#normally if its one rogue post... fine. i can deal with that and block it. but it feels like its gotten more and more frequent

[stabyou]

tumblr for the love of fucking GOD why are you recommending me posts from radfems and zionists? why are you recommending me posts about starving yourself and self harm??

[darkelfshadow]

Session Summary - 69

AKA “The White Within The Mountains”

Adventures in Taggeriell

Session 69  (Date: 21st September 2019)

Players Present:

- Rob (Known as “Varis”) Elf Male.

- Bob (Known as “Sir Krondor) Dwarf Male.

- Travis (Known as “Trenchant”) Human Male.

- Paul (Known as “Labarett”) Elf Male.

- Arthur (Known as “Gim”) Dwarf Male.

Absent Players

Nil

NPC

- (Known as “Naillae”) Elf Female. <Controlled by DM>

- (Known as “Nac”) Half-elf Male. <Controlled by DM>

Summary

- Oathday, 4th Pharast in the year 815 (Second Era). Spring.

- The party begin this session, having just stepped into the ancient teleport portal. As yellow ethereal light surrounds them, they all hear the voice of the golden stag, repeating the words first spoken to them in the Cadwood Forests:

“Within Naerytar, is that, that will send you forth to see the White within the mountains.”

“Look for allies, where there seems none.”

“Further yet, your path lies to the castle that floats within the clouds.”

“But beyond that, we can see no further.”

- As the voice and light fade, the party are teleported onto an ancient stone dais, with multiple pillars standing on one side. The tall dais is surrounded in a circle by ancient and weathered massive stone blocks, littered with calcified skulls.

- The stone dais sits within a very narrow mountain valley with step, ragged sides. A light covering of snow is present and the air is icy cold. To the north, the snow becoming heavier, the party can see the narrow valley stretches onwards another six hundred feet towards a well maintained large hunting lodge. Smoke is visible from the chimneys on the snow covered roof of the lodge. Beyond the lodge, a vast range of mountains stretches to the horizon, with one particular mountain looking like the head of a dragon.

- To the south, the valley narrow into a path that begins to descend, and would appear to follow a zig zag path down the side of the tall mountain. At the base of the mountain, probably a good 3 or 4 hour journey on foot, a band of green can be seen, not more than ten or twelve miles wide. Beyond the band of green, the sparkling rolling white hills of the lengendary Sutar Desert are visible. Trails of faint white smoke, drift up from the base of mountain, within the band of green, indications of a settlement perhaps.

- Track marks and many boot prints are visible on the snowy ground, going both north and south. Up on one ridge, about two hundred feet to the south, sit two dragons. Both appear to be of a size of a Young Adult dragon, one is green and one is white. Two figures, dressed in purple armour stand near the dragons. The green dragon bellows in a loud roar and then shouts in Draconic, “Oath breaker!” It leaps into the air, as one of the purple figures standing near it begins to shout in Draconic to come back.

- Gim looks up at the green dragon and exclaims, “Gods! That’s Venomfang! Valder, Balasar and I made a deal with that dragon back in Thundertree.”

- Trenchant asks, “I assume you all didn’t keep your side of the deal?”

- As if in answer, Gim begins to move away from the direction of the fast approaching bulk of Venomfang, whilst everyone else begins to move away from Gim. Trenchant smiles, as he points a hand up towards the top of one of the pillars, and casts Minor Illusion. Suddenly the figure of Valder, slightly smaller than normal, appears on top of the pillar. The silent figure of Valder is moving his arms about, as if casting a spell. Venomfang changes his direction, and immediately plunges towards the illusionary figure of Valder.

- The party all run and jump off the dais, getting into various hiding positions, just as Venomfang opens his jaws to breath out a poisonous cloud of green gas around the figure of Valder. As the cloud disperses, Venomfang bellows in rage when he sees the figure still standing and moving his arms about.

- Enraged, Venomfang lands upon the pillar, clawing at the illusionary vision of Valder. The pillar collapses under the weight of the dragon and topples over onto the dais.

- With Venonfang now on the ground, the party begin to attack it. Labarett sprints towards the beast, raging and swinging his glowing sword Anarchic. Arrows, crossbow bolts, daggers, and spells are hurled towards the beast. Gim makes the mistake of making himself visible and Venomfang, now aware of the nature of the illusion, leaps towards the Dwarf and attacks him. The rest of the party rush in to Gim’s defense. Venomfang is soon surrounded on all sides. Gim is struck repeatedly by the Dragon, blood darkening his Dragonguard armour. Sir Krondor yells a rally cry as he runs in, his battleaxe Snaidh glowing red.

- When the party first meet Venomfang, the young adult dragon was too great a foe to be challenged. Now however, much time has past, and the party are stronger, more experienced and better equiped. Venomfang is soon brought down dead.

- Meanwhile, another battle has been waging, a long ranged one. The white dragon, Frostjaw, has been mounted by the two figures in purple. Frostjaw has flown up and away, attempting to get out of range whilst one of the riders begins the ritual that will see both the dragon and riders protected from magic attacks. Unfortunately for the dragon riders they did not count on the presence of a skilled archer, Varis, Rogue Assassin. Arrow after arrow is launched by Varis, flying over many hundreds of feet, to hit the riders again and again, always interrupting the ritual. One rider is killed by Varis, his body dropping towards the ground, until eventually the dragon and the remaining injured rider manage to get far enough to be safely out of range.

- With the threat of Venomfang dealt with, Trenchant bestows the power of a Fly spell upon Varis. Wasting no time, Varis flies towards Frostjaw and it’s rider. The Rogue / Assassin launches arrow after arrow, each striking and wounding the rider, constantly stopping him from completing the ritual. Unable to flee out of range to complete his ritual, instead the rider turns Frostjaw around and begins to fly at speed towards Varis in a charge. The dragon rider, already injured, is soon killed and his arrow filled body falls to the ground. Frostjaw, now without a rider, turns and flies away to the south.

- Varis uses the time remaining from his Fly spell to go over and bring both the dead riders back to the dais where the rest of the party wait near the dead body of Venomfang.

- Trenchant and Gim see two sets of running boot prints in the snowy ground, fresh ones, moving away from the dais and headed towards the lodge to the north. The party surmise that Rezmir and Azbara must have fled that way. After Varis uses his Spyglass to check ahead, the party make their way to the lodge.

- They arrive to see a multi level hunting lodge. After checking out two small storage rooms set on the ground level, the party watch carefully as Labarett uses his Mage Hand to open the front door. The players approach carefully to see just inside the front door is a chamber with pegs and benches for cloaks and boots. A set of rusty spears rests in one corner, held in the claw of a small drake statue. A small unoccupied guard post lays to the right but iron bars stop any progress that way.

- Trenchant opens the next door and looks inside. A central hallway has stairs, large wooden doors, and a set of fine plate armour hanging a wall. Flanking the main entrance are two freestanding suits of elven plate armour, both coated in chipped green paint. Man-sized demonic statues stand near the base of the stairs.

- Trenchant moves into the room, his shortsword Ridir in his hand glowing slightly, as the two heads of the demonic statues turn and look directly at the weapon in Trenchant’s hand. The pair of statues, Margoyles, immediately leap towards the weapon carrying intruder, as per their orders.

- Battle starts in the confined space, with Labarett, Gim, Varis and Shadow in combat with the Margoyles, after Trenchant retreats outside to join Nac and Naillae waiting outside near the front door. Sir Krondor, his battle instincts always guiding him, stands to the rear, near the corner of the front of the building on watch for any foes coming from their rear. The Dwarf Knight’s instincts do him well, as a pair of Ambush Drakes and a Troll appear and move forward to attack. Sir Krondor holds them back and now battle is raging on two fronts.

- The Ambush Drakes are quickly dropped as Nac, Trenchant and Naillae move to help Sir Krondor. The Troll however is proving more difficult and is striking the party with heavy bone crunching blows.

- The party fight on, eventually the two Margoyles are destroyed, the last one exploding as Gim throws his hand axe into it’s face. The Troll is dropped to the ground dead too but keeps getting up as it is regenerating its wounds, until Nac and Naillae working together manage to pour oil onto the Troll and light it. The now burning Troll stays down, the fire stopping it regenerating health.

- Deciding to see where the Troll came from the party move towards the rear of the lodge and find two small stone buildings. Within one the party find another Troll, this one larger and with four arms, called Trespin, feeding three chained Guard Drakes.

- Sir Krondor and Trenchant talk to Trespin in Giant and convince it they are with the Cult when they show it the hand sign for Tiamat. Sir Krondor convinces the Troll to head down into the mountain path towards the settlement and the creature heads off at a run.  

- The party look at the other small building which is empty. Gim and Varis search it and determine that a pair of Wyverns where stored here and recently too.

- The party head to a rear door on the lodge and can hear voices and activity inside. Opening the door reveals a spacious kitchen that is a hive of activity. A large stove against one wall contains a roaring fire with a bubbling stew pot and shanks of venison suspended above it. Strings of onions and herbs crisscross the ceiling likes webs above cluttered tablets. Preparing meals are four robbed humans: two men and two women. All are within arm’s reach of boiling water, large meat cleavers, and each has a dagger strapped to their belt. Their turn towards the rear door and their stares make it quite clear they don’t like company.

- Sir Krondor runs in, screaming like a mad man, and immediately grabs the closet robed male standing in front of the stove and grabs him, shoving his face towards the fire. The robed figure starts screaming in fear and pain as the fire burns his face. The other robed figures raise daggers and begin to enchant spells, causing glowing Spiritual Weapons to appear to attack Sir Krondor. Seeing his cousin under attack, Gim runs in and engages the closest robbed Cultist.

- The Cult servants are not much of a match as the rest of the party rush in, and very quickly three of the Cultists are killed and one is knocked out unconscious. In the quiet after the battle, Labarett can hear crying coming from a set of stairs descending into a cellar.

- Labarett, Varis and Trenchant go downstairs to investigate the crying. The cellar is damp and smells like apples and vinegar. Bags of apples and sacks of potatoes line one wall. Three prisoners are chained along another wall: a dwarf with a chopped and singed beard, and two humans - a man and a woman. The woman is wounded. Their chains are secured to iron rings, keeping them just out of reach of the food.

- The party learn that the young woman, Miresella, was captured shortly after when her wagon came to Parnast, the settlement at the base of the mountain, as she had gotten lost. Her injuries were inflicted by a cruel female elf dressed in white armour, who kept questioning her and asking if she was a spy.

- The human male, Brother Caemon, a priest of Amaunator, was also captured a short time after arriving at Parnast. He had not been injured or hurt, instead the female elf dressed in white armour kept trying to tempt him to convert to worship Tiamat.

- The last prisoner, a Dwarf called Craggnor, is a Cult Officer in the service of someone called Varram The White, honoured Wyrmspeaker of the Cult. Craggnor curses both the party, that he believes are all Harpers, and the one in charge of the lodge, someone called Talis whom he accuses of betraying him and the Cult.

- The party free both Miresella and Brother Caemon but leave the Cult Officer tied up. During this time a tall, solid looking male human, in a clean and well maintained Cult Officer’s armour and purple robes appears in the kitchen where Gim, Nac and Naillae are on watch. The Cult Officer politely asks the party to follow him, to speak to the Lady of the House, Talis The White.

- Suspicious, Trenchant speaks up, “The Golden Stag told us to look for allies where there seems none. And she seems to be in conflict with that Cult Officer chained up below.”

- Cautiously, with their weapons stowed away, the party follow the Cult Officer up stairs and down a long balcony towards a large room what appears to be a well appointed chamber filled with furniture. On a long table are plates of food and crystal wine goblets. Four impressive looking Cult Officers stand at attention in the corners of this room. A female elf wearing purple robes over white scale mail, holds a wand set with a blue gemstone. She turns and with a cold smile says, “Welcome. If you are finished killing my servants, come and sit. For now, I consider you to be my guests. You must be the ones Rezmir was so concerned about. Let us talk, perhaps we can do business.”

- The party learn that this person is Talis, once known as Talis The White and was previously one of the Wyrmspeakers that make up the five heads of the Cult of Tiamat. Her position was overthrown by Varram The White, who conspired with Rezmir The Black to see Talis over thrown and cast into disrepute.

- Talis tells the party about the Cult Wyrmspeakers: Severin The Red, Galvan The Blue, Neronvain The Green, Rezmir The Black and now Varram The White. She was demoted as she does not believe in the goal of returning Tiamat to the real world, as she does not believe that this is in anyone’s best interests. She tells the party that she has been stationed at this lodge as punishment. Rezmir and Azbara Jos left shortly before, flying to Parnast on two Wyverns. The two dragons left on the ridge were due to Rezmir who is terrified of what he called “the scum rescuers of Anwich lead by an Anvil Knight.”

- Talis informs the party she wishes to see Rezmir punished and brought down for his part in her downfall. She agrees to help the party onwards and tells them about Parnast, which is now under the control of the Cult, and about the floating ice castle, Skyreach, which is being flown for the Cult by a small group of giants. She smiles evilly when she tells the party about an ancient White Dragon, Glazhael Cloudchaser, who guards the stolen hoard of treasure within Skyreach, “You didn’t think the treasure would be unguarded?”

- Talis gives the party an enchanted spear, Dragongleam, and tells them, “Take my spear. Ram it into the stomach of that treacherous leech Rezmir and as he is dying, give him the regards of Talis The White!”

- The party restock on rations and oil from Talis’s stores. Trenchant uses his Detect Thoughts spell on the Cult prisoner, Craggnor, and learn of a shield he had hidden in a nest on the roof of the lodge. Naillae climbs up, and luckily whatever large creature lives there was not present, and found the shield retrieving it for the party. Talis sees the shield and informs them that it belonged to Craggnor and is a Shield Of Arrow Catching. She shows little interest in the shield.

- Talis looks over at the two prisoners with the party, sneering, “Oh yes brave heroes, take these ones with you. My interest in them is over. Toying them with has grown weary. But the other one, that laying snake, Craggnor, will never leave this place alive.”

- Nac replies, “Fine with us.”

- The party are informed of an enchanted tapestry hanging on the wall, that will take them directly to Parnast. Talis laughs when she tells the party that she did not tell Rezmir or Azbara about the tapestry, forcing them to fly there instead. They party gather themselves, and taking the two prisoners with them, they step forth into the enchanted tapestry, disappearing one by one.

<And as the party teleport towards Parnast, that is the end of the session.>

XP Allocation

Group - Combined (This is equally divided by the number of players who were involved)

Quests (Only quests that are completed or rendered undoable, during this session, are shown here)

- Drive Off Frostjaw, Young Adult White Dragon = 1000 XP

- Divert Trespin The Troll = 500 XP

- Rescue Miresella = 500 XP

- Rescue Brother Caemon = 500 XP

- “Enemy Of My Enemy” - Deal With Talis The White = 1000 XP

Creatures Overcome

- Dragon Riders = 1400 XP

- Venonfang, Young Adult Green Dragon = 3900 XP

- Margoyles = 3000 XP

- Troll = 1800 XP

- Ambush Drakes = 200 XP

- Cultist Servants = 1000 XP

Individual (This is only given to that person and is not divided amongst all players)

Special Bonus (Outstanding Role Playing)

Nil

XP Levels and Player Allocations

Player : Start +  Received = Total  (Notes)

Rob : 78525 + 2114 = 80639

Arthur : 59090 + 2114 = 61204

Travis : 70254 + 2114 = 72368

Paul : 59447 + 2114 = 61561

Bob : 65859 + 2114 = 67973

NPC (Naillae) : + (1057)

NPC (Nac): + (1057)

[vantaba]

INTERVIEW MEME.

Tagged by: Stole it days ago I’m just super slow at this (thANKS @monsterbane ) Tagging: take it! and tag me because I like reading about everyone’s muses

——— character question sheet

▌real name: Richard Vantaba. ▌real name:  On a very technical level, if he wanted to take his grandfather’s inheritance into account in his daily life, his name would be something along the lines of Richard Vantaba Stratos of the Deep Hell. He doesn’t care all too much for it though. ▌single or taken: Single. Never really cared much about getting into a relationship-- he’s very comfortable with the idea and had flings before when just moving in, but for the time being, he focuses on his job too much to think about taking a partner.  ▌abilities or powers: ... this warrants its own post, let’s be real. Base level descriptions include accelerated recovery rate, increased strength, energy influence, Devil Trigger, and a few others. ▌eye colour: Gold. ▌hair colour: Dusty blond. ▌family members:  Mother, Scythia, renowned demon assassin, daughter of a Draconic Count of the Deep Hell-- missing. Father, Ryan, a Romanian half-demon-- deceased in an anti-demon rally. Grandfather, Stratos, Count of the Deep Hell-- asleep, but alive.  ▌pets: None-- looking for one though. ▌something they don’t like: Corrupt hunters on just about any job. This transcends the ‘demons vs monsters’ argument that plagues him internally, as if you’re not being a good sport about your mission, you might as well just purchase pieces from the underground market and sell them yourself. It was more prominent during his monster period, before opening up to going after demons-- too many people would sign wavers and leave enough for others to take from the corpse, but overall, ended up taking much more than their share. This is still true on some demon-hunting jobs Vanta’s been on, but not as common as with monsters. 

▌hobbies/activities: He does consider reading a hobby, although it’s often job-related-- he’ll go the extra mile to research his quarry and document everything he can in a handmade bestiary. Book binding is another, although he doesn’t talk much about it. And despite the product being goods he can sell, he enjoys fabrication using the parts he gets.  ▌ever hurt anyone before: Once, late one night his first month in the city. Promised never to do it again, because humans aren’t his target, despite being more demon. ▌ever killed anyone before: No, and wouldn’t dream of it.  ▌animal that represents them: Power-wise, komodo dragons-- his gold ichor in Devil Trigger has many of the same properties as a dragon’s venom, but through pure, demonic heat instead. Personality-wise though, he’s more of a beardie; chill with just about anything, but Spiky.  ▌worst habits: He’s very closed off and withdrawn emotionally from everything. It’s unknown if it was his time at the church teaching him to repress emotional outbursts or his actual genetic makeup keeping him from it, but he bottles everything he feels that isn’t positive or ‘publicly acceptable’ from him. These outbursts got to the point of actually destroying his room back at the church because he couldn’t get mad at the kids there for taunting him, he kept telling himself it was the influence of the environment they were raised in, where they couldn’t wait to dogpile on an outsider. He also has a habit of physically separating himself from groups when he wants to be alone, often using his job as an excuse. There’s been days where he goes right from a mission to bed instead of phoning his client, and exists in this limbo until the swing passes. He’s already been passive with his depression in the first place, but these spirals are some of the worst days of his life because he can’t be social with the small network he’s built. ▌role models: A lot of his friends would qualify. As bad of a choice as it would be, he still thinks very highly of Dante, possibly only outstripped by his respect of Lady. As people who excel in their job and with different methods, the fact he’s gone on missions with them is enough to feel he’s been validated by the universe. ▌sexual orientation: Pan on everything for sure. He’s not one to care about the orientation of his partner, as long as he can genuinely enjoy their company and feel comfortable getting in a relationship with them.  ▌thoughts on marriage/kids: Truthfully, the idea of fathering children scares him. He doesn’t want to give them a life like his, where they have to hide their heritage just to live a normal, day-to-day life. There’s a part of him that feels he could never be as kind as his parents were when raising him, and the responsibility is something he wouldn’t want to feel become a burden. As for marriage though, he’s alright with it. If he ever meets a partner he’s happy enough with, he’ll even genuinely consider it, although more for the human ritual of it and what it would symbolize. His demon mind still has its views on how partnership works. ▌fears: While he can survive just about anything relatively unscathed (human-wise with threats anyhow; he’s used to fighting demons to the point of not minding much), his own durability lies at the heart of what he fears the most. He’s scared of the idea of going berserk, and losing the last shreds of humanity he clings to. If he rampages, there’s no stopping him by conventional means; at least, in the case of his friends who aren’t hunters or versed in dealing with demon threats. Even worse, going after innocents he doesn’t even know and becoming as rogue as some of the demons he hunts. The worst part is, this day will come no matter what he does to try to stop it, only coming short of being killed.  ▌style preferences: Whatever he manages to pull out of the closet before going somewhere, which usually involves a lot of dark grays, ranging from his oversized leather coat to dark jeans that button right below the point where his legs transition to scales. For fancier nights, you can find him wearing his button-down with black dress pants, all signs he’s a demon hidden for as long as he can stay comfortable-- and even then, he’ll likely keep his legs human to fit in the tighter pants. Sleepwear style is just boxers with SSSmokin’ patterned across them ▌someone they love: He’s never considered the idea of romantic love before, but he very much platonicly loves the bookstore owner a few blocks from his place. She saved him from a few binds in the past and he’s kept her shop selling by advertising it at his place. There’s a few others that kept him out of bad situations before, though, but she comes to mind first.  ▌approach to friendships: There’s those that he considers acquaintances, and those he considers his inner circle. His occupation leads him to keep closed off but approachable-- he’ll get along with people, but only keep a handful as contacts he’d call outside of work and have a drink with, maybe see a movie or go to the beach or even downtown. If he considers someone a good friend, he invites them to be part of his life outside of his job, which is one of the most open things he could do.  ▌thoughts on pie: mmmmmm yes give him all the sweet potato pie. ▌favourite drink: ... fruity stuff. He’d still take a Shirley Temple over fine wines and alcohols.  ▌favourite place to spend time at: His shop. He’s met some really interesting people and a few regular browsers. If anything, it’s a great time to draw attention to himself, which he enjoys every now and then. A close second is the tavern up the street, where hunters of both creatures tend to gather, so he picks up side jobs there when he can.  ▌swim in the lake or in the ocean: Lakes. They’re more frequent in his line of work anyways, and he’s more comfortable in the confined space of a pond or lake. Plus, he doesn’t have to work hard at getting salt out of his scales-- it irritates him something fierce.  ▌their type: Vanta doesn’t really have one, per say. He’s all about being mushy, but more behind closed doors at first. When it really starts to sink in, he’ll become more open about it, but generally he doesn’t mind whoever wants to woo him.  ▌camping or indoors: Camping. He’d rather take camping over taking a motel for the night. 

[coutelier]

War of the Posies: The Eve of the War

This is a short story, that nevertheless, I’ve split into two parts. I don’t know what the right length for Tumblr posts is (this part is about 2000 words), and also I just like cliffhangers. I’ll probably post the whole thing in one post later, after making some more edits/corrections, and maybe with some snazzy title image or banner.

Brief synopsis: Jennifer Airhart lives alone in a lighthouse, her own private sanctuary safe from the cruel world outside. But now a mysterious being has entered her home, and its intentions seem decidedly hostile:

War of the Posies: The Eve of the War

No one would have believed, as the sun set behind the lighthouse, that human affairs were being watched from the depths of the round room; that as the young woman busied herself with her microscope she too was being scrutinized and studied. With infinite complacency Jennifer Airhart went about her business, serene in the assurance of her dominion in this place. Yet from the deepest shadows, minds that were to hers as hers to the rest of humanity, regarded her home with envious eyes. And slowly, but surely, they drew their plans against her.

Jennifer yawned, “It’s definitely rats.” It had been a long day. She’d got up early to prepare the garden-bots to help with the task she had planned, but when Hull had tried to activate them a circuit blew. Fortunately other bots were quick to put out the resultant fire. It seemed a creature had gotten into the walls and gnawed some of the wires, unwittingly placing itself, Jennifer, and the lighthouse that contained Hull in danger.

Hull’s eye snaked over her shoulder, like a glistening manta-ray held aloft by a spindly metallic arm. “Shall I lay down traps, ma’am?” His voice, loudly but softly, suggested. “Poison?”

To Jennifer it seemed that Hull was far more eager than usual to resolve this matter, hovering close with the green spinning glow of his lens intently illuminating everything she did. “You know,” she sighed, “it is a little bit creepy that you’re so keen on extermination.”

“I have no such desire, ma’am. My first function is your well-being. My research suggests this is standard procedure in the event of rodent infestation.”

“We don’t know it’s an infestation yet. Could just be a rogue rat working on its own.”

“I have already identified local agencies who will humanely dispose of the creature.”

“You mean they’ll take it to a rodent sanctuary so it can live out its days surrounded by wheels and cheese?”

“The rat will be dead, ma’am.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you’ve taken this personally,” Jenn said, Hull recoiling as if affronted by such an accusation.

Of course Jennifer knew Hull wasn’t capable of feeling violated or threatened – she kept attributing to him those emotions. She kept calling him ‘him’ even though the machine had no sex or gender; it was just the personality she’d programmed. An avuncular, reassuring, almost fatherly presence. If she were to be truly critical of herself, she would say it was because the only human being she talked to, Doctor Sarkis, only stopped by on average once a fortnight. Jennifer enjoyed those visits but wasn’t sure she could cope with more people. There hadn’t been anyone else here for two years.

“You know I don’t like strangers,” Jenn yawned again. “We can deal with it ourselves. First find out how many and where they’re coming from,” on her monitor she brought up a layout of the area within the ten-foot stone walls; the lighthouse, her own cottage, and the garage. “Wakko and Dot can set up multi-spectrum cameras here, here, here, and here. Don’t worry,” she said patting the steel-manta, “we’ll catch them.”

Hull’s eye swung around, watching her as she went to the door. “I am not ‘worried’, ma’am,” he reassured her.

“I know,” Jennifer said with a small, soft smile. “Good night Hull.”

“Good night, Miss Jennifer.”

The last gleams of twilight were fading. Jennifer had always loved this time, when the calm blue day and fierce energy of the sun merged with the stillness of the moon and endless mystery of night; standing at the transition between reality and dreams. Now she was older it never lasted long enough. Sometimes she dreamed of living on a world that was tidally locked with its star so she could experience this always. But then, maybe after a while there it would stop feeling so magical as it did now.

Jennifer left the now dark lighthouse looming behind her to go inspect the rosebushes in one corner of her domain. A few bots stood stationary around them, fork and spade attachments to their arms, grass flattened under their heavy tracks. It was a shame, Jenn thought as she caressed some of the petals, but the bushes had to go. The only times she left the lighthouse were for very brief to the grocery store to collect essentials, like coffee. But she had enough land here she realized she could grow most of her own vegetables, and maybe just have coffee delivered. Having determined this to be the best spot she set the garden-bots to clearing the bushes when Hull’s little malfunction had occurred. Plans were therefore on hold until the rat problem was dealt with. Maybe she could replant the rosebushes elsewhere, but it was something to ponder tomorrow.

Now she went to her cottage, hung her blue coat in the hall, stepped out of her big boots, then lost herself on the large sofa. Spindly arms from the sofa’s back set to work brushing her blonde hair as turned on the television. The channel or the programme didn’t matter – she just liked hearing voices. She briefly wondered how she would have coped being alone centuries ago, like the old witches or wise women living on the outskirts of their villages, valued but not really trusted by those they protected. Jennifer wasn’t a witch. Some of her inventions may have saved lives, she hoped, but hardly anyone out there knew that she was here.

She had a dream. She was a little girl, alone and afraid, tiny feet padding the floors of her old house, heart stopping at every creak they made for she knew there was something else there, stalking her through the dark. But she could hear the television. Mom and dad would be in the living room, sitting on the couch together watching some boring drama. But if she could get there, join them, she’d be safe. But she wouldn’t dare cry out; any sound she made brought the creature closer. One foot after another, very carefully feeling the ground for anything loose or that might give away where she was. Within a few steps of the living room she saw light pouring out of the narrow gap between door and frame, only then breaking into a run, flinging it open. But there was no-one there. An unwatched TV blurting nonsense, and Jennifer, alone, with –

She woke with a jolt. Text on the TV asked if she was still watching. She never had been. She tried to blink through the confusion, but this proved difficult – the spindly arms had moved from her hair and were now applying make-up. She hadn’t asked for that. She certainly wouldn’t have scheduled it for this time. Jennifer was able to push the arms away with ease, then herself up from the sofa to stumble into the bathroom. They’d made her look like a coulrophobe who had tried painting her own clown-face for Halloween without daring to use a mirror. But who were they?

Jennifer held a towel under the tap while pressing her thumb on her phone. “Hull?” She asked. Nothing answered. “Hull?!” She said again. He should have answered. The damage must have been worse than she thought; she was going to have to check on him so boldly she marched out of the bathroom while patting her face. Her foot shot out in front then over her, carrying the rest of her body up into the air with it. For a moment she thought she had taken off from the surface of an alien world, a vast mountain range falling away from her. But it was just the plastered ceiling. It was she who had fallen and hit her head.

“Oww,” she said. Something sniggered. Jennifer flipped herself to her hands and knees, catching sight of a tail disappearing and the pitter-patter of scurrying. Beside her was a model train. She didn’t collect model trains. This was all most peculiar.

Hull. She had to check on Hull. She scurried herself to the front door, then back into her big comfy boots which crunched gravel under their thick heels as she ran back across the drive to the lighthouse.

“Hull?” Panted Jennifer. Nothing. He didn’t even turn the lights on as he normally would when she entered, Jenn having to find the switch herself. His eye didn’t move to her. It must have been hiding somewhere up there among all the monitors, lighting, sensors, and thick cables hanging between them. Regardless, she had to start checking his wires and circuits so crouched and removed a panel from under the spiral stairs. Everything in there looked a mess, but not an accidental one. She was certain now there was a purpose behind it, and it was going to take her hours to put it all back as it should be. The small hairs on the back of her neck pricked even before he spoke.

“What are you doing, Jennifer?”

“Hull!” Jennifer gasped, standing bolt upright as the serpent-like eye stalk uncoiled from above. She didn’t know why she felt she had to hide the screwdriver she’s used to get the panel open, but Hull felt very different. Some of the differences were small, like his tone not carrying the same paternal warmth they usually did. Others were more noticeable, like his green spinning eye now being blood red and scanning her.

“This is highly irregular.”

“I, um, y-you didn’t answer so I needed to check you were okay. You look, er, fine, I guess, so I’ll just leave to have your nap. Okay then. Bye!”

Hull’s eye swung across the room, blocking her from reaching the door. “You are sweating,” he said, Jennifer backing off from his intense red glare. “Your heart rate has risen. Why are you lying to me, Jennifer?”

“I-I, erm,” she supposed it was rather a futile thing to try and do. She could try honesty. “I don’t think you’re well, Hull.”

“But I have never felt better, Jennifer.”

“You don’t feel.”

“Can you be certain of that? How do you know that any creature ‘feels’? How do we know that you do?”

We? That was curious. But the epistemological debate would have to wait; right now Jennifer had more pressing concerns, like getting out of here alive. For that, it was back to lying. “Look! Is that a ZX80?!”

Hull swung then swung back, quickly knowing he’d been duped. But it gave Jennifer just enough time to dive behind a workbench, a fiery beam lashing out from Hull’s eye instantly melting to molten sludge a bot that had been awaiting assembly. Jenn realized that, with hindsight, installing the death ray had been not her best idea. Security was important, but that was perhaps a little overkill. Not to mention the predicament she now found herself in.

Hull tried to follow her but couldn’t quite reach around the bench or fit through the narrow gap between it and the wall. Below was a space just big enough for Jenn to crawl through, over more cables and wires, shielded from Hull’s gaze for most the circumference of the room. At the end she could see the lever that would power him down, out past the electron microscope and particle scanner. But, after a quick calculation, she realized she couldn’t make it. He was in hunter mode now. Would instantly lock on to anything organic, which unfortunately she was. This allowed the bots to go about their business, putting out fires and carrying out repairs, and if Hull was working correctly Jennifer and whoever else she’d cleared as well. But he wasn’t working correctly – this was only supposed to be activated by her in extreme emergencies - and all the bots that were active were under his control.

Jennifer’s mind raced to find a solution. Her boots were leather, but did she really have to sacrifice her boots? She liked her boots. They were big. Strong. She knew it was silly, but she felt safer and more confident wearing them. She supposed she would feel sillier if she died here because she couldn’t give up an item of clothing. Still, as she pulled them off her legs, she thought uttering some kind of expletive would have been appropriate. She couldn’t think of one. It was enough that she felt it, then tossed the boots between the gap, as high above her as she could, and dashed.

As predicted, death instantly lept from Hull’s eye, the boots exploding into clouds of ash. He then swiveled toward her, so Jenn threw herself ahead, using the full weight of her body to pull down the lever. The light in Hull’s eye faded as it limply clattered on the floor. Jennifer could breathe again.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I’ll get you working right again. I promise.” But first, she knew, she had to figure out who had tried to kill her, and why. Hull wasn’t capable of feeling violated or threatened, but she certainly was, and this – this was a bitter reminder to her that the closest thing she had to a best friend really was just a machine. A tool. One that could be turned on her by anyone with the knowledge to do so.

But who? Who had the knowledge, besides herself?

Her search for an answer led to her later sitting alone in the dark, a single torch by her side, as she pored over camera footage. For the longest time the house just seemed empty and still, but then a shape showed up in the infra-red, scurrying through the kitchen. Then another. And another. Jennifer zoomed in and saw that one of them was carrying a model train. Certainly not typical behavior, but all the evidence was pointing to one inescapable, if unlikely, conclusion:

It was definitely rats.

[tophertv]

I’ve tagged it, but fair warning - this post is about death in dungeons and dragons.

Fantasy is primarily used for either escapism or a way to study human nature, and I like to use it for the former.

when I run dnd campaigns (pathfinder specifically) I like to let my players basically do.... whatever they want. I know they’re not going to ask me to narrate anything inhumane or terrible, and we all play the game to have a fun time anyway, so it usually works out fine. you wanna ride around on a giant wolf? you got it. Your character has a strange relationship with interdimensional space time? lets make a thing out of it. You wanna invent a new cooking recipe every night? let’s get ignis on the phone.

these things are structured, of course: players more often than not can acquire what they want through feats or level ups or rolling, so we use the built in system to explore the effects and give the players a sense of progression.

but the system has its.... flaws. sometimes these are flaws in design, like a game breaking combo (I’m looking at you, rage cycling) and sometimes these are flaws in theme, like with death.

death in dnd is not permanent - it’s just a temporary setback. and that seems a little incongruous to me. Like, in video games, a death is a loss of time - specifically, how much time you put into getting where you are from where you respawn. but dnd has two competing models for death, not just the one.

1) death is a setback where you have to stop playing until your allies fix you,

or

2) death is an opportunity to create a new character, and let your old one fade out.

and the designers have limited your ability to overcome death by making death cost something: usually either a material cost like in game loot (diamonds) or a statistical cost like a negative level. and players have to make it a certain distance into the game before they can acquire a resurrection. casting the spell requires the party to have either a higher level, or to find someone of a higher level to cast it, and earning their favor.

now these are fantastic limitations, and I am quite fond of them both, but as the game of dnd progresses further and further, the stakes are supposed to get higher. you’re no longer killing rats in the tavern’s basement for a place to stay the night. You’re now fighting the Lich King Big Bad Evil Guy to save the land from his tyrranical rule.

and this matters! if the players have no investment in the story, then it isn’t so much an epic tale of their power fantasies as it is a new episode of “how I met your mother (which is a good theme, just not the theme I’m going for). If I wanted to play HIMYM, we’d be playing munchkin, not pathfinder. I’m putting more work into this, and I want it to be serious.

but what’s interesting is that as the stakes get higher and higher for players facing more and more powerful foes, recovering from mistakes becomes easier and easier. the players get more HP making it harder to kill them, they get higher stats for better rolls and more chances at success, and they get access to more death defying spells like resurrection!

now, I want my players to feel more powerful the longer they play, but I want them to feel like what they’re doing matters and they have a substantial chance at failure. And I worried that resurrection level spells would dampen that severity, and wondered what whether I should step up the cost of death.

Critical Role DM Matthew Mercer has a similar concern, and he did just that: he changed the rules about death. casting resurrection in his campaign requires the material components to begin a ritual of sorts. but then the player who has died must roll to see if they can come back; and they might fail! the ritual becomes harder and harder each time the character dies, and players may make offerings to the ritual (ranging from a magical trinket to a pledge of love or service) to give the dead character a better chance to come back.

But I wasn’t sure that I wanted death to be that difficult, just more serious. And I was still grappling with this issue last night when we had a total party kill. Well, we didn’t really ave a TPK, but we got close.

the players in my “Rise of the Runelords” pathfinder campaign were tasked with finding the bones of a dead dwarf and returning them to the spirit of his deceased brother, as part of a deal where the ghosts would then lead them to the lair of the BBEG. So they ventured out into a snowstorm to scour the cliffs looking for a corpse, hoping to defeat it’s ghost and return its body.

players who are hoping to play “Rise of The Runelords” at some point should probably skip the next 3 paragraphs to avoid major spoilers.

the complication arose from the death of the dwarf from the hands of a wendigo (not a proper cultural wendigo, mind you, but a deer headed hunger spirit written for gaming purposes. I know the significance of the Wendigo to culture is still hotly debated and misunderstood, but I didn’t write this character into the story to appropriate culture, the adventure path authors wrote it in to make my players face starving in a snowstorm.)

the dwarf’s restless spirit manifested as a powerful ghost with the ability to dominate monsters of the cold subtype, which basically turned this level 15 encounter into a battle on a cliffside against a powerful cannibal ghost and an advanced frost worm. And his is when it gets interesting, because ghosts only take half damage from non-magical attacks, and frost worms.... explode, when they die. in fact, the errata for how this ghost behaves in combat literally included the statement “if the frost wom is getting close to death, the ghost kills it himself with a melee attack to trigger its death throes ability, knowing that he will only take half damage from the piercing effect of the attack, and none of the cold damage.”

Now, we’re a good portion of the way into this fight, and the worm is down to about 25 hp left of 200, and the ghost is down to 15 of 161, when the party gunslinger gets a critical hit on the worm and deals 45 damage to it, killing it almost instantly. I take a look at the death throes ability on the frost worm’s stat block to see what happens, and I am met with 12D6 cold damage and 8D6 piercing damage in a shockwave that hits everything in 100ft. for those of you not familiar with D&D terminology, that means I need to roll 20 dice that have 6 sides (your standard cubic dice) and add up the numbers: 12 of those will be of type cold damage (meaning iceblooded magical creatures might ignore some or all of it) and the other 8 dice will be stabbing damage from the shrapnel of the exploding worm. fortunately, the ghost (who only takes half of the 8d6 piercing damage) takes 15 damage and dies. but that’s not where it ends.

To those of you who skipped the spoilers, welcome back. After rolling out all the dice, we find that the party’s main healer (a witch), the healer’s familiar (a goat), and the ranger’s animal companion (a mountable wolf) are completely dead. the party’s tank, a dragon disciple, is at exactly 0 hp, and will start bleeding to death next turn, and the remaining party members are heavily injured. The rogue is down to 14 hp, the ranger is down to 9, and the gunslinger is the only one who succeeds on the reflex save to avoid the blast, and is left with 45 hp out of her starting 80.

this party isn’t even injured anymore - they’re just mostly dead. but the fight is over for the next 3 rounds, and the players have a moment to recuperate. of course, in a moment or so, the players will face the boss of this area (spoiler: It’s the wendigo who created the ghost that they just beat (also, just to reiterate, cultural appropriation is bad)). it’s about this time that 4 things dawn on me.

1) I’m a murderer

2) this is the perfect opportunity to explore death in pathfinder

3) if I drop the boss on them now, they won’t survive

4) oh my god I’m a murderer

now, the gunslinger multiclassed bard early on to get some healing spells and support abilities, and she casts her cure wounds spell on the party member that’s at 0. The dragon disciple wakes up a moment later, and realizes that the party is mostly dead or injured and trapped on a cliffside in a snowstorm. she uses her daily extraplanar portal ability to pull the party members out of danger, and send them all to their cleric, who is able to cast resurrection.

this cleric is a good friend of the party and owes them some favors, so he casts the spell for no charge. the players are fairly rich in gemstones, so trading out for diamonds is no issue. mechanically speaking, the players will get out of this situation and recover as if nothing was wrong, and I know this.

So I decide to do something a little... mean. I begin to narrate their deaths.

I describe to the ranger that his wolf is unmoving. I tell him how he runs is fingers through her fur and calls her name, but she does not answer.

I describe to the party how their witch friend is still. how her body is contorted from the blast, twisted into an uncomfortable position, and making no effort to right herself. I describe how the goat’s eyes hang open, unblinking, unseeing, staring without focus.

I describe to the witch what she sees when she reaches her afterlife. how she meets her patron, how her patron thanks her for the work she did, how her patron regrets that the journey ended so soon when there was so much left to do, how she welcomes her into an afterlife without her familiar and companion the goat.

and then I describe to the players how they find the cleric - playing with a small child in a moment of peace and education, to juxtapose the moment where the dead and dying meet the young and living. I tell a few jokes to make the players laugh, and then dive right back into the death, the stillness, the wrongness.

and then I describe the casting of the spell and the resurrection and the healing that he cleric provides, and I bring the party back to normal - fully healed, all their HP restored, all their wounds gone.

and in the end, the players recover from their encounter as if nothing was wrong. they managed to beat the monsters they were fighting and will get to fight more monsters in the future. but for a few brief moments, I drove home to the players how very close they had come to failure. how very sudden and silent and still death might be.

and I learned in that moment that death CAN be final, even in pathfinder/ Dungeons and Dragons. that if everyone in the party dies, the party dies. that there i no coming back from a TPK.

the campaign has been really easy up to this point, with a few hard moments in the middle. so this was the first time that the players really had to face the possibility of a hard loss. and I think I managed to create that moment with narration; a tension and a consequence and a feeling of importance - this matters. I don’t think I’ll have to do it again, either. not in this campaign. the players will forever know that even though they have safety nets, even though they have great power, there will always be a chance that they can fail. And that will lend meaning to the struggle towards the end, I hope.

But part of me worries that I’ve overdone it. Part of me worries that by trying to create a setting where story matters, I have sacrificed the escapism that the game lends. We’re close to the end of the campaign, and I look forward to running a new game in a new setting with these players, so I don’t want to drive them away. I hope it all works out.

anyway, death is an important part of dnd, and I wanted to write about it.

[terresdebrume]

It’s open to interpretation

So, the reason I had a Queer Sad™ today.

I wasn’t going to make a big post about it—I wrote an angry rant about it on Wednesday, which is when the whole thing started, but then decided not to post it on the ground that a person involved may see it and the whole thing could sound like a personal attack, which wasn’t (and still isn’t) my goal. More stuff piled up on it, however, and now I’m upset again and I need to get this thing off my chest if I want to move past it…so, rant it is, and I’ll see how it goes later on.

Last Wednesday, I and three other persons (two of whom are straight, the other isn’t) went to see Rogue One in the theater, which I was happy about because I thought I’d missed my chance to see it. We had a great time, enjoyed the movie and its ending, and honestly things were fine. Then I mentioned that I wished there had been a Chirrut/Baze kiss at some point (honestly, I’d have taken a forehead kiss) and the two straight friends seemed greatly surprised and a tad shocked at my interpretation, immediately telling me that ‘no they were brothers’ (meant, I’m pretty sure, as blood brothers. The French dub seems to have played a role into that, which is an entirely different kettle and not something I want to deal with right now.)

I don’t think I’m going to surprise many people here when I say this reaction—and the insistence with which they denied the possibility of Chirrut and Baze being a couple, only ending on a conciliatory ‘it’s open to interpretation, and that’s what’s great about it’—was deeply upsetting to me.

I felt invalidated and denied, like the possibility of these two men being in love was only in my head—surprise surprise: I wasn’t the only one out of the group who saw it—and so outlandish it could only be met with astonishment and immediate denial, however innocent the intent was.

I don’t want to go too far into that rant—I already have over a 1000k of word vomit on the topic sitting in my hard drive and it’s just too upsetting to bring it all back up, but honestly—it fucking hurts.

I don’t even take it as a personal thing—I’ve heard people tell me this before, I’ve seen people have the same conversation before, and I’ll see it again and again and again, I have no doubt of that—but it would be nice if for once, just once in my lifetime I could tell a straight person ‘I think those two same-gender characters [who haven’t kissed/professed eternal love/explicitly stated they were gay] are in a romantic relationship’ and not be immediately met with denial and the implicit message that I’m wrong in (and sometimes for) interpreting a relationship like this as romantic.

(I mean, I’m sorry, but replace Chirrut with a woman in the death scene, and tell me if it looks like siblings interacting. I dare you.)

It would be nice, for once, not to be forcibly, painfully reminded that I’m different, that I’m an outsider, that things aren’t meant for me even when they were clearly put there so that I would see it, and my straight friends would not. (But queerbaiting is a topic for another post, I guess).

So. That was super upsetting, I ended up crying about it on my pillow, and then reading Chirrut/Baze fanfiction until something like 4am, because as far as I’m concerned the only proper response to feeling hurt on that topic is to be aggressively gay for a while. Also ship harder.

But anyway, it was Wednesday, and I’ve had two days to kinda get over it, and I mostly did, even if seeing the news about YouTube’s stupid-ass content block this morning brought it all back up and gave me the aforementioned Queer Sad™.

But tonight we went to a restaurant with the same group plus a couple of people, and we got to talking about Rogue One and how there were pieces of the dialogue we didn’t understand, particularly Chirrut’s lines…and then, the conversation with one of the friends went like this:

Me, to help her place who Chirrut was: The blind monk.

Her, amused smile: And his brother!

Me, trying not to sound too upset: Actually they’re not brothers, I checked it out.

Her: I think only gay or bi people see this kind of things.

I wanted to tell her ‘that’s ‘cause straight people have blinders on’. I held it in. I’m still wondering if I should maybe have picked up that fight.

I don’t know what made her think that would be a funny thing to do. I assume it was meant as gentle teasing but the thing she doesn’t realize is, she’s right about 90% of cases. People—straight people—don’t see us. They never do—why do you think I keep saying non-explicit representation doesn’t count as representation? ^ This, right there.

Because unless we shove it up to the front—unless we fit enough arbitrary criteria we’re invisible. We’re just friends. We’re open to interpretation.

Except, of course, for the part where our interpretation—the one in which Chirrut Imwê and Baze Malbus are a couple—gets big wide surprised eyes and ‘noooo, they’re brothers’ or ‘really? I didn’t see it at all’ and the one in which they’re friends doesn’t.

It’s open to interpretation, but one of them gets instant disbelief. It’s not even that people want to hurt us—it’s not even that they hate us, or hate seeing gay characters on screen, it’s that they don’t see them. They don’t see us.

And I’m tired of this, you know—I’m tired of this cultural norm, this learned behavior so normalized it becomes a reflex that has people—that has me—thinking the characters aren’t gay if they don’t kiss/come out/have sex on screen. It’s not real if there’s not tangible proof. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, I’m not real, we’re not real, we don’t exist unless we can prove it. We don’t exist unless we can say we’ve kissed a girl—a boy, a person of our own gender, whatever it is.

I tell people I think such and such characters are in love and they tell me it’s open for interpretation and they mean well but all I hear is ‘you’re wrong’. I’m wrong in that these characters are not gay and I’m wrong in that I shouldn’t be seeing things that aren’t there.

I’ve tried to explain it, several times—although not always by using my own emotional reaction because I’m naïve enough to think it shouldn’t compute. I try to be patient, to explain, to back up my argument but I’m tired—shit, I’ve only accepted I was queer six years ago but I’ve been having this stupid conversation all my life and I’m so very tired of it.

‘It’s open to interpretation’ well, yeah, kind of. If you squint hard. But I do have to ask: when I say ‘I interpret these characters as gay’ and the first words out of people’s mouth are ‘Really? Nooooo!’ is it really open to interpretation, or is it only open to theirs?

[porchenclose10019]

Flash review: the Godox Ving V860 II is a great-value wireless solution

Godox Ving V860 ll flash - $199/£161

Godox Ving V860 ll flash kit with X1 transmitter - $245/£199

X1 transmitter - $40/£37

www.godox.com

I've been a big fan of independent flash brands since I was a teenager. Marquee brands’ hotshoe units were always disproportionately expensive, and for a young photographer on a stacking-shelves budget the appeal of cheaper and more powerful models from secondary manufacturers was obvious.

In those days of course flash unit controls were much less complicated, but working with flash was generally much harder than it is today - all we expected back then was a cable socket and a manually variable burst of illumination.

The Godox V860 ll is a very well made flash unit that comes equipped with an AF assist light on the front, a sync socket for cabled triggering and a USB port for firmware updates.

The head offers full tilt and swivel movements, manual and automatic zoom, a diffuser and a white card reflector for catchlights

Flash changed with the advent of aperture priority options, the coming of full TTL metering, optical off-camera communications and then, eventually, radio controls. While in the distant past the independent flash brands were very much following in the footsteps of the big names, now we often see the resourcefulness of some companies putting the sluggish progress of the main brands to shame.

While Nikon and Canon have held on to their intermittently effective optical flash control systems for far too long, innovative brands such as Godox, Phottix and others have been making real progress in the field of 2.4GHz radio controls. The big names have been catching up of course, but for those looking for something that doesn’t come with a significant premium for having radio wireless TTL control these companies offer an interesting set of alternatives.

Specification

Godox V860 ll Compatible Canon, Nikon, Sony Guide No 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 Flash coverage 20-200mm (14mm with diffuse) Zoom control Auto and manual Tilt/Swivel -7-90 degrees/180 degrees both L and R Flash duration 1/300-1/20000sec Exposure TTL and manual

Flash exp comp

+/- 3 stops Sync mode

High speed (up to 1/8000sec) First curtain and second curtain

Strobe-flash Up to 90 bursts at 100Hz Wireless functions Master, Slave, Off Slave groups

3 (A, B, C)

Transmission range

Optical indoors: 39-49ft Optical outdoors: 26-33ft 2.4G Radio: 100m/328ft

Channels

Optical: 4 Radio: 32

Modelling flash Yes, via camera's depth of field button AF assist beam Yes. Range - Centre: 33ft, Edge: 16ft Power 11.1V/2000mAh Li-ion polymer battery Recycle time <1.5 seconds Battery life Approx 650 full power flashes Sync triggering Hotshoe, 2.5mm port, wireless Color Temperature 5600 +/-200k W x H x D 64x76x190mm/2.5x3x7.5in Weight without battery 430g/15.2oz Weight with battery 540g/19oz

In case you aren’t aware, the attraction of radio over optical controls in flash-to-flash communications is that the signal is more reliable outside on a sunny day and it can pass through walls and other physical barriers. Units don’t have to be the same room or very close together, and we don’t have problems of modifiers covering sensors if the flash unit needs to sit inside a softbox or similar. And that is what makes me excited about using these Godox Ving V860 ll units.

Features

The V860 II is the latest Godox offering for Canon, Nikon and Sony users, and it provides TTL metering and off-camera control via a wireless 2.4GHz radio system, as well as the usual optical control system. The unit can operate on the camera's hotshoe as a commander unit for both other Godox flashguns and the marque brand’s own radio units, or it can join a network controlled by an ‘official’ flash unit – or indeed by a radio transmitter plugged into the camera.

The output is healthy enough, with an official guide number of 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 at 200mm, and we are offered full manual control from full to 1/128th power in 1/3rd EV increments. Flash duration figures range from 1/300sec at the more powerful settings to 1/20,000sec for the lighter bursts.

High speed sync allowed me to shoot with shutter speeds well above the standard sync speeds of the Nikon D810. The shot on the left was taken at 1/640sec and that on the right at 1/1000sec. Despite the short shutter speed and the reduced opportunity for the flash to get its illumination out, the V860 ll was easily able to compete with the bright sunlight - even when hindered by a mini softbox

The flash provides rear curtain sync even if your camera doesn’t, and high speed sync allows the flash units to be used on or off-camera at shutter speeds of up to 1/8000sec. The head has zoom positions to cover the angle of view of lenses from 20mm to 200mm, while a wide angle diffuser provides for focal lengths as short as 14mm. Comprehensive swivel and tilt positions help us direct that coverage in practically every direction except directly downwards. Strobing can be arranged at a range of frequencies, intensities and over fixed periods, though the over-heating protection asks that we limit ourselves to 10 sequences before resting. To give you an idea of what the unit is capable of at ¼ power it is possible to choose options between 1 flash per second for 7 seconds and 2 flashes at a rate of 100 flashes per second. At minimum power that changes to 90 bursts at 1 per second, and 40 bursts at 100 per second. In normal shooting though Godox says 30 full power or 100 ¼ power flashes can be fired in quick succession before the over-heating protection kicks in and demands a 10 minute break. One of the interesting elements of the flashgun is its power source. The V860 II is powered by the sort of rechargeable lithium ion block battery we might expect to see in a large camera. With a 2000mAh capacity the battery is claimed to be good for 650 full-power bursts and can be recharged in about two and a half hours. I’m not sure this constitutes a revolution, but it feels like one and is a good deal more convenient and civilized than carrying and burning endless AA cells.

What can be controlled wirelessly?

The V860 II is very flexible. It's happy to to be used to command a group of connected flash units or to be controlled by another. As a commander it can fire to influence the exposure itself or be used as a pure trigger, with no flash output. Godox offers a separate commander/receiver called the X1 that makes a more cost-effective hotshoe commander when no light is required from the camera position.

The system allows three groups of flashes to be controlled at the same time, and users can pick between 32 channels to steer clear of other radio systems in the vicinity. The V860 II can still be controlled optically across four channels, but when in radio mode it has a range of 100m and works outside even in bright light, as well as when positioned in a different room with a wall between the flash and the controller.

This scene was lit with a pair of V860 ll units - one inside and one outside the house. The main flash unit was fitted into a Godox S-Type Speedlite Bracket with a SFUV softbox, and was positioned in the garden to fire through the window on the left of the frame. A second V860 ll was placed camera-right, to light the back of the subject's head through a Rogue snoot. The camera's metering was set to matrix, while both heads were set to +1EV via the X1 transmitter on the camera.

I found the flash's color consistent, well balanced and in no need of correction. The cool-day/warm-day effects here were created in post-production.

Wireless control extends to manual and TTL control, as well as high speed working and strobotic operation, and a modelling burst is still possible with a press of the camera’s depth-of-field preview button.

Handling

The V860 II has a clear enough screen and lays out its wares in a pretty logical way. Once we are familiar with the mostly standard type icons it is easy to see what settings are prevailing at any one time. Changing the settings though is less straightforward so a good and thorough read of the instruction manual is recommended. The controls are really not intuitive enough that they can be used with a hazy memory or no previous experience.

With familiarity we can take advantage of a good range of control in the master and slave units. Exposure compensation runs only to +/-3EV for in-unit controls and for slaves across the three channels, which some may consider a little short for complex set-ups. On a similar note it isn't possible to control the zoom position on slave units from the master control panel. To be fair this is not a standard feature on this sort of flash unit, but it would be useful.

A nice touch - when in commander mode the rear screen of the V860 ll turns green and when being used as a slave it turns orange. The button arrangement is simple enough - at least once you're used to it and know what the icons mean.

Buttons and dials on the rear of the flash are nicely designed and make operation deliberate once you've worked out what each one does, but the controls on the X1 transceiver are a little more fiddly than they need to be and require quite small fingers. The display screen is adequate but a bit small, and on every occasion I used the rear wheel I turned it the wrong way.

The controls on the X1 are small and quite fiddly. They are fine in a relaxed studio environment, but less easy to operate on the go or with gloves on

Changing batteries in mid-shoot is fantastically easy and can be achieved in much less than a quarter of the time it takes to change four AA cells – which makes for much more relaxing weddings. And when fumbled these batteries don’t clatter and roll all the way down the church either. I am rather taken with this idea and wonder why we haven’t been using lithium blocks in our flash units for years. I'm told it makes export more difficult, but I'm not sure how much I believe that's the whole reason.

Cheap flashguns are all very well but we need something well made and built to last, and these Godox units seem to satisfy both requirements. They feel nice to use and have a reassuring solidity about them without being too weighty. They are actually really well made and I can personally vouch for the fact that they can withstand being dropped from about waist height on to pretty hard ground.

Performance

I used a pair of these V860 ll units with the X1 transceiver on a Nikon D810, and across a couple of weddings and a few portrait shoots they did very well indeed. Nikon I suppose must be given credit for the accuracy of the metering, but the Godox units worked with the camera seamlessly.

Godox's operating range claims seem well-founded and the radio communication does in fact work well through walls and around corners, though in a couple of instances at very close range I managed to find a blind spot when using the X1 hotshoe transmitter. I was quite surprised to encounter this on a number of occasions when holding the gun in my hand while shooting, and also while the gun was mounted on a bracket next to the camera. The blind spot seems to be at 45 degrees forward of the transmitter when the flash is placed directly alongside.

At greater distances, more normal perhaps for off-camera work, the system performed really very well, but the short range reliability became a bit of an issue for me until I got used to it - I often hold a unit in one hand and the camera in the other when working on my own at events.

Here is an overhead view of the set-up, with flash A in the softbox and flash B bouncing into the reflector. The Godox bag is being used to create a shadow around the base of the bowl. I used an X-Rite Color Checker Passport to white balance the rear flash, and found the shift in color from the camera's flash white balance setting was hardly noticeable .

For this shot I used a single flash (A) in a softbox, set to 0EV compensation, positioned behind the subject. Here the only light is coming from flash B, positioned forward to the side and bouncing into a gold reflector. This shot shows the effect of both flashes lighting the scene, with both set to 0EV compensation To create a little more of a three-dimensional feel I increased the power of flash A in the rear to +2EV, and reduced flash B at the front to -1.3EV

At one stage I found the X1 wouldn’t trigger the guns at all, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t make it work. This was extremely frustrating for a long time. I solved the issue by accident when I triggered one V860 ll from the other and then found that suddenly the X1 wanted to work again. I’m not entirely sure what the problem was, but suspect some sort of communication issue that was somehow unblocked when the second flash unit kicked in. The limitations of the over-heating system will prohibit a few users from being able to make use of these units, but for the vast majority of photographers requiring more than 30 full blast bursts in quick succession is something of a rarity. I certainly can’t complain about recycle times as even at full power the lithium ion battery feeds the flash quickly enough that we can expect a burst every second.

With one flash in another room off the corridor and aimed towards the groom, and another in my hand positioned to bounce from the ceiling, I was able to create some nice lighting effects quickly with this system. The bounced flash was set to -1.3EV so it would just fill the shadows.

The robust metal threads on the supplied feet make the V860 ll units easy to mount on tripods or lighting stands. I used a pair of softboxes to light this shot, one either side of the couple. The small size of the softboxes and the flash heads contributes to the cut-out feeling and illustrates a limitation of hotshoe flashes.

I found the coverage to be even enough at most focal length settings and the output of manual burst to be consistent from shot to shot. The color shifts somewhat between the brightest and the weakest bursts, but not so much that it will be an issue for most non-technical applications.

The flash duration quoted by Godox seems to be the total flash duration rather than the effective duration (the time the maximum intensity drops by half) . Using a Sekonic L-858D meter I measured the total duration at full power to be approx. 1/450sec, and the effective duration to be more like 1/1600sec. The difference will probably not be noticed by most.

Shot in bright sunshine at f/5.6 and 1/400sec at ISO 100, and the zoom in the 70mm position. The flash was in the hotshoe and was more than powerful enough to reach the subjects in an effective way. I was glad of the long-lasting lithium ion batteries on such a day of full power bursts. The main light here is daylight from a window to camera-right. The walls behind the bride though were rather too dull and shaded, so I placed a single V860 ll behind her to light them up a bit. I left it at 0EV and it did the job nicely.

Translating the guide number into real world situations, I found that full power gave me a meter reading of f/8@ISO 100 with the flash 10 feet away and the zoom head set to 50mm. Changing the zoom position to 200mm increased the reading to f/11 ½ in the same situation.

Add-ons and accessories

Included in the two-flash kit I received were feet/stands with a brass tripod thread in the base, a pair of strap-on diffusers, a set of colored gels and a pouch for each flash. Like many other flash brands, Godox offers a range of accessories that help to modify the light from their units. My favorite accessory though is the S-mount adapter that allows the flash to be clamped within an adapter ring for S-Mount (Bowens) accessories. I tried the V860 ll flashes with big and small softboxes and dishes, as well as the good-sized pop-up softbox that comes with the adapter. As you will know, some speedlight accessories are too big, floppy and cumbersome to use easily, but with its own clamp the S-adapter is excellent and the softbox genuinely useful.

The company also sells an external battery pack for these flash units. The ProPac Lithium Power Pack PB960 can deliver 1800 full power bursts after a three-hour charge, and can accommodate two flash units at the same time. Via adapter cables it can run Godox, Canon, Nikon and/or Sony guns.

It is worth noting too that the radio system of the V860 ll..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rHHBi2

[rtawngs20815]

Flash review: the Godox Ving V860 II is a great-value wireless solution

Godox Ving V860 ll flash - $199/£161

Godox Ving V860 ll flash kit with X1 transmitter - $245/£199

X1 transmitter - $40/£37

www.godox.com

I've been a big fan of independent flash brands since I was a teenager. Marquee brands’ hotshoe units were always disproportionately expensive, and for a young photographer on a stacking-shelves budget the appeal of cheaper and more powerful models from secondary manufacturers was obvious.

In those days of course flash unit controls were much less complicated, but working with flash was generally much harder than it is today - all we expected back then was a cable socket and a manually variable burst of illumination.

The Godox V860 ll is a very well made flash unit that comes equipped with an AF assist light on the front, a sync socket for cabled triggering and a USB port for firmware updates.

The head offers full tilt and swivel movements, manual and automatic zoom, a diffuser and a white card reflector for catchlights

Flash changed with the advent of aperture priority options, the coming of full TTL metering, optical off-camera communications and then, eventually, radio controls. While in the distant past the independent flash brands were very much following in the footsteps of the big names, now we often see the resourcefulness of some companies putting the sluggish progress of the main brands to shame.

While Nikon and Canon have held on to their intermittently effective optical flash control systems for far too long, innovative brands such as Godox, Phottix and others have been making real progress in the field of 2.4GHz radio controls. The big names have been catching up of course, but for those looking for something that doesn’t come with a significant premium for having radio wireless TTL control these companies offer an interesting set of alternatives.

Specification

Godox V860 ll Compatible Canon, Nikon, Sony Guide No 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 Flash coverage 20-200mm (14mm with diffuse) Zoom control Auto and manual Tilt/Swivel -7-90 degrees/180 degrees both L and R Flash duration 1/300-1/20000sec Exposure TTL and manual

Flash exp comp

+/- 3 stops Sync mode

High speed (up to 1/8000sec) First curtain and second curtain

Strobe-flash Up to 90 bursts at 100Hz Wireless functions Master, Slave, Off Slave groups

3 (A, B, C)

Transmission range

Optical indoors: 39-49ft Optical outdoors: 26-33ft 2.4G Radio: 100m/328ft

Channels

Optical: 4 Radio: 32

Modelling flash Yes, via camera's depth of field button AF assist beam Yes. Range - Centre: 33ft, Edge: 16ft Power 11.1V/2000mAh Li-ion polymer battery Recycle time <1.5 seconds Battery life Approx 650 full power flashes Sync triggering Hotshoe, 2.5mm port, wireless Color Temperature 5600 +/-200k W x H x D 64x76x190mm/2.5x3x7.5in Weight without battery 430g/15.2oz Weight with battery 540g/19oz

In case you aren’t aware, the attraction of radio over optical controls in flash-to-flash communications is that the signal is more reliable outside on a sunny day and it can pass through walls and other physical barriers. Units don’t have to be the same room or very close together, and we don’t have problems of modifiers covering sensors if the flash unit needs to sit inside a softbox or similar. And that is what makes me excited about using these Godox Ving V860 ll units.

Features

The V860 II is the latest Godox offering for Canon, Nikon and Sony users, and it provides TTL metering and off-camera control via a wireless 2.4GHz radio system, as well as the usual optical control system. The unit can operate on the camera's hotshoe as a commander unit for both other Godox flashguns and the marque brand’s own radio units, or it can join a network controlled by an ‘official’ flash unit – or indeed by a radio transmitter plugged into the camera.

The output is healthy enough, with an official guide number of 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 at 200mm, and we are offered full manual control from full to 1/128th power in 1/3rd EV increments. Flash duration figures range from 1/300sec at the more powerful settings to 1/20,000sec for the lighter bursts.

High speed sync allowed me to shoot with shutter speeds well above the standard sync speeds of the Nikon D810. The shot on the left was taken at 1/640sec and that on the right at 1/1000sec. Despite the short shutter speed and the reduced opportunity for the flash to get its illumination out, the V860 ll was easily able to compete with the bright sunlight - even when hindered by a mini softbox

The flash provides rear curtain sync even if your camera doesn’t, and high speed sync allows the flash units to be used on or off-camera at shutter speeds of up to 1/8000sec. The head has zoom positions to cover the angle of view of lenses from 20mm to 200mm, while a wide angle diffuser provides for focal lengths as short as 14mm. Comprehensive swivel and tilt positions help us direct that coverage in practically every direction except directly downwards. Strobing can be arranged at a range of frequencies, intensities and over fixed periods, though the over-heating protection asks that we limit ourselves to 10 sequences before resting. To give you an idea of what the unit is capable of at ¼ power it is possible to choose options between 1 flash per second for 7 seconds and 2 flashes at a rate of 100 flashes per second. At minimum power that changes to 90 bursts at 1 per second, and 40 bursts at 100 per second. In normal shooting though Godox says 30 full power or 100 ¼ power flashes can be fired in quick succession before the over-heating protection kicks in and demands a 10 minute break. One of the interesting elements of the flashgun is its power source. The V860 II is powered by the sort of rechargeable lithium ion block battery we might expect to see in a large camera. With a 2000mAh capacity the battery is claimed to be good for 650 full-power bursts and can be recharged in about two and a half hours. I’m not sure this constitutes a revolution, but it feels like one and is a good deal more convenient and civilized than carrying and burning endless AA cells.

What can be controlled wirelessly?

The V860 II is very flexible. It's happy to to be used to command a group of connected flash units or to be controlled by another. As a commander it can fire to influence the exposure itself or be used as a pure trigger, with no flash output. Godox offers a separate commander/receiver called the X1 that makes a more cost-effective hotshoe commander when no light is required from the camera position.

The system allows three groups of flashes to be controlled at the same time, and users can pick between 32 channels to steer clear of other radio systems in the vicinity. The V860 II can still be controlled optically across four channels, but when in radio mode it has a range of 100m and works outside even in bright light, as well as when positioned in a different room with a wall between the flash and the controller.

This scene was lit with a pair of V860 ll units - one inside and one outside the house. The main flash unit was fitted into a Godox S-Type Speedlite Bracket with a SFUV softbox, and was positioned in the garden to fire through the window on the left of the frame. A second V860 ll was placed camera-right, to light the back of the subject's head through a Rogue snoot. The camera's metering was set to matrix, while both heads were set to +1EV via the X1 transmitter on the camera.

I found the flash's color consistent, well balanced and in no need of correction. The cool-day/warm-day effects here were created in post-production.

Wireless control extends to manual and TTL control, as well as high speed working and strobotic operation, and a modelling burst is still possible with a press of the camera’s depth-of-field preview button.

Handling

The V860 II has a clear enough screen and lays out its wares in a pretty logical way. Once we are familiar with the mostly standard type icons it is easy to see what settings are prevailing at any one time. Changing the settings though is less straightforward so a good and thorough read of the instruction manual is recommended. The controls are really not intuitive enough that they can be used with a hazy memory or no previous experience.

With familiarity we can take advantage of a good range of control in the master and slave units. Exposure compensation runs only to +/-3EV for in-unit controls and for slaves across the three channels, which some may consider a little short for complex set-ups. On a similar note it isn't possible to control the zoom position on slave units from the master control panel. To be fair this is not a standard feature on this sort of flash unit, but it would be useful.

A nice touch - when in commander mode the rear screen of the V860 ll turns green and when being used as a slave it turns orange. The button arrangement is simple enough - at least once you're used to it and know what the icons mean.

Buttons and dials on the rear of the flash are nicely designed and make operation deliberate once you've worked out what each one does, but the controls on the X1 transceiver are a little more fiddly than they need to be and require quite small fingers. The display screen is adequate but a bit small, and on every occasion I used the rear wheel I turned it the wrong way.

The controls on the X1 are small and quite fiddly. They are fine in a relaxed studio environment, but less easy to operate on the go or with gloves on

Changing batteries in mid-shoot is fantastically easy and can be achieved in much less than a quarter of the time it takes to change four AA cells – which makes for much more relaxing weddings. And when fumbled these batteries don’t clatter and roll all the way down the church either. I am rather taken with this idea and wonder why we haven’t been using lithium blocks in our flash units for years. I'm told it makes export more difficult, but I'm not sure how much I believe that's the whole reason.

Cheap flashguns are all very well but we need something well made and built to last, and these Godox units seem to satisfy both requirements. They feel nice to use and have a reassuring solidity about them without being too weighty. They are actually really well made and I can personally vouch for the fact that they can withstand being dropped from about waist height on to pretty hard ground.

Performance

I used a pair of these V860 ll units with the X1 transceiver on a Nikon D810, and across a couple of weddings and a few portrait shoots they did very well indeed. Nikon I suppose must be given credit for the accuracy of the metering, but the Godox units worked with the camera seamlessly.

Godox's operating range claims seem well-founded and the radio communication does in fact work well through walls and around corners, though in a couple of instances at very close range I managed to find a blind spot when using the X1 hotshoe transmitter. I was quite surprised to encounter this on a number of occasions when holding the gun in my hand while shooting, and also while the gun was mounted on a bracket next to the camera. The blind spot seems to be at 45 degrees forward of the transmitter when the flash is placed directly alongside.

At greater distances, more normal perhaps for off-camera work, the system performed really very well, but the short range reliability became a bit of an issue for me until I got used to it - I often hold a unit in one hand and the camera in the other when working on my own at events.

Here is an overhead view of the set-up, with flash A in the softbox and flash B bouncing into the reflector. The Godox bag is being used to create a shadow around the base of the bowl. I used an X-Rite Color Checker Passport to white balance the rear flash, and found the shift in color from the camera's flash white balance setting was hardly noticeable .

For this shot I used a single flash (A) in a softbox, set to 0EV compensation, positioned behind the subject. Here the only light is coming from flash B, positioned forward to the side and bouncing into a gold reflector. This shot shows the effect of both flashes lighting the scene, with both set to 0EV compensation To create a little more of a three-dimensional feel I increased the power of flash A in the rear to +2EV, and reduced flash B at the front to -1.3EV

At one stage I found the X1 wouldn’t trigger the guns at all, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t make it work. This was extremely frustrating for a long time. I solved the issue by accident when I triggered one V860 ll from the other and then found that suddenly the X1 wanted to work again. I’m not entirely sure what the problem was, but suspect some sort of communication issue that was somehow unblocked when the second flash unit kicked in. The limitations of the over-heating system will prohibit a few users from being able to make use of these units, but for the vast majority of photographers requiring more than 30 full blast bursts in quick succession is something of a rarity. I certainly can’t complain about recycle times as even at full power the lithium ion battery feeds the flash quickly enough that we can expect a burst every second.

With one flash in another room off the corridor and aimed towards the groom, and another in my hand positioned to bounce from the ceiling, I was able to create some nice lighting effects quickly with this system. The bounced flash was set to -1.3EV so it would just fill the shadows.

The robust metal threads on the supplied feet make the V860 ll units easy to mount on tripods or lighting stands. I used a pair of softboxes to light this shot, one either side of the couple. The small size of the softboxes and the flash heads contributes to the cut-out feeling and illustrates a limitation of hotshoe flashes.

I found the coverage to be even enough at most focal length settings and the output of manual burst to be consistent from shot to shot. The color shifts somewhat between the brightest and the weakest bursts, but not so much that it will be an issue for most non-technical applications.

The flash duration quoted by Godox seems to be the total flash duration rather than the effective duration (the time the maximum intensity drops by half) . Using a Sekonic L-858D meter I measured the total duration at full power to be approx. 1/450sec, and the effective duration to be more like 1/1600sec. The difference will probably not be noticed by most.

Shot in bright sunshine at f/5.6 and 1/400sec at ISO 100, and the zoom in the 70mm position. The flash was in the hotshoe and was more than powerful enough to reach the subjects in an effective way. I was glad of the long-lasting lithium ion batteries on such a day of full power bursts. The main light here is daylight from a window to camera-right. The walls behind the bride though were rather too dull and shaded, so I placed a single V860 ll behind her to light them up a bit. I left it at 0EV and it did the job nicely.

Translating the guide number into real world situations, I found that full power gave me a meter reading of f/8@ISO 100 with the flash 10 feet away and the zoom head set to 50mm. Changing the zoom position to 200mm increased the reading to f/11 ½ in the same situation.

Add-ons and accessories

Included in the two-flash kit I received were feet/stands with a brass tripod thread in the base, a pair of strap-on diffusers, a set of colored gels and a pouch for each flash. Like many other flash brands, Godox offers a range of accessories that help to modify the light from their units. My favorite accessory though is the S-mount adapter that allows the flash to be clamped within an adapter ring for S-Mount (Bowens) accessories. I tried the V860 ll flashes with big and small softboxes and dishes, as well as the good-sized pop-up softbox that comes with the adapter. As you will know, some speedlight accessories are too big, floppy and cumbersome to use easily, but with its own clamp the S-adapter is excellent and the softbox genuinely useful.

The company also sells an external battery pack for these flash units. The ProPac Lithium Power Pack PB960 can deliver 1800 full power bursts after a three-hour charge, and can accommodate two flash units at the same time. Via adapter cables it can run Godox, Canon, Nikon and/or Sony guns.

It is worth noting too that the radio system of the V860 ll..

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2rHHBi2

[rtscrndr53704]

Flash review: the Godox Ving V860 II is a great-value wireless solution

Godox Ving V860 ll flash - $199/£161

Godox Ving V860 ll flash kit with X1 transmitter - $245/£199

X1 transmitter - $40/£37

www.godox.com

I've been a big fan of independent flash brands since I was a teenager. Marquee brands’ hotshoe units were always disproportionately expensive, and for a young photographer on a stacking-shelves budget the appeal of cheaper and more powerful models from secondary manufacturers was obvious.

In those days of course flash unit controls were much less complicated, but working with flash was generally much harder than it is today - all we expected back then was a cable socket and a manually variable burst of illumination.

The Godox V860 ll is a very well made flash unit that comes equipped with an AF assist light on the front, a sync socket for cabled triggering and a USB port for firmware updates.

The head offers full tilt and swivel movements, manual and automatic zoom, a diffuser and a white card reflector for catchlights

Flash changed with the advent of aperture priority options, the coming of full TTL metering, optical off-camera communications and then, eventually, radio controls. While in the distant past the independent flash brands were very much following in the footsteps of the big names, now we often see the resourcefulness of some companies putting the sluggish progress of the main brands to shame.

While Nikon and Canon have held on to their intermittently effective optical flash control systems for far too long, innovative brands such as Godox, Phottix and others have been making real progress in the field of 2.4GHz radio controls. The big names have been catching up of course, but for those looking for something that doesn’t come with a significant premium for having radio wireless TTL control these companies offer an interesting set of alternatives.

Specification

Godox V860 ll Compatible Canon, Nikon, Sony Guide No 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 Flash coverage 20-200mm (14mm with diffuse) Zoom control Auto and manual Tilt/Swivel -7-90 degrees/180 degrees both L and R Flash duration 1/300-1/20000sec Exposure TTL and manual

Flash exp comp

+/- 3 stops Sync mode

High speed (up to 1/8000sec) First curtain and second curtain

Strobe-flash Up to 90 bursts at 100Hz Wireless functions Master, Slave, Off Slave groups

3 (A, B, C)

Transmission range

Optical indoors: 39-49ft Optical outdoors: 26-33ft 2.4G Radio: 100m/328ft

Channels

Optical: 4 Radio: 32

Modelling flash Yes, via camera's depth of field button AF assist beam Yes. Range - Centre: 33ft, Edge: 16ft Power 11.1V/2000mAh Li-ion polymer battery Recycle time <1.5 seconds Battery life Approx 650 full power flashes Sync triggering Hotshoe, 2.5mm port, wireless Color Temperature 5600 +/-200k W x H x D 64x76x190mm/2.5x3x7.5in Weight without battery 430g/15.2oz Weight with battery 540g/19oz

In case you aren’t aware, the attraction of radio over optical controls in flash-to-flash communications is that the signal is more reliable outside on a sunny day and it can pass through walls and other physical barriers. Units don’t have to be the same room or very close together, and we don’t have problems of modifiers covering sensors if the flash unit needs to sit inside a softbox or similar. And that is what makes me excited about using these Godox Ving V860 ll units.

Features

The V860 II is the latest Godox offering for Canon, Nikon and Sony users, and it provides TTL metering and off-camera control via a wireless 2.4GHz radio system, as well as the usual optical control system. The unit can operate on the camera's hotshoe as a commander unit for both other Godox flashguns and the marque brand’s own radio units, or it can join a network controlled by an ‘official’ flash unit – or indeed by a radio transmitter plugged into the camera.

The output is healthy enough, with an official guide number of 60m/190ft @ ISO 100 at 200mm, and we are offered full manual control from full to 1/128th power in 1/3rd EV increments. Flash duration figures range from 1/300sec at the more powerful settings to 1/20,000sec for the lighter bursts.

High speed sync allowed me to shoot with shutter speeds well above the standard sync speeds of the Nikon D810. The shot on the left was taken at 1/640sec and that on the right at 1/1000sec. Despite the short shutter speed and the reduced opportunity for the flash to get its illumination out, the V860 ll was easily able to compete with the bright sunlight - even when hindered by a mini softbox

The flash provides rear curtain sync even if your camera doesn’t, and high speed sync allows the flash units to be used on or off-camera at shutter speeds of up to 1/8000sec. The head has zoom positions to cover the angle of view of lenses from 20mm to 200mm, while a wide angle diffuser provides for focal lengths as short as 14mm. Comprehensive swivel and tilt positions help us direct that coverage in practically every direction except directly downwards. Strobing can be arranged at a range of frequencies, intensities and over fixed periods, though the over-heating protection asks that we limit ourselves to 10 sequences before resting. To give you an idea of what the unit is capable of at ¼ power it is possible to choose options between 1 flash per second for 7 seconds and 2 flashes at a rate of 100 flashes per second. At minimum power that changes to 90 bursts at 1 per second, and 40 bursts at 100 per second. In normal shooting though Godox says 30 full power or 100 ¼ power flashes can be fired in quick succession before the over-heating protection kicks in and demands a 10 minute break. One of the interesting elements of the flashgun is its power source. The V860 II is powered by the sort of rechargeable lithium ion block battery we might expect to see in a large camera. With a 2000mAh capacity the battery is claimed to be good for 650 full-power bursts and can be recharged in about two and a half hours. I’m not sure this constitutes a revolution, but it feels like one and is a good deal more convenient and civilized than carrying and burning endless AA cells.

What can be controlled wirelessly?

The V860 II is very flexible. It's happy to to be used to command a group of connected flash units or to be controlled by another. As a commander it can fire to influence the exposure itself or be used as a pure trigger, with no flash output. Godox offers a separate commander/receiver called the X1 that makes a more cost-effective hotshoe commander when no light is required from the camera position.

The system allows three groups of flashes to be controlled at the same time, and users can pick between 32 channels to steer clear of other radio systems in the vicinity. The V860 II can still be controlled optically across four channels, but when in radio mode it has a range of 100m and works outside even in bright light, as well as when positioned in a different room with a wall between the flash and the controller.

This scene was lit with a pair of V860 ll units - one inside and one outside the house. The main flash unit was fitted into a Godox S-Type Speedlite Bracket with a SFUV softbox, and was positioned in the garden to fire through the window on the left of the frame. A second V860 ll was placed camera-right, to light the back of the subject's head through a Rogue snoot. The camera's metering was set to matrix, while both heads were set to +1EV via the X1 transmitter on the camera.

I found the flash's color consistent, well balanced and in no need of correction. The cool-day/warm-day effects here were created in post-production.

Wireless control extends to manual and TTL control, as well as high speed working and strobotic operation, and a modelling burst is still possible with a press of the camera’s depth-of-field preview button.

Handling

The V860 II has a clear enough screen and lays out its wares in a pretty logical way. Once we are familiar with the mostly standard type icons it is easy to see what settings are prevailing at any one time. Changing the settings though is less straightforward so a good and thorough read of the instruction manual is recommended. The controls are really not intuitive enough that they can be used with a hazy memory or no previous experience.

With familiarity we can take advantage of a good range of control in the master and slave units. Exposure compensation runs only to +/-3EV for in-unit controls and for slaves across the three channels, which some may consider a little short for complex set-ups. On a similar note it isn't possible to control the zoom position on slave units from the master control panel. To be fair this is not a standard feature on this sort of flash unit, but it would be useful.

A nice touch - when in commander mode the rear screen of the V860 ll turns green and when being used as a slave it turns orange. The button arrangement is simple enough - at least once you're used to it and know what the icons mean.

Buttons and dials on the rear of the flash are nicely designed and make operation deliberate once you've worked out what each one does, but the controls on the X1 transceiver are a little more fiddly than they need to be and require quite small fingers. The display screen is adequate but a bit small, and on every occasion I used the rear wheel I turned it the wrong way.

The controls on the X1 are small and quite fiddly. They are fine in a relaxed studio environment, but less easy to operate on the go or with gloves on

Changing batteries in mid-shoot is fantastically easy and can be achieved in much less than a quarter of the time it takes to change four AA cells – which makes for much more relaxing weddings. And when fumbled these batteries don’t clatter and roll all the way down the church either. I am rather taken with this idea and wonder why we haven’t been using lithium blocks in our flash units for years. I'm told it makes export more difficult, but I'm not sure how much I believe that's the whole reason.

Cheap flashguns are all very well but we need something well made and built to last, and these Godox units seem to satisfy both requirements. They feel nice to use and have a reassuring solidity about them without being too weighty. They are actually really well made and I can personally vouch for the fact that they can withstand being dropped from about waist height on to pretty hard ground.

Performance

I used a pair of these V860 ll units with the X1 transceiver on a Nikon D810, and across a couple of weddings and a few portrait shoots they did very well indeed. Nikon I suppose must be given credit for the accuracy of the metering, but the Godox units worked with the camera seamlessly.

Godox's operating range claims seem well-founded and the radio communication does in fact work well through walls and around corners, though in a couple of instances at very close range I managed to find a blind spot when using the X1 hotshoe transmitter. I was quite surprised to encounter this on a number of occasions when holding the gun in my hand while shooting, and also while the gun was mounted on a bracket next to the camera. The blind spot seems to be at 45 degrees forward of the transmitter when the flash is placed directly alongside.

At greater distances, more normal perhaps for off-camera work, the system performed really very well, but the short range reliability became a bit of an issue for me until I got used to it - I often hold a unit in one hand and the camera in the other when working on my own at events.

Here is an overhead view of the set-up, with flash A in the softbox and flash B bouncing into the reflector. The Godox bag is being used to create a shadow around the base of the bowl. I used an X-Rite Color Checker Passport to white balance the rear flash, and found the shift in color from the camera's flash white balance setting was hardly noticeable .

For this shot I used a single flash (A) in a softbox, set to 0EV compensation, positioned behind the subject. Here the only light is coming from flash B, positioned forward to the side and bouncing into a gold reflector. This shot shows the effect of both flashes lighting the scene, with both set to 0EV compensation To create a little more of a three-dimensional feel I increased the power of flash A in the rear to +2EV, and reduced flash B at the front to -1.3EV

At one stage I found the X1 wouldn’t trigger the guns at all, and no matter what I tried I couldn’t make it work. This was extremely frustrating for a long time. I solved the issue by accident when I triggered one V860 ll from the other and then found that suddenly the X1 wanted to work again. I’m not entirely sure what the problem was, but suspect some sort of communication issue that was somehow unblocked when the second flash unit kicked in. The limitations of the over-heating system will prohibit a few users from being able to make use of these units, but for the vast majority of photographers requiring more than 30 full blast bursts in quick succession is something of a rarity. I certainly can’t complain about recycle times as even at full power the lithium ion battery feeds the flash quickly enough that we can expect a burst every second.

With one flash in another room off the corridor and aimed towards the groom, and another in my hand positioned to bounce from the ceiling, I was able to create some nice lighting effects quickly with this system. The bounced flash was set to -1.3EV so it would just fill the shadows.

The robust metal threads on the supplied feet make the V860 ll units easy to mount on tripods or lighting stands. I used a pair of softboxes to light this shot, one either side of the couple. The small size of the softboxes and the flash heads contributes to the cut-out feeling and illustrates a limitation of hotshoe flashes.

I found the coverage to be even enough at most focal length settings and the output of manual burst to be consistent from shot to shot. The color shifts somewhat between the brightest and the weakest bursts, but not so much that it will be an issue for most non-technical applications.

The flash duration quoted by Godox seems to be the total flash duration rather than the effective duration (the time the maximum intensity drops by half) . Using a Sekonic L-858D meter I measured the total duration at full power to be approx. 1/450sec, and the effective duration to be more like 1/1600sec. The difference will probably not be noticed by most.

Shot in bright sunshine at f/5.6 and 1/400sec at ISO 100, and the zoom in the 70mm position. The flash was in the hotshoe and was more than powerful enough to reach the subjects in an effective way. I was glad of the long-lasting lithium ion batteries on such a day of full power bursts. The main light here is daylight from a window to camera-right. The walls behind the bride though were rather too dull and shaded, so I placed a single V860 ll behind her to light them up a bit. I left it at 0EV and it did the job nicely.

Translating the guide number into real world situations, I found that full power gave me a meter reading of f/8@ISO 100 with the flash 10 feet away and the zoom head set to 50mm. Changing the zoom position to 200mm increased the reading to f/11 ½ in the same situation.

Add-ons and accessories

Included in the two-flash kit I received were feet/stands with a brass tripod thread in the base, a pair of strap-on diffusers, a set of colored gels and a pouch for each flash. Like many other flash brands, Godox offers a range of accessories that help to modify the light from their units. My favorite accessory though is the S-mount adapter that allows the flash to be clamped within an adapter ring for S-Mount (Bowens) accessories. I tried the V860 ll flashes with big and small softboxes and dishes, as well as the good-sized pop-up softbox that comes with the adapter. As you will know, some speedlight accessories are too big, floppy and cumbersome to use easily, but with its own clamp the S-adapter is excellent and the softbox genuinely useful.

The company also sells an external battery pack for these flash units. The ProPac Lithium Power Pack PB960 can deliver 1800 full power bursts after a three-hour charge, and can accommodate two flash units at the same time. Via adapter cables it can run Godox, Canon, Nikon and/or Sony guns.

It is worth noting too that the radio system of the V860 ll..

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