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phantomrose96 · 6 months ago

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Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 2

(Sham Sacrifice: Chapter 1)

Chapter 2, because @ciestess voiced an idea that absolutely consumed my entire mind and I could not rest until I made this

...

Danny’s eyes tracked the swing of gunfire raining bullets across the horizon. Tucker reloaded, crouched, dodged left and pivoted, another blast of bullet confetti launched through a gaggle of zombie heads. He tossed the magazine and reloaded. Click. Ching. Danny flinched when a zombie smashed a hammer clean through Tucker’s head.

“God. Fucking…” Tucker pulled out of his hunch. He unclamped his fingers from his controller like bug legs unfurling. He extended the controller to Danny, bouncing it in his grip. “Your turn.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, as if he hadn’t been watching Tucker’s game the whole time.

“You. You’re up. I died.”

Danny accepted the controller, reloaded the screen, and jogged about a hundred feet forward before the first horde of zombies took him out football-style from the left. The death screen rolled.

“Oops,” Danny said.

“Not your best work.” And Tucker took the controller back. Tucker shot a few spare glances to Danny while the level restart loaded in. “Is it Vlad?”

“No. Well, yes,” Danny answered, flopping back into his normal position on the Foley attic armchair. Tucker’s mom had planned to toss it ages ago, before it became Danny’s chair. “But at least he left when my parents went all zombie mode into the basement.” Danny picked absently at the scabs of leather flaking from the armrest. “It was just weird.”

“I don’t mean this as an insult, but it’s definitely not the first time your dad’s gotten some math wrong,” Tucker said. “He blows up like three things a week doesn’t he?”

“He does. But he doesn’t care when he gets that math wrong. This one was like I broke something important.” Danny’s expression soured, and he picked a leather flake clean off the chair. “Vlad did, I mean.”

“Does any of the math actually work?” Sam offered from Tucker’s desk. She leaned an elbow around the back of his chair, head tilted to Danny. A pencil dangled from her loose fingers, nib-half worn to the History of an Invention report she was actually working on. Tucker had half-assed his earlier in the day about the palm pilot. Danny had not done his. “Like, it’s all crackpot theory, right? Do ghosts even follow math?”

“I think they follow some math. It’s not magic that makes the ecto-bazookas work, or the Fenton-phones work, or—well the thermos DIDN’T work—until I made it work.”

The unspoken thing Danny had been not-quite-saying hung in the air. He said it this time.

“So I’m wondering if I did it. Like the Fenton thermos. And now maybe they’re gonna do the math all over and realize the missing piece of the equation is one half-ghost son.”

“Well the order is backwards, for starters,” Sam said. “Thermos worked because you pumped ghost-energy into it. How would you have done that to the portal? You were human when you walked in.”

“Sam’s right. What do you think you brought to the table exactly? Button-slapping abilities?” Tucker loaded up the next level. “It was their portal, and their math, and it worked. There’s a million-billion kinds of math and they probably just forgot one thing.”

Tucker took a headshot and died. Mechanically, he handed the controller back to Danny.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Ask Vlad. He’s got a portal.”

“Like Vlad’s gonna tell me.”

“Just promise to be his diligent little son minion or whatever. He’s easy. Wait, let me do the next level. You know I like the cyberpunk levels.”

“It’s not your turn,” Danny said, reeling the controller just out of Tucker’s wiggling grasp.

“I’ll let you do two in a row for your next turn.”

Danny knocked Tucker away, distracted just long enough for a zombie cyberbeam to launch from the horizon and take him out through the head.

The screen washed sepia. Danny stared at it. You died.

…

Danny hadn’t really meant to stay the night at Tucker’s place. They’d just gotten really far in Man vs. Zombie, and Sam had gone home, and Danny was just resting his eyes between his turns with the controller.

So when he woke to the bright strip of sunlight beaming into his eyes through the attic skylight, his first thought was Fuck.

He was awake, here, morning, school. Fuck he had not actually done his History of Invention report, despite the stupid amount of grief it had already caused him this weekend. He pulled his face out of the armrest, now pineapple-patterned from the decaying leather, and pawed for his phone fallen on the floor. If it was still early enough, he could maybe still afford to desperately half-ass something before sixth period science.

He flipped his phone open. A text from Jazz. “Don’t come home. Make up an excuse.”

“…Fuck,” Danny whispered, through the sensation of his heart launching itself into his throat.

He scrambled upright, whole body shaking at the mercy of adrenaline shock so soon after being pulled from dead sleep. His mouth was dry, teeth unbrushed, wearing his old clothes from yesterday, report not done, Don’t come home, Don’t come home, Don’t come home.

They knew. He’d fucked it up. Somehow they knew. The math. Something. And it had to be with guns blazing, because Jazz would not send that text if they’d taken the “We accept you” angle.

Were they coming for him? On their way here? Tracking by his phone? Did they like Mrs. Foley enough to not SWAT-slam her against the wall when she opened the door for them so they could come capture the ghost pretending to be their son?

Fuck.

Danny was upright. Danny was standing. Danny was shaking. Danny wasn’t actually sure what the next thing was he was supposed to do.

Tucker’s ball of blankets rustled from the couch. “Mmph?” he asked, articulately.

“I have to. Go deal with my parents, I think,” Danny said, because any plan felt a little better than no plan. “I think they know.”

Danny was a ghost. Danny was gone. Tucker sat upright, alone, blinking himself awake. He was staring at the You Died sepia screen still displayed on monitor, now burnt into the plasma of the tv.

…

Danny paused with his human hand slick on the Fenton front door. The gears in his mind turned as his plan quickly unraveled into no-plan. He had no plan, right? What was his plan? Handle this Man vs Zombie style—open the front door ready to dodge wide, because both zombies and parents liked to camp behind closed doors with bazookas at the ready?

“—absolutely absurd, and entirely unscientific, with no probability of being true. It goes against everything we know about neurology.”

Oh, Jazz. Was Jazz enough of a bazooka-deterrent? Probably not. Knowing his parents.

Danny turned the knob. His heart hammered. If bazookas, dodge left.

The first thing he noticed was in fact the no-bazookas. It was what he was most looking for. And so it was Jazz’s expression he did not notice until second—whites of her eyes wide, snapped to Danny, with a look that would be accusatory if worry hadn’t won that battle. Her cheeks were pale. Her hair was unbrushed.

He noticed his parents third. Compulsively, he rocked back onto his right foot, still outside the doorway, still outside the threshold of the Fenton family household.

Seeing his parents tired was of absolutely no shock-value to Danny. It was at least a twice-per-month tradition to see them haul themselves up from the basement sweaty and glaze-eyed at 7am, babbling excitement about some new ecto-spectral-hoozy-whatsits whose concept had shimmed into their minds at 8pm and now existed, fully operational, 11 nonstop hours later.

So it wasn’t the exhaustion on their face. It wasn’t the stagnant smell of sweat or the paleness of their faces or the stains on their clothes.

It was the way they looked at him. Like their whole world had fallen apart with his foot passing over the doorstep.

“Danny,” Jazz said, choked, a break in the silence. “Things are…! A little weird here. So maybe, if you wanna just get to school, I’ll finish clearing up—there’s a misunderstanding Mom and Dad have with their math. I am state finalist in Math League and have been studying college-level calculus in preparation for school applications so I’ve offered to help them fix their math, or prove to them—”

“Danny,” Maddie said, an echo of Jazz, but it felt worse. Danny scanned her hands for anything pointed enough to be a weapon. They were empty. “Danny can I just ask you something honestly, just quickly? Jazz is right. I’m just trying to clear up an issue with our math. And I won’t be mad. Whatever the answer is, I won’t be mad. I just want an honest answer.”

She stepped closer. Danny fought the urge to match her with a step backwards. Her eyes roved over him in a starved way, looking for something.

“Were you there when the portal turned on?” she asked.

“No, I wasn’t,” Danny answered. He wasn’t sure what to do with his face to make it look convincing. “It just. It needed some time to boot up, or something, right? That’s what you two said.”

“That was our guess ,but we don’t really know. The security tapes are wiped. We tried to make them EMF-resilient but a very, very strong blast of EMF could still corrupt them.”

“Yeah. I mean the portal’s gonna do that, right? When it turned on? Ripping open the Ghost Zone that’s—gotta be huge EMF.” Danny’s focus bounced between his mother’s eyes. “Just a guess. I really don’t know. I was in bed, already, whenever the portal started working.”

Left eye. Right eye. Why was she looking at him like that? Like she was sad. Was this part a trick? Make Danny let his guard down, go hey Mom need a hug? and that’s when the bazooka-whipping starts? It made his ribs feel scratchy. Stop looking at me like that.

“Have you felt anything weird at all, since the portal started working? Any gaps in your memory? Any parts of you that don’t feel right? Is there any part of you that feels like it’s changed in a way you can’t explain?”

She reached a hand out. Danny instinctively recoiled.

“Uh, yeah. They taught us about this in health class. They call it ��puberty’ there.”

“Danny,” Jack said, and his voice was scratchy from disuse, from a long and uncharacteristic amount of time spent not speaking. “Did you die in the machine?”

A beat. A moment. Like when the zombie sends a hammer through your head.

“I’M alive!” Danny declared with a crack in his voice, with hands slammed to his chest. “Look at me. What are you talking about?”

“It’s the only math that works,” Jack continued, his words like chalk, his voice too dead. He looked too much at Danny. “If one of you two walked into the portal, and died in it. And I don’t think it was Jazz.”

This was bad. This was weird. Danny had ghost powers, sure. ‘They can’t kill me I’m already dead,’ was a funny joke sometimes. But it was funny as a joke. He was a ghost sham, really. A faker, a LARPer, whatever Tucker had called it. He was a human who was just kind of a freak now. More of a freak than he already was. He looked dead, for someone who was super-duper still alive.

He’d buried that worry, already. They weren’t allowed to bring it back.

“Look… at me!” Danny continued, mouth dry. He threw his arms wide. “Look how super alive I am! I’m awake! Using energy! Eating food and sleeping with my human body. I’ve got flesh and blood and bones and stuff! I’m not a ghost-expert but ghosts don’t have that.”

This was weird. This made Danny feel like something was scratching to get free from inside his rib cage. It twisted his entrails. Sure Tucker and Sam had thought he was dead, for those first horrible few minutes, but then he changed back to a human and the nightmare ended there. Jazz never called him dead. The ghosts called him freak and halfa and whelp, but never ‘one of them.’ That was his whole thing: being different from the ghosts who became ghosts by something so normal as dying.

He was not dead.

“If you died in the portal, your ghost wouldn’t have been ripped out of your body. It would have been allowed to stay, and then you’d be…” Jack hesitated. “I don’t know what you’d be, but you wouldn’t be alive.”

“Dad,” Jazz said, and she stood herself bodily between Danny and Jack. “What an absolutely messed up out-of-line thing to say to your son! You don’t know that! Dad you’re tired, and just because you weren’t able to solve your math problem in one night doesn’t mean you get to treat Danny like this! I said I’d help you with your math! Now apologize to Danny.”

Jazz looked over her shoulder to Danny, her expression falling at the sight of Danny’s face.

Danny backed up over the door threshold. He shook his head. “I’m not comfortable with this. This is weird. I’m gonna go to school now.”

“Danny, I promise they’re just—”

Danny turned on heel. No backpack, no change of clothes. He took to the street without a single school supply and moved, and moved.

It was supposed to be guns-blazing. Molecule by molecule. Headshot you died. He’d prepared for that this whole time, in the shower, in his dreams, in his daydreams in class. He’d duck and dodge and explain himself over and over until they understood him.

Danny wasn’t sure he was capable of explaining himself anymore.

…

Danny knocked the heavy iron knocker. He was in ghost form, as a threat. He wondered if he still smelled like yesterday’s sweat now that he wasn’t wearing yesterday’s clothes. Now he was wearing the clothes he died in.

No one answered the door. Danny phased himself in.

“Vlad!” he called, and his words echoed along the slope of the two elaborate winding staircases that twirled and met at the top like caduceus. Gold-plated banisters. A security camera buried somewhere in the ceiling, no doubt.

Danny phased into the library. His eyes roved the three stories of bookshelves wrapping the perimeter like a sheath. Gaudy. Audacious. Like Vlad would ever read that much. Danny racked his brain because some something in here was the secret to opening Vlad’s laboratory. Jazz had told him. Some gold something to be touched, and pressed down, or pushed up? Or it opened to a button. Or a keypad, maybe.

Danny spat a curse. He was being stupid. He was frazzled. He wasn’t thinking straight.

He dove into the floor below. Intangibility was the only key he needed.

The sheetrock was cold, even when he wasn’t touching it. The darkness was so piercing it made static jump in his vision, some weird trick of the brain Jazz had explained where, in the absence of all light, the brain hallucinates its own. It came with a sensation of pressure against his eyeballs, and a complete disorientation of direction, and he simply just kept going down.

Danny emerged into a wash of cold air. Cold like metal was cold. The low lights of dials and clicking machines were bright to his eyes previously dunked into the pitchest nothing. He drank it in, eyes grateful for light no matter how little, inner ear grateful for orientation that had left his head swimming and his stomach tight.

His feet tapped down to the stone ground, and the air that breezed past him was chilled.

“Vlad!” Danny called again.

Nothing.

He moved by the floor lighting, which ran in trim along the perimeter of the laboratory rooms. It lit things from beneath, made machines gaunt and specimens into sharp geometries of darkness and flesh. It made the Fenton lab feel warm in a way Danny had never considered it warm.

His feet clacked. His breath puffed.

“Vlad!”

He followed light, followed a wash of green miasma percolating from some far room and catching on the particulate of water and dust that disturbed with the air currents. Danny disturbed it too, walking through, wearing its shade of green which his shadow robbed from the wall behind him.

“Vlad. I swear to god Vlad.”

He crossed the threshold of the portal room, where the dusting of green ambience became a medallion wash of golden-green coating, painting every surface of the room. The Fenton lab was one single expansive room, portal anchored into the far wall and facing all the dead and empty air in front of it. This was different. A much smaller room, walled on all sides save for the simple doorway, and each surface reflected the color back deeper and heavier. It was like a fishtank in the wall of an aquarium lit radiant aqua-blue by all the lights within, but green instead, pure ecto-green.

Danny approached the open portal. He stared into its placid swirls, mesmerized, and scared of it, in a way he hadn’t previously felt about the portal in the Fenton basement.

“Ah, seems the cat is a good mouser after all, it dragged you in my boy.” The words came sing-song. They came spine-shivering for Danny, who felt them like hot breath on his shoulder and reeled back, pivoted, fire crackling to life in his palms.

Vlad stood at the doorway, a solid 20 steps from Danny.

“Vlad.”

“So I’ve been hearing.”

“I need you to explain the portal.”

“Ah, I see you’ve spoken to your parents.” Vlad stepped in, washed in the ecto-green which muddied his ruby red eyes. He held his hands behind his back, cape trailing, a smirk on his fanged face. “Last I heard they weren’t taking the news very well.”

“What news. What did you tell them?”

“Me? Nothing. In fact, very kindly for your sake I even tried to drive them away from the answer but… We know how stubborn your parents can be.”

“What answer?”

“That you’re dead, Daniel.”

Shock washed like ice down Danny’s spine. It sent prickles like spider legs across his skin.

“Well, I suppose there’s still chance for some doubt. It could be Jazz. She could take the fall for you, if there’s any benefit to that at all.”

“I’m a halfa. We are halfas,” Danny said.

“A silly made up word by a silly child,” Vlad mused, and the light smile left his lips. “We are dead.”

“I’m not dead,” and Danny’s words were small, and they were childish.

“You are. I am. Embrace it. It’s nicer this way.” Vlad took a few steps closer, lionously tall in his saunter, feet clacking the ground. “It’s very freeing. After you’ve died already what is there left to fear?”

“I’m alive.”

“You’re a dead body with its soul still stuffed inside it like a Christmas goose. A lot of things in your body don’t work anymore, but ghosts don’t work right anyway and it is, for all its defiance of nature, a perfectly symbiotic relationship.” Vlad’s smile brushed his lips again, warm. “It’s nice to share this with you. Isn’t it nice to share things with people?”

Danny’s heart was beating too fast in his chest, and it was a human heart, a human beat. “I’m not dead,” he declared.

“Your wounds heal quickly because the ghost piloting you only needs to remember form. It stacks cells back into place and calls it good. You’ll endure fatal injuries as you no doubt have many times in your fights, but they’re trivial because physical trauma is not what kills a ghost. It’s what creates one. You’ll necrotize in places but it’s okay, because you’ll carry on, and it will bother you only if you let it bother you, if you’re too sentimental about the puppet you’re still inside.” Vlad closed in closer, neck craning to appraise Danny. “Ghosts love a facsimile of life so you will keep your heart pumping, your lungs breathing. You’ll eat and you’ll sleep but you’ll find you won’t perish if you don’t. It just won’t be a good time if you want to keep occupying your flesh form. Take better care of it. You won’t get another.”

“You’re psychotic. And you’re wrong.”

“I have all the math to prove it.” Vlad leered from over Danny’s shoulder. He circled the boy, knocking Danny’s balance, who still on a hair trigger stood ready to fight. The light from the ghost portal painted Vlad’s face like the phases of the moon as he moved. “Did your parents explain that part to you properly?”

“No, because they didn’t get the math right.”

“Oh they’ve gotten it right. This time. It only took them two decades longer than it took me.” The portal rolled like static, and its fizzling pattern crashed like an ocean wave across Vlad’s cape. “No amount of man-made power is sufficient to drag the entire fabric of the Ghost Zone up against our own, tear a hole through it, and anchor it to a stable frame. It requires something with a pull on the Ghost Zone, a strong pull, and that thing is a human life at the moment of an extraordinarily violent death.”

Danny backed a step away from the portal, from Vlad, but the walls boxed him in. He swam in its green light.

“You stepped in and you turned the portal on, that’s what you thought, right, Daniel? Pressed a careless button on the inside and now here we are. Silly parents for not finding that button first.” Vlad’s face hardened. “No. Jack and Maddie knew about the button. Maddie explained it to me over the phone. What engineer designing and building their own portal would forget the location of the on button? They’d pressed it from the outside. It didn’t work. And so you pressing the button was not the important part. It was you dying to the electrocution that clicked everything right into place. And while your ghost should have been torn from your lifeless corpse and pulled to the Ghost Zone you instead pulled the Ghost Zone here. Your ghost got to stay put. You opened the portal. You became the undead freak you are. And now we’re here.”

Danny’s eyes bounced between Vlad’s. His cheeks felt hot, like he was enduring an accusation of wrongdoing. And he had none of the knowledge to refute what was being said.

“You’re messing with me. You’re wrong,” Danny shot back. He thrust an arm out, drenched in the fog of the portal. “If the portal needs a person to die in it then explain your portal! Are you so casual about it? You killed someone? You’re admitting to murder and you think I won’t do anything about it?”

Anger flashed like a storm across Vlad’s face. His aura swelled, pressing down with a pressure on Danny as Vlad halted and cast his shadow clear across Danny, coating the back wall. “The killing of other people with the wanton carelessness of half-baked machines is the domain of Jack and Jack alone. I’ve brought no such harm onto anyone else.”

“Then how do you have this portal?”

“This portal? This portal that I’ve had for 20 years? Which I opened when I solved the piece of Jack’s broken math that he was never able to solve until this morning?” Vlad stalked closer, hunched, imposing. Danny stepped back. “My boy Daniel you’ve had it so easy. You had it so simple. A truly clean break. So clean so lucky. A single lethal dose of electricity and it was already over. I’m jealous. You never even suffered.”

Vlad stepped closer, striking distance, arm extended. Danny flinched, but Vlad only swept his cape around, clenched in his fist, and pivoted to approach the portal.

“Put out of your misery before it even started.” Vlad slammed his fist against the portal rim, and the explosive metallic clang bounced through the rooms. His laugh belted out. “I should have been so lucky.”

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A sophomore in college. A man actively in the midst of sabotaging his social life to chase a woman who was already deeply in love with Vlad’s best friend who he hated more every day. He wasn’t sure what he ever enjoyed about Jack’s bumbling ineptitude, or his loudness, his brashness, his poor social skills, his bad breath, his mullet. Maybe Vlad had gravitated to Jack because deep down he loved how superior it made him feel to surround himself with the likes of Jack Fenton… And now, he hated how enraged it made him to watch Maddie’s eyes skip past his to focus on Jack Fucking Fenton again and again and again and again.

But surely there was hope still. Surely it was a matter of time before the rose-tinted glasses fell away and Maddie saw bumbling and inept and every such word in the basket when she looked at Jack. There’d come the day she tested the waters with Vlad to complain about one of Jack’s little quirks, and they’d find solace together in all the things Vlad was that Jack wasn’t, and all the things Vlad had that Jack didn’t. And he’d be gone, back to bumble elsewhere, and it would be just them.

The day didn’t come. It wouldn’t come. And maybe Vlad needed to change himself for Maddie. If he listened to her and Jack’s ghost ramblings, if he could put Jack in his place and solve the things Maddie couldn’t, it would show her. She’d understand.

Because that was the thing about Jack. His math was never right. Enduring Calculus 1 with Jack was all it took to prove this to Vlad. How many times he’d caught a single error on a single line for Jack, like a dropped stitch that would unravel the whole sweater. Every problem, without exception. Jack only passed on his homework grade with Vlad’s help. On his tests, he failed.

So Vlad was staring at Jack’s equation, full of bogus math, which Vlad knew was wrong because Jack had penned it, and Vlad had not yet fixed it himself.

“I’m telling you Jack, it won’t work.”

“Bogus V-man it totally will!”

It wouldn’t. But Vlad wouldn’t fix it for him. Not yet. Vlad would let Jack embarrass himself first, fully in front of Maddie, watching on, judging. Vlad would solve it for her. After. Once Jack had made a fool of himself for the hundredth time since college began.

He leaned in to study the portal frame. The gears were turning in his head already. He didn’t hear the whir of the power source catch.

…

19. Vlad Masters was 19. A tube ran down his nose and into his lungs, supplying oxygen for lungs which were failed by a diaphragm sloughing itself away. He was poisoned from the outside-in. Irradiated by ecto-energy none of the nurses or doctors could fully understand. It damaged his DNA. First obvious in the skin of his face where the blisters of his ecto-acne drained and sloughed. “Acne” was the wrong word. An unkind word. They were boils where the blast had cooked his skin, microwaved his cells. The skin on his body blackened over time. Organs decayed. Vlad Master read a lot about radiation sickness. He knew everything he had to expect.

Jack and Maddie had stopped visiting. They were dating now. It was on their last visit they’d told him, and Vlad hadn’t taken it well, and he’d perhaps burned a few bridges with the words he chose. It was deserved. Considering what Jack did to him.

He’d found the error in Jack’s math, by the way. Errors, but all the rest paled in impact compared to the lambda. The ecto-energy. The necessary ecto-potential to pull the Ghost Zone here. How stupid. How idiotic. For Vlad to die to a machine so botched in its construction.

When Vlad was released from the hospital, it was not because they’d cured him. It had been because there is a certain cruelty in making a 19-year-old live the last of his days bedded down in a white-walled room with just his books, his equations, and no one coming to visit anymore.

He was released with bedrest instructions. Vlad did not heed them. In his beater car, every cell of his body aching, he drove. At the materials lab, he disconnected his oxygen tank and moved through the lab space with the tube dangling loose from his nostril. No one was Vlad Masters’ friend. No one cared to stare long at his ugly boil-ridden face. No one stopped him as he hauled sheet metal, and supports, and bolts and wiring and resistors and power tools, checked out with a valid student ID, from the lab. The lab inventory room would not be seeing these back.

It was a prep bunker, buried beneath a vast lot of empty Wisconsin land, that Vlad hauled his materials. He and Jack had discovered it as freshmen. Poked through its bowels with flashlights and quipped and laughed over how eerie it was. Deep beneath the sheetrock, boxy rooms carved out of walls of stone. Shelf upon shelf of dusty canned foods, and shotguns sealed in cases fastened to the walls. The locks had rusted with water damage.

His arms ached until they throbbed, dragging beams of metal across the stone floor, scratching chalk-mark stains into the ground. His skin sloughed, inflamed, burning to the touch. Vlad didn’t bother to rest, because these injuries would never heal anyway. He hauled, and welded, and wired up his circuitry and resistors with a care and caution Jack would never have bothered to practice. He checked it against his math by flashlight. He took naps on the cold stone floor and woke with deep purple bruises on every part of his body that had pressed against the ground.

His appetite left him. His lungs filled with mucus. The boils on his face had spread down to his chest, his shoulders. The touch of his shirt chafed them, so he worked without one, a figure of skeletal rib ridges jutting from tight skin that bloomed with the projection of his shadow against stone walls.

He knew why Jack’s math was wrong.

A silly mistake. A stupid mistake. Anyone with half a mind for the paranormal should have realized the Ghost Zone was not so easily at your beck and call. Not without chumming the water with something it would rise to feast on.

And in that violent death, what would happen to the ghost? It would stay, wouldn’t it? If it successfully anchored the Ghost Zone to the portal it stood inside, then by definition the ghost would stay?

And was that death? Yes, in a way. But it was a death one would get to keep living. As opposed to the death Vlad was headed for, whose coldness and finality scared Vlad more than anything he could put to words.

He’d fixed the oxygen tank back to himself. He couldn’t work without it, hauling it about on a little dolly with him, back and forth, while he fetched and affixed the last of the plating he needed to craft the frame of his silent soulless portal.

He’d stolen a generator from the sports storage shed. It was meant to be enough to power the portable stadium lights they hauled onto the fields for late games, an absolute obelisk meant to cast light across an entire football field.

Surely, it contained enough power to kill one simple human.

Vlad fixed the last bolt in place. Jumper cables clamped generator to portal wiring. It was a pure skeleton. A paltry thing, like the bones of something already picked clean. Built in haste, sloppy, by a 19-year-old whose fingers were too inflamed to clutch a wrench any longer.

He could have asked Jack for help. Maddie. But he wouldn’t let them have this. They had to solve the portal on their own. They didn’t get to know his hard work. They did not get to save him.

Vlad would save himself.

A ghost anchored to a body. What was that? What monster was that?

Vlad moved. He coughed mucus from his lungs. It made it hard to breathe. So he moved slowly, and crouched, bony jutting angles, painted blotchy purple, all bruises and skin, sloughing away.

He crouched, because the portal he’d constructed was not large enough to hold him standing up. He bowed inside it, a small thing, a pathetic man of little life. He wheezed. He hurt. His eyes burned.

And he held in his hands the remote to flip the generator switch, and connect the circuit, and bring to life the math Vlad had so kindly corrected out from under Jack’s grip.

Vlad did not. Because throwing the switch would kill him.

Deep in his animal brain, his dying brain, he knew this intimately. It filled him with a drowning fear like paralysis. He did not want to die.

He would die if he did nothing.

It would be this one throwing of the switch which could save him. Which would burst the portal to life right through his heart. Electrocute it out of its rhythm, slaughter him like a pig on spot and… maybe… hopefully… drag the Ghost Zone here. And whatever he was, dead, would stay.

And whatever he was, dead, would be better than this.

Vlad held the remote in his clammy hands.

And from within the humming skeleton of his portal, his fingers caressed the on button.

…

The portal sung its happy contentment, mused in its healthy green aura, staining all the slabs of rock wall. Danny swiveled his head, recognizing now the bunker this had been before it had been a laboratory.

“I’ve harmed no one, Daniel,” Vlad concluded, his voice too measured for the horrors it had spilled forth. Too calm against the blossoming terror its words had wrought across Danny’s face. “I opened the portal to save myself. You’re lucky, Daniel. It was because of my fast thinking that your father is not a murderer. I took that honor from him.” Vlad’s head tilted to the side, suddenly sympathetic. “Although, you’ve maybe made the title whole for him.”

Vlad reached out, Danny shot away.

“Dad didn’t kill me,” he choked. “I did this to myself.”

“How lucky Jack is, to always dodge responsibility for his actions.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. If you believed me, you’d have to accept you’re not wriggling out of this. There’s no denial you can bring home to your parents. If you believe me, then this is reality.” Vlad smiled, a playful glint to his fangs. “I suppose I should have more sympathy. I quite like being this way. It is so much nicer than wasting away to death, like I was. But you. You were healthy before this. This killed you, and it didn’t save you from anything.” Vlad cocked his head. “Such tragic fates, both of us, due to the carelessness of Jack Fenton.”

Danny shook his head. His heart beat—his human heart beat—all too fast in his throat. It made him sick. It made him feel like the walls were closing in around him. This was Vlad’s doing. Vlad’s trap. Vlad’s prison he’d been forced to join.

"That's not true. I'm not like you."

“Of course not,” Vlad said, sweetly. “How sweet denial is. Deny it if you like. Call me a liar. But if you ever want to come to terms with what your father did to you, consider coming to me. I understand you in a way no one else will.”

Danny gave no response. He gave no acknowledgement of Vlad’s words. He took to the air, phased himself up through the sheetrock that had been packed atop the doomsday prepper bunker. Up through the mansion, which had been built atop the portal beneath it, and not the other way around. Into the open sky, he breathed fresh air not stagnant and damp beneath the ground, bathed in light pure white from the sun and not tainted green like the bowels underneath him.

And he flew back toward the portal that made him, leaving Vlad with the portal from which he’d made himself.

...

(inspiration post from @ciestess)

#sham sacrifice #danny phantom #dp #dp fanfiction #vlad masters #danny fenton #YELLS AND THROWS THIS AT YOU #ive been spinning around like a top on this idea #tw: suicidal ideation

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raeynbowboi · 1 year ago

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Playing a Heroic Necromancer in DnD 5e

Necromancy is one of the most evil-skewed powers in just about any fantasy setting. However, unless you're running a villain campaign, most DnD parties are made up of heroes who won't like having an evil character in their midst. You want to play a necromancer, but you also realize that DnD is a very collaborative game. So, how do you make your party more amicable towards the thought of you raising a family? Here's some possible backstory ideas that can fuel a heroic necromancer for your next campaign.

The Scholar

The taboo, illegal, or forbidden nature of studying necromancy drew your interest. Whether you studied with a secret sect, uncovered a grimoire of necromantic magic, or made a deal with a devil for profane knowledge, you were driven by a desire to study magic. The sparse availability of necromancy forces you to remain mobile, making party formation easy. You may be hunted by law enforcement, clerics of Kelemvor, or other necromancers angry at you for stealing their arcane secrets. And now that you know what so many tried to hide from you, it's your choice how to use it.

The Chronicaller

History is written by the victors, the rich, and the powerful. But every life holds valuable knowledge and secrets. Ancient bones know things lost to time. Knowledge that was never written down. Stories which have not been spoken in centuries. Opinions of the common people during a historical event. Experience with phenomenon that can no longer be encountered. The Chronicaller wishes to unearth the secrets of the past already laid to rest.

The Physician

The Frankenstein of Necromancers wishes to understand the medical and scientific elements of life and death itself. To understand the body by inspecting it and digging into it. They may study how to cure diseases or how to spread them. Try to find a way to slow or even halt the slow decomposition that turns the body elderly and frail.

The Thayan Rebel

Once a Red Wizard of Thay, you have left Thay and the Red Wizards, letting your hair grow back slowly as you seek to expand your arcane talents beyond the limitations of Thayan conquest and oppression. The Red Wizards and Szas Tam become personal antagonists for your character and party as a result.

The Undead

Be they a Revenant, a Dhampir, a Vampire, a Lich, or something else, they are already imbued with undead power. They simply embrace their anti-life energy already flowing through them, channeling a power most others would avoid. You may be undead, but you desire to staunchly defend the living from other undead who are less compassionate.

The General

A wizard with a soldier background and optional martial multiclassing, your undead horde is your army of loyal soldiers, putting their lives on the line again and again to serve their general. An Oathbreaker 7/wizard 6 adds your CHA mod to undead within 10 ft, and proficiency bonus to all undead you control. But the steep dip into paladin locks you out from higher level spell slots for stronger undead minions.

The Noble

Similar to the general, the undead serve you out of loyalty, not fear or force. But where the general commands their soldiers, the Noble may command their staff of servants, their commoner citizens, their knights and soldiers, or their own noble ancestors. The Noble utilizes their horde to fulfil the services and duties of their noble house. They're just as likely to conscript skeletons to pave a road or build a bridge as they are to form a wave of zombies to break up a smuggling ring in their city.

The Immortal Guardian

You have or want to become immortal not out of power hunger or greed, but to protect the innocent forever as an unwavering guardian against evil. Everyday people can't protect themselves, and even legendary heroes die eventually. Only an immortal protector can be an eternal defender of the people.

I hope if nothing else, this gave you some ideas for some good and noble necromancers you could bring to your next table. Did I miss any Heroic concepts that you thought of? Let me know, and help make the world a more morbid place.

#dnd #dnd 5e #dungeons & dragons #dungeons and dragons #necromancy #necromancer #lich #wizard #wizards of the coast #vampire #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 #undead #skeleton #Halloween #happy halloween

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sepublic · 4 months ago

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Alright but consider a magician who can control all variety of animals; Something about them seems off. They move and act too perfectly. You realize they don't actually breathe or blink. They don't sleep or eat. You touch one and it feels quite cold.

And then you realize; It's taxidermy. They're all taxidermied creatures brought back to 'life' via necromancy. An issue many necromancers have to contend with is decay; Their resurrected zombies and skeletons can often fall apart within weeks, if not days. Some spells slow down this process, but it's often advisable to find some way of 'preserving' the corpse.

Consider a taxidermy necromancer who prefers their minions in top condition, indistinguishable from life; For the most part. No diseases or stench, nothing like that. If they want to control something, they make sure to carefully kill it before submitting its corpse through the painstaking taxidermy process, and once it's preserved, only then can they reanimate it.

They take offense when you damage their collection, given how much work went into each one and ensuring it’s both presentable and lasting; Not just some impromptu scavenged corpse to discard later on! What if this went hand in hand with someone who couldn’t cope with the loss of a loved one, and ‘brought them back’ this way?

Imagine people who are taxidermied, acting as uncanny mimics to impersonate the real deal; It's the original body but without the soul. Imagine a museum display of bodies submitted for plastination, brought back to life and breaking through their display cases. They creak and stumble from their bodies being hardened but are in some ways more durable for it. Imagine fossils and taxidermied creatures being rallied together; A museum is a handy source for 'sustainable' necromancy, isn't it? If not, there's always a hospital's morgue.

Depending on how far necromancy can go, what if someone reanimated the very meal on a plate? It would be quite the fright to see one's fried chicken meal, or a freshly-boiled lobster, spring to life as if nothing happened. What if they could reanimate the creature while it's inside of your stomach to tear you apart from within, could even a fillet count? How much does dead matter have to be ground up to be beyond magic's control? Things like that would easily push someone into vegetarianism.

And what of necromancy for plants? Fungi? Imagine your table coming to attack you, or all the broken debris at the bottom of a forest bundling together into some great monster. A dead tree erupts from the roots, freshly-cut flowers offered as tribute now writhe. Black mold cleared from your nooks and crannies swarms towards you.

Necromancy is scary stuff; Usually it's only the living you have to worry about, once it's dead you're clear. But now it's only the living you can count on, relatively speaking; And they can still be a danger. It's ghosts coming back to haunt you. And it can remind a person that in the end, a lot of stuff exists in a constant cycle of life and death, and the boundaries between these can be quite blurred when you remember each feeds the other, and is comprised of them.

#Def having some Viracious thoughts on mind here #necromancy #necromancer #taxidermy

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elbiotipo · 2 months ago

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I was thinking on how to do Lovecraftian horror in a Project Zomboid-like game. By Lovecraftian horror I don't mean investigators like in the Call of Cthulhu RPG, or a FPS where you're a badass shooting tentacle monsters. I'm thinking of a setting where The Stars Were Right and the world is consumed by madness and surreal horror, with only some places where humanity still survives as such. Something like The Forever Winter, trying to survive by hiding and looting among ruins and wilderness but instead of giant mechs it's Elder Gods.

I mentioned Project Zomboid because it gets survival right. You have to keep yourself constantly fed, healthy, and even entertained, and oh there's also zombies. Surviving in such a world would be the same. You would be still a common human with all your needs, but your entire reality has collapsed now and you need to evade monsters, and fighting them will be impossible (at most you could take out some of their minions)

And that brings me to insanity. Now that's a topic with a lot of arguing to be done but let's think of it as gameplay. A simple HP points system is dumb. The Zomboid method of stacking debuffs for panic and such works but it's frustrating.

But think about it, what does make you insane in Lovecraftian fiction? It's not seeing a big guy with tentacles, it's trying to understand your own place in the universe and failing. (Though of course traumatic and horrorific sights don't help). So my idea is that you would be isekai'd transported to this new "post-Cthulhu" world, as a regular human (much like characters in Zomboid are average people) You would have some kind of mind-map that allows you to do things, from skills like crafting items to even just walking or speaking. Every time you experienced something lovecraftian, you could lose parts of the mind-map, but they would be mostly... Altered. Perhaps you can even strenghten yourself against the horrors, perhaps not. And on top of that, you would need to keep yourself alive and there won't be any convenient merchant NPCs or magical crafting. You could very well starve to near death, be awake for weeks (and when you sleep, the game doesn't stop, you can face the horrors in your dream... Or have nice dreams if you are doing well), be hurt with a long recovery, and those will take a toll in your psyche.

Maybe when I finally play Disco Elysium I'll get some ideas.

#cosas mias #my hobby is thinking about games I'll never make #maybe someday when I'm done with my current career #oh Kenshi has a good base for this

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cryingeevee524 · 10 months ago

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i can't see why anyone would choose zombies over skeletons as minions. sure, zombies can usually take a couple more hits but neither of these are front line soldiers! they're SERVANTS and lemme tell ya, zombies are TERRIBLE servants. for one the smell is AWFUL and it spreads EVERYWHERE as flesh falls off and leaves a trail wherever they've been, secondly they're WORTHLESS at servant work! "oh minion, could you pass me the forbidden book? yes, the blood magic one" congratulations! ancient secrets have been smeared and ruined from zombie residue! "oh minion, cook me a meal would you?" you WILL get several diseases. "minion, sweep the halls, they're quite dirty" it will be DIRTIER than when it started. the only thing they have over skeletons is you only need one to carry something heavy meanwhile you need 3 or 4 skeletons for the same job. but THAT'S WHY WE HAVE THE FLESH ABOMINATIONS! carefully cleaned and prepared as to not rot, choice pieces expertly stitched together for strength, and SUPER customizable! save yourself the pain and strip all the flesh and organs and whatnot and just raise that corpse as a skeleton.

#sorry to rant but i just found out a so called “colleague” of mine has her tower full of the rotting bastards!#their go to minion!#at least zombies are fun to set on fire i guess...#wizard posting #necromancer

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kimberlyannharts · 9 months ago

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LAST TIME ON POWER RANGERS: Ranger Slayer got herself captured by Dark Specter's forces while saving Drakkon's ass. BUT Drakkon makes up for it by saving HER ass from Dark Specter's corruption. BUT, he died in the process. So that means Slayer now has to save everyone's ass. Again. Seriously, this is like the third event where Slayer has to save everyone.

it's Power Rangers Unlimited: The Morphin Masters!

= so Drakkon and Slayer training together is canon, okay cool, book over, I got what I need

= But moving on from that these panels specifically make me crazyyyyy because what do you mean Tommy and Kim together means "happy ending"? What do you mean referring to Kim as Tommy's guardian angel? What do you MEAN redrawing Drakkon's death scene as more intimate than it was in 116????????

= MY STUPID EX-HUSBAND DIED ON ME SO I HAVE TO GO ON THIS STUPID QUEST

= So something cool about these energy beasts - they're all tied to ranger powers! A yellow bear, a red lion and ape, a gold praying mantis, a white rhino, and an orange scorpion. Sure, the latter wasn't TECHNICALLY a ranger power, just a zord, but there's a point to the "the PR universe did have Kyurangers at some point" theorists

= I just like this panel because it's silly. she's got the zoomies

= Slayer continuing to win the idgaf war against literal deities

= and then they founded an animation studio that gave us the Minions. so unfortunately they gotta go

= but in seriousness, I guess this is how we're going to rationalize how the MMs were portrayed in Beyond the Grid versus how they were portrayed in Power Rangers Universe - the BtG guys were a couple specific higher-power ones. It's fine, I guess. I'm still not a fan of the idea of an entire civilization just calling themselves Morphin Masters, though. Just make.....THESE GUYS the Morphin Masters. Why are they ALL the Morphin Masters??????? Now we have to establish a SUB-SECTION of the Morphin Masters!!!!!!!!!

= Slayer holding Drakkon and his death in high regard like this.......god. god.

= oh hi Blue really cool to see you again hope you don't die in the next few pages

= oh well never mind. Guess we're never going to find out why they came back to life, which was their reason for going into the Grid in the first place, huh

= I do like how we're going back to referring to Blue with they/them pronouns. I guess in hindsight we really were just misgendering them for years. awesome

= I'm glad we're fully acknowledging all the shit Slayer has gone through but I will admit my immediate reaction to the "it was fire" line was "she would not fucking say that". Maybe as a teen, sure. But NOW?

Pink: follow me to the orifice

Slayer: .....the ORIFICE?

= oh hey guys, how have you been since you got retconned into existence and therefore have accomplished nothing in the main series

= I know this is supposed to be a whole thing of "ohhhh these guys think they're free but they're still being controlled yada yada" but at the same time as someone who hated the Emissary retcon and wishes that we could have gotten more from the characters as they were before........them being angry over losing what they had is very very good and I wish it wasn't done through "evil corruption magic." It was good with corrupted Slayer because they dedicated an entire issue to it and FREED HER at the end, allowing more time and space for development; here it's just a quick fight scene and in the case of Blue, followed up with death. And slight spoilers here, even if they don't die here, the way the Emissaries have been dropping like flies doesn't give me much hope for their survival if they show up in the main series

= I wonder if this is a reference to how in an early draft for the Ranger Slayer one-shot, the Bow of Darkness was going to be broken in half by Zombie Rita and Slayer would have used it as dual swords. Either way it's fucking cool

= also while the inclusion of Dino Thunder as one of Pink's forms is a simple mistake, it takes me back to those old DT AU fics where Kim became DT Pink. They're canon now guys, no takebacks!

= So turns out the "Illumination" are just a bunch of senile grandpas. Yeah, that's.............the big revelation for where the Morphin Masters have been. ok

= Now let me just say for this story, the Morphin Masters being useless is a fine decision, for the same reason why the Morphin Masters were useless in Dino/Cosmic Fury - you can't have these overpowered god figures show up and fix everything with a wave of their hand. This applies to every story ever - the god-like figure is captured, or dead, or simply doesn't care enough to interfere. It's a very basic and logical choice for a narrative in order for our actual grounded protagonists to be the heroes.

HOWEVER. It's another instance of Boom hyping up these kinds of storylines as groundbreaking revelations of PR's mythos for years just for the actual reveal to be kind of a letdown. Phantom Ranger's identity. Dark Specter being a major villain. The Squadron Rangers. And now the Morphin Masters' current status. All hyped-up concepts that either get rushed or end up secondary to other concepts, and in the end, don't feel like they matter. It's getting to be a bit tiresome, and I'm saying that as someone who doesn't hold PR lore high on her list of reasons I enjoy the franchise in the first place. And it doesn't help here that, as I've said before, it just feels more like a way to stretch out this event to fill its year-long timeframe. By the end of this book, nothing was accomplished except two more Emissaries are dead (not that they did anything before this) and I guess Green and Black will eventually join the fight, so what was the point of it all. Slayer never really believed the Morphin Masters would help them anyway, so it's not like she changed by the end either - Pink was the only one who really developed as a character, and, well......

= Pink quick eat an imaginary Snickers you're not you when you're hungry

= this is the third person Slayer has killed in two books. she's so good at her job

= also you may have noticed that we've killed two Emissaries and they're not turning to stone nor having a giant spider boi burst out of their bodies. It's soooooooooooo cool how that entire story arc meant nothing in the long run

= ugh yes queen swear off religion just like that

= also at this point Drakkon has wielded the power of a Morphin Master and Slayer was offered the position of one. What I'm getting at here is Tomberly are indeed divine figures

#mmpr #mmpr comic #mmpr comic spoilers #comic recap #pr unlimited #the morphin masters

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pockavas · 1 year ago

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Halsin - trusting your fears

Part 4

On their way to Baldur's gate, the party came across a tower inhabited by a necromancer who was harassing the nearby village and surrounding territories. People disappeared, others said that they were seen wandering through the misty woods, aimlessly, with tattered clothes and sickly green glowing eyes. The animals were not spared either, the corpses of tame and wild beasts, mutilated and half-grown, were found.

When the heroes clashed with the necromancer, they realized he was more powerful than they thought. After a long and treacherous battle filled with twists and turns and unpleasant tricks, the witcher was pinned in a final grip at the base of his tower. All his minions down, with no chance of escape, the necromancer drew one last spell from his sleeve before he breathed his last.

A flask of dubious contents that he cast a spell on and immediately hurled at the target he had chosen.

It was Halsin. During the fight he had assumed his usual bear form, with one swing of his powerful paws and sharp claws tearing zombies to pieces who, if they had any sense left, would never have come near him at the sound of his mighty roar.

The necromancer's idea was to poison Halsin with his magic and turn him against his comrades, using his unbreakable power against them. The vial hit its target, hitting Halsyn in the face, a cloud of green smoke erupting, which the druid inhaled. The color of his eyes began to change, from the forest brown typical of bears to a hideous glowing green. Halsin realized what was happening to him, fought the effect of the substance, put all his will into it, but gradually began to lose control of his rage.

A berserk Halsin turned his attention to his friends, now exhausted from the battle, wounded, bruised, and drained of magic. Being the most familiar with necromantic magic, Gale immediately understood what was happening and warned the others to stay away, that Halsyn would be very difficult to stop.

"-Gale, there has to be some way to get Halsyn back to himself!" Ross shouted to him- "I trust your knowledge to think of a cure!" They were having a hard time discussing the solution to the problem, very hard ,because Halsin constantly attacked them.

"-Whatever happens, don't hurt him! This is still our Halsin!"-Ross kept calling out to the others. She couldn't imagine that they would have to hurt him to stop him, or worse, take his life. She wouldn't allow it.

"-Of course! I remembered! Do you remember the flask of the strongest anti-intoxication potion that the priest from the temple of Seluna gave us?! It's the best we have, the only one to be exact. There's also magic applied here , but maybe with the elixir and Halsyn's will, it will have an effect!" exclaimed Gale, who had teleported himself to a high terrace of the tower to stay out of Halsyn's claw range-"It's just... There's and bad news. Halsin must swallow the liquid, drink it. And I don't see how we're going to get him to do that. Anyone who comes near will be killed."

A grim thought, but did they have a choice to save their friend?. To save her most precious person. Ross managed to reach into her bag in between her efforts to parry and dodge the druid's swings. This was it, she held in her hand the hope of bringing him back, of bringing him back to her.

"-Cover me as much as you can, distract him. I only need a few moments..."- she instructed the others.

"-What are you up to? Do you want to kill yourself?" Shadowheart yelled at her.

Ross ignored her. Tossing the bow to one side, her hands free, she uncorked the flask and bit down on its narrow neck. She took a deep breath for courage and strength and sprinted towards Halsin with his back to her. She swooped onto his back with the agility of a seasoned ranger, leaping from branch to branch in pursuit of her prey. She clung to his fur, soaked in mud, sweat and blood. Halsin immediately began to thrash about, trying to get her out of there, growling and grunting furiously. Ross didn't let go, clutching the fur with all her might, trying not to spill a single drop of the precious liquid. He moved closer to his neck, she could already see the shiny black nose of the bear. She just had to somehow manage to pour the liquid down his throat without being teared it in the process.

Desperate plans need desperate actions. With one hand she removed her belt, threw it quickly around the druid's neck, tried to pull him so that she would bend his head back and give him the medicine. But desperate actions don't always work.

Their eyes met just before Ross could take the flask from her mouth and pour it into his. Even more anger came over Halsin, he thrashed wildly, so hard that Ross lost her grip on the belt, falling to the ground on her back. Halsin leaned over her without thinking, without recognizing her, and bit her right shoulder with his huge maw full of sharp, powerful teeth. Ross cried out in pain, but she couldn't give in, she couldn't give up now, not on the brink of death. With her left hand she held the bear's muzzle, and with her right, she took the flask and pushed it into Halsin’s mout, until the glass broke and the healing liquid spilled over the druid's tongue. A shard of glass managed to cut Halsin's bottom lip, this enraged him anew, he sunk his teeth even further into Ross's small shoulder, jerked his powerful head and threw it into the air in one motion.

Ross flew a few meters to the side and landed hard on her face in the muddy ground.

They all shouted in unison, fearing the worst. The elixir quickly began to work, the green in Halsin's eyes fighting the gold, the druid magic. Through the mist of the fading necromancer spell, Halsin began to regain his composure. The world began to take on its usual color, the blood red hue receding along the periphery of his vision until it disappeared.

Halsin locked his gaze on Ross, lying helplessly on the ground, covered in blood. He was fully aware of what had happened, he remembered everything. His heart sank, his soul ached, what he had done to his most precious being. He wanted to rush to her, to take her in his arms, but his being seemed to be frozen by the horror of what had happened. He forced himself to walk unsteadily towards Ross, changing his form back to human in motion. The golden glow of druidism ran through his body as the bear form transformed into a human.

The rest of the group had gathered around Ross, she was still conscious, hearing deafeningly as the others called out to her from under the water. With the last of her strength, Ross managed to raise her head towards Halsin, she saw that he was back to himself, saw his worried expression mixed with horror, no trace of the uncontrolled beast was left. So she had succeeded after all! But at what cost?

The world around her began to disappear, the sounds died away altogether, everything began to darken, first at the edges of vision, and finally darkness took over everything. She sank below the surface of unconsciousness.

Halsin was terrified that the worst could happen, and that he was responsible for it. He was willing to do anything to save her. He went towards her, to take her in his arms, to bring her back, but the others pushed him away.

"-No, Halsin, stay back!" Shadowheart stopped him.

"-I …, let me help! I'm on my own now! I'm responsible! I have to be with her!" Halsin answered desperately.

"-You’ve done enough already!"-spat Shadowheart angrily-"I'll take care of her!"

"-Come on, my friend! Let Shadowheart work her magic. It's hard, but it's better to step aside now."- Gale said and patted Halsin encouragingly on the shoulder.

...

Back at the camp Halsin couldn't find a place. The otherwise calm archdruid, a pillar of self-control and wisdom, of caring for others, now felt out of his skin. He marched back and forth, circling, no matter how exhausted he was from the battle, he was unable to calm down, to stop.

After several hours, Shadowheart and Karlach emerged from Ross's tent, their hands stained with blood, their faces haggard.

As soon as he saw them, Halsin moved towards them impatiently, waiting for news.

"-She lost a lot of blood. Really, a lot! And the wounds... the bite, it's really brutal!"- Shadowheart informed him-"But you know that well!"

"-Oh, come on Shadowheart! Don't be so cruel!"- Carlach interjected.

They discussed Ross' condition. The wounds were serious, and healing magic was unable to immediately and completely heal her. It would take time to recover and care would be needed.

Halsin tried to swallow the urge to burst into the tent and wrap Ross in his arms. His face was consumed with worry, his heart stuck in his throat, and his soul curled up in the corner of his mind. He tried to regain his composure, so he could think more clearly, find the best cures to help Ross, do his best.

He was determined not to leave the tent, to be always available, to avenge what he had done, to do everything he could for her.

#baldur's gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 #halsin baldur's gate 3 #halsin #halsin bg3 #halsin romance

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autisticsupervillain · 1 year ago

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It's Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

The Terrarian vs Paper Mario!

Conditions:

Mario has absolutely everything except for the Pure Hearts. Terrarian has everything. Speed Equalized.

Scenario:

The Terrarian intends to steal the Crystal Stars to use them to make a new weapons set. Mario stands in his way.

Analysis: The Terrarian

The land of Terraria, despite it's unassuming exterior, is a chaotic and dangerous one. The universe was created as an experiment by the Gods, a test to see if some form of cosmic balance could be maintained. However this balance was threatened by the dread god Cthulhu, who sought to bring all of Terraria under his domain. Luckily, the ancient race known as the Dryiads were able to overpower the dark lord, fighting it to the very last man and crippling him irreversibly. This forced Cthulhu to retreat to the dark side of the moon, where it would attempt yo regain its strength to one day attempt to conquer the world once more.

That day was soon to be fast approaching as a cult arose, seeking to revive Cthulhu and bring his horrible reign down upon all. That is when our hero enters this story: The Terrarian themselves. They were a simple nobody of unknown origins until the mysterious guide appeared before them one day and sent them off on their quest to prevent Cthulhu's return.

And luckily for all of us, The Terrarian has many.... many.... many tools on hand to help them fight the forces of darkness. This dude has more armors than Tony fucking Stark, each of which designed to help them combat that numerous beasts infesting Terraria.

Every armor and weapon at their disposal bolsters their already superhuman strength to some degree, which says a lot when they're capable of killing ghosts and blasting zombies into big meaty chunks with just their bare hands. Many of their armors, as well as their healing items such as potions, campfires, and statues, can speed up their regeneration, which is already good enough to help them recover from having their face ripped off. On top of that, many of their armors allow them to duplicate ammunition, allowing them to mow you down with their variety of gattling guns and magical crossbows with complete impunity. And if that wasn't bad enough, their most powerful armors can increase their capacity to summon minions as well as allow them to turn invisible.

On the topic of said summons, they're completely intangible, unable to be harmed even by those who can kill ghosts and effect souls. This is especially problematic when you have to deal with all the other things the Terrarian's magic can do. They can make it rain damaging blood from the sky, bring down small meteors just by swinging their sword, can freely teleport just about anywhere is sight or teleport all the way back to their base, and even nullify your ability to heal from it all. Their ranged weapons are equally deadly, capable of shooting poisonous projectiles, intangible projects (that go straight through everything that isn't you), giant fucking lasers, the works. Really it'd be easier to list all the ways the Terrarian can't kill you.

I don't think that the Terrarian wouldn't be willing to use this on you either. They can be shockingly ruthless in the pursuit of their goals. For example, they were perfectly willingly to permanently sacrifice their Guide's life to get a shot at killing the Wall of Flesh, unleashing the spirits of Light and Dark and causing untold chaos in the process. Hell, they even helped hasten Cthulhu's return just so they could kill it themselves and solve the problem for good. So you can fully expect some ruthless tactics out of them. Magically enducing confusion in you to get an opening? Check. Sucking out your very life force until you're nothing but a dead and empty husk? Sure thing. Spraying you with a weapon that corrupts you into a mindless servant of the all consuming Crimson, omnicidal Corruption, or over zealous Hallow right down to your very soul? Yes, they'd do that.

And good fucking luck retaliating properly, even assuming you could hit someone who can fly, teleport, and turn invisible at whim, their numerous charms and armors grant them resistances to poison, mind control, fire, ice, and many, many more. Hell, they can even resist your ability yo nullify said resistances with the right gear. And if that's not good enough, they can even transform themselves at will into a form that gives them a better advantage, such as a merfolk who can breath underwater or a werewolf with increased strength at night.

Even with all this at their disposal, the Terrarian does have some considerable weaknesses. That being that a lot of their stuff relies on their gear. If you take that away, you'd be left with an incredibly experienced and skilled fighter... but that's about it.

Having said that, they're still an underdog ehen compared to their competition. The Terrarian builds nearly all their gear themselves and has used it to slaughter entire armies and even outright gods in the span of a single night. For example, the Celestial Towers that sealed away the Moon Lord (Cthulhu), are powerful enough to pull the moon closer to the Earth in the span of seconds. The kinetic energy generated would measure out to 152.98 Ninatons of tnt, or 9x more than the energy needed to destroy the Dwarf Star OTS 44.

Source:

And keep in mind, this isn't even the Terrarian at their peak. They would later fight against the same Mokn Lord who was stated to be capable of destroying the entire realm of Terraria.

The loot they got from beating the Moon Lord is even stronger still. When you're powerful enough to beat gods who can destroy stars, you're powerful enough to do damn near anything. The Terrarian is far more than a simple Minecraft clone. They're in a league all of their own.

Analysis: Paper Mario

Mario "Jumpman" Mario. You know who he is and what he does. Even if you've never touched one of his games, you probably know everything about Mr. Video Game. This humble plumber has risen high ever since his humble days chasing after Donkey Kong Sr. Being basically the only competent form of security that the peaceful Mushroom Kingdom has, Mario has rescued its resudents and princess from the clutches of the nefarious Bowser countless times. But some of his adventures are a bit.... craftier than others.

For the sake of this analysis specifically, I'm treating Mario and Paper Mario has two distinct entities. While Nintendo has gone a bit back and forth in the past as to whether or not Mario and Paper Mario are the same guy, with several games in both series referencing the events of each other's games as canon while at other times treating the two as completely distinct entities, so really, you're fair to read them either way. Mario has about as much continuity as Tom and Jerry most days anyways, so for the sake of fairness, I'll be limiting Mr. Jumpman to his arts and crafts arsenal today. Even when treated distinctly, Mario and Paper Mario should powerscale off each other in stats regardless, because Paper Jam is a game that exists.

Not that being two dimensional has made Mario's arsenal any less vast. The usual arrangement of hammers, fire flowers, and mushrooms with various effects are all here and accounted for. Paper Mario is just as capable of making big jumps as his three dimensional counterpart and has saved his version of Peach just about as often. And what's unique in Paper Mario's arsenal is often times uniquely devastating.

Mario's papery proportions allow him to move in unique ways. He can flip between 3-d and 2-d to avoid attacks and reach otherwise impossible areas and he's been "cursed" with all manor of shapeshifting abilities, from the power to turn into a paper plane and soar through the sky to the power to the ability to turn into a paper boat to crosd the sea! Mario can breath in the vacuum of space (except for when he can't) and survive space radiations completely unprotected.

Moreover, Mario's inventory is versatile and deadly. The mega star can make him grow absolutely gigantic and let him plow through everything in sight, while his Pixl allies give him a whole host of powers. Tippi analyzes his enemies for him, giving him advice and informing him of their stats, Barry creates, well, barriers to protect Mario from threats, Carrie turns into a floating platform to carry Mario and pals out of danger, and Thoreau lets him pick up and throw enemies and objects over twice his size, among many others.

Over the course of his first adventure, Mario would rescue the seven Star Spirits, allowing him to overcome Bowser's wish granting star rod and nullify his invincibility. Mamar sings a song to put enemies to sleep, Skolar rains down stars from the sky, Muskular decreases the enemy's strength, Misstar restores his health, Klevar stops time, and Kalmar transmutes the enemies into stars. The Crystal Stars can give many of the same abilities, on top of powers such as creating Earthquakes and sealing away beings as powerful as the Shadow Queen, who could cause earthquakes all over the world and covered the world in darkness.

Yet, despite all that variety, Mario's most powerful and arguably strangest ability comes in the form of things. Real life objects of incredible power that can be used to absorb and redirect poisons, melt entire mountains, and even spin the entire planet! Such a feat, if performed on Paper Mario's world, would generate a kinetic energy equivalent to 154 exatons of TNT. That's enough to shatter the moon!

Source:

And that's on top of being considered equal to his mainline counterpart. The same Mario whose power stars can create galaxies, who could survive the universe being reset, and defeated the Megabug, a dimensional instability that was going to destroy Mario's entire dimension.

2-d or 3-d, Mario is one of most powerful video game characters Nintendo has ever created. No matter what side series he hails from, Mario is the mascot for a reason.

Throwdown Theme:

youtube

Throwdown Breakdown:

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. This is a big one.

The arsenal on both of these combatants is absolutely massive. I don't think I even touched on half of it in either of their run downs. And both of them have ways of killing each other right out the gate. The Terrarian could always just corrupt Mario into a unicorn, but Mario can just as easily turn the Terrarian into stars. As video game characters controlled by the player, neither side really has a go to openinh move in combat, so determining who wins the quick draw is difficult. And that's on top of all the abilities that just counter out, like flight, because they both have several ways of doing it.

On one hand, Mario cannot destroy or guard against the Terrarian's summons, as even people who can punch ghosts to death bare handed can't touch them, meaning Mario's ability to fight Boos wouldn't help and he'd be getting harassed all fight. On the other hand, Mario's ability to shift between two and three dimensions would provide a similar level of Intangibility, as Terrarian has never shown to hit a foe who becomes incorporeal in such a manor. On the third hand, Terrarian has even more ranged options, with a huge plethore of guns, bows, and magic staffs, whereas Mario heavily relies on either massive Area of Effect attacks or attacks that are relatively close range.

Both of these combatants can either defeat beings who or are comparable to beings who can defeat people who can threaten to destroy the entire universe, so there's no considerable gap in power. Any attempts to buff or debuff stats would get swiftly countered out anyways by potions and power ups.

So what's the deciding factor here? Well, there's a few things that work in Mario's favor here.

1. Unpredictability. As vast as the Terrarian's arsenal is, all their weapons are at least things that look like weapons at first glance. Mario, meanwhile, can just summon a giant chicken or stop time with a stop watch, or spin the Earth with a fan and you don't know which until he does it.

2. Analysis. Tippi is going to be able to give Mario a tip that the Terrarian is very dangerous and very versatile, cluing him in to the fact that he should open up with a winning move first, while Terrarian is going in blind.

From there, Mario could just stop time or put Terrarian to sleep before turning them into stars. While Terrarian could just as easily open up with an instant win move, they both wouldn't know to do so and would have no way of predicting Mario's arsenal because of how out there it is.

As versatile as these two god killers are, Mario is just that little bit... craftier.

This Throwdown's Winner is....

Paper Mario!

#fictional throwdown fridays #super mario bros #paper mario #terraria #the terrarian #Youtube

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music-oc-tournament · 1 year ago

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NEPOTISM BONUS ROUND!!!

Since I disqualified myself and my friend group from participating due to bias, I've decided to make a bonus, 1 day only, free for all poll for me and all my friends Villains! Who among them will win the honor of getting the...Slightly less prestigious 1st place price?

Top to bottom, left to right:

MIRE: 21, She/Her. Mire's a big boisterous Kaiju "Witch" who magically "polymorphs" (mutates with her venomous breath) people into reptile minions. She acts tough and diabolical in a larger then life way, but ultimately is a big sweetheart at her core, with it not taking much to get on her good side.

COUNTESS VIVISECTOR: Mid 20's, She/Her, Ve/Vem, He Him. Countess Vivisector is a brooding supervillainess with the power to disassemble still-living bodies and put them back together in new forms. She's cruel and cold, but rather artistically inclined, creating grisly furniture and art sculptures out of the foolish heroes who dare challenge her. She's also 6'11 and is gay married to her zombie henchman.

MASTERMIND: 80ish years old, appears 40ish, He/Him. Mastermind, AKA Dean Davis, is the leader of the supervillain group known as Sinistar. His ferrokinesis and engineering ability allows him to control his organization and fight heroes. He also secretly has the power to reverse aging, which he acquired back in the 60's after he built a machine that kills heroes and extracts their powers…Which he used on his own girlfriend.

THE DIRECTOR: 40, She/Her. A mover and shaker in both the business and hero worlds, seismokinetic villainess The Director is the head of Hierarchy, an organization built on the principle of ruthless efficiency. She's a slick entrepreneur who's mustered a cadre of fanatical employees willing to follow her to the ends of the earth and die for her there. Never mind that she cut her own girlfriend out of the deal when she rebranded the guild they founded together- it's just business, darling.

T.I.S.M: Adult, He/Him. TISM is a self proclaimed genius doctor working for the supervillain organization Scelestic, which he helped found. His job is to "harvest" powers from heroes, taking parts of their bodies and incorporating them into various gadgets, machines, and weapons that he can replicate and make a profit off of. He is also a dilf.

LOBOTOMY: As old as time, He/Him. Lobotomy is the King of The Darkness and winner of the World's Worst Dad award, he's a vengeful and murderous god who will stop at no lengths to get what he wants. After forcing his psuedo-adopted "son" to kill everyone he knows, he ends up as ruler of the entire realm he resides in, where he now has full control over everything and everyone.

UMPYRE: 31, They/It. With the power of the sun in the pads of its paws, UMPYRE is a force to be reckoned with for any professional superhero. It's a good thing, then, that it's pretty much just a glorified theater kid, a contractor for the government who far prefers the show and spectacle to any real damage. And for as much as they put their all into their job... well, who could blame them for getting more than a little silly with it?

#scopophobia #scopophobia tw #<- for lobotomy's scary eyes #bonus poll #ask to tag

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weenwrites · 11 months ago

Note

yay for attempting this crossover!! im really glad you're giving this a try, tho if you end up not liking it i understand, im just happy you're hearing me out!!!

this character is from my current favorite game: guild wars 2. he's called Trahearne, and he's a sylvari, aka sentient plant-like people! he's also a necromancer, which i think would be startling to Cybertronians when they hear he studies magic that raises the dead into his personal minions. Trahearne is a good guy tho, not evil, and he has a hard and troubling destiny ahead of him, a fate given to him since he awoke in his world.

if he were in the tfp world, trying to get back w the help of team prime, what do you suppose their opinions of him would be???

no pressure if you're not into this, but if you are, have fun!! don't worry about not knowing this fandom or game, thank youuuu

✎ A/N: Just to clarify to people OTHER than the requester, I still don't do crossovers and I don't think I ever will after this one because it was difficult for me to write. The only reason I'm making an exception for this crossover is because I decided to say "yes" to it because I wanted to give it a shot. Also anon I'm sorry it took so long for me to respond, but I tried my best with what you gave me to work with, and I hope you see it and enjoy it.

[ Please do not repost, plagiarize, or use my writing for AI! Translating my work with proper credit is acceptable, but please ask first! ]

Optimus

Despite Trahearne's disposition, Optimus wouldn't be the type of person to judge him because of it. So long as Trahearne is someone who wishes to do good, then he's willing to extend his hand to help him however he can.

He can somewhat relate with having a troubling destiny, as he is the bearer of the matrix and the leader of the autobots. The fate of two worlds are balanced upon his shoulders, and his every move may risk toppling them both. He tries to offer what bits of wisdom and knowledge he can in hopes that it will one day be of use to him.

Ratchet

He believes that the team already has enough to worry about with humans to protect and the decepticons scouring the earth, they needn't anything more to take care of on their plate. Unless Trahearne's willing to extend a hand to help Ratchet with his duties, then it's most likely that the two will have little room to interact.

But speaking of magic, Ratchet initially thinks that it's ridiculous. Magic doesn't exist, and he doesn't believe that studying it is even possible. If Trahearne's the kind of person to prove Ratchet wrong and show off his skills, then the look on Ratchet's face is something that no one will be forgetting any time soon.

Ultra Magnus

Like Ratchet, Ultra Magnus believes that effort and resources should be poured into the war effort as opposed to aiding a stranger, or at the very least form a partnership so that both sides get something out of it. Yet if he is ordered to help return Trahearne back to his world, then he'll comply without another complaint.

Smokescreen

He initially thinks that it's super cool that he has some predetermined destiny waiting for him—so long as that destiny is to do good in the world. He may come off as a little insensitive at first (especially if Trahearne's destiny is something he has complicated feelings about) but he's quick to realize any mistakes and apologize if he said something he shouldn't have.

He'd think the whole "doing magic" thing is real cool, and he'd ask all sorts of questions about it, like what can he do with magic? How does he do it? Smokescreen would even want to try learning, and if he was given the opportunity he would legitimately pour in the time and effort to do magic.

Bulkhead

Wait so if he raises the dead to do his bidding, were these undead servants people he killed or people that were already dead? And would it work on cybertronians? To Bulkhead, if he thinks long enough about zombies brought from the dead to do someone's bidding, it grows more and more disturbing. But zombies aside, if Trahearne's a good guy, then there's a chance the two of them could get along just fine.

#tfp imagines #tfp headcanons #tfp optimus prime #tfp ratchet #tfp ultra magnus #tfp smokescreen #tfp bulkhead #weenwrites

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saberwitch · 1 year ago

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I think about Necro minions a lot. Like these are not recognizable creatures, they're amalgamations of parts. They're distressingly small humanoid skulls fused to distressingly large rodent bodies. They're floating torsos with spines for limbs, huge hulking masses of flesh with jawbone arms. There's a thing that looks like a devourer until you get too close and realize it is made of something else.

Is this a conscious choice on the Necromancer's part? Is there an agreed-upon Necro-aesthetic? Is it PR? As in, are they non-recognizable remains because zombies are upsetting to other people? Is that just how the magic manifests? If it is, why does it form these particular constructs?

(I haven't forgotten the Shade, but that is a pre-existing recognizable entity, different imo to the "constructed" minions)

anyway I wish we could name them, even if they are "disposable".

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #gw2 necromancer

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that-house · 2 years ago

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Ran the first proper Field of White Flowers playtest the other day.

I stuck them in the Kill Six Billion Demons universe, because i love that setting and its general aesthetics and power level are perfect matches for FoWF (tbh K6BD was a significant inspiration for FoWF)

They were mercenaries hired by the Repossessions Guild to break into the house of a mob boss who’d gone missing and take everything that wasn’t nailed down.

TLDR: it was fun

in depth breakdown of what happened below the cut because i don't wanna nuke everyone's dash <3

For those with no context: Field of White Flowers is a high fantasy high power tabletop roleplaying game system geared towards huge dramatic anime fight scenes, wuxia bullshit, and feats of tremendous heroism and villainy. It draws inspiration from the webcomic Kill Six Billion Demons, fighting games, a vast slew of other roleplaying game systems, and the time-honored video gaming tradition of having a climactic duel in a field of white flowers.

The big thing I was worried about going into the playtest was just that it wouldn’t be fun. I’d had a lot of fun designing it and talking about it, but until you play the game properly it’s impossible to tell whether the game is actually fun.

Like, take Lancer. I love Lancer, I love the design philosophy behind it, I love theorycrafting builds for Lancer. Actually playing through a Lancer combat is like getting a cavity filled without anesthetic. How do 4 rounds with 4 players and no roleplay take 6 hours? We will never know

Our cast, in order of introduction:

Abzu, Newborn God: a young ocean god seeking to prove himself to his brethren. flavorwise he was a waterbender, mechanically he was a fairly supportive debuff engine focusing on lowering enemies’ stats with Chill. Attempts to get Abzu's player to join tumblr have been unsuccessful thus far.

Alizoba, King of Miscellany: sapient pile of trash looking for more stuff to add to themself. had a build based around Baiting enemies into bad moves and following up with huge combos. Alizoba was played by @cyrus-swag.

Ophidia, Serpent Queen of Lead: cowgirl and gun witch, mostly just here to kill people and get money. build revolved (haha gun pun) around throwing flashbangs, vanishing, and reappearing somewhere else with a huge gun. Ophidia was played by @fearlesscomfort.

Sixgill Griseus, The Bartender No One Fucks With: shark man who is a bartender/bouncer/chef/waiter/etc at his bar. magically-enhanced death glare can intimidate inanimate objects and shut down people's nervous systems. Sixgill was played by @historically-innaccurate-dialga.

The events of the session:

Abzu immediately murders someone for polluting a canal

gradually all met up and made their way to the house they were going to rob

encountered two devils, the tiny chainsaw-wielding Ozzy and the colossal Scunge who wielded a machete and a harmonica, guarding the house

Scunge was tackled clean through the door of the house and pinned down by Sixgill until he simply keeled over dead from the force of the bartender's stare

Ozzy mauled Abzu and Ophidia, and was about to coup de grace the latter when Alizoba summoned a building on top of him

Ozzy and Scunge served as a test of the Power Couple mechanic, in which two combatants are represented by a single statblock, one of which dies and changes the statblock when they collectively reach half HP

Inside the house, they encountered a vast horde of living dead who had been employed as meth cooks and house guards. They fought them off for a while before Ophidia finished off the last forty or so by briefly stopping time and lining up a headshot on each one

The zombies were an example of the horde mechanic for representing a TON of enemies with one statblock and a few minions. They worked great

Next was a hall of huge swinging blades, because i wanted to include a few simple skill challenges.

Sixgill just used his enhanced senses to walk through the hall, only getting barely clipped by the last one.

Abzu attempted to freeze the mechanisms, but they exerted too much force and shattered the ice.

Ophidia solved the "there are several thousand pounds of high velocity metal in front of us" with her own several hundred pounds of high velocity metal (she shot the blades with her minigun until they broke)

The next room was a treasure room, with tons of weapons in glass cases. Sixgill broke one of the cases to get a harpoon, causing the rest of the weapons to drop through the floor and poison gas to pour into the room

Abzu waited out the poison in a bubble, while Alizoba summoned a fridge to hide in. Sixgill stared the fucking poison down and the very air said "you know what fuck that I'm not getting paid enough." Ophidia tried to fire off enough guns to replace the air near her with gunsmoke, which went badly

the final thing we had time for in this session (we're going to finish it another day) was a room with an enchanted idol in the middle, which compelled everyone who saw it to want it.

Ophidia burned a fifth of her HP to teleport over to it instantly and take it before anyone else could, and we ended the session as they walked into the next room, which contained a devil named BIG BOY (all caps)

The good stuff:

combat flows quickly from player to player, turns are short but impactful. it's not a tactical wargame, there's no grid or elaborate line of sight rules, but decisions about when to bring up damaged allies and whether or not to take short term disadvantages for long term benefit mattered

even though the system has a lot of room for optimization and certain characters were definitely stronger than others, no one felt useless even with bad rolls

the general Math of the system worked out pretty well. people were critting about as often as I wanted them to be, the HP amount for the players felt right

people had fun (the most important thing)

other important thing: it filled a niche that no other system i've played has filled, and did it well. the experience might have been different if we'd used another system, but it would not have been enriched by the change. Field of White Flowers just. fundamentally. works.

The stuff that needs improvement:

in retrospect it should have been obvious that, given that at its core the game is designed to be roughly balanced (especially at lower levels), making enemies that are on even footing with the players would make the combat REALLY fucking difficult. That was a silly on my part <3 the first encounter was not meant to be that hard. I halved the HP of the second encounter and it was much more reasonable

the mental overhead of certain builds is a little too high. the character sheet handles a lot of things for the players, but some builds have numbers that fluctuate frequently in combat

debuffs didn't quite feel impactful enough on enemies. main issue is that many of the durations are too short, leading to a lot of debuffs just sort of feeling bad when you use your whole turn to apply them, while other debuffs are just VERY VERY VERY good (looking at you Shock)

current out of combat resolution system is very bare-bones (skill checks are roll a few dice against a DC), and either a sliding scale of success or a push mechanic would likely augment it

nerfed Knife Juggler because holy fuck it was so OP for how easy it is to obtain

The nice thing about game design is you can make a system you want to play. Field of White Flowers ticks soooo many of my boxes, and it proved to be pretty easy to pick up, fun to play, and with enough depth of content to keep people talking about it for a good while after the session.

thanks for reading, and always remember: Pariah Stance allows you to tick down the countdown on Forbidden Technique faster

#field of white flowers #that last statement is an inside joke about the fact that Pariah Stance has no actual upsides #rpg design

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reformed-ghost · 3 months ago

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Thinking about my ocs meeting Taliesin for the first time

🐉 Ghara shrugs, patches him up, accepts his offer, and slowly leads him towards Windhelm where she’ll turn him in to the Stormcloaks for a modest reward. She doesn’t like the Stormcloaks, but she really doesn’t like the Thalmor, and she’s disgusted by Tally’s blasé attitude towards the Talos worshippers he slaughtered.

They run into some detours on the road, go on a few dungeon crawls, and Ghara gradually begins warming up to him. Internally she berates herself for it, but when Tally explains his reasoning for joining the Thalmor she can’t help but sympathise a little- does she really have the right to judge him? She abruptly changes course and announces she was reading the map wrong this whole time- Riften is actually this way!

🦌 Nils groans in frustration when he stumbles upon the still-very-much-alive Taliesin. He had heard rumours of a massacre taking place at an old Talos shrine and figured it was the perfect opportunity to collect some undead minions and fresh dinner in one fell swoop. Sure, Taliesin would be very fresh, but he can’t shake this paranoid feeling that the Thalmor will just know somehow if he puts down one of their agents. Tally offers to travel with him and, well… he would certainly be a more interesting bodyguard than the zombies, even if he is a bit too squeamish for Nils tastes.

☀️ Saadri is disappointed. She was expecting vampires, necromancers, maybe just some rogue skeletons, not something as boring and petty as Thalmor. She typically tries to avoid politics, but she was born and raised in Hammerfell, of course she has opinions regarding the Aldmeri Dominion. She chastises Taliesin for being a cold-blooded murderer as her restoration magic wraps around his wounds and she helps him to his feet. He offers to join her and she excitedly declares that he can repent for his crimes by joining her holy mission to smite the undead from the face of Skyrim.

Taliesin is regretting this already.

🔮 Their usual mask of quiet grace and dignity falters for a moment, and Athen cannot help but laugh at the pitiful agent sitting in a puddle of his own blood- oh how the mighty have fallen! Athen couldn’t care less about the faithfuls innards decorating the shrine of Talos, but their contempt towards the Thalmor runs far deeper than Taliesin could possibly know. They don’t kill him- they keep him close and wring out every last drop of information he has regarding the Thalmor, in the vain hope he’ll know something about…

It doesn’t matter, because every day that they travel alongside each other Athens hatred begins to soften bit by bit- their smiles and laughter become genuine, and they almost forget that this alliance is purely strategic in nature. Almost.

#i haven’t written anything like this in a very long time ik its a bit bad #taliesin skyrim #skyrim taliesin #my ocs #oc: nils #oc: ghara #oc: saadri #oc: athen #skyrim #skyrim custom followers #the elder scrolls skyrim

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bulkyphrase · 1 year ago

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Halloween Fic Recs 2023 Week 4: Other ships

Not much longer till Halloween! This week's stories are from a variety of ships - not necessarily rarepairs, but not enough spooky fics to make up an entire rec list.

The End of All Things by cakeisnotpie (Clint Barton/Phil Coulson, Mature, 17,801 words)

Summary: Clint Barton could always see ghosts and monsters, and now that he's a ghost hunter with his partner Natasha, he's about to come across a house that is well and truly haunted, one that seems to be waiting for him. A seriously spooky bit of horror completely with monsters and ghosts and creepy-crawlies and nightmares just in time for All Hallow's Eve. Happy Samhain, ya'll.

Monsters 'R' Us by Not_You (Clint Barton/Phil Coulson/Natasha Romanov, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Mature, 20,183 words)

Summary: Phil Coulson is one of the last of the old school monster hunters, and finds himself in the company of a werewolf and her human.

Bite Down by avesnongrata (@avesnongrata) (Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Explicit, 5,224 words)

Summary: "I could change your life, Maria. And all you need to do is trust me." Seasoned monster hunter Maria Hill is tasked with tracking down a dangerous supernatural creature in the heart of the jungle. Her hunt does not go the way she planned.

The rest are below the cut!

Between the Shadow and the Soul by Yeetmeaway (Romanogers, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Mature, 151,121 words)

Note: this is a sequel to the amazing For Whose Love I Rise and Fall

Summary: After receiving Shield’s cure, Steve’s memory of the past seventy-five years of being infected with Hydra’s virus has been wiped clean. He's grateful for it— it's better to forget the suffering he caused as an infected monster, but as he navigates the unfamiliar world he has woken up in, it becomes clear that his past isn't done with him. Troubled by disturbing dreams and by strange, lingering feelings that he can't explain, Steve struggles to navigate exactly who and what he is now. But a new threat emerging in the wake of Hydra’s destruction has a strange obsession with Steve and his new partner, Natasha Romanoff. The mere presence of this threat promises to destroy what little ground Shield has gained in this war and if Steve and Natasha can’t stop him, they stand to lose far more than just their lives.

you know i didn't want to (have to haunt you) by dharmainitiative (@rocketnebulas) (SamBucky, Teen And Up Audiences, 46,052 words)

Summary: Sam Wilson is an amazing realtor. He works hard, he takes care of his clients, and he can sell any house he puts his mind to. Unless, of course, the house happens to be haunted by an irritating, standoffish ghost who died in 1940. Then things get a little more complicated.

The Way Out Is Through by samwontshare (Attaining) (@samwontshare) (SamBucky, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Explicit, 12,097 words)

Summary: Sam and Bucky's love story in Wakanda is interrupted when Sam contracts a virus that makes him crave human flesh. Bucky will do anything to keep him safe. And fed. Instead of The Blip, Thanos' minions brought the zombie apocalypse. (Aka a Sambucky zombie romance. Happy Halloween!)

Best and Last of All Things by anactoria (@anactorya) (SamBucky, Mature, 7,481 words)

Summary: Just a couple of guys, holding each other together as the world falls apart. (Alternatively: Fucking zombies.)

batteries and holy ghosts, buried in my bag of bones by starvels (dinosaur) (@starvels) (Steve Rogers/Tony Stark/Janet Van Dyne, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Mature, 8,102 words)

Summary: “You don’t sleep anymore," Steve says. “Yeah, I guess not,” Tony agrees, smiling like that’s funny somehow. Steve hates it. “But Jan does and she could use some company.” Steve’s eyes close again. Jan. Sharp, unnerving Jan. Jaundice yellow and grave-dirt-black magic Jan.

D.I.Y. (Demons In You) by RedTeamShark (WinterHawk, Explicit, 37,828 words)

Summary: Clint and Bucky are ready to take the next step in their lives and buy a house together. And when the opportunity arises for Clint’s small Youtube channel to get a big sponsorship on a home renovation series, it seems that the stars are aligning for them. Buying and remodeling an older house is a much bigger project than they expect, and old houses hold old secrets. Have the two found a place to live and love together, or is forever homea bit more literal than they ever intended?

Historic Features by flawedamythyst (@flawedamythyst) (WinterHawk, background Stony, Teen And Up Audiences, 19,254 words)

Summary: “Electrical surges with no source, and music coming from the air, and that damn baseball game no one was watching, and I swear I sometimes hear voices right on the edge of hearing when I should be alone,” said Tony. “What does that sound like to you?” “Sounds like-” said Steve, then hesitated. Tony gave him a pointed look. “Sounds like a haunting,” he finished, reluctantly. “Oh no,” said Clint, in tones of mock-horror. “Ghosts!” Bucky laughed and kissed him. “Man, I hope they’re friendly.” Clint and Bucky are haunting the new apartment that Tony bought in Brooklyn to try and impress Steve.

The Ghost of a Chance by atothej (WinterHawk, Major Character Death, Teen And Up Audiences, 2,341 words)

Summary: The Asset's only constant companion is the ghost that haunts him.

The Road Less Traveled at the End of the Line by NarutoRox (@muteelfmoonmoon) (WinterIron, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Teen And Up Audiences, 27,889 words)

Summary: To say Steve is surprised to wake up haunting his loved ones after sinking his plane into the ocean would be an understatement. To say he enjoys it would be just plain cruel. For starters, there’s the ‘minor’ problem of said loved ones being unable to see or hear him, which is bad enough. Things only get worse when he finds out Bucky is alive, but held prisoner by the very people he and Steve had fought against, leaving Steve to watch as HYDRA slowly tries to unmake his best friend. Then there’s Tony, Howard’s genius son, whom Steve loves dearly and may or may not be a little protective of after watching him grow up under Howard’s less-than-stellar care. Steve doesn’t know if they keep him sane or drive him crazy, but he does know that Bucky and Tony are the two most important people in his world. He also doesn’t know if it would make his life easier if they knew each other or not, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve never met, are on opposite sides of the world, and other than being cared about by Steve, have nothing else to do with each other. Until Tony is kidnapped by the Ten Rings…and HYDRA thaws Bucky for a mission…And Steve decides it’s about time these two met.

Take My Hand (Don't Fear the Reaper) by dracusfyre (@dracusfyre) (WinterIron, Major Character Death, Not Rated, 6,693 words)

Summary: For the ITAB prompt: After Afghanistan tony became a part-time grim reaper assigned to the winter soldier, since Bucky has a messed up head he can see tony.

#marvel fic rec

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cake-apostate · 2 years ago

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Stealth Game Morgana

I had a dream and now I have an idea.

In my dream, I was Morgana. For reasons that kept changing, the Phantom Thieves were abducted/put under house arrest in a house on a floating continent, but the cops didn’t realize that Morgana was sentient and let him run around the house. So it was up to me to get everyone out.

As Morgana, I had to coordinate with the party, spy on the cops, and figure out what was going on, all without letting the cops know that I was anything but an ordinary house cat. I got caught when I tried to perch on top of a punching bag and I knocked it over, and somehow this tipped off a cop that I was magic?

So now I have an idea for a stealth game (or more realistically, fanfic). The Phantom Thieves go on a second road trip, but along the way they get captured. They’re taken to a big house in the middle of the woods (or an abandoned temple, an empty village, etc.) and are put into separate rooms. Except one of the thugs thinks it’s a shame that the cat will have to go to a shelter once the Phantom Thieves are dealt with, so they bring Morgana along so they can adopt him when this all blows over. Since they want Morgana to like them, they let him have the run of the house.

Since Morgana is the only one who can move through the house freely, it’s up to him to get everyone out.

Suspicion:

First, why would anyone suspect the cat? I was thinking that the captors are aware that magic exists, but don’t know much about it. They know that the Phantom Thieves can use it, but they don’t know that they’re Persona users.

In other words, they are aware that magical cats exist, but so far they don’t have enough evidence to even suspect that Morgana is one. So Morgana can get caught and caged on the basis that he’s a magic cat aiding the enemy.

Morgana can disguise his spying and sabotage as normal cat actions, but with some catches. For example, cats knock things off tables, so he can break glasses to create a distraction, break someone’s (light and open) laptop by pushing it off a high table or place, etc. But if he only does this when it’s important, they’ll know he’s doing it deliberately, so he also has to be seen pushing stuff off tables for no reason. Moreover, if he does this too much, people will stop putting light things on high tables because they know he’ll knock it over.

In other words, the suspicion meter is a measure of how catlike and nonsentient Morgana appears to be. Morgana can also lower the meter by doing ordinary cat things like climbing to high places or sitting in boxes. Some of the minions might play with him.

The captors knowing a little bit about magic could be fun, actually. Minions can bet on what kind of magic the Phantom Thieves use on breaks, their prison rooms could be warded with everything from talismans to salt, and someone keeps warding off the Evil Eye. It would be even more fun if one of the minions keeps saying that they’re using magic from other Megaten games; they insist that the phone summons demons, that they’re all zombies resurrected by a god, that they’re the reincarnation of the Messiah, etc.

There might also be a secret ending if Morgana maximizes suspicion at every turn; now the guards are terrified of the monster cat.

Human Actions:

Morgana can also do a variety of things that are blatantly human, like picking locks, stealing certain items, and crafting. Apparently some cats hoard things, so it would be too weird if he picked up food or small shiny things, but not chemicals or whatever.

There could also be a minigame where Morgana tries to read without getting caught.

Spying:

Morgana can discover lots of things by listening in, from hints to lore. You have no idea who captured you, so by listening to meetings and gossip, you can find out a lot of things. I’m thinking this ends up more in a replay; on the first playthrough you just want to get out, but on the second you want to get every bit of dialogue.

The minions that like cats might try to pet Morgana. Sometimes, while playing with him, they might discuss important things, or they might also gossip about their lives.

Morgana can also spy on meetings. He can infiltrate them through several ways. If he sits at the door, there’s no risk, but he can’t hear everything. He can hear everything if he’s in the meeting room, but that carries drawbacks. If he enters while the meeting is in progress, it’ll raise the suspicion meter because cats don’t like crowded rooms with strangers. He can also sneak into the room, but he can fail, which would also increase suspicion even more than waltzing in. If he arrives before the meeting and doesn’t leave, it won’t arouse suspicion, but he’ll miss out on a chunk of time (and he’d have to know about the meetings ahead of time, so it might be a replay bonus).

Coordination:

Morgana can enter the cells that hold the Thieves. There are guards, so their conversations are coded. The thief he’s visiting has to talk to him like they’re talking to a pet, which leads to a lot of baby talking from some party members. Morgana updates the situation while they play with him, and they can respond to some basic questions.

If he asks a yes-no question, they hide the yes or no response.

For example:

Futaba: “Yes, you’re a good kitty!”

Futaba: “Is there any kitty cuter than you? No, there’s no kitty cuter than you!”

And if asked for advice, they disguise it as talking about a hobby.

For example:

Makoto: “You know what I miss? Yakuza movies. One of my favorites was Blood Raining from the Heavens. There’s this one great scene where the villain breaks the generator just so he could ambush the electrician when he comes to fix it.”

The Captors:

I don’t have a set idea of who they are, but whoever they are, escaping has to let the Thieves go free. This may seem tautological, but what I mean is that they can’t or won’t capture them again at the next town.

I’m trying to keep this story self-contained, so just escaping from these guys is enough. No need to go after their bosses or change their hearts.

So I’m thinking mysterious group working for their own purposes, dudes who pose as cops, local cops with no jurisdiction, or a rogue section of the military. If I write fanfic, I might use that Agency of Supernatural Investigation I keep using.

Freedom Conditions:

You can free party members, and since they’re Phantom Thieves, they’re stealthy enough not to get caught on their way out. However, the captors become more wary and the rest of the game gets a little harder with every Thief freed. On the other hand, party members outside of the house can provide you with other small benefits; for example, Futaba breaks communication lines, Ryuji distracts outdoor guards by appearing on their radar and then leading them on a wild goose chase, Makoto can take out guards, etc.

You can also try to free multiple people at once.

I was considering that they could escape via the Metaverse; Morgana can slip them their phones. But the Metaverse App brings along everyone around you, which would include the guards.

#persona 5 #p5 #persona 5 morgana #persona 5 mona #persona 5 royal #p5r #p5 royal #p5 morgana #p5 mona

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