#lodwod

[morathor]

Ladies of Darkness 41/?

"So.  You know how.  I used to try to find an aquifer?" "*beat, deepest of sighs* Yeahh?" "Okay, I'm going to indulge in a little bit of symbolism here.  And like, you know, Arakiel's real pissed.  And so--" "I swear to god--" "Instead of an aquifer--" "I SWEAR TO GOD--" "Arakiel's gonna search... for lava.  And bring it to the surface." "...thank god, it could have been WAY stupider."

Hey hey it's a newwwww Ladies of Darkness!  That thing!  @ladiesofdarkness!  That I like!  It, has, been, a, while!  I had to relisten to the last few minutes of the previous episode to kind of.  Get back into the swing of it.  But it's good, I'm good, I'm following.  I have been practicing following podcasts, actually!  Like, legit I have gotten so much better in the past couple of months at just like... processing podcast audio.  ANYWAY.

We start by.  Checking the party's goth/jock balance.  Making sure we got enough of each.  Turns out they brought a lot of goth, but also a super-jock in the form of Charlie so it's probably okay.  And once they've got that all sorted out they are right into combat.  First up is Charlie, because Charlie is always first, she's got ridiculous high initiative rolls.  Steph did some nerd flexing over how stupid high her initiative stat is.  Anyway Charlie/Valoel gives a big speech, handing out bonus dice like cheap candy at Halloween, and ALSO flies up on Paimon to do ultimate murder flames to the face.  So that's a thing.  Valoel pitches in with wind punches, always nice.  And Arakiel does a lava thing.  Lava is always useful, if you want to destroy things.  Which Arakiel does, right now, so that works out.  Samael and Layla Help Out In Ways.  

So they keep at that for a bit, Paimon attempts to draw them into his abyss, mixed success there, also gets wind punched.  And then Arakiel gets in a crotch-shot.  With lava!  At this point Samael suggest that maybe thye need to focus on seeling Paimon, because destruction is probably not on the table, although Steph is kind of.  "Can we still hit him with the volcano though?"  So they do that, and they get Paimon back into the abyss and close the portal.  And it feels kind of... short?  Like, this whole fight is fourty minutes, two thirds of the episode, but it feels like it went by so quickly!

And... so... then... what's next?  Well, Samael is like, some of the demons and undead and what not that were coming out of the abyss got away, might need to deal with that.  Valoel is on board.  Arakiel, though, is still struggling.  Like, now that the fight is over (for now), they're having to get back to Feeling Things.  It's hard, having feelings.  Vahkiel's like, "Well I promised I'd let myself be exorcised anyway, so I can go to the abyss and see if your friends that Paimon ate can be.  Un-eaten?"  Also Mary-Margaret shows up and cannot read the room for SHIT.  But she's also like, "Hey, so, here's what I've learned about the abyss, in my magic studies--remember my magic I've been studying?--if those people, you are looking for, actually still exist, you can pull them OUT of the abyss, without going INTO the abyss to look for them, so let's do it THAT way."  And there's a little more arguing, but eventually they do settle on, they'll all stick around, and keep looking through magic, and helping people.  Because, fallen or not, they're angels.  Helping is what they're meant to do.

And that's it!  That's the entiiiiiiiire Demon the Fallen arc, of Ladies of Darkness.  They are still planning on starting Vampire the Masquerade later this year; I'm very excited for that, to see what sorts of great new characters and great new stories these characters come up with.  I'll be honest, I thought they might have changed their plans and decided to end it here--and I couldn't blame them, burnout happens, and if they do change their plans later down the road I wouldn't blame them for that either, but for now!  I am excited!

[totalspiffage]

eyyyy recording sesh for @ladiesofdarkness - we took a little break but we’re BACK

[kinkokitty]

lodwod doodles! @ladiesofdarkness is a fun tabletop rpg podcast, I love all the characters gosh they are so fun and interesting.

Apparently I feel compelled to draw interactions with Daniel the best garden gnome. Most of these are just sketches because I am supposed to be working on animations, I just had to get some of this out of my system.

[secretfrog]

So I’ve been listening to my friend’s podcast @ladiesofdarkness, and I ended up writing this little... theme song for the party, I guess?

(please forgive the shit midi, I do have a physical keyboard but not the right cables to record it, lol)

[cartchytuns]

samael: let's look for clues, gang

valoel: what, sorry, i already found the monster

arakiel: everyone look at this cool toothpick i just found

charlie: [screaming]

[morathor]

Ladies of Darkness 40/?

Ladies of Darkness?  Now that's a name I havne't heard in many a moon...

Yeah it has been a whie on this good good podcast but it's back!  It's back and I am very stoked about it.  You should maybe go check it out, here, @ladiesofdarkness.  It's really good.

So we start out with The Adventures of Mecharakiel who, if you may remember, has given up on everything and doesn't care about anything and is generally being, A Bit Of A Downer.  And like, the others meet up with them, but they're not answering?  Sophie's like "I'm not sure if Arakiel hasn't noticed them or is ignoring them, but if they have noticed the others they are ignoring them."  Won't even get in the truck!  Not that their new mecha body would fit but.  Also they're just not getting in.

Anyway then they get attacked by Lilith, Paimon's loyal illusionist, now with shiny new body.  And Arakiel continues to not care and just like.  Tries to run past.  And gets knocked back.  And tries to run past.  And gets knocked back.  And tries to--no actually after a couple of failures they start attacking, and the others are like "Well Arakiel's doing this I guess we're all doing this" even though, Arakiel is not being much of a team player right now.  But the other two are team enough for everyone.  

But they keep running into this problem, where, she's made of water.  And uh.  It's pretty hard to injure.  Water.  You know?  You can splatter it, but it's not wounded.  When you do that.  It's water.  So, Valoel goes into her visage because Everybody's Doin It!  And Vahkiel just like.  Attempts a mind control.  Got no time for this other nonsense, mind control it is.  However that's kind of a contested roll, sort of a thing?  And it does not work.  Sad times for all.

But then myyyyy favorite sword lady shows up, and does sword things which, unsurprisingly, don't really work that well because water... but she's doing her best, you know?  And Nina's like, "Hey did you notice we have a whole bunch of NPCs here?  What if a bunch of us distracted her so you can get past?"  So they do that.  Valoel did portals and such.  And Vahkiel issues a challenge!  Technically I think she's trying another sort of mind control thing, but it was basically a given that wouldn't work?  The important part of the ability, I think, was that the target hears your words regardless of volume etc.  So basically.  A CHALLENGE!

And we end there.  I think this is probably, second to last episode of this campaign.  Maybe not, I'm wrong sometimes but, sure seems that way.  I'm so excited!

[morathor]

Ladies of Darkness 39/?

"Great!  Everything's ruined.  Everything sucks, and everything's terrible.  Um, everyone that ever cared about them, is dead, and, now the whole Earth sucks too.  Um... can I roll to smack the zombies?"

Hey guess who's way behind on Ladies of Darkness again!  Sorry I've had overtime for like.  A month and a half.  And it doesn't look to be letting up any time soon.  But I can't leave my favorite ladies unlistened to in the darkness for too long!

Also like.  So.  Normally after the "previously on" segment and leading into the theme song, DMKat does a little rhyming bit in kind of a husky voice and it's rad af and I love it.  But this time around there's a change of pace and I... love this a lot as well.  Valoel took over the intro bit this time, absolutely stellar bit of voice acting from Tamara there.  (And then we go into the song which, is always awesome but I was particularly feeling it this week.  Mm.  Nice.)

And we start with Arakiel, who we didn't get to hear from last time (apparently player had some computer problems).  Doing a ganglerun with Eitan's tall awkward bod.  Chuckin rocks at rando zombies in passing.  And then, um.  Has a breakdown.  Like a complete, total, crisis of faith, identity, of, what are they doing, why are they doing it, they lost sight of what mattered, they picked the wrong friends, they helped Paimon rather than risk blowing their cover and now the most important people in the world to them are dead.  It uh.  It's real heavy.  Poor Arakiel, man.

And then they turn their gun into an Iron Man suit!  Moving on.

So meanwhile Valoel and Vahkiel/Charlie have met up and are planning their next move.  Valoel tryna find Arakiel, and Vahkiel decides to help with cool new powers!  That moves Tamara's roll from AVERAGE to SUPER AVERAGE.  Very helpful.  Anyway they get a lock on Doris/Layla, which is a start, and they all pile in the truck.  And Valoel and Dor(k)ian lay down in the truck bed because they don't want to get pulled over for illegal seating arrangements in the middle of the zombie apocalypse.  

So they find Layla, and she is like... in a ball of water.  And they are trying to figure out if this is something she did herself, or something that was done to her, and after a truly interesting roll Valoel was all "humans just do that sometimes right"?  Anyway then they got the bright idea of just.  Reaching through the water.  Tapping her on the shoulder.  Having a talk.  And Layla was super scared and Valoel's attempts to encourage her made her even more scared.  Then Vahkiel stepped in with the New Magic Leadership Powers and gave her a pep talk.  Real good endgame, power of friendship anime speech.

Then they reunite with Arakiel, who is living a completely different genre of anime right now.  And does not want to do the power of friendship.  Fuck this, Arakiel OUT.

And that's it!  That's where we stop.  Looking forward to the next one.

[morathor]

Ladies of Darkness 37/?

"Nah I can just hypnotize them, it's fine." "Oh.  O... kay, then.  Great.  For you." "Great, we just have a fucking sixteen year old, who tries her best.  That's how we get into places." "Well maybe you should have, maybe you should have thought about becoming vampires instead of demons." "Aw, fuck." "Yeah maybe you shoulda been--" "There's always next time." "Maybe you shoulda been playing Vampire the Masquerade, idiots."

Okay.  Intermission.  THEN grand finale.  So so so so, it's Ladies of Darkness!  If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't been following my blog very long because I babble about this podcast like... every other week.  It's good.  Go check it out.  @ladiesofdarkness

So the battle is over and they just... kinda... go.  Like their accomplice in the organization, the one that let Charlie out, shows up, and is like, "Cool good job bye now" and there's a super awkward elevator ride with Cecil and Nikki.  And Steph brought up the whole, exorcising Vahkiel deal but they're not in the mood.  Having a crisis of faith there.  So Charlie does her best to recruit them, and they get a maybe from Nikki.

And now!  It is time... to... LEVEL UP!  Game mechanics, build decisions; this is what gaming is all about folks.  Sophie chooses to level up Arakiel's item crafting/enchanting powers over their earth powers, because the maxed out earth powers cause too much collateral damage and that just doesn't seem very Arakiel.  Tamara decides not to get a superform she qualifies for, because it does not match Valoel's Aesthetic.  (She got a different one.)  Good calls on both fronts.  Steph pretty much already maxed out everything she was working on with her character, so now she's picking up a second lore, boosting some skills and stats to support it. Very pragmatic.

So now Valoel and Arakiel have visages.  Valoel's is a fuckin creepypasta, Arakiel is metal as fuck.  Steph went into a bit more detail on Vahkiel's visage, which now includes "Long arms/hands that go down to my ankles."  NICE.  Also, I have to say, they put on some background music for this which is, approximately, the Miiverse theme over the percussion track from Sympathy for the Devil?  It's kind of mesmerising.

So back into the game and Mary Margaret invites Charlie to fucking makeout point.  Charlie brings fancy chocolates.  And Richie is coming along too!  It's very, very awkward.  But apparently the intention was to deal with an imminent zombie outbreak.  Hey, you know, that's not a bad date idea MM.  Charlie gets into it pretty good.  Richie is super confused tho.

Valoel and Dor(k)ian go out for pizza and riff on Nina's pizza choices.  And also the whole, she's generally in a bad mood, probably because their current plan means going against Paimon which means going against Haniel who I guess is very much a parental figure in her life?  (Also, Dorian you are not either a real actor.  Come on.)  They talk about what comes after they beat the bad guys, but then like, the TOWN EXPLODES and they gotta go deal with that mess.

Arakiel and Eitan go to hang out with Doris and Lailah, and they have a fun chat about--haha no we're skipping straight to the doom and gloom on this one.  Lailah is scared, she feels like she messed up and everyone's doomed, because she didn't try to stop what was going down, she didn't expose Paimon's plans, she didn't even run away and stop helping, and now it's all about to go to shit.  And Arakiel is like, look we all got used here, we've all been complicit in our own ways, we all wanted to stay alive.  It um.  It's a very intense and emotional scene here?

Also Haniel's dead see you next episoooooooode.