#let a little token through? take 8 damage

[dravidious]

Kindness Anon said they were busy again, but you're still really really awesome.

A shame they aren't here to see that I FINISHED THE SET :D

Now to redo a quarter of the cards to use keyword counters lol

[monstersdownthepath]

Herald of Milani: Courage Heart

CR 15

Chaotic Good Medium Outsider

Adventure Path: Reign of Winter: The Shackled Hut, pg. 84-85

The baby of the bunch among the Heralds, Courage Heart here also has the dubious honor of serving the youngest of the gods we've seen thus far, with Milani becoming a full-powered deity only a century ago with the death of Aroden, for whom she formerly served as a saint. Courage Heart is even younger, being only a few decades old, having perished as a mortal in the upheavals of Galt, only to have her soul rescued by Milani and transformed into a being of divine freedom. She is so young that she still has immediate mortal family, as in brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, parents... but she refuses to ever see them if she can help it, and has cast aside her past name in favor of her divine title so that no connections can be made between her and her family. Not out of shame, or pride, or hatred, but because Galt isn't a very nice place to live, and if anyone ever found out who her mortal family is, that's a weak point that could be exploited.

She still remembers being mortal and will sometimes return in the guise of one to avoid suspicion from fiendish onlookers, taking on the shape and abilities of a Ranger of 4th or higher level, staying only long enough to fulfill whatever mission she saw fit to accomplish before departing, never revealing her divine form or purpose until she's safely back in Elysium. She never stays long enough to form attachments and purposely hardens herself against any attempts to know her, not wishing to put any allies (or potential friends) through the grief of watching a beloved companion vanish without a trace. One must imagine it a terribly lonely existence, but at least she has the benefit of friends she's made in Elysium waiting for her between missions.

Despite her appearance preceding Inner Sea Gods by a full year, Courage Heart really benefits from the two-page spread she's afforded in the book. Compared to the rest of the Heralds who have their stats, art, and lore crammed onto single pages with no room to breathe or stretch, CH has a fully realized lore block, beautiful art, and a statblock that puts an enormous number of other Heralds to shame despite being younger and, thus, much less experienced than any of them. There's a few Heralds who punch above their weight class, and CH is one of them. Let's see just what that looks like...

Almost immediately, one's eyes are drawn to CH's weapon of choice: A +3 Anarchic Morningstar, a weapon a full +1 tougher than any other Herald's. Her attacks are both highly accurate (+29 to the first hit, +14 on the last) and powerful, dealing 1d8+11 damage (+2d6 vs Lawful targets) up to four times a round, or 2d8+11 once via Vital Strike if she can't make a Full-Attack... though if you stay out of her melee range, she may instead decide to swap to her even more intimidating ranged option.

Oh yes, from a distance, her silly little rose may not seem all that impressive as a weapon, but anyone who knows anything about Milani knows just how dangerous a rose can be in the hands of her believers (that link to her article above? scroll down a bit until you read what she does to Wall of Thorns). Indeed, CH's Bloody Rose is not just a token she can hand out, but a shockingly potent weapon: A +1 Anarchic Dart, meaning it deals 1d4+9 damage on a hit (+2d6 vs Lawful) and it can hit up to four times a round, as CH can conjure as many as she wishes as a free action. While seemingly less damaging and less accurate than her melee morningstar at first, she has two to back it up: Point-Blank Shot and Rapid Shot, the first adding +1 to attack and damage rolls vs nearby creatures, and the latter giving her an extra attack if she Full-Attacks with her dart... And ALL of her weapon attacks benefit from her Favored Enemy ability, to which she has +8 vs Lawful Outsiders, +6 vs Evil Outsiders, +4 vs Undead, and +2 vs Humans giving her even more damage than she first appears to have when opposing tyrants and fiends.

Her dart isn't her only ranged option, just the only one that can critically strike: she's also got both Chaos Hammer and Holy Smite at-will to deal a burst of damage to multiple Lawful or Evil targets... but her true power lays not in what she can do on her own, but what she adds to an ongoing rebellion. As servant to the goddess of uprisings, Courage Heart gives hope to the hopeless and bolsters them with the strength to fight back against their oppressors; allied soldiers will feel the most benefit from CH's presence, but even peasants and commoners will feel new strength welling up inside them.

CH's Rebellious Aura quite literally gives hope to the hopeless, granting every ally within 60ft a +4 to saves versus fear effects and a permanent, undispellable Good Hope effect, granting a +2 to every d20 roll and weapon damage roll they make until they're no longer in the aura. In addition, her spell-like abilities benefit others far more than they benefit her, as she can grant Darkvision out despite having it herself, Magic Vestments and Magic Weapon when she already has fully magical equipment, and Protection From Arrows when she's already got the Deflect Arrow feat. All of the mentioned spell-likes can be cast 3/day, and they're not nearly all she can do to aid an ongoing cause; if she can help it, no one will die in her care. She does have Cure Moderate Wounds 3/day, but that pales in comparison to her Martyr's Blood, granting her the power to lower her own Fast Healing 10 by 1 to grant Fast Healing 1 to an ally for an hour, meaning the target regains 600 HP over the course of that hour, one round at a time. There's no limit to how many times she can grant someone her blood, just that she's restricted to only marking 10 targets at a time (lowering her own healing to 0/round for an hour), basically allowing her allies infinite out-of-combat healing. If you can't kill someone under her protection, they'll be back on their feet at full health an hour later.

But a true uprising isn't built on defenses alone, her fellow freedom fighters must be ready to take up arms when needed. Not everyone in her makeshift militia will have proper weapons, but whatever they grab off the ground will serve as a fine weapon thanks to her 3/day Peasant Armaments, a spell unique to Milani followers which allows anyone nearby using an improvised weapon to A) do so without penalty, and B) treat them as their closest equivalent simple weapon. The spell amusingly states that even a butterknife or broken chair leg can be treated as a dagger and a club (respective) while under the effects of this spell, letting a group of peasants fight back against trained soldiers with planks torn from the ground, tree branches, silverware, and furniture. With Magic Vestments and Magic Weapon being handed out, even people in scavenged armor can have a better chance at surviving long enough to escape a tyrant's grasp. Anyone who cannot or will not fight can be shrouded by her 1/day Mass Invisibility to sneak around what cannot be fought.

Also, when I say 'handed out' in regards to her magic, I mean it literally. CH can't be everywhere at once, but she can freely use Imbue With Power to grant anyone she touches the ability to cast one of her 3/day spells, expending one of her uses but allowing the target to cast it themselves at a later time. She can hand out quite the lengthy list: Cure Moderate Wounds, Magic Weapon, Peasant Armaments, Protection From Arrows, Shield Other, and Status! With the power to divide the workload between herself and her allies, it leaves her hands free to go on the offense while other people 'holding' her magic for her can get it to the ones in need, removing any potential for her enemies to try and split her focus. About the only one she might want to keep for herself is Shield Other, as it allows her to take damage meant for a chosen champion, with that damage crashing into her long list of defenses: DR 10/Lawful, and 20 Resistance to Acid, Cold, Electricity, and Fire. With Fast Healing 10 ticking her up each round, she's an excellent Shield Other battery, and even beyond all this she STILL has more tricks!

She can use Tactician to grant all allies within 30ft of her the use of her Outflank, Lookout, and Swap Places feats for 11 rounds, giving them additional DPS, initiative, and maneuverability in a single action. All the while, her allies are benefiting from her long list of buffs, both active and passive. Were it not for the shackles of divine law requiring her to operate in secrecy, there's little doubt in my mind that Courage Heart would actually whip Galt into proper shape in a matter of weeks, if not days... were it not for some factors assuring that her homeland remains in its tumultuous state. But who's to say those factors wouldn't allow CH to shed her disguise and fight at full power? Perhaps, over the course of a specific module, the players see fit to call the Herald of Freedom back to her homeland to finally free it from the parasites that have been ruining it...?

You can read more about her here.

[miloscat]

[Review] Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal (3DS)

Maybe Sonic Boom works better in 2D than 3D.

Alongside Rise of Lyric, Sega commissioned a handheld companion game within their Sonic Boom line. Development duties went to Sanzaru Games, another American studio who had previously made the Sly Cooper 3D platformers. This is actually their first 2D game (well, 2.5D anyway) and while it's less ambitious than RoL, it is much more successful at fulfilling those lower ambitions.

While RoL had a flash-forward cold open, this one abruptly starts in medias res with Lyric accosting Amy. Amy apparently is an archaeologist of sorts, and Lyric mind controls her to find the secrets of a lost extra crystal, tying into the MacGuffin objects in RoL. This sadly puts Amy in the "damsel in distress" role, but it does make room on the D-pad character switcher for Sticks to be playable this time (yay!). Incidentally, Lyric is not given an introduction in in-game cutscenes, but gets some backstory in the form of a short comic that is only viewable after level 1, which also sets up the present-day events. It's done by the Archie team of Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley, and [fun fact] is the only time that Sega let them put Lyric or Boom Shadow in any kind of comic medium.

The game plays out on a 2D plane with occasional dips into the foreground or background in short transitional sequences. It reminded me a little of Generations 3DS since it has a boost/dash button (unlimited use here, but doesn't damage enemies until you get an unlockable perk late on) and a mid-air homing attack. You also get the Enerbeam for grapple swinging and removing enemy shields, and each character has their own abilities and interactions. Tails can hover and throw bombs, Knuckles can burrow, Sticks throws her boomerang, and Sonic has a versatile air dash. As you encounter the characters and quickly build your team, you can swap between them on the fly which is needed to progress and find optional areas.

Although the format feels a lot more like traditional Sonic than RoL, this is similarly more slow-paced and exploratory than many of the series' 2D outings. I do think it strikes a good balance and flow, helped by quick on-the-spot respawns from pits as long as you have rings. The levels can be sprawling, and it's not always obvious which path leads onwards or to optional goodies, but it's usually possible to backtrack or loop to earlier portions. And you will need to do this, as completionist plays of levels become necessary. In a good use of the bottom screen, a scrollable map does help you get around and find goodies.

Saying this game only has eight (8) levels sounds absurd, but it's not the full story. The levels are huge, with full collectathon runs taking upwards of 15 minutes while the time trials often have a goal over 5 minutes. Each one also consists of two different environments that you bounce back and forth between using Enerbeam slingshots. These levels have a series of goals: time trials and ring collection give tokens to unlock character model dioramas, while collection of all blueprints (for unlocking passive perks, much more useful here than RoL's equivalent bonuses) and crystal shards give crests that unlock new levels. If you try to just breeze through you quickly encounter a hard roadblock that makes you go back and repeat levels for crests. I'm the type who enjoys doing and getting everything so it suited me, but it might not be to everyone's tastes that this is required.

Along with the eight main levels, there are race levels... kind of like the races in Generations 3DS. These use the same engine to have you beat another character through a fast-paced platforming level, and I found them fun to learn and improve. Another type of side level is the worm chase, an into-the-screen autorunning affair which Sanzaru would build on in their Tron Run/r game soon after this. These were less enjoyable for me and more demanding, although they're simpler to control. Rounding out the whole game is a Lyric battle���the only boss fight—which is not bad and incorporates platforming between phases. These other level types are a good way to flesh out the package and break up the action between the gigantic regular levels.

One of the strengths of the Sonic Boom show is its array of goofy side characters, and while RoL slotted a few in, there's a dearth here. Shadow at least has slightly more of an integral role in Shattered Crystal, but oddly Eggman has barely a cameo! However SC does stand head and shoulders over RoL in the script department as it actually remembers that Sonic Boom is a comedy series, and has lots of silly interactions between the characters before and after each level. The credited external writers weren't involved with the show but they seem to get it, and it makes this game feel more authentically part of the setting.

Speaking of the setting, the game looks lovely with varied environments and lots of detail in the backgrounds. The Donkey Kong Country-style world map helps give a sense of place and context to the levels, although it's far too zoomed in so you can't even see where the paths take you, which means a lot of trial and error to find levels. Trial and error on the map screen! What were they thinking!!

Shattered Crystal always got points for me by including a playable Sticks, but now that I've played it, it turns out it's a decent game as well. It feels more like a Sonic game than Rise of Lyric, but also shakes up the format a lot in ways that I like by encouraging exploration and interaction, even if it's relatively simple. I also think it does well specifically as part of the Sonic Boom series. I'm excited to see how Sanzaru builds on it with their second game!

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms Viewer's Choice #3: #309, Morgan Le Fay

On the exact opposite side of the equation, we have Morgan le Fay. Where Ophelia has complications in her build due to how little we see her fight, Morgan was tough because of the sheer amount of shit she can pull off. Obviously, I won’t get into details here bc of LB6 spoilers, but… prepare for some fireworks.

Morgan is a Clockwork Soul Sorcerer to make sure everything goes smoothly in her kingdom, and a War Magic Wizard to come back time and time again.

Check out her build breakdown below the cut or her character sheet over here, but be sure to watch out for Lostbelt 6 spoilers! I had to spoil the ending of LB 5 and a big chunk of LB 6 for this build, y’all better appreciate that.

Race and Background

Morgan le Fay is, obviously, a fae, but she’s not small, and making things bigger doesn’t really matter for this build. Instead, we’re going with a Hexblood for +2 Dexterity and +1 Intelligence. That lets you keep your medium size, plus you get an Ancestral Legacy for two skills. Grab proficiency in Insight and Performance. You’ve been stabbed in the back enough to know what to look for, and the whole faerie kingdom is one big play, you just rule it. You get 60’ of Darkvision, and can create an Eerie Token from your body once a day that lasts for a day, letting you send telepathic messages to whoever holds it within 10 miles, and you can also see through the token up to 10 miles away for one minute. Doing the latter destroys the token, but that’s a small price to pay for info. All the lostbelt kings seem to know exactly who we are and where we’re going, yet they keep losing. Ain’t that weird? I’m sure Morgan will be the exception though. On top of all that, you can cast Hex Magic with your Intelligence, casting disguise self and hex once a day for free, or with your spell slots. Cursing her foes and sneaking around are definitely Morgan’s cup of tea.

We’re going with the standard Variant Noble background here, History and Intimidation. You’ve lived through most of recorded history, plus you’re the fucking king of lostbelt 6.

Ability Scores

Once again, we’re power building. Set Constitution, Intelligence, and Charisma at 15, Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom at 8. You’re a schemer with the kind of longevity that would give Heracles a run for his money, but being a caster and a berserker is a dangerous combination.

Class Levels

Sorcerer 1: As a Clockwork soul, you gain extra Clockwork Magic, either from the list given or replacing one spell a level with any abjuration or transmutation spell from the sorcerer, warlock, or wizard list. We’ll go into detail about what you get when you get it. You can also Restore Balance proficiency times a day, negating advantage or disadvantage on a d20 roll within 60’ of you as a reaction. Faeries love to play tricks, but they don’t work on you. You can cast Spells using your Charisma, and I’m just going to say this here- you have a truly massive spell list, and going through every spell would take ages. So- we’re just covering the highlights in this article. Check the character sheet for a full build. From your clockwork magic, you can Absorb Elements instead of casting Alarm, and you gain Protection from Evil and Good. I know your NP is anti-faerie, but sadly this is the best we can do in 5e. They just don’t have the specificity to target faeries in particular. Anyways, the former lets you cut down on elemental damage and return it as part of your next attack, while the latter gives faeries and other extra-planar beings disadvantage to hit you, and they can’t charm, frighten, or possess you either. That’s the kind of stuff you do to them. Finally, you get more proficiencies. Constitution and Charisma saves, as well as Arcana and Deception. You’re a millenia old mage, and you’re good enough to pull the wool on the other Crypter’s eyes, at least.

Sorcerer 2: A second level sorcerer is a Font of Magic, giving you Sorcery Points equal to your sorcerer level, which you can turn into spell slots or vice-versa. You also pick up the spell Witch Bolt. No fancy reason for it, but damage is damage, and dealing damage while concentrating will be a great boon to you in a bit.

Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers get two Metamagic options to gain more control over their sorcery. A twinned spell turns the target of your spell into a voodoo doll of another creature nearby, forcing them under the effects of the same spell. Quickened spells are just good. Turn an action cast spell into a bonus action, with the limitation that you can only cast one leveled spell per turn. For example, quicken a witch bolt, then use your action to activate the current witch bolt for double the damage. For new spells, Aid will give you and your puppets more HP, and instead of Lesser Restoration we’re picking up Alter Self. It’s another disguise, and while the natural weapons and waterbreathing aren’t necessarily canon compliant, I’m pretty confident you could do them if you wanted to.

Wizard 1: Your magic might be innate, but god knows you’ve spent plenty of time honing it. Bouncing over to wizard gets you a second, much larger Spell list, which you prep from and cast using your Intelligence. You also gain an Arcane Recovery, so you can get a couple spell slots back on a short rest once a day. Most faeries are resistant, if not outright immune, to charming effects, but maybe if you Cause Fear, that’ll break through their thick skulls.  It forces a wisdom save, and if they fail they’re frightened for up to a minute, though they can reroll the save each turn. That gives them disadvantage on skill checks and attacks while they can see you, can they can’t willingly get closer to you.

Wizard 2: At second level, you specialize in War Magic. Right off the bat, your Arcane Deflection lets you add +2 to your AC or +4 to a saving throw as a reaction, with the caveat that you can’t cast leveled spells for the round. Again, witchbolt is great since it gets around this restriction. You also have a Tactical Wit, adding your intelligence modifier to your initiative rolls. You got the first punch in before we even got to your lostbelt. There’s no way you should have a +0 to initiative. For your spell, Find Familiar is pretty useful. It’s a ritual spell that you can use to get an animal buddy that can’t attack. While it’s within 100’, you can talk to it with your mind, and even see through its eyes. You can even cast touch-range spells through the familiar to extend your reach.

Wizard 3: Third level wizards get second level spells like Magic Weapon, which should help you turn just about any faerie bumpkin into a proper knight of the round table. We’ll get a more thorough transformation later, but shockingly a lostbelt king needs a lot of high level stuff.

Wizard 4: Use this Ability Score Improvement to round out your Constitution and Charisma for some stronger spells and an extra 7 HP this level. Remember, HP scales retroactively! If you need to deliver the entire history of your country in a hurry, try using Encode Thoughts to solidify your memories and pass them on to someone else.

Wizard 5: Fifth level wizards get third level spells, like Bestow Curse. This one’s pretty open ended, but basically it makes a bad thing happen to someone for a certain amount of time, with that time lengthening as you cast with higher spell slots. I think “kill this fool if they can’t pay their existence tax” is a bit much for a third level spell, but it’s a start!

Wizard 6: At sixth level, war mages can invoke a Power Surge when they use a damaging spell. You can store up to Intelligence Modifier surges at a time, always having one at the end of a long rest. You can add one to your repertoire by using counterspell or dispel magic, or by taking a short rest with 0 surges. Once a turn, you can spend a power surge to deal half your wizard level in force damage to a target you damaged with your spell. A +8 by the end of the build isn’t much, but if you’re tearing down a tree of emptiness, every bit counts.

Wizard 7: Seventh level wizards get fourth level spells like Raulothim’s Psychic Lance. TBH we’re mostly picking this because Rhongomyniad is a lance, but it’s still a good damage spell. Name a creature to slap that creature. If they fail an Intelligence save, they take the full slappage, plus they’re incapacitated for a round. Fun fact: exactly 0 fey are immune to incapacitation. In fact damn near nothing is outside of CR 20+ monsters.

Wizard 8: Use this ASI to bump up your Intelligence for better spells. Spells like Control Water, letting you flood areas, part water to keep your dress dry, redirect water to flood the bastards who need flooding, and create whirlpools. It’s a shame none of these options let you create a giant magic storm that can send your mind back in time, but… that’s more of a “level 9” kinda thing.

Wizard 9: Ninth level wizards can Dominate Person, bending the fey to your will with the frightful curse of command spells. ..I’m assuming the “fey” here are also hexbloods- this doesn’t actually work on faeries since they’re not humanoid.

Wizard 10: Tenth level war mages have Durable Magic, giving you a +2 to your AC and all saves while concentrating on spells. That includes your concentration saves, which you already have proficiency on. And you have a +3 from being so dang healthy, so that’s an automatic +10 for a minimum of 11 on every concentration roll. That means you automatically save against any sort of damage unless you get hit by 24 damage or more. And you can use Arcane Deflection here, so that’s actually a minimum of 32 damage. This is Dantes level concentration, and this is just a side benefit! Also, this brings your pitiful AC from a 12 all the way to the dizzying heights of a… 14. Yeesh. For your spell, Enervation is like Witch Bolt but for eating people’s souls. If they fail a dexterity save they take the full damage, and you heal for half the amount they take. Then you can use your action every turn to deal that damage without a save. This isn’t quite the save or die curse you put on the fey who can’t pay their taxes, but it does make you even tankier for basically no reason.

Wizard 11: Eleventh level wizards get sixth level spells like Create Homunculus. It’s a tiny creature that you can feed your hit points into for a limited time boost to its power. I know it’s small right now, but Mordred’s just a baby, cut him some slack.

Wizard 12: Use this ASI to max out your Intelligence. Wizards love that shit. You also get Tenser’s Transformation so you can come back strong from the brink of death. While transformed for up to 10 minutes, you can’t cast spells, but in return you gain 50 temporary HP, have advantage and proficiency with weapon attacks, deal extra damage on a hit, gain proficiency in strength saves, and can attack twice per action. You also have to make a constitution save after the spell ends or you’ll get messed up, but… you have a +13 to a dc 15 save if you use your deflection, so you’re probably gonna make it. The other big issue is that your best melee attacking stat is dexterity, which is a +0. Advantage is good, but it’s not that good.

Wizard 13: Thirteenth level wizards get seventh level spells. If you don’t want all that hullaballoo about temporary HP an actual weapons, Mordenkainen’s Sword might be more your speed. You create a floating sword that hangs out with you for up to a minute, and you can attack with it every bonus action. It says it’s a sword-shaped plane of force, but your weapon shapeshifts, so do what you want with it.

Wizard 14: Fourteenth level war mages have a Deflecting Shroud. Now every time you use Arcane Deflection you can hit up to 3 creatures near you for half your wizard level in force damage. By the end of this that’s 24 free damage per round just for getting hit! You can also make a Simulacrum- it’s basically you, but it can’t regain spell slots, and it has half your HP. You know how we made infinite Osakabehimes to cheese out a paper army? That’s actually a canonical ability Morgan has. We are so fucked.

Wizard 15: Fifteenth level wizards get eighth level spells. The fey love using magic, so put them in their place with an Antimagic Field. Just… just no. Also, you can make Clones now! These can’t be turned into an army like simulacrum, but they’re effectively the best guts in town. It costs 3,000 GP to make one, and it takes 120 days to reach maturity, but after that, you will instantly pop into one of these bad boys when you die. If you’ve killed a high-level wizard, no you haven’t.

Wizard 16: We’re using our last ASI to become a Metamagic Adept for 2 more sorcery points and two more metamagic options. Heightened spell forces disadvantage on a save against a spell you cast. Your best spells only have one save before you wail on them for tons of damage. Also, pick up Distant spell to double a spell’s range. You’ve got to have one hell of an arm on you to hit something in another lostbelt. You can Dominate Monster now. Kind of a waste of an eighth level spell slot, but if you’re dealing with true fey nothing else will do.

Wizard 17: Your final level grants you the ultimate power of ninth level spells. Power Word Kill: Collect enough life energy or die- it’s literally how your taxes work. With True Polymorph, you can now permanently warp a creature’s spirit origin, turning fey of your choosing into knights of the round table. Turning one creature into another is simple: the new form has to have a CR lower or equal to the original form’s CR or its level. It lasts for an hour: if they stay in their form the whole time, it lasts until dispelled. You can also turn objects into creatures CR 9 or lower, or a creature into an object. A death knight is CR 17, and I assume your faerie knights have been leveling up with you, right?

Pros and Cons

Pros:

For a caster, you have ridiculous amounts of HP. You’re still low enough that a particularly dedicated Sanson could get you down in a single turn, but he’d still have to reach you first. Past your massive spell radius, magic-enhanced initiative, advantage-negation, and literal army of yous. But yeah, once all that’s taken care of, you’re in trouble.

The only way your spell list could get more bonkers is wish, and you’re a wizard. That means you can just… copy wish down if you find it. And cast it as much as you want.

One thing I didn’t touch one with true polymorph: Simulacra + Polymorph is dumb. Why? Because Simulacra have the same level as you do. So, you can True Polymorph one into a real-ass copy of you which can regain spell slots, has all your health, and can do the same combo. One Morgan becomes two becomes four, and they all have clone backups. Wizards are stupid powerful.

Cons:

It’s a good thing your concentration saves are fantastic, because your AC is… less spectacular. It’s 14, unless you use your reaction and chance for a leveled spell to raise it to 16. Or use a spell slot for shield. Either way, you’re at a disadvantage. You also have zero ways to heal yourself outside of rests, so once that HP is gone it’s not coming back without a cleric.

It takes a lot of time to build up that infinite army, and also it’s kind of DM fiat as to whether or not that even works. Your great and powerful immortality engine doesn’t come online until level 20, and most campaigns never reach that point. So you’re either playing this character in a campaign that never gets to see level 20, or in a oneshot that won’t give you the time to set up.

Your Concentration is amazing, so of course a lot of your spells capitalize on it. But that also means you can’t cast two of them at the same time. Kind of a rough deal, picking and choosing what you have to get done. Also, quite a few of your spells have limitations requiring your target to stay within range, which can be a problem. If only you knew someone who was really good at slowing people down… ah well.

[technogeekmituna]

My Thoughts on Mammon's Birthday '21 Event

Spoiler Warning!

I don't want to say it was awful or super disappointing, because my feelings are kinda hurt from the somewhat high-ish expectations I had for his birthday event, considering last year's was really good and wholesome.

It really was kinda dodgy though. I mean, clearly the OM Devs have never heard of Chekhov's gun rule. I'm not expecting anything high standard, but really? The Mammon Instruction Manual? It literally takes a focus for half the first part of the event, plus the item Satan gives you, and then it's just never really mentioned again. It's brought back up in a "Oh, wow, you knew this thing I really liked and my exact size! Geez, is there a Mammon Instruction Manual out there?? Nah!" Like, that shit infuriates me generally, but it was such a fuckin' throwaway point that it didn't need to exist at all. The writers really were trying to just lengthen out the event for the first half.

What makes me madder is that they don't even let us view some chapters, even though they say it's so full of stuff of Mammon we might not know. Like, we've been in the Devildom, what, two years almost or something? It's pretty late to try to push something like that on MC or us as fans.

Not to mention, as a writer and fanatic about good story writing, they didn't have to include the Mammon Instruction Manual or that other hot garbage in the first part. They have a good trigger for the event but it only gets revealed and solved halfway through the second event!

The bracelet is cursed, but Luke didn't know. Neither did Mammon. There's a cost on the line for all this good fortune Mammon is coming across, but he refuses to let the bracelet get damaged or destroyed, despite the impending misery that will rebound as a consequence, because Luke gave it to him! Mammon considers Luke as a little brother, and he cherishes the bracelet. It means something to him.

This is enough to drive the event at the start, and Mammon can still run around being oblivious or not to the circumstances of his good luck. It comes to a pinnacle point where the bad luck starts happening, so he either has the curse broken by destroying the bracelet or suffer the misfortune, and Mammon would choose to the latter. He cares that much about the gift Luke gave him.

It just runs all over the place. It's unfocused. Like it seems like such a linear plot: Mammon gets bracelet from Luke > bracelet is cursed > the others are unaware of it until Simeon says something > Mammon burns through the good luck part of the curse until it starts reversing > the others try to persuade him to let them destroy it, but he refuses because Luke gave it to him > sudden ex machina (Diavolo) gives Lucifer a token to give to Mammon so he can catch it and break the curse without damaging the bracelet > Luke and Mammon have a moment and spends the rest of his birthday with MC

It just scrambles this, and it annoys me.

You as MC don't get much agency either. You kinda just tag along, and, normally, that would be fine! It's Mammon's birthday, that makes sense. Except, it's like, nothing really happens, and you don't get much say in anything. You don't even get a kiss out of him. You hold his hand or onto Mammon's arm. An oath that he'll love you. That's the best we get out of this event! What the fuck??

If I had to rank this event without thought, it would get a 6.8/10. If I look at the "Mammon's Workshop" moment (btw, what a fuckin' weird ass yet kinda cute synonym for date, but what-the-fuck-ever) and the ending to the top of the second part, then it'll get 7.3/10. If I consider the lost potential of Mammon and Luke bonding and not being tossed aside and terrible start to the first half of the event, it's 6.4/10.

I can't list a positive without two negatives. I mean, if you enjoyed it and loved it without being critical, good! I'm glad. I enjoyed it too, just very lukewarmly. I just know that it could've been better.

If they had just focused on a regular event, no fucking two optional route bullshit, and put more thought to the plot and characters, then this event would have easily been at 8 or above.

Apparently, as more salt to the wound, the cards don't have any kissing moments either, and that's fine. I'll be honest, I haven't played the cards yet, but if Mammon, the most spoiled character for romance with MC, doesn't get a kiss or affection from MC during the main event or kiss in his cards, then I'm banking the cards might be kinda weak too. If they can be good romantically and have Mammon and MC bond or just be together and have a nice time without some god awful contrivance with a poor conclusion, then I won't be as salty. We'll just have to see.

Rant over, I guess.

[goodgirlsfanficawards]

Happy WIP Wednesday! This week we are featuring five canon/canon divergent WIPs we can’t wait to read more of!

don't get cut on my edges by whiskeyjack / @whiskeyjack​

06 Feb 2021, E, 21K, 4/10

She had been there, with her stupid socks, looking at him across her room, waiting for him. She had been wearin’ her pearls, the same ones that were currently sitting tucked away next to three disfigured slugs, a torn piece of pop’s baby blanket before Rhea’d fixed it, a polaroid, a school land-yard and a movie ticket; feelings Rio can’t and doesn’t want to be liberated from no matter the cost. He needs the token reminders. The best and worst moments of his life, these items monumental in their significance.

And then the dream had shifted. Sweat wicked silk sheets jarred impossibly against stiff black fabric soaked with tears. The look on her face when he pulled that black bag off her head was mutinous. He caught a flicker of relief before she succumbed to her confusion and anger. Rio turned to show her Turner on the floor, when suddenly he heard the shots being fired. Blindin’ fuckin’ pain and the world went black.

He couldn’t help the infuriating heat that was building - anger shocking his body out of any remaining deliriousness. The pain, subsiding gradually, only left room for comprehension to yank him abruptly back to reality.

A Gangsta To Love Her Better by HisBossBitch (Kithi1), Kithi1

09 Feb 2021, M, 103K, 35/?

“You did that deliberately, you cheat,” she sputters and elbows him gently. She’s laughing and he grins back, unrepentant. “But seriously, Christopher, say what you said again.”

He smirks, “Maybe next time you could actually try hitting…” She pushes him again as he gets his towel and he laughs at her, a smug sound.  

“No. The thing, the other thing, Christopher. Don’t be obtuse.” 

“What? Elizabeth’s pregnant. You heard me the first time.” He walks off the court. He sounds matter-of-fact about it but she thinks it’s an act. He had known that what he was saying was surprising to say the least and that’s why he had waited until the end of their match to bring it up.

She grabs her bag, walks beside him. “ The Elizabeth?”

“Yeah.” He slings his towel around his neck. 

“The one who shot you.” 

Yesterday, Forgotten by thingcalledlove

09 Jun 2020, M, 4.8K, 2/3

“You dated.” Rio said it so matter of fact, that for a moment, all Beth could do was stare at him. Then it clicked.

“You already knew,” she accused, turning to jab a finger into his ridiculously hard peck.

“Dangerously close to where you’ve already done some lasting damage.” His voice was like ice, but there was a hint of amusement that Beth could only now pick up on after paying so much attention to the little quirks of the man that stood before her. “Nah,” he continued easily, “I suspected, but I didn’t know.”

She wanted to ask him how. How did he come by this information? It was part of her past that not even Annie knew about. Ruby also only had the smallest kernels of information, and none of it important enough to truly resonate. No, this was secret she had planned to take to the grave with her. An embarrassing chapter in her life she had practically forgotten until it had walked up to her. She had a million questions for Rio but settled for the most important one.

“How are you connected to all this?” Beth inquired, taking a slow sip of the newly pilfered bourbon. She decided to ignore his little remark about her shooting him.

“Andretta,” Rio said, nodding in the direction of the other man, who Beth noticed was still looking at her as he spoke to a few other well-dressed men, “He runs this whole thing.”

Get To Be Mine by septiembre / @septiembur​

25 Sep 2020, T, 34K, 3/8

“Oh, Christopher.” Beth laughs and moves closer to take his hand in hers. His mouth drops open the smallest smidge. “Sweetie,” She says to dig the dagger in that much deeper. “You are too much. I can’t believe you kept it a secret this long.” Her tone shifts inquisitive, slipping into a role honed by twenty years of marriage to Dean Boland, and envelopes it with the rapport she had built with Marjorie and Miriam the day before. “Is this my Valentine’s Day present? Or-“ She gasps. “Is this for our anniversary?”

Rio looks at her like he can’t decide if she’s batshit or if he wants to stab her. It’s her new favorite look, she decides. The Vandenberg sisters watch on trying to make sense of the scene in front of them.

“Christopher’s my partner.” It isn't an untruth. Beth makes a show of biting at her bottom lip, a tad gleeful. Suddenly the scene is nervy -- she's going to win.  Is this how he felt that night at the dealership? Her fingers twitch.

To Rio’s credit, he recovers quickly. He gives a little cough. “Darlin’, you know our anniversary ain’t 'til April.”

Oh?

“Y’know, when we met that first time. At the store.”

i will collect you and capture you by foxmagpie / @foxmagpie​

28 Jul 2020, E, 17K, 2/3

“I just think we should find another spot,” she says, ignorin’ that slight, “to do drops and exchanges.”

And Rio had said “fine,” and Elizabeth had been surprised, shocked even, at how easily he’d conceded. She’d nodded, like she’d beaten him in some game, and he let her believe it. 

But the look on her face when she walks into her own bedroom to see him languidly riflin’ through Dean’s side table drawer is worth it. She drops the laundry basket huggin’ her hip, and a li’l scream gets caught in her throat, just like that first time he’d surprised her sittin’ on her kitchen island.

“‘Ey now,” he says smoothly.

“What are you doing?” Elizabeth hisses, bendin’ over to pick up the few items of clothin’ that spilled out of the basket. She sets the basket on top of the dresser and notices that her pajama drawer is cracked just slightly. 

Rio didn’t actually go through it—he just wants her to feel as invaded as he does. 

Half the time he feels like she’s fuckin’ shattered his sternum and crawled up between his ribcage. Time, distance—none of it dulls it anymore. In the beginning, it was all triggered by seein’ her. Now he can go a week without seein’ her and still feel fuckin’ stir crazy. 

Rio pulls out some cheap watch Dean’s got tucked in his drawer, assesses it. “You said we needed a new spot, no?”

If you know of anyone’s tumblr/twitter and we haven’t found it or tagged incorrectly, please send us an ask to let us know.

[anestheticrage]

Be me: Japanese honor student🎓, 15, with half a brain and even less of a plan. Hunting bitches by day and witches by night. Livin that dank only child✌️ life while mom n dad yeet all over the globe, leavin me plenty of time to forget not to make 2 lunches for myself #quirky 😜

no time for socialization or basic electronics skills ???📱??? when your best friends are an alien demon rabbit🐰👽 and the inexplicable Hole ™ in your brain. lmao, btw did i mention im ✨M✨A✨G✨I✨C✨A✨L✨

dreamin bout my 2D waifus again when familiar pink haired cancer patient dances through my brain passin out fliers: Kamihama Meguca Dating Service: Sponsored by Cult of the Magius. 250 stones per session 🤔

seems legit, Mr. Moneybags. wasn't spending my unwieldy sack of gemstones on anything else anyway. lets pull 💎💎💎

first up we have Redhead Radagast and her plethora of plants. 🌿☺️🦎

anndd, nearly dies immediately. 

well not off to a great start but i guess shes pretty cute at lea- oh FUCK its her girlfriend, Tsundere Poseidon😒🔱💦, and their exasperated, straight and single Sword Mom 😔🗡️🔥. fml gonna have to save up for the next pull. might as well play a few rounds with what i got tho. 

get in some good girl talk about things like school, color coded hair styles, body count, permanent soul damage, and our personal demon pacts. ya know, the usual 😚 . realize my dark backstory seems to be missing, so the girls take me to Ketchup Queen Sappho 🍅🥧 (wtf?) to molest my glowy egg stone. whatevs, more action than ive had since Kuroe 🖤 got added to the story anyway

the gang agrees it's time to hunt down the cutest rabbit pimp 🕶️🐇💵 in the city. >> say 🎵mukyuuu🎵 one more time and ill hug you so hard my backstory will pop right out, you adorable fluffy bastard. plz be my new best friend 💕

Form brand new friendship pact with Kyubae, and remember that my lil Sis 🐥 was always the best wingman for pickin up magic chicks, and kept her side of the room so spotless i forgot she existed. whoops 乁༼☯‿☯✿༽ㄏ Maybe if I find her i can stop paying these exorbitant pull fees.📵💎

speaking of which: hot damn this week's featured bachelorette is a 19 year old model and magical detective🔎 with massive levels of PTSD and self loathing 🥵💙💦 more likely to stab you or dramatically jump off a rooftoop than utter a single positive comment. wow, maybe i really COULD find true love…

... if i had MORE THAN A 1% FUCKING DRAW CHANCE. 😡 smh

hard to make much progress finding sis or winning the broken heart of a hard boiled detective amidst the never ending lover's quarrel of the Trident Vine Lesbians. 💔 Sword Mom tells them if they don't behave a monster will take them away. LOL classic mom 🤣

>>>HOLY FUCK IT DID

declare all-out war on urban legends, starting with staircases ⚔️ to reunite the dysfunctional trio, and hope that I net a way better lineup with the next 10x pull. at least sad sleuth lady came to help out. they say combat is the best way to bond wi-   and there she goes off the rooftop again 🙄 fml

alright that got way off track, we need a fresh start, away from all the loli drama. how bout a little B&E🔓🔨🤷🏻‍♀️ at the local house of worship to clear my head. ahh nothing like the unanswered prayers of the masses to get you in the mood for another wasted pull, and the 🔥 MIGHTIEST 🔥 headache you could ask for with a side of Double Cooked Pork 🐖🍜 (meh 5/10🧾)

venture forth into the spiritual unknown with your new human flamethrower🔥🌻🧡 and ask your favorite private eye to please, for the love of Eve, trade Meguca accounts with me~~~ Head through the eastern spirit portal to meet up with hologram propaganda sis and detective crush's evil ex, who joined a dating-app cult (#fuck) and also turned into the moon?🌕?(that's rough buddy)

get ambushed by Acid Horse on Wheels 🌈🐴 and vomit up my soul so hard that its time for a crossover episode. T U R F F F   W A R R R *que operatic harmonies* 💛 Blondie with the hair drills and enough attitude and guns to fill up a noble phantasm tries to ban my account permanently, but PI heartthrob denies her admin privileges. aww babe i didn't know you cared. 😭♥️

get kidnapped by my new true love and go back to her place 😏  defs enough empty rooms to house five emotionally traumatized girls and at least two ghosts hehehe👻 XD 💚🃏💜🎸 decide to form the anti-gossip brigade and recruit my blazing sunflower after getting ambushed by the witch living in my fruit loops🥣

❌outvoted 2:1 that cults are bad. mf. fiinneee one last pull to round out the team and then I'll delete the app. cmonnn Karin 🎃~

OH HELL YEAH TWO FOR ONE.

Always wanted a daughter 💜🔨🐄 with a penchant for pissing off the local Martial Arts & Books Club and drinking suspicious liquids offered by total strangers. Well if it's good enough for her AND the sexy mayadere with enough game to seduce a mermaid, might as well get in on that myself. 

#curseddrank 🤢 0/24 would not recommend to a friend, 'cept maybe Ria

win alot of cash 🤑, blow up a fountain, meet the pied piper²🎶🖕, moon cult, monochrome feathers, something about liberation✊🏻; adopt temper tantrum cow girl. aces 💜🥩

Next up!!! skydiving with DJ Hammer! Jump to apparently-not-certain death after suicidal A.I. 💚💾🗼 tells you to rescue her hostage before they run out of Radiohead albums and have to move on to Thom Yorke's solo discography. save the invisible shield kitten 💚👑😿 from happiness and get chased through the internet by the sexiest homicidal Paint Pallette 💚🎨😈 since Caravaggio. (apparently green is the color of the digital apocalypse. i’m deleting Kako from my friend's list)

that’s it, fuck this app. 250 stones 💎 per-life-threatening-experience is more than i’m willing to deal with 😓 don’t wanna mess with the perfect nuclear family anyway. we've already got: 

✔️the two emotionally traumatized moms with memory and commitment issues

✔️the adhd daughter with anger management problems and a giant hammer

✔️the psychologically abused scizophrenic cat

✔️and the eccentric aunt with crippling anxiety

#squadgoals

now that were done hoarding bitches, its time to hunt the witches. and the bitches makin the witches. btw did i mention the witches ARE the bitches! AND WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!? 📽️⁉️💀 wait fuck lets back up a second

This is Nemo📕 and Token🧪 and they have all the answers but prefer if you only ask vague questions in exchange for vague responses so they can fill in the rest by discussing their superior intellect 🧠 at length. not to mention they built that dating app, so of course everyone in my harem decides to be a FUCKING. TRAITOR.🤬

cept waifu prime ofc 🥰💙. [PTSD > brainwashing] 'yOu CaN bE tHe LeAdEr NoW'. i have been from the very beginning you traumatized Hinedere nightmare. maybe if you weren't so caught up collecting surrogate daughters you would've noticed IM👏THE👏ONLY👏 ONE👏PROGRESSING👏THE FUCKING👏PLOT✨

rescue the rest of dysfunctional found-family™ from selves before my adorable firebender burns down Disnihama🎡🔥😱 during her weekly anxiety attack. (love the makeover T B H) 

CHAPTER 8: Magical Girl Massacre🩸🗡️

   - everyone has like, the shittiest day ever

   - the new Pope really needs to be extradited from the church

   - make friends with a really pretty tree 🌺🌲✨

i swear, if i don't finish this god damn story in time to get that free pull im gonna beat the shit out of every mirror i find in that giant mansion that i haven't even had any time to even mention yet. 🖕🏚️ let alone EVERYTHING happening with the prequel [fuck you, I'm the star] girls 💗💜💙💛❤️️ and their multidimensional melodrama. We don't need that many repetitive af episodes to emphasize that Homo-ra is a shitty person. we've all seen Rebellion. 🙄

NO, I DONT CARE IF YOU WANT SAPPHO'S BACKSTORY, I ONLY HAVE 79 STONES LEFT AND IF YACHAN FINDS OUT I HAVEN'T DELETED THE APP YET IM GONNA HAVE TO GO SLEEP IN WITH SANA 😭💎💸😠

uhhhggggg where were we��� Topple a cult and burn down Hotel Denoument only to realize that Sis was fused with the dating app servers this entire madokafuckin time (told ya she was the best wingman 😊). 

Dilemma: Sis =🥚, Triumvirate of Trouble want 🐣. What do? vote now:

Help Hatch - IIIIIII

Not Do That - IIIII

What The Actual Fuck Is Going On - IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Lets just fight everyone until something good happens.

🔥🔫🔥🗡️🔥😱🔥🌆🔥😱🔥🛡️🔥💣🔥

Kill (???) the artist-in-chief of the italian reindeer murder police after teaching her the true meaning of Christmas 🎄 hatch 🐣lil Sis and realize she WAS your wingman all along🐰 MUKYUUUU! we're just gonna ignore how much trouble it would have saved if you'd just mentioned that. "yOu DiDnT aSk..." 

FUCK YOU SPACE BITCH. ONCE AN INCUBATOR ALWAYS AN INCUBATOR 🖕🐇🔪

anywho, somewhere along the lines we of course summoned the Antichrist ⚙️ because why not raise the stakes to max and still not kill off a single character. Madofuckinkami, can we PLEASE wrap this up. 😩💤

feathers (not the culty kind, tfm) rain from the sky, and the power of friendship and not having the Urobutcher 🔪🩸as a lead writer saves our peacefully sectioned off alternate reality 😇

TL:DR fuck cults, real life waifus DO exist, don't sell your soul to space rabbits, or your stones to megacorporations. Enjoy arc 2 on the JP server with your shitty translation patch you filthy fuckin weebs 

Yours Truly, 

- Thirsty Weeb Eroha 💗💎😘 

[lesquatrechats]

Now, for the formal introduction, this is Thuza Bellatrix, the newest edition to our family. Although this video is a happy one, and her life will be a very happy one, her origin story is a shocking and sickening one. For that reason *TRIGGER WARNING* for animal cruelty and attempted animal homicide.

Two days ago Daddy had a job interview, it went well, but he was amped up afterwards and decided to take a short walk around a small local lake and look for a nice place for us to visit and take pictures, to wind down before coming home. He hadn’t done this before, but felt compelled to stop there before coming home. Well into his walk he heard and saw some movement of a plastic bag deep in the thicket near by. Expecting to find a rodent or bird stuck in someone’s littered grocery bags, he went into the thicket to check it out. As he approached the bag he saw a small black spot where it looked like something was pressed against what turned out to be a little hole in the bags, he got closer and saw that the black spot was a tiny nose desperately trying to breathe. He ripped the bags— which had been tightly knotted shut— and there was this tiny beautiful kitten gasping hard for the fresh air, he stared in disbelief while quickly removing his button up shirt to wrap her up in to bring her home. He scoped out the area for other bags and anyone suspicious but saw none in the immediate area and no one but a frail old women using a walker and decided to just rush her home for an exam right away.

When he showed up at home with her I was in complete shock, disbelief, love, and then filled with such anger that someone could do such a terrible thing to a living creature, let alone such a perfect baby kitten with long fluffy soft hair, who is clearly a nice breed. It just doesn’t make any sense, but cruelty rarely does.

Luckily, he found her just in time, as she was very close to oxygen deprivation, but our little girl, she found a way to survive through a fate kittens rarely escape. She stayed calm enough not to use up all her oxygen by panicking and either made or found a hole through BOTH bags big enough for her little nose to reach air and breathe enough to stay alive and conscious. Clearly, she’s a warrior.

Not only did someone deliberately try to literally throw away and effectively murder this innocent baby where they thought no one would ever find her, they let, or made, her nearly starve to death first. By her eye and teeth development we are able to estimate her age at at least 8 weeks, but her body and general appearance is that of a 5 to 6 week old kitten. She had been malnourished at least since being weaned, if not her whole life. She is small, she is frail, and you can feel many of her organs through her skin without trying. She was dirty and dusty (and still is somewhat as we haven’t given her a full bath yet to spare her any stress before she felt safe and settled in). Her hair is dry, and dull, showing the lack of nutrients, but she’s still beautiful, she still does her best at cleaning her thick fur, and we can tell once her diet is right for long enough, she will have a beautiful hypoallergenic coat. All signs are pointing to her being a runt of a large breed purebred cat litter (she has certain traits that are attributed to larger breeds despite her size) that a breeder saw no value in raising because she was small and weak compared to her littermates, and deposed of in secret to protect their reputation or “quality standards”— which makes us sick. We plan to return to the lake soon and comb the area for other bags, just in case this was more than a one time thing or a different scenario entirely where her siblings are spread out there too; but it’s difficult to stomach what we very well may find when we do.

But there’s more to her than being a warrior and a survivor, where her middle name Bellatrix originates; she’s truly a lover, not a fighter, she’s a perfect angel in every way. She’s the calmest kitten either of us have ever met, but she is 100% aware and responsive, showing no signs of brain damage. What’s more dumbfounding is that she is fully litter box trained. She has no signs of any illness. She has no signs of any problems at all beyond being malnourished. She isn’t mean. This kitten couldn’t have done anything to provoke being thrown away. She was afraid of Daddy, very afraid, but never bit or hit him, just put her ears back and hissed lightly, when he set her down she would hide. She was much braver with me the moment we met she clung to me; we think she may have associated the scent of testosterone with her trauma, as I am no longer on hormone therapy and I don’t smell male, whereas Daddy definitely does. She just gravitated towards MaPa for the first day, while Daddy gained her trust. Daddy is a friend of all felines and it didn’t take long for her to realize that this man, her new Daddy, would never hurt her or let anything or anyone else ever hurt her again, and she’s already warmed up to him nicely.

To fully explain her name of Thuza (derived from Thuzar), I need to give you some more information. The day before she was found, Daddy was telling me all day that he just couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was about to happen, it didn’t feel like something bad was coming, just something major. As Buddhists we thank Buddha for our blessings in life, and that night we were laying in bed with Egyoku talking about the crazy happenstance circumstances that led him to us (a story I am eager to share soon too), how it felt like some sort of divine intervention, a token of hope and inspiration to go on through these troubling times. We also talked—for the thousandth time- about how we longed for a female kitten that looks like our Lucille, so that she and Egyoku could have beautiful hypoallergenic babies together, and so that Luci would have a kitten to connect even more with, (because she was spayed when we rescued her from a humane society but is very loving and nurturing). We have been trying to find “the one” locally for two years with no luck, long before Egyoku and Eloise were ever born. So, having those conversations that day and night and then having this perfect little baby make a surprise entrance into our lives the following day, under such unusual circumstances that have never occurred before in our life; we feel it’s undeniable that we were sent to her. Daddy hadn’t ever been to that lake, it was just one he had driven past and thought about visiting with me, but he felt compelled to stop, at that exact moment, and he walked all the way over to that area without hesitation, drawn towards some backdrop-worthy trees nearby. So, this precious angel is named angel, but, the Buddhist version, Thuzar, to pay respect to our spiritual guide whom we strongly believe directed us to her, both to save her precious life, and to remind us that he’s looking out and listening, even if he can’t force fast change or create new things, he can guide us the right direction as long as we trust our intuition that he influences.

*

*

Video Audio Credit:

Music: Mornings

Musician: Jeff Kaale

[inventors-fair]

Lyrical Poets

There was a pretty diverse set of musical interests represented in this competition - a wide variety of artists and genres, which definitely kept things from getting dull on my end. Without further ado, let’s jump on in!

@antmations​ - Erissa, Bog Witch

Flavour: Spooky big bog witch makes everybody feel like dying. I'm not sure it communicates why I'm better off that way, but I'm sure she knows what she's talking about. Mechanics: A deathtouch creature is already a pretty significant deterrant to attacking, so adding extra downsides makes it especially unattractive. Be careful with effects like this because they often put the opponent in a position where they feel they can't progress the game without dying, which just makes the gameplay grind to a halt. Templating/Nitpicks: Nope, nothin'. Overall: Bog Big witch energy.

Charmera - Bad Moon Risen

Flavour: I respect how literally you played into this, especially the references to old card names. Kudos. Mechanics: Obviously with taking things as literally as you did, the design kinda has to wind up all over the place. My biggest takeaway from this one is that it feels like it should be a Saga that just ticks up through the lines you're referencing. Templating/Nitpicks: On MTG.design, you can use asterisks (*) to drop bullet points into your modal effects. It's super convenient. Overall: The chorus of this song is commonly misheard as "There's a bathroom on the right." That would probably be harder to design. 

@corporalotherbear​ - Tranquility, the Trickster

Flavour: You chose a very simple effect which gave lots of room for flavour text. Just with the lines included I still don't totally understand the why, but it definitely conveys what's going on. Mechanics: This is repeatable removal, and pretty strong removal at that. Red is supposed to be weak against creatures with high toughness, but besides actual-factual walls this will generally circumvent that. Templating/Nitpicks: While a creature technically can fight itself, if you asked players what that means probably 9 out of 10 would get it wrong. The correct way to template this would probably be to just write out, "deals damage to itself equal to twice its power." Overall: It is a heck of a trick, tho.

@dabudder​ - Unbounded Truth

Flavour: The lyric you chose is really wholesome and pleasant. Revealing cards feels like "saying what we mean", though it fights the theme a bit that only our opponents get in on that action. Mechanics: Peek with some incidental lifegain tacked on sounds reasonable, I suppose. Control decks probably wouldn't mind knowing what answers they need to dig for while giving themselves more time to do so. Templating/Nitpicks: You're looking for "card", not "spell", and converted mana costs are "high" rather than "great". It probably comes out, "You gain life equal to the highest converted mana cost among cards revealed this way." Overall: Thanks for going to the trouble of submitting it until it went through. I expect next week to go a little smoother for you. 

@dim3trodon​ - Paladin of Silence

Flavour: The lyrics are pretty evocative, and I can imagine a paladin saying (or explicitly not saying?) exactly that line. Good choice to lean on the spell Silence to define what exactly that means. Mechanics: I'm not sure what's Blue about this one. Perhaps it was for the Flash, but it's worth noting that every color has access to Flash for effects that genuinely require it to work - this would be one of those. Templating/Nitpicks: Kudos on being careful around flicker effects, though also be wary when you have to do that. It can be a sign that the core effect isn't very fun. Overall: 

@dimestoretajic​ - Kawejitch, the Unrestrained

Flavour: Thanks for putting a face to the lyric that's been stuck in my head since my childhood. Only a little surprised that face has a trunk. Mechanics: This is functionally unblockable, but Mardu probably adds up to that. The rate could probably use some attention, as an 8/5 unblockable for six is better than anything that's been printed. Putting combat keywords on a creature that's nearly impossible to block feels like a miss; I think it's to really stick the "couldn't hold me back" thing, but I feel like super-menace delivered on that well enough. Templating/Nitpicks: I hope I'm not the only that gets unreasonably happy reading lines of text like this. Overall: I've been talking to myself out loud the whole time I've been typing this. 

@emmypupcake - Burden of Despair

Flavour: Between the art and the flavour text, I can certainly feel the despondency of the situation. Mood. Mechanics: This is reasonably flexible removal, getting rid of little dorks entirely and mosty disabling bigger ones. The power drop feels pretty irrelevant since the creature can't attack or block anymore, but I suspect it's just there for symmetry. Templating/Nitpicks: Yours is one of only a couple submissions that correctly represented both title and artist in the flavour text. I'll be clearer about it in the future, but gold star for you in the meantime. Overall: Bog Big mood.

@fractured-infinity​ - Erase From Time

Flavour: I'm not sure what the art is showing me, but the flavour text does more than enough to set the tone. Gone for good. Mechanics: This is quite the clever little innovation, a variation on White's more permanent exile removal that is relevant in multiplayer. I'm a little curious why it phases instead of exiling, since the nonlegendary clause means it wouldn't hit Commanders either way, and the two are equivalent in most other cases. Templating/Nitpicks: No need for hyphens in "nonland" and "nonlegendary". Overall: This is one of those moments where you come up with a cool concept, you develop an awesome design around it...and somehow that design just no longer fits that concept. The biggest thing keeping you out of the winner's circle this week was that your innovation played in the opposite direction of your theme by making the removal less permanent. Solid design work, though.

@gollumni​ - Guildless Anarchist

Flavour: I assume the flavour text is mostly connecting with the first ability. Some designs just need the added context of a set or cycle to really make sense, and that's okay. Mechanics: Part of me suspects the first ability is a little overcosted, because it doesn't actually net you a card - see Haunted Crossroads for reference. That said, the repeatable removal and/or Lava Axe of the third ability seems pretty strong to make up for it. Templating/Nitpicks: Magic is picky, so you only "return" cards to the battlefield or your hand; you'll just "put" this one where it goes. Also, you'll want to include "untapped" in the cost of the third ability; the rules don't strictly require it, but templating praxis does. Overall: "Slaughtermatic" is my new word of the day.

@hypexion​ - Ravenous Extraction

Flavour: I've never heard it, but even just reading it that flavour text seems catchy. It has a clear message, and the Treasure tokens have added meaning thanks to the "inheritance" line. Mechanics: This hearkens back to Squandered Resources, both mechanically and thematically. Moving it to Red is probably correct in the modern color pie, though admittedly I'm not sure at what rate either of these effects would be fair. Nyxbloom Ancient triples your mana more permanently for seven, so...maybe five is fine? Templating/Nitpicks: For poetry, line breaks are as much a part of the writing as the words. If it's not possible to fit with line breaks intact, you'll want to include slashes to indicate where they should be. Geist of the Moors is an example of what that looks like. Overall: I'm going to have to look up this song to see how close it sounds to how I'm reading it.

@ignorantturtlegaming​ - Angel's Song

Flavour: An angel's song is definitely magic-appropriate flavour, and has a lot of room for interpretation. "Eternal life" as doubling your life total makes sense, though the burn part feels more like punishing the gathering than calling it. Mechanics: Moving Sphinx's Revelation to sorcery speed does hurt its power level, though I'm not sure it does it enough to compensate for all the upsides this has. Having the option of using it as a sweeper is huge, and the life doubling on top of the first mode seems like it gets out of hand quickly. Templating/Nitpicks: Modal spells only really have their modes. If you want the conditional part to occur regardless of which mode you pick, the correct way to do that is to include it in both modes. I agree this feels weird. Overall: A song called The Gathering was such an apt choice, kudos.

@illharg-the-rave-boar​ - The Key and the Gate

Flavour: I'm definitely picking up the "thrall to Yog-Sothoth" feel. And the card is powerful enough that it communicates a sense of powerlessness against cosmic forces. Mechanics: This card is quite the beating, but I suppose three-color, seven-mana spells generally should be. This is a pretty clear 'game over' in most cases - unless your opponents have another source of cards, the fact you're stealing one each turn and doming them for 7 every time they whiff should end the game pretty quickly. Templating/Nitpicks: There are enough details of the lyrics that lend themselves to Magic vocabulary (rainbow, cascade, even walls) that I wish the design were a little more explicit, but I understand there's only so much room. Overall: Songs these days really have nothing on great old ones.

@khyrberos​ - Neutral Physician 

Flavour: Few things make me happier than "deniability" on a card that  literally denies an ability. This has a few different things going on, but they're all pulled reasonably well from the text you're referencing. Mechanics: All the different pieces of this card kinda drag it in different directions. While they're clearly pulled from the lyrics, they don't really create a unified mechanical identity, which makes it hard to imagine how a card like this should be used. Templating/Nitpicks: If you want it to counter death triggers, you can actually just do that. "Counter target triggered ability if a creature dying caused it to trigger" does what you want without the weird timing restriction. Overall: I think there's actually something here, it just needs a little polish.

@macaroni-and-squeez​ - Rising Form-Claimer

Flavour: Using the untap trigger to show the creature "woke up" that way is really clever. Mechanics: The delayed trigger feels a little hard to track, and I can't help but think there must be a simpler way to achieve a similar feel. I do like the fact that the tap in the cost of the ability sets up the untap trigger, which makes the design feel internally consistent. Templating/Nitpicks: There's a comma missing between your costs, and you probably mean to say "When CARDNAME becomes untapped during your next untap step," otherwise the trigger hangs around indefinitely and goes off every time it untaps. Overall: Is this thing skinless until you activate the ability? Oh no.

@machine-elf-paladin​ - Goblin Firework Festival

Flavour: This line feels so much like a goblin rhyme, I'm really pleased that you felt that in it too. The unpredictability of the end result, and flavour of blowing up your friends and fireworks feels very resonant. Mechanics: This is a finisher, with a pretty clear multiplayer leaning. I think in practice this would generally kill whichever player is at the lowest life total, encouraging them to sacrifice everything they have, in turn possibly killing another player and encouraging them to do likewise. While the effect feels fun to read, I'm not convined the actual gameplay would feel interesting most of the time. Templating/Nitpicks: Gold star for the use of slashes to indicate line breaks in your flavour text. Overall: I hope this song is as fun as this design implies it is.

@martian-june - Blood Pact

Flavour: Combining a group hug effect with a group slug effect to convey "friends who bleed" is pretty clever. Mechanics: This is an interesting combination of 'White' and Black effects. The card draw is something that Black can do at this rate, and the opponents drawing cards probably covers any cost of the life loss. I'm not sure precisely what deck is looking for the combination of these effects, but it's neat to see them done together. Templating/Nitpicks: I don't think there's any strong reason for the "if" clause, there are very few effects that would prevent that from happening anyway. Overall: I like centered cards too.

@milkandraspberry​ - Taunting Slander

Flavour: I can see how "stupid butt" might get one's hackles up. Them's fightin' words. Mechanics: A fight effect with a little extra reach seems sensible enough. You'll often lose your creature along with theirs, so it's a little bit like a Heartfire. Templating/Nitpicks: "...each get +1/-1..." is the template you're looking for. Apart from that, I'd just like to see the flavour and reminder text italicised - it subtly communicates that I should be reading it differently, which is surprisingly helpful. Overall: Not too strong, not too bad.

@misswamyn​ - Bardic Inspiration 

Flavour: I can definitely imagine how a great song could get your troops a-movin'. I do wish there was a little more to make me feel why this song has this effect, but the overall effect definitely makes sense. Mechanics: The biggest miss is that there's nothing particularly White about it. Otherwise, perfectly solid. Templating/Nitpicks: This is a really simple line of text that has apparently never appeared on a Magic card before. Those are always a treat. Overall: Makes me wonder what the actual greatest song ever would do.

@mistershinyobject​ - Ghastly Grasp

Flavour: Drain is definitely a classically Black way to illustrate the concept of touch. The impression I get is that the creature is the one overwhelmed by your touch, though I'm not sure I immediately connect with the "almost convinced me I'm real" line. That part seems especially poignant, so I'd love to see it show through in the mechanics. Mechanics: You expressed some concern over whether this was allowed in Black - personally, I don't think it's even a bend. Because Black can get full drain at roughly this rate, it certainly wouldn't be a break for it to get only half of that. Dealing damage without any lifegain would have to be a bend then, but this sets itself up to gain life almost every time it's used. I think you're fine. Templating/Nitpicks: Power seems like an odd choice over toughness, just because it feels like it's operating on an entirely different axis. Overall: Killing a Rampaging Ferocidon with this would be so satisfying.

@misterstingyjack​ - Keeper of the Fourth Mystery 

Flavour: I wouldn't have picked up on what this card's flavour text was saying without your explanation, though with the explanation I can pretty clearly see what motivated your decisions. Mechanics: Expanding your tutor effects is an interesting space to play in, I wonder if there's a good way to make it work. Templating/Nitpicks: Unfortunately, this template probably doesn't do it. I don't believe an effect can really look forward to see where the searched card is going to be put, and I'm not sure the search replacement would work as intended anyway. This is a tough templating challenge though, so I think this was a valiant effort. Overall: A honestly hope to see a more polished version of this in the future.

@morbidlyqueerious​ - Lethal Prominence 

Flavour: It works a little hard to convey its theme, but I think it gets there. Mechanics: You're right that it came out a little wordy, and I suspect there's probably a more elegant way to deliver on the notes this is trying to hit. I think it gets dragged in too many directions trying to incentivise everyone (the counters, the Gold, the attack requirement). That said, I do like where it's aiming. Templating/Nitpicks: Nothing stands out, which is good. Overall: This is exactly the kind of lyric I had in mind when I created this challenge.

@nine-effing-hells​ - The First Home of Crafters 

Flavour: It does do the work of tying Dwarves, Artifacts, and Artificers together thematically. Mechanics: Lands that tap for multiple mana are often a problem, and there are enough cheap artifacts that I would expect the other two types to be largey irrelevant. That deckbuilding restriction is a limitation, but history has shown that cheap artifacts tend to be good together without a lot of extra help. Templating/Nitpicks: You noted that the wording on the trigger is hard to follow, and I have to agree. I think it does function correctly though, so points for that. Overall: It's definitely a song.

@quillpaw​ - Mercury in Retrograde 

Flavour: It's hard for me to connect what the flavour text is telling me to the resulting effect, which is unfortunate because each of them seems cool on its own. Mechanics: This is definitely a variant of Kruphix that feels Red. I think it feels a bit bad that it costs so much, because by the time you can start holding onto your mana it's going to kill you pretty quickly trying to do so. I think the downside feels appropriate though. Templating/Nitpicks: Those are two different abilities, so they should be spaced a little differently. And generally you'll want quoted flavour text inside quotations marks. Overall: I still can't figure out if it's a friend or not.

@real-aspen-hours​ - South Wind 

Flavour: Cute to evoke the spell Hurricane for a song of the same name. The second half is...Shatterstorm, which I suppose is on the storm theme? Mechanics: Suspend is something we probably won't see much of soon, and this isn't the kind of effect that plays especially nicely with that mechanic. When your opponent knows a sweeper is coming, they just know not to play into it. Templating/Nitpicks: I put the card image together for you. I think I do good work. Overall: You've got at least three more winds to design now.

@reaperfromtheabyss​ - Question to the World 

Flavour: The design itself asks questions without answering them, which is kind of an interesting place for this to be. Mechanics: The coolest part of this design is that it asks your opponent whether they want to bother dealing with it (and giving you cards) or just letting it live as a minor inconvenience. This came close to winning, and my only problem with this design is that the combination of evasion and hexproof takes most of your opponent's ability to interact with it away, leaving that one interesting question pretty moot. Templating/Nitpicks: Cards would be exiled "with" it, not "by" it. Overall: Did they ever get an answer?

@scavenger98​ - Horizon's Turn 

Flavour: I definitely get the sensation of leaving the surface world behind and taking to the skies, which is a neat story. Mechanics: This a tough one. It's a six-mana (twelve, if you count the skipped untap) sorcery that can often do actual nothing depending on your opponent's deck. The frustrating part is that there's no real way to build around it, because it relies entirely on your opponent's things. Also, skipping untap steps is just rough. Templating/Nitpicks: Nope, nothing in particular. Overall: I feel like there's more story to this than I'm picking up on, and it genuinely makes me want to know more.

@shakeszx - Leave Breathless 

Flavour: The "doesn't untap" clause is normally used for ice effects, but I can see it being used for breathlessness. Adding the activated ability bit certainly sells it as something different. Mechanics: Split second isn't a favourite of mine, but I suppose it's there to make sure the activated ability line gets to do its thing. This is only moderately better than normal freeze effects, so I'm not sure the color-intensive cost is really necessary. Templating/Nitpicks: It's a little weird that the effects last for different periods. I'd probably just attach the activated ability limitation to "until it becomes untapped", as many activated abilities won't be usable until then anyway. Overall: That line is a pretty good choice, I gotta say.

@snugz​ - Caught in the Act 

Flavour: A song as well-known as this one is a bold choice because it comes with so many preconceptions. I'm not sure I'm picking up where all the different parts are fitting together thematically, and that could be part of it. Mechanics: This is some nifty little soft removal. It feels a bit like a Blue Stab Wound - most often, this will be used to immediately kill small opposing creatures (by leaving up a blocker big enough to eat it in combat), but occasionally it’ll be stuck on something harmless to achieve the recurring effect. In most cases, mill two each turn is not going to be too scary (and is even an upside at times), but in a mill deck every recurring source of mill is key. Templating/Nitpicks: Reimagining the artist of the song as a character was an interesting little addition. Overall: I would not be at all surprised to see something like this printed in an upcoming set.

@sorustyitshines - Fire-Forged Bond 

Flavour: This definitely conveys the theme of two creatures fighting and enduring hardships together. I feel like you have the space to do a little more to really sell the theme, but it's certainly clear from what you've got. Mechanics: This is an effect that doesn't exist yet, which means it's got that much going for it. I think the theme gives you space for a little more innovation than what you took advantage of; something like "those creatures gain indestructible for as long as you control both of them" is a slightly more unique space that leans a little harder into the story you're trying to tell. Templating/Nitpicks: The effect wants "each of two target creatures", otherwise it sounds like you're splitting the one counter between them. Overall: It probably doesn't need to be rare, but otherwise this is a very printable card.

@teaxch​ - Sink and Drown and Die 

Flavour: I had to actually listen to the song to piece together what was going on, as the flavour text only went so far. That said, aligning the three effects with the three verbs was really cleverly done. Mechanics: My only real qualm here is that your opponent makes all the decisions. This would probably be in the winners’ circle if you picked the three permanents and they picked what to do with them (a kind of Kiss, Marry, Kill effect). Templating/Nitpicks: The existing templating looks perfect, so instead let's imagine the Kiss, Marry, Kill version: "Choose three nonland permanents controlled by the same player. That player returns one of them to its owners hand, puts another on top of its owner library, and sacrifices the rest." Overall: Just hoping the flavour text wasn't aimed at me.

@tmstage​ - The Lone Digger Club

Flavour: You were correct in assuming I'd seen the video, so I did have a sense of what was going on here. That said, I warned that the card was the context I was most interested in, and it doesn't serve to communicate all of that itself. Mechanics: This is a really cute way to evoke the effect you were going for. Forced blocks (and attacks, for that matter) can be done within Blue, and the aggressive feeling definitely justifies the Red inclusion. Templating/Nitpicks: Nowadays attack restrictions refer to "combat" rather than "turn", so that it's clear how they interact with multiple combat phases. Overall: The purple art on a Blue-Red card is so satisfying.

@whuh-oh​ - The Demon Within 

Flavour: I can see how each of part of the lyric is supposed to correspond to one of the activated abilities, though it's not immediately obvious which effect is which line. Mechanics: Free mana is often very strong, and being able to turn 2 life into three mana each turn feels strong - I suppose it's only a turn sooner than Gilded Lotus with a higher color requirement, but it's also a lot more flexible than that. The fact that the third ability doesn't seem to interact with the other two makes it feel a little out-of-place, especially since three abilities and the activation restriction means you could pretty easily have them work cyclically (i.e., have the last ability read "BBB: You gain 2 life."). Templating/Nitpicks: You'll want it to read "only once each turn", because templates. Overall: Form of the Demon is a pretty neat idea.

@wolkemesser​ - Memnarch's Manic Plan 

Flavour: The strongest flavour points for this card go to the fact that it makes you think like the character; you immediately start to imagine the payoffs for doing the thing, and the costs just become an afterthought. I think that was really cleverly done. Mechanics: The biggest obstacle is that this is a bit of a one-card combo. As long as your deck has any game-winning combo somewhere in it, you just build up a lot of permanents and play this, hoping to draw into your combo and immediately have the mana to play it out. Either you succeed and win on the spot, or you don't and your opponent picks you apart while you try to piece things back together. It's possible this gives you enough resources when it works not to immediately fold to pressure, but if that's the case there's just not much risk to playing it after all. Templating/Nitpicks: Looks like you missed the word "cards" after "draw X", otherwise you're golden. Overall: I was really pleased to see Memnarch show up on this, thanks for that.

--

That’s our feedback this week - I wanted to get it out of the way so that you all could focus on @teaxch​‘s challenge starting today. Thank you all again for letting me share one of my favourite design exercises with you, and I hope that some of you will keep it in mind the next time you’re struggling to nail an idea down.

Until next time,

~Mod [ @3smuth​ ]

[verdantspringcourtyard]

Protecting YinYang / Onmyoji Guardian Event

Yet another event part of the Ootakemaru invasion story. It is the same as the Sea Voyage event but with least fun part of the False God event - the dispatch quests. The event consists of 4 portions; Kyoto Purification, Hidden Realm, Kekkai Dispatch and Boss Challenge.

Kyoto Purification: Progress through a board by banging a drum to move across tiles. At the start of each board you choose what type of bonus rewards you’ll get from most tiles - exp, gold, random evo materials or random mitama/souls. There are 6 types of tiles you can land on - bosses (can be done solo or co-op), reward, move forward x amount of tiles, drums, quizzes and mystery deals (offered an item to buy with jade). Each day you start out with 15 drums and you get 5 more from completely your dailies, buying 10 for 100 jade per day, get 1-3 special drums by completing daily event missions or be sent a special drum by a friend. Special drums can use 3 times per day and let you choose how many spaces you want to move to. Both types of drums only let you move across a maximum of 3 tiles.

Hidden Realm: It’s basically Kyoto Purification but with a little bit of a twist. To access hidden realm boards you need a scroll which is obtained via the daily event quests or be bought for 50 jade (price increases by 25 jade per purchase). There’s an easy and a hard mode, easy mode must be cleared to unlock hard mode. After selecting a difficulty you’ll have 9 drums and 3 special drums to reach a boss, these are separate from the ones you use in Purifiation and each one add 1 extra minute to fight the boss. Fighting the boss will give you all the rewards you accumulated on the board. At the top of the board there will be 6 empty spaces for buffs to be shown. The buff are obtained by simply progressing through the board and choosing a 1 buff out of 3. Buff range from boost to stats, extra time to challenge ths boss to additional mitama/soul effects for your entire team.

Kekkai Dispatch: Cost 10 sushi/AP to send up to 1-6 teams of 5 shiki out on a 24 hour dispatch quest. Depending on which shiki you selected, you’ll get a certain score and there are rewards that will unlock depending on your total accumulated score. Dispatch quests give you guild medals, event currency and some random rewards like orochi scales and exp mitama/souls etc. Clearing dispatch quests to unlock rewards like the random SSR/SP in the exchange shop, however, requires the entire server to work together. To recall a team early costs jade, but how much jade will vary eg; recalling with 23hrs left costs 100 jade while recalling with 16hrs left cost 68 jade.

Boss Challenge: Fight the 5 bosses (solo only) within 3 minutes. They are unlocked by clearing the event story and 1 purification board. Bosses are Sealand Youkai with a treasure box, Sealand Youkai on a seahorse, buff Sealand Youkai holding a club, Kani-hime and Kujira. Only your fastest clear time is recorded for ranking. Recommend you do not attempt boss challenge until you have 10-30 blessings first, it’s best to wait until the last 1-2 days of the when you have as many blessings as possible. Same advice applies to people interested in ranking.

Boss Blessings are really important for boss challenges. Blessings are obtained via the point exchange, you can use jade or “tokens” to buy them. Each blessing gives you +3% ATK and HP.  There are also powerful effects for having 10-30-50-70 blessings which are; 10 -  Start each round with 8 onibi and ATK is increased by 40% for 3 turns 30 -  Shikigami skills cost 2 less onibi 50 - After taking an action, own HP is restored by 25% 70 - Enemies’ DEF is reduced by 50%

Notable rewards from the point exchange: new Juzu skin, an icon frame, special kekkai/realm cards, 3-5* white daruma, black daruma, random SSR/SP, blue summon tickets, skin tickets, lots of gold and orochi scales. There are also quests that give you more event currency, “tokens”, a loading screen pic and unlock certain items inthe exchange shop (eg the random SSR/SP).

Notable rewards for total accumulated score from dispatch: 4* white daruma, special kekkai/realm card, bio affection items, a lot of gold and a lot of sushi/AP.

Rewards for clearing boss challenges are a total of 25 black daruma shards, jade and lots of gold. Although there is ranking for boss challenge and hidden realm (hard mode only), there are no rewards for ranking besides bragging rights and providing examples of shiki teams to use.

What Shikigami/Teams to Use

Dispatch

Five 6* SSR/SPs

One 6* of the three required shiki + two dupes of any grade or two 6* SSR/SPs

Try to use the required shiki or max level 6* SSR/SPs for the dispatch quests. If you have any dupes of the required shiki, use them instead of max level 6* SRs or Rs because they will give you a slightly better score.

Even if you don’t many high level shiki, you need do these dispatch quests if you want to unlock the random SSR/SP in the shop for the entire server.

Purification

3 AOE attackers + Oitsuki/Zashiki + Yama Usagi/Maki/Ushi

2 AOE attackers + snow spirit Kiyohime + Oitsuki/Zashiki + Yama Usagi/Maki/Ushi

As for what attackers to use, any mix of AOE and ST with hasei/shadow, shingan/watcher or kyoukotsu is ok.

The recommended bonus reward to choose is gold. Although you can pick mitama/souls, 6* only drop from SR/SSR/SP bosses and the drop rate is rather low.

Hidden Realm

Ryoumen + 190 SPD snow spirit Kiyohime + 170 SPD Ushi + 140 SPD Oitsuki + HP-HP-HP Shoyou

Shiranui + 2 Shuten + 190 SPD snow spirit Kiyohime +170 SPD Ushi

Recommended buffs to get; crit DMG +60%, SPD +50, HIT +200%, splash damage, 30% chance to double crit, extra 30 seconds to fight boss, 200% damage up outside of turn, splash indirect damage, shingan/watcher, hasei/shadow, and kyoukotsu. Multiple of the same type of buffs will stack.

Even if you can’t reach the boss after using up all your drums you can still challenge it, you just won’t have extra time to fight it. The battle itself is in the boss defense format, ie only your highest damage score matters and you’re not really expected to defeat it.

Regardless of which difficulty you choose, if you just want your rewards then challenge the boss and immediately exit. It makes no difference to your accumulated rewards if you actually deal damage to the boss or not. But if you want more event currency, you should try to do more than 500000 damage.

For reference; - leaving without dealing damage gives you ~250 event currency - dealing 500000 damage gives you ~1000 event currency - dealing 40mil damage gives you ~1800 event currency - you only get 50 tokens regardless of how much damage you do

Boss Challenge

Boss 1-3: 2-3 AOE attackers + 0-1 ST attackers + Kamai + Aoandon

Boss 1 & 3: Kuro Douji + 1-2 Youkinshi + 0-1 Orochi + SP Shuten + Ushi

Boss 1-3: Ryoumen + snow spirit Kiyohime + Ushi + Oitsuki/Maki + Shoyou

Boss 1-3: SP Tamamo/SP Ibaraki + Orochi + 2 Youkinshi + Aoandon

Boss 1-3: AOE attacker + 2 Youkinshi + Ushi + Aoandon

Boss 2: Yuki Douji + snow spirit Kiyohime + Kamai + Ushi + Kosode

Boss 4: 1-2 Ibaraki + 1-2 Sanbi + Ushi + Oitsuki + Shoyou

Boss 5: SP Tamamo/SP Ibaraki + 2 Youkinshi + snow spirit Kiyohime + Aoandon

Boss 5: SP Tamamo/Takiyasha + Ryoumen + snow spirit Kiyohime + Shoyou + Ushi

For the first 3 bosses there’s a lot of flexability with the teams, so just use what works for you.

Please don’t underestimate blessings. Doing boss challenge without them can be extremely difficult.

To reiterate; there are no rewards for ranking besides bragging rights and providing examples of shiki teams to use.

More details about the event Post for Sea Voyage Event Transcription of Mt Oe event (helpful for answering the quizzes)

[smutnug]

Day 8: Patching Up

Kremissius Aclassi x Caroline Gault (non-Inquisitor OC)

It was the worst pain he'd ever felt. Worse even than pain: the red shard buried in his side thrummed with wrongness, a corrupt force leaching into his system.

Krem lay on the lush grass of the Arbor Wilds and watched birds fly overhead, a riot of noise and colour. He wondered if he was dying.

"Stitches!" he heard somebody scream. "Get Stitches!"

Hadn't he been with them? There'd been the river, and they'd beaten the Warden forces back over the bank and into some overgrown ruins…and then the Templar monsters, horrors of red crystal and twisted flesh. But they were winning. They were winning, and then -

He winced as he craned his neck to see the damage. Such a small thing, really. It felt the width of a man's arm but it was little more than the size of an arrow. Shrapnel from an exploding behemoth, it had punched through his armour before he'd even registered the danger.

"Where the fuck is Stitches?"

"Skinner is getting him. Hold on Krem, you tough bastard."

"Someone's coming!"

"Just scouts."

There was only one scout he wanted to see. Would he die here, now, when they'd barely held hands?

"Krem!"

He must be hallucinating already because there she was leaning over him, dark eyes wide in a pale face.

"Is it the Fade?" he rasped. "Am I dead? Where did you come from?"

"From the river, vous sotte. What have you done to yourself?" The shine in her eyes and the tremble of her hands belied her smile. "You're getting blood all over me."

"Can you heal?" Dalish asked, and she laughed bitterly."

"I can't heal a flea bite. You?"

"Same." Dalish didn't even pretend she wasn't a mage; it must be serious.

"Get it out," he rasped.

"We can't do that," Caro said, "it might be the only thing stopping you from bleeding out."

He tried to keep the rising panic from his voice. "It's killing me. I can feel it - please, just get it out of me."

"Skinner, what the fuck? Where's Stitches?"

"Elbow-deep in guts," the elf said with characteristic bluntness. "He'll be as quick as he can."

Caro chewed her lip. "I might be able to cauterise the wound. But I've never tried it. I might just burn you to death."

A spike of red-rotten pain lanced through his side. "I'll take those odds."

"You're a fool."

"Humour me." He blinked as a drop fell on his face. Rain? The skies were blue.

"Help me loosen these straps," Caro was saying. "We'll need to take the plate off at the same time to staunch the wound."

By his side, Grim grunted in affirmation. He'd patched up his share of wounds. But not like this. Not for anyone who'd pulled through, that was. They began to work at his buckles.

"Wait." He batted her hands away as she reached for his breastplate. Breathing heavily, he crossed his hands over his chest. "Just wait."

"It will hurt," she said. "If we had some elfroot -"

"It's not that."

"Let her work, idiot."

He turned to Grim in disbelief - it was the longest speech he'd ever heard from the man.

"You want to die?" he continued. "Get out of the fucking way. Nobody cares."

Caro was looking between them with a frown. "We can wait, Krem. Wait for your medic." Still, she unwrapped the scarf from around her neck ready for use as a compress.

"No." It burned; it crawled. "Take it out."

Still he clutched at his breastplate.

She misunderstood. "I've seen scars before, if that's what you're afraid of."

"That's not it."

"Then what?" There was an edge of frustration to her voice.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. With an effort he moved his shaking hands to his sides. "Do it."

Caro handed Grim the scarf. "Be ready to press this to the wound. We need to pull the shard first, then the armour. Unless it won't come out. Then we have to pull it all at once. Let's hope that's not how it goes." She hesitated in reaching for the shard. "Maker, that feels wrong."

Grim grunted. Without a word he grabbed the base of the shard and yanked; it slid out as easily as it had gone in, and he tossed it aside with a scowl.

"Now." As a team they pulled the breastplate free, sticky with blood. Caro pulled up his undertunic and Grim pressed the scarf to the wound. It hurt like a bastard, but the wrong feeling had lessened.

"It's clean, as far as I can see." Caro joined Grim in pressing on the scarf; her little weight was a token addition at best. "No viscera poking out. That's good, no?" She shook her head. "I think we can wait. I don't want to make it worse."

Krem searched her face. His bindings were exposed, there could be no doubt. "I wanted to tell you. I would have."

"Tell me?" Her eyes met his, concern mingling with relief. "Oh." Fingers brushed the edge of his blood-soaked bindings. "Is this what you were so worried about?"

"It's not nothing."

"But it is." She cupped his cheek and pressed her forehead to his, and his heart skipped erratically. "I don't care about that, you silly boy." Soft lips pressed to his, and he couldn't be quite sure he was still conscious. The pain was still there, certainly - but it seemed so, so unimportant.

"Stitches is here. Get out of the way." Skinner, hopelessly unromantic.

"I'll be right here." Caro kissed him again. "Right by your side."

"Promise?" he whispered, and she grinned, or was it sunshine breaking through the forest canopy?

"This, I promise."

Then Stitches was there, with potions and poultices and a needle and thread, and Krem fell asleep with a smile on his face.

[solitaria-fantasma]

((Extensive Session #3 highlights.))

We go to Von Trikona’s tower and are greeted by three students and a handful of golems.

Humphry eyes Mountain with abject terror.

Von Trikona gives us the preserved bodies wrapped in burial shrouds, and teleports us to the town of Fwee - just past the security gates, but not right in town square.

The map for the town of Fwee is heckin’ pretty.

“Oh no...oh no, I fucked up. I made a mistake! UwU!!!”

“Please don’t comment on the corpse-shaped backpacks!”

Udaji may be tol and stronk but she is also dumb and can’t roll higher than a 10 on her Perception checks.

“The only ones who don’t blend in with the local crowd are the Halfling and the Dragonborn.” Claus and I just can’t catch a break…

We walked around the marketplace with the preserved corpse backpacks for a while as we asked for directions to the Rose family home.

Mountain’s intimidation checks are on-point.

Udaji’s average Perception roll is a 4 while the rest of the party averages around 16.

It has been decided that this scaly baby should never have been allowed out of town on her own.

Somebody in this town is throwing mud balls and glitter bomb darts at our rogue and Udaji is seeing NONE of it.

“Claus would like to point out that you’re covered in paint.”

We entered a house and the DM resized our icons to reflect the height differences. It looked like a bad game of Agar.io and I was winning.

Matthias - still covered in paint - was politely asked not to sit on the furniture, and handed a single tiny-ass napkin to ‘clean up’ with.

“Yeeeaaahhh...there was no easy way to do this, was there?”

“Is it more disrespectful to put the bodies on the ground or the table?”

“It might be more disrespectful to try and unwrap the bodies one handed and risk dropping them.”

“Above the board, do we have to tell her that the bandits were already dead when we found them?”

Matthias ‘accidentally’ smeared paint on the servant on his way out, and offered him the tiny-ass napkin back.

Lady Rose thanked us for returning her family’s bodies, but asked us to give her some time to process her loss.

We then went to the magic district (mostly wizards, mostly elven) to get started on the errands we promised to run between Von Trikona and her friend Vincent.

We knocked on the door, heard a loud ‘CRASH’, and poked our heads through the unlocked door Scooby-Doo style.

The DM promptly had us roll for initiative.

I keep forgetting to select my token BEFORE rolling for initiative heck.

“Hopefully you guys don’t die.”

“Gotta be honest - I’ve thought about what character I’d bring in if Udaji DID die. But it would be really, REALLY sad.”

I had to run down to get dinner and missed half a turn of combat but I made it back just in time for my second go.

“Oh! Udaji! You missed this part, but the old wizard man has cried out for you to not set anything on fire.”

“Can do! That’s not my kind of dragon heritage!!”

The old wizard man is ‘Vincent Oman’ - an artificer. We returned his stuff, and he offered us dinner.

“This guy is, like, peak Grandpa. He’s very happy to have people over.”

Vincent has not heard of Lord Hassan, but recalled an enchanted lockbox a cohort of his (Ceri, another artificer) had made on commission for the dowry of a local girl marrying a man in the next kingdom over.

That lockbox (enchanted to be neigh on impossible to break into) was part of Clarissa Rose’s dowry, and now I’m sad.

Vincent drew us a map to Ceri’s house, and then we nearly left without picking up Maxine’s books (three advanced spellbooks & some of her notes).

He also offered to let us sleep in his attic for the night, since it was getting late, only asking us to try and keep quiet, as he was a delicate sleeper.

Matthias finally got to wash off the paint in the ‘waterifier’ (re: magical, water-creating shower).

Vincent reminds Udaji too much of her own dad, and she took one point of homesickness damage. Vincent gave her heartwarming life advice, and more food.

“It’s okay if you get sad sometimes, when traveling far from home. You will find people who will not, perhaps, fill the void, but surely make it feel less empty.”

I’m going to adopt Vincent holy heck

Ceri confirmed that the lockbox was commissioned to keep safe a dowry traveling a long distance, and told us that it could only be opened by using two skeleton keys simultaneously.

We had found one of said skeleton keys in the bandit/necromancer lair back in Session 1.

“We were too eager to shout ‘MURDER!’ in front of the guards back in Torrin so now we’re afraid to whisper it in Fwee.”

Ceri confirmed that the key we found is one of the lockbox’s two keys.

We then debated for five minutes who the key, lockbox, and dowry would legally belong to, now that Clarissa and Donald are dead, but never officially reached the wedding.

“This is not the kind of law my family studies!”

Ceri whispered a few rumors of engagements in the area that had fallen through due to ‘accidents’ which saw the dowries go missing, and that the enchanted lockbox had been commissioned by the Rose family to protect against that.

He then told us to get out of his house.

“That’s the kindest ‘GTFO’ I’ve ever gotten.”

“We haven’t heard back from Lady Rose yet, but I feel like it would be too awkward to go back to her house and knock on the door like “Hey, are you done grieving yet?”. The answer is probably ‘no’...”

“Maybe if we walk around town, someone will try to throw more paint at Matthias.”

We wandered around the marketplace for a while, trying to lure out the mysterious woman who’d been throwing things at us the day before.

[Just to set a little reference - this is all happening within the first two hours of the campaign.]

Matthias got egged, and we chased the perpetrator into a public park.

Mountain got distracted by the beautiful view, and Matthias threatened the woman with his bow. The woman pulled her own bow and threatened right back.

“I am going to swing my lute around in front of me to act as a shield in a worst case scenario. I’m not taking an arrow over an egg.

THE WOMAN. IS MATTHIAS’. CHILD.

DM: “How long has it been since you last spoke with your lover?”

Matthias: “Let’s say it’s been….twenty-five years, seven months.”

The kid’s name is Astrid, and she is mAJORLY pissed off at ‘dad’.

Udaji is backing away from the awkward family reunion, and Mountain is still distracted by the park scenery and has no idea.

“You’re Hohenheim, and she’s Edward.”

[I understood that reference!!]

“Udaji makes eye contact with Mountain and shakes her head like “Don’t get involved you’ll regret it”.”

Mountain officially confirmed for Tiefling.

Claus tries to calm Astrid with the blessings of Lathander. She refuses. Udaji bends over a little and pats Claus on the shoulder consolingly.

His player has difficulty articulating it (and honestly, who wouldn’t? Words are hard), but Matthias is legitimately upset to hear that his lover had died.

“You go up to her and give her a hug with a pat-pat?”

“She immediately starts sobbing in your arms.”

“I shed a single manly tear.”

Mountain has only just now caught up to the fact that these rogues know each other.

Astrid is now refusing to leave. Udaji is still the party baby.

“The only reason I was allowed out of town is because nobody could physically stop me.”

“Claus gives you a comforting pat on your hip, as that’s about as high as he can reach.”

After all that chaos, we were approached by a servant from the Rose family, calling us back to Lady Rose’s house.

Her name is now Ingrid Rose, because the DM forgot to name her until this very moment. Mood.

Matthias is still covered in egg.

Lady Rose admits that she thought the offer of marriage from Lord Bryant Hassan to her daughter was too good to be true.

She also admits that she thought the Lord had asked for a rather greedy amount of dowry with the proposal.

“Were any of my husband or daughter’s possessions recovered?”

Don’t look at Matthias. Don’t look at Matthias. Don’t look at Matthias.

Lady Rose asks us to look into the recovery of the enchanted lockbox that was carrying her daughter’s dowry, and offers to reward us for it.

She ALSO asks us to put a knife in the throat of whomever arranged her daughter’s death, should we find it to not, in fact, be a tragic accident.

Astrid is basically June from AtLA but without Nyla.

Everybody stocks up on rations for a long trip back to return Maxine Von Trikona’s books.

We get on the road back to Torrin, retracing the ill-fated Rose party’s steps as we go.

After two days on the road, we come across a seemingly wounded man on the side of the road, by an overturned cart.

He asks us for gold to get back on his feet.

Udaji immediately fell for it, and had to be physically stopped from reaching for her gold.

Miraculously, we all managed to avoid a bunch of mysterious projectiles and whistling noises.

Interestingly, both of the guard corpses we had ‘interviewed’ reported hearing a whistling noise before their death.

Mountain took an arrow to the horn, but only three points of damage.

We were all tired by this point and there were a lot of bandits so combat was looooooong.

Claus has two waiting Bardic Inspiration dice and is having a very good day.

“You’re going to shoot THROUGH your daughter and your cleric??”

ONE BANDIT DOWN!

I charged at a bandit, sword drawn, but couldn’t quite make it there in one turn, so I added an intimidating roar for good measure.

I rolled a nat 20, therefore proving that I inherited SOMEthing from my white dragon mother, and the bandit pissed himself.

THREE BANDITS DOWN!

I took 8 points of damage from the other bandits and it’s a good thing the DM had us level up at least once bc if I’d still had my lvl. 1 total of 9hp that damage would have damn near killed me.

“Ew, he’s got a skull face with horns! ...oh, wait, he’s just ugly nevermind.”

“If I cast the magic, but Matthias says the words, can we duet ‘Vicious Mockery’?”

“My mother [the white dragon] would be proud of that, and I’m not sure I’M proud of that.”

I stand corrected: Astrid is a ranger, not a rogue.

Dragonborn zoomies.

“I may be wearing a flower crown, but I’m still scary.”

I have now decided that there will be - at minimum - one fight where I take off my flower crown and force someone else in the party to hold it.

Probably Claus.

SIX BANDITS DOWN!

“Well, they identify as a corpse right now, so…”

We got distracted for another five minutes arguing about how useful Hawkeye was to the Avengers in the MCU vs. how useful Hawkeye was to Loki in the MCU, which spawned from the DM apologizing for her slowness in playing out Astrid’s turn, as she had never played a Ranger before because she thought they were useless.

Poor Hawkeye.

The bandit captain tried to ambush Astrid, hit her with one of two scimitars, and failed his dagger roll badly enough to stab himself.

Claus - incredibly inspired by Udaji’s music and heroics - saved Mountain from dying.

Udaji keeps rolling really well on attacks and damage...if only I could shuffle some of those over into Perception.

Astrid got the killing shot on the bandit captain.

I looted his body, and found (2) scimitars, tattered leather armor, the queen piece from a set of dragon chess, and (7) silver.

I took the chess piece, and nothing else.

Astrid found footprints leading back to the bandits’ camp, so we took over it for the night.

We leveled up! Woo!!!

Zone of Truth. Zone of TrUTH. ZONE OF TRUTH-

And College of Creation. This is gonna be fun!!!

[renaer-is-allegedly-hot]

session 6

so pdfing and jpging things for tumblr is hard so ur just gonna deal with this have fun

I'm sleepy

Also criminal minds is v good

"rain makes sleepy" or smth I can't process anything rn

"can I just stop.. Stop trying .. With discord"

We're so quiet

And out of it

"if I have an extra belt, I'll just hook it to it" - dom2020, about the loss of his window blinds stick thing

The only people w blinds problems r jacob n dom apparently

Jacob: can we start at 3

Jacob: can we start at 4

Jacob: can we start at 5

Lol ok

If lillian is a reformed horse girl dom is a reformed cow boy

JACOB IS GOING TO REPLACE THE MILK IN DOM'S HOUSE WITH HIS

"I'm going to go to your house and replace the milk in your house with mine"

Dom didn't know males could lactate

  Last time we finished downtime w a bomb I guess

An explosion outside of our home

N then we found out the one goblin or smth killed by the explosion was the last key holder of the oh it was a gnomes it was an associate of renaer's father

Asyna given a necklace by a child + asyna's fish spirit thing

  We go into mirt's house in one of the sitting rooms

Renaer is pacing and looks concerned n frantic

U missed sylvia's question oops

Ok wait suddenly we started talking about trump and politics what happened

Ok so when it comes to protesters burning stuff like cars and businesses there are a lot of reports that it's not protesters and that it's police and/or random ppl just joining to break things

I haven't looked into that as much but one of the biggest arguments is that ppl who were really protesting wouldn't b burning down the low-income businesses n stuff that have been

  Adam asking to renaer and floon if the gnome had a reason to come to our house

Maybe gnome found out ppl were watching and maybe wanted to give us the thing

Adam asking if we need the body

if he didn't have it on him then the authorities would've confiscated

There r speak w dead practices ig

Not really any reason to believe it's not on the body

Mirt asks us to recount the events

Looked like zents

Why would zents want the gnome

Renaer said smth

All of us r flustered from day's events

Theo got 15

One of the neighbors fallah the elf person had said someone wandered off

Adam tells them abt which building the attack probs came from

Asyna brings up necklace and said it was from a puppet

Mirt takes the necklace and is looking at it

Four jewels hanging from the broken necklace, reddish-orange almost marbles

Looks like one of them had been pulled off

Stone impervious to scrying magic

Stone looks like ?????

Either with the police or on the zent or idk

Could ask trench to find it bc expert tracker

Adam runs arcana check on it

Rolls 18, learn it could have smth to do w the element of fire

"can we throw it into the fire?"

Gonna dangle the necklace over the candle

No reaction

Asyna has her deer, summons it

Comes out, paces, looks at asyna expectantly

Naya is a scrying deer so u can tell it to scry

"I'll show naya the necklace, be like, 'scry'"

Jumps around, backs up toward house front then looking for us to follow

Mirt is meeting w associates

Adam: "invite us" . "sometime"

Renaer says he'll lie low probs bc worried abt his fate

Floon says ditto basically

We're following naya and watching it move through the streets

Right as the sun sets make it further into sea ward and then naya stops and returns to the token

Back in the direction of our house toward a gated, walled-off manor house w elegant metal bars blocking some sight and a low wall covering it, locked gate

Building behind it looks two stories tall

You do not recognize the building

No visible guards, just the wall itself

Some light coming in from windows but no one in front of the windows walking around

Some light lit on the second story

Sylvia's gonna jump over it ig but I have to play w thE CHILD

Sylvia wants to use a bear

R we using my dog

Or is asyna turning into a bear

No one's around it's night

We're gonna try picking the lock first ig

Oh nvm we're knocking

Asyna is knocking

Waits a little, no response

Door made out of solid wood but we're just gonna lockpick instead of letting adam destroy it

Theo tries lockpicking, puts ear to door and eventually can't pick open lock

If asyna turns into an animal she can open the door

Squirrel!asyna time does it ez

Rolls 15 for perception

Squirrel!asyna is on the wall, there's a pathway that goes forward and one branching off towards the left to what's probably a guest house

Adam is gonna send message, eventually we notice a groundskeeper w two mastiffs

They're kinda far from us, over 100 ft away they're just making rounds

Asyna might try to unlock the door as a squirrel

Strength check as squirrel

Dogs r getting closer

Asyna can't open it

Could knock when the groundskeepers r closer

When mastiff+groundskeeper come closer we'll try that

OOP just asyna is rolling initiative as a squirrel

Lmao rolled nat20

Asyna might die ???

Climbs up wall again

Gets onto top of wall

Older human gentleman just pulls dogs aside

Groundskeeper says we can't go in and eventually walks away

Adam "not even someone who has official business with the house's master ?"

Rolls a 9, groundskeeper says come back in the sun

There's a dirt path ???? One going forward towards a porch into the main building, and a side path that eventually diverges abt 50 feet up the path further into the courtyard

Not a manor w manicured gardens, otherwise just p flat

We're gonna stealthily run for it

We make it to the main door of the house, it's unlocked - doesn't even look like it could be traditionally locked bc it's just a display door

We forgot to lock the door we left

60 feet away

Adam is giving me bardic inspiration whispered

He's playing a soft lullaby

You RUN

Can kinda shut it, to left you see the two dogs and groundskeeper but they don't notice you and you sneak back

We go into the villa

Go in, shut the door haha frozen computer

We enter and see immediately to the left 15 ft away a shut door, further down the hallway a long dinner setup

Dinner table turned over on its side

Staircase and another set of doors to right

But most of all there r dead bodies littered in the hallway

Probs 10ish

Some dressed in typical guardsmen attire w spears, smaller number of bodies covered in zents attire

We hear sounds of active fighting upstairs

Inspect the dead bodies

No one recognized, one of them collapsed in front of a doorway leading into a

Five different exits including door we came from and stairs

Check the other exits

Naya is summoned but it doesn't work

Oh bc it's once a day

Nvm there are four different doorways

One w a guard slumped over in front of it

Go to door to immediate left

Adam stealthily cracks door open, looks like a storage room

There's a skinny 5ft wide staircase to the right

Gonna check another door

Peek into another room w two human men dressed in black zent robes w maces at their belts and at the sound of the door, turn and r shocked for a second

Cel goes first

Groot gets 6 for initiative idk if there r any modifiers

They're running forward to attack

U roll 17+4 for first insight

U have sneak attack against one of the targets

14 pts of damage gOD I'M SO SORRY Y'ALL I TOOK A FAT MINUTE

U run up and stab him and he looks p heavily wounded

Cel has tripped and fallen for reasons

U get 4 damage he tries to hit u in the head so the wooden part of the mace hits ur head

Asyna

Pulls out ice knife

21 to hit, going for the one that hit me

Rolls a 1 LMAO

Ice knife

Couldn't hit him w full attack but secondary part of the attack hit him and has some damage

Adam

Runs into line of sight, they look cut up but not bloodied

Casts vicious mockery on the one u stabbed

Points at hole in gut "I bet the hole in ur gut is not as large as the hole in your heart"

4 damage

Theo

Strikes and misses

Groot

2 damage

Dom's gonna

kill my dog

Other guy attacks theo

Hits

U do 5 damage

Ok so

Ig every time u fight

U can use sneak attack ??

9 pts to damage

Ok I think ur using sneak attack wrong

Adam technically saved ur dog

Asyna

Rolls nat20 to hit

Rolls

Kills the guy

"I mean, shillelagh"

Howls in pain, slumps over on the ground

It's the bald one the guy u stabbed

Adam

Casts vicious mockery

Threatens baldness

2 damage

Theo

2, no hit

Groot

Doesn't hit

Other guy

Trying to hit theo

Hits

3 damage

Aerana

Shortsword

6 damage

Asyna

8 to hit

12 hits

7 damage

Siiiiiis imagine killing both of them wait is he dead

Oop he's not dead yet tho

Adam

Vicious mockery

Lives

Theo

16 to hit

ROLLS A ONE

LILLIAN

Four damage

BRUH

Groot misses

Other guy

Drops his weapon

Adam walks into the room

"hey buddy . What's goin on ?"

Persuasion check at disadvantage

10

Might as well kill

You kill, groot pushes adam so adam doesn't see

[grailfinders]

Fate and Phantasms #189

Today on Fate and Phantasms we’re making the royal hikkikoneet of Himeji Castle, Osakabehime! This giant nerd is a Lore Bard, because it’s hard to stay in your room all day and not read things, as well as a Trickery Domain Cleric to fill your castle to the brim with ghostly defenses (and run away to your kotatsu when things get scary).

Check out her build breakdown below the cut, or her character sheet over here!

Next up: Prepare for trouble, and make it double!

Race and Background

Going by Fate’s official lore, Osakabehime is a kitsune like Tamamo. But, since Tamamo’s pretty insistent on No Doubles, O-heems here had to change her race, and so do we. So we’re making her a Hexblood to get some castle magic right off the bat. This makes Batty Fey and Humanoid, and she gets +1 Wisdom and +2 Charisma. She keeps the standard Medium size, but she still gets Darkvision, Fey Resilience against the charmed condition, Hex Magic which lets her cast Disguise Self and Hex using her Charisma. You can cast one of these spells for free each day, or by using spell slots.

She can also make Magic Tokens out of her hair (and other things, but those are gross), letting her send a message to the creature holding it. Also, while she’s within 10 miles of the token, she can enter a trance to see and hear through the token for 1 minute, after which the token is destroyed. She can make a token once per long rest, and they only last until her next long rest anyway, so don’t get excited about stockpiling them like I just did before reading that part.

Castle Guardian Spirit isn’t an official D&D background, but fortunately Mangaka is! Or at least, Guild Artisan has the same sort of ring to it. This gives Batty proficiency in Insight and Persuasion.

Ability Scores

Batty’s Wisdom should be her highest stat. Making good art requires good eyes to figure out how to improve your technique. Second best is her Charisma. She’s got that awkward underdog style going for her, despite how much she overthinks things. Her Dexterity is also pretty high. She might not move around much, but she’s an expert at hiding from responsibilities! Batty’s Intelligence is above average, it’s hard to spend that much time on the internet and not learn something. Her Constitution isn’t great, I blame staying inside all day, but we’re dumping Strength for pretty much the same reason. There’s nothing saying a NEET can’t be a gym rat, but that’s def not Batty.

Class Levels

Bard 1: Starting off as a bard gives Batty all sorts of proficiencies, like Dexterity and Charisma saves, Sleight of Hand and Performance to master her brushstrokes, History for living for so long, and Stealth to slip away from crowds. If she does end up next to people though, she can use her Bardic Inspiration to give them a d6 for one of their checks, saves, or attack rolls Charisma Bonus times per long rest. Batty can also use her Charisma to cast Spells! Minor Illusion and Silent Image will create the first soldiers in her origami army (they can’t touch people, but they can be distracting!). She also gets Feather Fall for some bat parachuting, Blade Ward to hide from physical attacks in her kotatsu dimension, Charm Person to avoid fights altogether, and Distort Value to make even a neck guard look like a proof of courage.

Cleric 1: Bouncing over to cleric real quick will give us all sorts of goodies. Since Batty is a Trickery cleric, she gets a Blessing of the Trickster, giving another creature advantage on stealth checks for an hour. Don’t you know heavy armor is uruso noisy? Keep it quiet! She also learns another set of spells (since we’re multiclassing you’ll have to use the special table to figure out how many slots you have now.) that use her Wisdom to cast and prepare them. She gets Charm Person and Disguise Self for free, which... she already had from level one... But, she also gets cantrips! Guidance and Resistance will make you a little more knowledgeable than everyone else about everything, and Thaumaturgy will help you get your spooky castle ghost thing going. You can also prepare spells like Bane to dull the senses of intruders, and Purify Food and Drink and Sanctuary to protect yourself and guests.

Bard 2: Second level bards are even better at everything since they’re Jacks of All Trades, adding half their proficiency to all skill checks. They also learn a Song of Rest, so anyone brave enough to spend a short rest in Himeji Castle will heal an extra d6 when they use hit dice. Your Magical Inspiration makes your bardic inspiration dice even better, letting your allies add the d6 to the damage or healing of a spell! Batty can also cast Speak with Animals now! Turns out she has an army of like 800 animal spirits helping out, which certainly explains all the origami.

Bard 3: As a Lore bard, Batty gets even more proficiencies, making her really good with Deception, Arcana, and Religion. I mean, she is kind of a god already. She can also turn her bardic inspiration into Cutting Words, reducing a creature’s check, attack roll, or damage by that amount instead of adding to it. She means well, but her cringey moments can get pretty uramessy. She also get Expertise in Performance and Stealth, doubling her jozu modifier. She can also cast Animal Messenger to make her first origami animal that can actually help you, delivering a message to a creature you specify in a location you’ve been before.

Bard 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to bump up your Charisma for more inspiration and confidence, meaning more helpful hints and more cringey cutting words per long rest. This also makes your spells better! Speaking of, you get Prestidigitation to make real origami at will, and Phantasmal Force to make an origami horse that can really trample people. Well, kind of. It’s still an illusion, but the damage is real.

Bard 5: Fifth level bards get stronger Bardic Inspiration, their dice turning into d8s. They also become a Font of Inspiration, thanks to their inspiration dice refilling on short rests instead of long ones. You can also use third level spells now, like using a Glyph of Warding to hide Phantasmal Forces all around your castle. You can use these glyphs to create Explosive Runes for straight damage, or Spell Glyphs to store spells of the level you cast the glyph at or lower, which will target whatever activated the glyph in the first place. It takes an hour and 200 gold to cast, but it also lets you ignore concentration, so... actually this would be a great way to summon creatures. Just stick a glyph in a book, throw it at a creature’s head, boom, summons without concentration. You’re welcome.

Bard 6: Sixth level bards can waste their turn using Countercharm to give allies advantage on saves against being frightened or charmed. You already get half of that for free, so why bother. More importantly, you get Additional Magical Secrets, giving you two spells from any class. For your normal spell, grab Nondetection to prevent yourself from getting found through magic, then use magical secrets to pick up Leomund’s Tiny Hut to hide in a proper kotatsu of protection, and Conjure Animals for some slightly fleshier origami animals. We’ll get the real deal later, but this works just as well, yo-i.

Bard 7: Seventh level bards get fourth level spells, like Hallucinatory Terrain. Changing up the whole castle grounds is a good way to get people lost, and if they’re lost they’re less likely to find you.

Bard 8: Max out your Charisma with this ASI for better spells and more cringe. You can also use Greater Invisibility to keep yourself hidden, even while making more origami.

Bard 9: Your last level of bard makes your Song of Rest a d8 too, but more importantly, you also get fifth level spells, meaning you can finally cast Animate Objects to make real origami animals of variable sizes. You can create up to 10 animals this way, with medium pieces of paper counting as two, large pieces as four, and huge objects as eight. You can also upcast this spell for more objects at once. Rise, my mighty karmy!

Cleric 2: Now that we have your origarmy ready to go, we can finally dip back into cleric! Second level clerics can Channel Divinity once per short rest, either Turning Undead with a wisdom save, or Invoking Duplicity to create an illusory copy of yourself for a minute. The illusion has to stay within 120 feet of you, but you can cast spells as though you were standing in its space. Perfect for when you have to fight but you want to stay in your tiny hut at the same time.

Cleric 3: Third level clerics get second level spells, like Mirror Image and Pass without Trace. Finally, you can make yourself sneaky! You also get access to a bunch of other spells that will make yourself more protected- Aid increases your and up to two other creature’s max HP for 8 hours, Protection from Poison protects you... from poison, and Zone of Truth makes sure nobody can hide their plans from you.

Cleric 4: With your bard stuff taken care of, you can use this ASI to bump up your Wisdom for stronger cleric spells. You also learn Mending. Your army is made of paper, they’re going to get torn eventually.

Cleric 5: Fifth level clerics can Destroy Undead of CR 1/2 or lower when they’re turned, and they also get third level spells, like Blink and Dispel Magic. Bringing your own magic into someone’s house is shitsurei manners, don’t you think? You can also Bestow Curses on particularly rude guests, Meld into Stone to hide away without a trace, and create Spirit Guardians to protect yourself from melee attacks.

Cleric 6: As a sixth level cleric, you can Channel Divinity twice per rest, and you can use it to put on a Cloak of Shadows, becoming invisible until the end of next turn, or until you attack or cast a spell.

Cleric 7: Seventh level clerics get fourth level spells, like Dimension Door to pop straight into your kotatsu from 500 feet away. You can also cast Polymorph to reclaim your foxy glory! Or turn into a T Rex, if you want to powergame. Your choice. You also get access to Guardians of Faith, which are like Spirit Guardians, but they don’t stick near you- perfect for when you want to avoid being in a fight entirely. You can also use an Aura of Life and/or Aura of Purity to make your hikkolife a bit easier. The former gives nearby allies resistance to necrotic damage, immunity to max HP reduction, and autoheals creatures when they start their turn with 0 hit points. Hey, another spell that would be really good to keep around in a glyph of warding! The latter prevents disease, gives creatures in it resistance against poison damage, and has advantage on saves against being blinded, charmed, deafened, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, and stunned.

Cleric 8: Use your last ASI to max out your Wisdom for the best cleric spells possible. Your Destroy Undead grows to affect creatures of CR 1 or lower, and you also get a Divine Strike, causing all your weapon attacks to deal an extra 1d8 poison damage. I mean... no reason to turn down a free gift, right?

Cleric 9: Ninth level clerics get fifth level spells, like Dominate Person and Modify Memory to sculpt the minds of those foolish enough to enter your castle without permission. You can also use Insect Plague to create a massive swarm of tiny origami bats, dealing piercing damage to creatures stuck in them. Alternatively, use Hallow to make your castle a more liminal space, adding a bunch of effects against celestials, elementals, fey (probably should just not include that one.), fiends, and undead, preventing them from entering the area and messing with their magic and mental effects. There’s also a ton of other effects you can add, just take a look at the spell, we’re not writing them all out here.

Cleric 10: Tenth level clerics get Divine Intervention, letting you pray to your god for a roya-l get out of jail free card once a day, with a week’s break after it actually works. You have a roughly 1 in 10 chance of it working each time you use it, based on your cleric level. If it works, you can get whatever your DM thinks is appropriate- maybe a couple robots show up to help out your plan to be lazy forever? Nah, that’d be silly. You can also cast Sacred Flame this level. I was running out of good cantrips to give you, and kitsune are known for will of wisps and the like, so it’s sort of on theme.

Cleric 11: Your capstone level makes Destroy Undead affect creatures of CR 2 or lower, and you get sixth level spells! Forbiddance locks magical travel out of an area for up to a day- if you cast the spell every day for a month, it’ll last until dispelled. You can also force extraplanar creatures to take a bunch of damage every turn they’re in the area without a save, so Tamamo will finally leave you alone. You can use Word of Recall to teleport back to your kotatsu from anywhere, no restrictions. (Technically you have to pick a spot that is involved with your god, but aside from that.) Or, you can use a Heroes’ Feast to make the rest of your party stronger so you won’t feel as bad when you leave the fighting to them. This cures creatures of all disease and poison, makes them immune to poison and being frightened, gives them advantage on wisdom saves, and increases their max HP, all for 24 hours.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Glyph of Warding lets you set up tons of traps and store spells away for later, all without using concentration. That is huge for a build whose main source of damage comes from summon spells. Not only does it let you cast more of them, it also means the ones you have up won’t disappear because you get hit.

Speaking of, it’s really easy for you to avoid combat entirely. Go invisible, hide in a tiny hut and let your duplicity do the fighting for you, throw gobs of paper at enemies then run the other way, whatever they do doesn’t matter because you won’t be around to get hit anyway!

If an enemy does try to chase you down, they’ll have to pass through your massive army of summons first-with an upcasted Animate Objects, that means they’ll be taking 18 attacks of opportunity before they even walk through them all, and that’s before factoring nonsense from your glyphs.

Cons:

You are terrible at fighting directly. You have very few spells that deal damage directly, you have barely over 100 HP, and your AC is 11 if you’re playing to character. Once somebody does make it past your paper, you’d better have a word of recall ready.

Multiclassing really hurts spellcasters. It means you don’t get 7th level or higher spells, you have to spend all your ASIs on casting modifiers to make them both good, and you don’t get the guaranteed intervention from only being a cleric.

You have a big army, but they’re still made of paper. If you go the tiny bat route, all your summons will only have 20 hp, which means one fireball will tear through all of them in a single blow.

[sp4c3-0ddity]

cliche “what I would do differently in season 8″ post

Warning:  contains plance and some kallura bias

Disclaimer:  my memory on the season (especially some details and the order of certain events) is already rather hazy, and this is more focused on characters and relationships than on plot, with which i was mostly pleased (and it’s probably crap besides)

all right here we go:

first of all when Hunk gives Lance the run-down of the Voltron tv show and mentions that it hints at romance between Keith and Allura, Lance doesn’t react except to maybe look uncomfortable. Hunk is surprised he doesn’t have anything else to say about it and wonders why he’s unusually subdued, and Lance admits Veronica (not Hunk, who’s more aware of the dynamics within the team) is encouraging him to ask Allura out. Hunk wonders what’s stopping him and Lance, still a little cagey about it, says he doesn’t know but decides he’s gonna...so he does and Allura accepts reluctantly with Romelle’s encouragement as portrayed

Pidge still agrees to go shopping with Allura but when it comes to bartering for the dress the Unilu fixates on her glasses as a “Voltron collectible”. she’s reluctant for a good second before admitting she never needed them anyway (implied they were an emotional crutch while her family was missing more than anything else) and handing them over

Coran still puts Lance through his paces but in a less humorous and more uncomfortable fashion that implies he might be a little out of his depth

after the mall Pidge, not wanting to return to her “imprisonment” on the eve of leaving Earth again, goes off to watch the sunset. Lance finds her, and at first she’s a little stiff until he teases her about her “appreciation” for something so mundane (to her). Pidge muses it’s not so mundane if it could be the last time she ever sees it, then wonders what he’s doing with her when he should be getting ready for his date, but before he answers Keith interrupts. Pidge takes the opportunity to leave (she’s still grounded and Romelle and/or Rizavi have probably suffered for covering for her). Lance properly apologizes to Keith for his antagonism

the date isn’t awkward, Lance’s family still likes Allura and she appreciates their warmth, but something is still wrong and, when they’re off alone. Allura looks like she’s on the brink of saying something (after the tree healing incident) when Lance confesses he’d liked her for a long time and had a good time with her that night but that he realizes they’re better as friends. Allura breathes a sigh of relief that she didn’t have to break his heart because she agrees and doesn’t really have time to dabble in a romance anyway and they share an amiable hug

Krolia (because i missed her) is in “Battle Scars” and makes the realization that they’re dealing with Ranveig’s monster and communicates a warning seconds before Keith does

in the Olkarion episode Pidge’s grief bonds her more strongly to the Green Lion, which is how she connects with the planet enough to view its last moments. Lance and Hunk show a bit more concern for her and both comfort her (Allura’s still with her most of the time and insists she’ll be safe with her when they go with Keith to deter the weblum). also the Olkari refugees contact the Coalition after the fact and Pidge (and the Holts) greets them and they all mourn Ryner and the rest that didn’t survive their planet’s destruction. Pidge carries the anger with her for most of the rest of the season (so she now has another personal stake in seeing Honerva defeated)

the team splits as Lance/Pidge and Allura/Hunk. Ezor is actually dead and Acxa made the whole thing up to get Zethrid to surrender, but the Olkari guy does repent after Pidge and Keith “chat” with him about his choices (i.e. survivor’s guilt when he learns Olkarion was destroyed) so he still saves the ATLAS’ crew’s butts later

Honerva doesn’t drain the Guardian but rather takes it hostage to siphon off its quintessence. she still retrieves Lotor’s body and Sincline and they’re still on the verge of slicing the Red Lion (i.e. Lance) - made more meaningful since they’re explicitly friends and not romantically entangled - when Allura’s about to spear Honerva

rather than Lance, Keith gives Allura reassurance (and there’s no “romantic” mush but Kinkade still rebukes Rizavi for spying on a private conversation). also Krolia is interviewed alongside Kolivan, ostensibly to remind him of things he might’ve forgotten. she’s also shown reacting to Coran’s...excessiveness; there’s a brief glimpse of Pidge and Lance playing the new game while Rizavi observes they’re at it again and wonders if they’ll let her play seeing as she helped Pidge procure it, right in time for Hunk to interrupt and ask if they’ll taste something for him

Allura says that, after some rest, she’ll remove the “entities” from the other Altean colonists (she never does because...the one she removed from Tova ends up in her). all of them (especially Coran) are reluctant to leave her for the Clear Day carnival but she insists they go (Keith maybe gives her one last look before agreeing). alongside Lotor she hallucinates versions of Keith (who says he senses no hostile intent from it and that Lotor did have good intentions so maybe she should trust him), Shiro (who reminds her that he once had a direct link to Haggar’s mind, but if she knows about it she can use it to her advantage), and Coran (who tells her she’d be honoring her father’s memory experimenting with something he once did) in turn. Allura, despite her skepticism because she knows this isn’t real, sees no recourse and promises them that she’ll give it up as soon as they no longer need it

meanwhile at the carnival Hunk and Keith still get stuck on the ride (it was a Highlight). callback to “Space Mall”, Lance and Pidge go off together. when she doesn’t get enough tickets to earn the “best” prize, Lance cheers her up by challenging her to a pricey and rigged carnival game that he almost wins...which is when Pidge suffers the family portrait for more tokens. they retry, Lance wins and relinquishes his prize to Pidge, who may or may not blush only to observe he might be a good sharpshooter after all

(Pidge and Hunk both question how Shiro won at arm-wrestling without an elbow)

Coran is the most adamant about Allura not using the entity, though the others are still doubtful. Keith confronts her properly about it after the meeting, but Allura shuts his protests down by saying they need to defeat Honerva even at the cost of one of their lives (possibly alludes to his near-sacrifice at Naxzela)

Lance has a “wtf” moment when his bayard turns into the sword. he and Alfor only talk briefly about his appreciation for Allura before telling him he really should train in using that thing

Alfor to Allura about Keith:  why is the red one in the Black Lion??

(possibly he also comments on his quintessence-sense...because someone should)

Trigel lowkey chides Pidge for neglecting her connections with people outside her family while also commenting on her kinda adoption of the Olkari

when Alfor is incredulous about Allura’s use of the entity (even Zarkon reminds her of the damage it caused) she insists it was the only way (Keith, internally:  i told her so); the Paladins, horrified, stop her from tormenting a younger Zarkon with the memories of what his older/possessed self did, and she has a moment where she’s incredulous about what she’s doing/what she’s become; she promises that she’ll happily destroy the entity once they reach the end of the line

Allura admits to Coran that she saw her father while in Honerva’s mindscape. Coran begs her one last time to release the entity only for her to admit she’ll need someone else’s help

and when she’s recovering (when was that in the season?? can’t remember) everyone visits her, but it’s Lance reassuring Keith that Allura will be all right rather than the other way around...and he admits to remembering the “bonding moment”, Keith is like i knew it and rubs it in Lance’s face while still seeming troubled

Pidge still assists Slav and Sam but Trigel’s (and Slav’s hehe) reprimand sort of sticks with her and before they do battle she tells her teammates how much they all mean to her (maybe prefaces it with “i’m not good with people but you guys taught me how to be better”). there’s a group hug, but Lance lingers and they hug properly while she tells him that he’ll do great and he says that he knows (and he means it)

Battle proceeds. Maybe a little trimmed down so Lance, at some point, can “properly” bond with the Red Lion

Allura shows Honerva her work and tells her they can fix it if only she releases the Guardian. Honerva agrees, but it’s not enough and Allura reluctantly admits a life must be given too (and that the entity must be destroyed), at which point her teammates (Keith’s loudest, again bringing up his near-sacrifice at Naxzela as the wrong answer) protest...and Honerva offers something, that she started this and that she’ll finish it too and that Allura should live the life she never got to. she even uses the last of her power to take back the entity

“one year later”, Allura is shown mourning the person Honerva (and Zarkon) was by erecting a memorial to Alfor and to the Alteans that perished when Zarkon destroyed the planet and when Lotor harvested the colonists’ quintessence. she mentions to a few former colonists that they should never forget the mistakes of the past but learn from them, and she’s shown with Romelle and Coran, who begins briefing her on what Keith’s been up to with the Galra...

Pidge is with Matt, finishing up Chip (eh might as well keep it). he teases her about being late to her “date”, but Pidge insists it’s not a date (because all her other ex-teammates will be there)

the seven of them reminisce

Pidge works with her family but she’s also an ambassador spreading science ideas around the universe. Lance is an instructor at the Garrison (he basically has Iverson’s old job probably), and they’re implied to be happily in a relationship. Keith’s fate is pretty much the same but it’s mentioned he gets inspiration from Allura and her memories of old Altea. ditto Hunk

the show ends with Allura’s coronation as queen rather than Shiro’s wedding (though it can be implied he, attending wearing his black Garrison uniform, met Someone at the celebration afterward), and the Lions flying their separate ways, ostensibly to return when the universe needs Voltron again

[housebeleren]

Random Commander Challenge: Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire

Aaaand back to Magic. I’ve gotta say, I really love doing this random commander thing. It really gives me a chance to stretch my deckbuilding muscles, and keeps the games fun and casual, since I can’t have too high a budget. It’s even inspired some of my playgroup to do similar things, building offbeat commanders with restrictions, so I highly recommend trying it out. For October (I’m way behind), the wheel landed on Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire from Core Set 2019. I feel like the 5 Elder Dragons from M19 were all super exciting when they landed, but were quickly cast aside in the excitement of the Ravnica guilds. But back to M19 it was, and with a deck I was really excited to try out, particularly since I almost never build these colors.

Art: Steven Belledin

Theme

Vaevictis Asmadi, at least on his second time at the rodeo, has a really interesting mechanic. He wants you to swing, and every time he does, he polymorphs something of your choice of every single player’s board. So right there, that presents us with a few clear jumping off points to work with. We’ll definitely want things to sacrifice to him, and we’ll want to hit a permanent as many times as possible, since it’s really painful to have all your opponents flip big creatures into play and have you whiff on a non-permanent. So with that in mind, I thought, “What if I made the deck almost all permanents?”, which naturally led to the follow up, “What if I made this a Primal Surge deck?”

Naturally.

So that’s the direction I went. This deck is very much about the mechanical identity, and very little about the flavor or lore identity. Sorry, Vorthoses, this one is for the Mels out there. (Though to be fair, there’s very little actual lore on the Elder Dragons besides Bolas.) But yes! Ramp to get to Vaevectis Asmadi, lots of sacrifice Fodder to feed his ability, and some payoffs, plus the lone spell Primal Surge to serve as an alternate path to victory. Let’s look at them in order.

Card Groups

Ramp - We definitely want plenty of ramp in this deck, as Vaevictis Asmadi is a 6 drop who needs to swing before he does anything, so chances are we’ll be casting him at least once to have any shot of winning. However, given his restriction, we don’t want lots of spell ramp like Cultivate in the deck. Instead, we want Creature and Artifact based ramp. I particularly like some of the Creatures that go find Lands to put on the battlefield, since they increase your chance of hitting actual cards with your commander’s ability. Of this group, Farhaven Elf, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Ondu Giant, and Solemn Simulacrum all made the cut. I also added Khalni Heart Expedition and Curse of Opulence as more off the beaten track ways to ramp (the latter of which can also be used as sac fodder). Lastly, I included 10 rocks and dorks, and which ones you prefer don’t really matter, as long as you have plenty of acceleration.

Haste & Protection - Vaevictis Asmadi is great, but has one major challenge. He’s a 6 drop without Haste that needs to attack before he’s useful. Normally, I’d say don’t stress it or wait until you have 8 or 9 mana to hold up protection after you cast him, but this deck is so tuned around his ability, we really need to get him attacking. For that reason, I think some Haste enablers are basically mandatory for this deck. Rhythm of the Wild and Fires of Yavimaya are fantastic, and feel right on with the flavor as well. I also included Anger, Bloodsworn Stewrd, and Urabrask the Hidden as additional redundancy. Lastly, as silly as it is for dragons to wear boots, I included Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots, which both also have the advantage of protecting him from targeted removal.

Sacrifice Fodder - Now that he’s attacking, we need something to sacrifice. It’s all well and good making your opponents sacrifice their big bombs they’ve just put out, but we want expendable things. Token makers are essential. Grismold, the Dreadsower is one of my favorites, since he not only creates sac fodder, but grows off of them when they die as well. Tendershoot Dryad and Verdant Force make tokens consistently as well, though they are costlier to get going. One of the cheapest is Genesis Chamber, but that can backfire if an opponent has a deck with lots of Creature ETBs, so play it carefully. I rounded out my options with Endrek Sahr, Curse of Disturbance, and Slimefoot, among a few others. Also, don’t forget your land-fetching creatures can be sacrificed for value after they’ve done their initial thing.

Big Payoffs - Now comes the fun part: flipping your tokens into some giant monsters and things. I started with all three Cavaliers from Core Set 2020 that fit in the Jund colors, and they’re all great hits off the ability. The Red one can also grant Haste, so he serves double duty on that count. Sepulchral Primordial is also a fun hit, since you can reanimate creatures you just forced your opponents to sacrifice, or anything else they may have thrown in the bin. It’s definitely worth including Avenger of Zendikar, Craterhoof Behemoth, and Purphoros as good hits that can easily turn into win conditions. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest fills a similar role, as does Kokusho, especially when paired with Haunted Crossroads. Probably the granddaddy of all hits, however, is It That Betrays, which will completely dominate the game if you untap with it and Vaevictis on the board, as you slowly take control of everything. It’s the only Eldrazi I included, but the important thing is mix & match your favorite giant monsters and have fun.

Removal & Other ETBs - Lastly, there are also lots of creatures with useful ETBs that are good hits off of Vaevictis, so you’ll want to include some of those. Several of them are removal, like Ravenous Chupacabra, Reclamation Sage, and Loaming Shaman (yes, that’s removal against Graveyard strategies). I also included Plaguecrafter and The Eldest Reborn as punishment against decks with low creature counts. Several other good ETBs are graveyard retrieval, so you’ll want to include at least a few, like Eternal Witness and Gravedigger. And finally, I threw in Dire Fleet Daredevil for both the name (yes, I’m that ridiculous), but also because its ETB effect is really sweet. Pick your favorites and make room for them.

A few final one-offs that are worth including. 

Haunted Crossroads - I already mentioned this one, as it’s a great way to buy back big creatures that die by flinging them on top of the library in response to Vaevictis’ ability trigger (though you can’t return the same thing you sacrifice, sadly). 

Warstorm Surge - Good Purphoros redundancy

Aid from the Cowl - Basically lets you double up your hits each turn. 

Bonds of Mortality - Since Vaevictis does target, and this allows you to get rid of pesky Hexproof creatures at a low cost.

Possibility Storm - This is a must-include here, since you won’t really care what you’re casting, but it can completely screw up your opponents’ game plans.

Primal Surge - If you’re going all-in on permanents, why not? Most of the time, this card simply says “Win the game.”

Win Conditions & Lines of Play

I feel like the win conditions in this deck pretty much speak for themselves, so I’ll go through these pretty quick:

Avenger-Craterhoof  - I mean, duh. This is the classic combo for Green, and it works great here. With all the Haste enablers in the set, these two can come down on the same turn (say, from a Primal Surge?) and just immediately win you the game.

Purphoros/Warstorm Surge - These two cards are basically redundant, and your goal is just to get them out then either drop an Avenger of Zendikar, or Primal Surge into your deck. But, even if you get one of these early, you can still win pretty quickly off them just through creating tons of tokens off Verdant Force, so don’t sleep on that option.

Primordial Betrays Everything - Use either Sepulchral Primordial or It That Betrays to just take everything. You can amass a huge army of your opponents best stuff after only a couple turns with these guys. For the Primordial, you’ll need to sacrifice it and reuse it, probably with Haunted Crossroads. Oh, that works for Kokusho too, how convenient.

Stompy Dragon Mode - Use your giant commander and many of the other giant creatures in this deck and just smash. This deck can go really aggressive really fast, and it’s often hard for other decks to keep up when you’re removing their best stuff every turn. Definitely think about winning through good old fashioned face smashing.

If it wasn’t clear, you should basically always win dropping Primal Surge, because you’ll flip into some combination of the above. The only time it might not work is if you have an opponent who truly has an obscenely high life total, in which case you may have to try to win through commander damage, or attrition them out by slowly taking their entire deck over the course of every turn. The good news is, you can prevent yourself from decking, so this isn’t actually completely unreasonable, it’s just annoying. (But honestly, if someone gains “infinite” life, are they not the unreasonable ones?)

Conclusion

Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire has been awesome. He was always one of my favorites from the cycle, but I actually think there’s a competitive Commander build here as well. There’s tons of potential to make this deck really solid, though I prefer my kinda jank one. The deck played pretty consistently, thanks to all the ramp, and I actually won 2 out of 4 games with it, which is pretty good.

I went a touch over budget for this (as usual), but this was about the closest I’ve ever come to staying within the budget, thanks to already having Craterhoof & Purphoros on hand. But I did need to get a copy of It That Betrays, and plus a few other odds and ends for the deck, ended up spending about $30 on new cards for it. Still, not bad considering my theoretical $25 budget for new cards. 

So yeah, fun commander, and a blast to play. Would 100% recommend, both for veteran players looking for something a little different, and for newer players as a way to introduce them to some really great combos, but still have fun doing big splashy things.

For November (yes I know I’m, to quote Sex and the City, about a fucking month late), I got Medomai the Ageless, so apparently the universe decided that nobody else was allowed to have fun after this one. I’ll post that one here soon, after I get to play it one more time this week.