#protecting the hoard

[radiance1]

Ghosts are Dragons.

But.

Instead of being protective or caring for one another or caring about child ghosts.

They actively view each other as threats.

Like:

"Oh, nothing personal but you gotta die now."

"Oh yea I totally get that but you also have to die now."

"Understandable."

Inspired by this glorious fic.

Dragons don't really hate each other, they just have to kill each other on sight no biggie. Even more when they feel like their hoard is in danger or a dragon is getting too close to said hoard.

So.

Danny and Vlad.

Phantom and Plasmius.

I would like to say that they're seen as really weird entities by the ghost community. On one they manage to act civil with each other (I.E not trying to tear each other's cores out or something) and then on the other they're literally how dragons would expect them to be (Phantom and Plasmius).

Of course, a ghost's act of civility is not the same as a human's, so they're just viewed as... really fucking weird. In human form their instincts are kinda on the back burner but still there so they're somewhat antagonistic with each other.

In ghost form?

Bloody brawl.

Even worse if you try and fit into the idea of the Fenton family being apart of both their hoards. Most common link being Maddie but if you wanna get kinda cracky with it could be Jack too for a Vlad/Jack angle.

On one hand, Vlad wants Danny to be his kid. On the other it's like "Okay no hard feelings but you really need to die now."

Then imagine if this was a Nasty Burger explosion au and Danny falls into Vlad's custody. It's like, okay, cool, Vlad got what he wanted but wow does his dragon side want this kid dead and damn he has really good self-control and somewhat morals to not try and strike a grieving child.

Danny, on the other hand, is very, very sad and his dragon side also, very much, wants Vlad dead.

They get into some fights. Well. A lot of fights. Nothing big.

By dragon standards anyway.

Look! Two dragons! In one house! And they haven't torn out each other's cores and disabled on another! It's a miracle!!!

(Sidenote, I feel like Danielle wouldn't really be around in this au because, you know. Dragons kinda want each other dead and all that.)

So yea, in the eyes of ghosts those guys Phantom and Plasmius are really, very weird dragons. And so, extremely but confusingly civil.

In the eyes of humans, however... well.... kinda... paints a bad picture.

To one Bruce Wayne especially when they meet each other at a gala.

[xmimikyuusx]

whenever I hear the shit like "trans men can't say tranny that belongs to trans women" "trans men using transandrophobia are just stealing language from trans women/trying to copy them for attention" "trans men can't use the egg cracking analogy because that belongs to trans women" "trans men are trying to appropriate trans women culture" (whatever the fuck that's supposed to mean) it reminds me of being 12 and changing schools, and being a child in the 2010's, I was obsessed with using the word coolio. However, the kids were very quick to inform me that there was Already another kid who was saying coolio and that word belonged to them/was their catch phrase, so I couldn't say it. Even though to me, I'd been using that long since I showed up there. I'd been saying dumb shit like that forever.

So like. Infantile shit. To try and say that certain words belong to your specific identity and anyone who might even remotely relate to you is doing it to steal your thunder. I promise if someone from a different identity uses a term that you use for yourself it literally doesn't affect anything other than your ego.

a note*: the above doesn't apply to indigenous/POC who have had their language essentially colonized, very much a different situation

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 238

"Ugh. There's a group at the barrier again." Star squinted over the buildings they were all sprawled on almost lazily. "Seriously? I thought the GIW would have given up by now since there's 'no more humans' here," Sam's voice was sarcastic as she combed claws through her hair. The others grumbled in agreement, Valerie spreading her wings in a stretch. "Who wants to bet Danny is already about to crash their intrusion?" "Hah! I bet Dash is there already to video it!" "Those are both suckers bets," Wes scoffed, clear eyelid closing over his eyes and temporarily dimming the glow. "Let's be honest, Paulina has already left, she's going to get there first."

- - -

The GIW have been having a bit of trouble. Maybe just a bit. See, they were supposed to be taking care of the ecto-entities. Studying them, y'know? But er, some earlier agents had been a bit trigger happy, which meant the entities were well... aggressive. And a city full of dragon-fae-beings disliking any presence wearing white was rather terrifying, so they... might have gotten permission to bring a hero with them. For protection of course. ... Hopefully no one dies-

Feel free to ignore any of these pics lol, they're just ideas.

Order: Jazz, Danny, Tucker, Sam, Valerie, Wes, Dash, Kwan, Paulina, Star, Ellie, Dan

[bunny-extract]

I just can’t get over Ghost realizing he’s exhausted every other option before lining his fist up to his cheek and punching himself in the face over and over, frantically working against basic instinct to dislocate his own jaw. His limbs growing cold and numb while the virus takes over his nerves, rooting itself into the fiber of his muscles, recoding every neural network while he holds on to the memory of your smiling face back at home wishing him a safe and quick deployment. Smiling to himself with a mouth full of blood before his bone finally cracks.

[chubbychiquita]

How does it feel to compare how much more you eat than someone who is smaller, in the sense they are small and eat so little compared to your gigantic feasts?

tbh it feels sort of powerful, like i am amassing infinite calories to thrive through the harsh winter and everyone else will perish

[imawriternotamagican]

My character development is that I just get progressively gayer as I listen to more podcasts

[demigodofhoolemere]

Trying to find nice stuff for Wish but everywhere you go people are being painfully wrong in their interpretations of the movie

[fatedroses]

Adventurer Zenos and G'raha cause I had to draw my silly guys. I just enjoy the idea of Zenos hanging out with fellow bookworms and being begrudgingly (though occasionally willingly) helpful.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

An interoperability rule for your money

This is the final weekend to back the Kickstarter campaign for the audiobook of my next novel, The Lost Cause. These kickstarters are how I pay my bills, which lets me publish my free essays nearly every day. If you enjoy my work, please consider backing!

"If you don't like it, why don't you take your business elsewhere?" It's the motto of the corporate apologist, someone so Hayek-pilled that they see every purchase as a ballot cast in the only election that matters – the one where you vote with your wallet.

Voting with your wallet is a pretty undignified way to go through life. For one thing, the people with the thickest wallets get the most votes, and for another, no matter who you vote for in that election, the Monopoly Party always wins, because that's the part of the thick-wallet set.

Contrary to the just-so fantasies of Milton-Friedman-poisoned bootlickers, there are plenty of reasons that one might stick with a business that one dislikes – even one that actively harms you.

The biggest reason for staying with a bad company is if they've figured out a way to punish you for leaving. Businesses are keenly attuned to ways to impose switching costs on disloyal customers. "Switching costs" are all the things you have to give up when you take your business elsewhere.

Businesses love high switching costs – think of your gym forcing you to pay to cancel your subscription or Apple turning off your groupchat checkmark when you switch to Android. The more it costs you to move to a rival vendor, the worse your existing vendor can treat you without worrying about losing your business.

Capitalists genuinely hate capitalism. As the FBI informant Peter Thiel says, "competition is for losers." The ideal 21st century "market" is something like Amazon, a platform that gets 45-51 cents out of every dollar earned by its sellers. Sure, those sellers all compete with one another, but no matter who wins, Amazon gets a cut:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Think of how Facebook keeps users glued to its platform by making the price of leaving cutting of contact with your friends, family, communities and customers. Facebook tells its customers – advertisers – that people who hate the platform stick around because Facebook is so good at manipulating its users (this is a good sales pitch for a company that sells ads!). But there's a far simpler explanation for peoples' continued willingness to let Mark Zuckerberg spy on them: they hate Zuck, but they love their friends, so they stay:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

One of the most important ways that regulators can help the public is by reducing switching costs. The easier it is for you to leave a company, the more likely it is they'll treat you well, and if they don't, you can walk away from them. That's just what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau wants to do with its new Personal Financial Data Rights rule:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-proposes-rule-to-jumpstart-competition-and-accelerate-shift-to-open-banking/

The new rule is aimed at banks, some of the rottenest businesses around. Remember when Wells Fargo ripped off millions of its customers by ordering its tellers to open fake accounts in their name, firing and blacklisting tellers who refused to break the law?

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/10/07/497084491/episode-728-the-wells-fargo-hustle

While there are alternatives to banks – local credit unions are great – a lot of us end up with a bank by default and then struggle to switch, even though the banks give us progressively worse service, collectively rip us off for billions in junk fees, and even defraud us. But because the banks keep our data locked up, it can be hard to shop for better alternatives. And if we do go elsewhere, we're stuck with hours of tedious clerical work to replicate all our account data, payees, digital wallets, etc.

That's where the new CFPB order comes in: the Bureau will force banks to "share data at the person’s direction with other companies offering better products." So if you tell your bank to give your data to a competitor – or a comparison shopping site – it will have to do so…or else.

Banks often claim that they block account migration and comparison shopping sites because they want to protect their customers from ripoff artists. There are certainly plenty of ripoff artists (notwithstanding that some of them run banks). But banks have an irreconcilable conflict of interest here: they might want to stop (other) con-artists from robbing you, but they also want to make leaving as painful as possible.

Instead of letting shareholder-accountable bank execs in back rooms decide what the people you share your financial data are allowed to do with it, the CFPB is shouldering that responsibility, shifting those deliberations to the public activities of a democratically accountable agency. Under the new rule, the businesses you connect to your account data will be "prohibited from misusing or wrongfully monetizing the sensitive personal financial data."

This is an approach that my EFF colleague Bennett Cyphers and I first laid our in our 2021 paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly," where we describe how and why we should shift determinations about who is and isn't allowed to get your data from giant, monopolistic tech companies to democratic institutions, based on privacy law, not corporate whim:

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

The new CFPB rule is aimed squarely at reducing switching costs. As CFPB Director Rohit Chopra says, "Today, we are proposing a rule to give consumers the power to walk away from bad service and choose the financial institutions that offer the best products and prices."

The rule bans banks from charging their customers junk fees to access their data, and bans businesses you give that data to from "collecting, using, or retaining data to advance their own commercial interests through actions like targeted or behavioral advertising." It also guarantees you the unrestricted right to revoke access to your data.

The rule is intended to replace the current state-of-the-art for data sharing, which is giving your banking password to third parties who go and scrape that data on your behalf. This is a tactic that comparison sites and financial dashboards have used since 2006, when Mint pioneered it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/mint-late-stage-adversarial-interoperability-demonstrates-what-we-had-and-what-we

A lot's happened since 2006. It's past time for American bank customers to have the right to access and share their data, so they can leave rotten banks and go to better ones.

The new rule is made possible by Section 1033 of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which was passed in 2010. Chopra is one of the many Biden administrative appointees who have acquainted themselves with all the powers they already have, and then used those powers to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

It's pretty wild that the first digital interoperability mandate is going to come from the CFPB, but it's also really cool. As Tim Wu demonstrated in 2021 when he wrote Biden's Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, the administrative agencies have sweeping, grossly underutilized powers that can make a huge difference to everyday Americans' lives:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

Image: Steve Morgan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._National_Bank_Building_-_Portland,_Oregon.jpg

Stefan Kühn (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abrissbirne.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

 - 

Rhys A. (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhysasplundh/5201859761/in/photostream/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[princess-ibri]

King Magnifico Backstory Part 3

Part 2

On the Princesses 18th birthday, a strange messenger came to the castle, with a desperate plea.

"Princess Maroula, my mistress, the Keeper of the Wishing Stars, who granted both you and your father life, needs your aid. There is a quest that only one such as you can fulfill. A dangerous quest but a necessary one for the good of all people within this world and the EverRealm. She has done what she can herself, but her gaze is stretched thin by her obligations. We ask that you leave as soon as possible, if you are willing to come and aid us.”

And the princess, always kind of heart, and remembering the conversation in the garden all those years ago was willing

But her father was not.

“How dare your mistress ask this dangerous task of my daughter! She knows the perils that exist in that realm, that befell me. She did nothing to aid me in my troubles, why should she ask to place my daughter in peril now?”

“The Blue Lady is young, in the way of her people, she had only recently taken over this charge when your misfortunes befell you, and she has sorrowed over them ever since. She granted you your daughter in part as penance for that failure. But still she has her duties, and she has foreseen a threat that only as deeply linked to Wishes as Maroula is can combat. Would you see an entire realm suffer for what was done to you?”

Maroula knew the anger born from his past heartache, which her father usually tried to keep under control, beginning to rise, and tried to sooth him

“Father, I am willing to go. You and Mother have taught me well in both the use of magic and the need to be generous in helping others. Please, let me go and help the Lady. How can I call myself a princess of Rosas and not do so?”

“No Maroula!” The King cried, his fear for his daughter and anger getting the best of him. “I won’t allow it! What right has this fairy to grant my greatest wish, give our happiness tangibility and then take it away!”

“She’s not taking me away Father, she’s only asking that I—“

“Enough!”

The king turned and dismissed the messenger coldly from his sight, demanding that it never return, for his daughter would not be going to the other realm, now or ever.

“That choice is the Princess Maroula’s.” The messenger said as it left, unfazed by the king’s anger. “She is a woman grown now, able to make her own choices, even if they are not what you would choose for her. If she wishes to go, then she may go”

“Then I shall insure she cannot!”

And with that, the king used his magics to open up a room, deep deep beneath the castle, a room he had discovered upon taking claim of the castle, (a room where he had found a dangerous and deceptive tome of magic). Here he wove about with his spells and enchantments so that he was sure no star’s light could find his daughter.

“I don’t wish to leave you here Maroula, but I must keep you safe, at all costs. Let that other place deal with its own problems. You will stay here until you’ve learned to see sense”

And so the king left his daughter crying in the dark, as his gentle queen cried in the palace above, torn between supporting her husband in keeping their daughter safe from unknown danger, and supporting her daughter’s generous wish to help

What neither realized, is that there was one small opening within the dungeon, a keyhole that the king had failed to account for, a keyhole through which a single thin strain of starlight came through and found the weeping princess. The princess beheld the light, and taking the power within her, she wished upon the star

And the star answered

But what came after for Princess Maroula is a story for another time…

The king and queen sought day and night for their daughter, but even with all his powers, either the power of the Lady of the Wishing Stars was greater, or Maroula was using her own to avoid her father’s search. Even his wishing her back did nothing. And so the king and queen fell into despair, knowing their daughter was lost forever.

Is this the thanks I get for granting everyone else’s wishes all these years? To have my own daughter run from me? I’ve cared for her from the day she was born, given her everything and and she still decides to defy and disrespect me with this rebellion?!”

At last, the king, letting his anger over this perceived betrayal overcome his grief, decided that they could no longer go on as they had, and so he crafted a spell that would enable them to move forward

He asked his wife to give to him her wish for their daughter’s return, gifting it to him to hold onto until it could be granted. And as Amaya gave him her wish, trusting that one day it would come true—the memory of her daughter left her entirely, along with the grief of her loss. Letting her forget without the weight of regret…

From then on, the king utilized this spell whenever it came time to grant his people’s wishes, holding on to them in perpetuity, instead of granting them on sight. Having lost the love of his daughter, he tried to substitute it with the love he felt imbibed in each wish as he guarded them, keeping them safe as he couldn’t protect her. Each person who gave him their wish forgot it, and so Magnifico intended to ensure that not only would no unworthy wish be granted, but no wish would lead to the heartbreak he had suffered

Despite his anger at his daughter, over the years he took many other apprentices, seeking to fill the void she had left, even granting their and their families wishes when he usually would have declined to—but none of them ever filled the place of his beloved Maroula.

And as the years passed, his anger over her loss, the heartbreak of his past, and his frustration over watching everyone’s wishes be granted but his own began to harden the king’s heart, and a darkness grew beneath his pristine exterior, waiting for the day until he felt threatened enough in his power and control to break loose…

[weareallgonnaliveforawhile]

To the Platonic and Romantic Terusai masses, I offer

Teruhashi and Saiki protecting each other from their brothers.

We've seen a bit of Saiki doing it to Kokomi so in a (platonic or romantic sense) terusai way it would go a bit like

-

Kokomi: Ah, Saiki! Let's go to this one restaurant!

Saiki: Fine. But only cause they have limited edition coffee jell- Oh no.

Kokomi: Of course, I'll pay, but is something wrong, Saiki?

Makoto, within Saiki's hearing but not Kokomi's: Where is my sister?! I tracked her location here, but I can't find her

Saiki, frantically shoving a hoodie over Kokomi before walking quickly away: Yes, hurry. If we pass through the ally then maybe...

Kokomi: Hey, does that voice in the distance sound familiar? It sounds weirdly close.

Saiki, taking Kokomi's hand and just booking it: Come on, come on, come on, I'll hotwire a car, we just need to get you the fuck out of here

-

Which, if you noticed, is very similar to canon situations that have happened in the anime regarding Makoto. In a Terusai situation, which is to say Saiki acknowledging a positive relationship between them and not sabotaging it, he'd be a bit more worried. Saiki is a worrywart at heart, and he knows what it's like to have to flee from your older brother.

He would do everything in his power to make sure that man stays as far away from her as possible. Maybe that involves using his powers to send him to a bog in England, maybe that involves stealing a car and riding away (at dangerously high speeds) into the sunset (and maybe a shopping mall) with Kokomi (who is screaming in fear)

Speaking of Saiki's fuck up of a brother, Kokomi would not hesitate before protecting Kusuo from Kuusuke. It'd be decently similar to a canon interaction that exists due to Kokomi having a very different set of strengths than Kusuo

It'd go like

-

Kuusuke: Well if it isn't my littl-

Teruhashi, standing as a psychical barrier between them: Hello Saiki-san :)

Kuusuke, trying to move to look at Kusuo: Ah. Well if it isn't that gi-

Teruhashi, moving around so that he can't: Pleasure to meet you again Saiki-san.

Kuusuke: We-

Teruhashi: How have you been? Great I assume.

Kuusuke:

Teruhashi: : )

Kuusuke: Listen, girl- [Puts a condescending a arm on Teruhashi's shoulder]

Kusuo: Don't touch her-

Teruhashi: [Dramatically throws herself to the ground] [Tears instantly well up in her eyes] I'm...I'm sorry for whatever I did to offend you! Truly, I meant no harm!

Kuusuke: [Raises an eyebrow] Wha- Oh, that is a crowd forming around us?

Kusuo: [Helping Teru nail the 'scared perfect girl' look by pretending to comfort her] An angry mob actually, judging by the fire.

[moons-rising]

i'm doing a little bit of hoard/vault cleaning and while i'm at it, here's a small tip some people may not know about:

if you want to avoid accidentally selling a hoard-sellable item when you select everything (for example if you collect certain materials or trinkets, or for elemental eggs), you can click on the item and flip this little switch at the bottom:

(i collect scroll cases lol) if you then select everything and go to sell it the game gives you a little warning popup and lets you deselect the items in question:

you can then simply deselect the items and sell your stuff! it also remembers this selection for any future stacks of the protected items you might get, so it's great for protecting collection items or stuff needed for swipp or hibden trades!

you can also flip this switch from your vault if you already have some collected items stored there, i've done it for all stuff i collect~

[starlightskyshine]

While I was reading an story I couldn't help but think about a Takara treasure dragon au?

Takara as dragon (shifter?, hybrid?) that likes to collect shiny glass things for his hoard, and then he meets Taishin who has eyes that can defeat every piece of his collection 🐲

[impishtubist]

It's just so phenomenally stupid to be sitting here trying to do everyday shit and planning for the work week ahead when it doesn't even matter anymore. Laundry groceries meal prep cleaning who the fuck cares. The lucky ones with the means to do so will get to escape the country and the rest get to deal with everything becoming too exorbitantly expensive to be able to live and also having no healthcare. Plus vaccines being outlawed (it just happened in Idaho!) and a brewing H5N1 pandemic everyone is going to ignore oh yeah and also Trump executing everyone who doesn't agree with him. Why the fuck am I having to do emails and spreadsheets at a time like this??

[bmpmp3]

sorry for art-class-critique-posting again but one thing thats been very fascinating to see from my classmates and especially from my professors is this like, usually implicit but occasional explicit assertion that a lot of the artistic techniques, styles, and practices i happen to do (such as quick, unblended brushstrokes, paint drips, etc) are inherently "masculine". i personally am secure and comfortable with myself as a gender nonconforming woman so it doesnt affect me one way or the other much but i also can't help but feel like.......... do you think maybe the reason you dont see as many young woman art students doing these techniques might be because they feel a bit insecure or uncomfortable having their womanhood called into question just because they were a little more aggressive with their brushstrokes? of course abstract expressionism and movements of its ilk where boys clubs (as were most artistic movements in the history of time) and theres a lot to unpack with that but i dont think leaning into the idea that women only paint neatly with careful paint blending and soft colours is the way to go about this.........

[vivianquill]

there's another ranchers/zits/giggs au story concept in my head i've been playing with, so let's-- just call this a demo.

Feel free to send asks or just give general feedback, not only will it help me to flesh out the au more, it'll also give me more ideas on where to go. I've seen similar aus out there, but nothing quite like this one-- or having all the same concepts as this one. If people like it, I might turn it into an actual longfic. but i tend to run out of steam on my longfics (mostly due to a lack of interaction tbh. if no one else is excited about my au, then it's not worth pursuing, right? but that's my problem and something I have to work through myself, not something for anyone else to fix)

Anyway.

This is a thing.

The moment Jimmy laid eyes on Tango, he knew something was-- off-- about him.

They'd met him in a tavern, in the small town that lay below the abandoned Deepfrost Citadel. Jimmy's adventuring troupe had been commissioned with finding an artifact in the Citadel, and bringing it back to its rightful owner. The bounty offered would be enough to pay off the troupe's debts and much much more. When they'd asked around for any sort of maps, or a guide, the tavern keeper had pointed them over to Tango.

"He's the only one to have ever made it out of that cursed place alive." The dwarf had told them, pointing to where their future guide was sitting in the corner, "If you want a guide, he's the only one who can."

Jimmy's sense for danger had shivered up his spine and stolen his breath the moment he looked over. But-- no one in his troupe paid any attention to him anyway.

Besides, the negotiations had gone well, Tango seemed amical enough, and no one else seemed to have a problem with him. It was only Jimmy, and his overzealous avian anxiety. They would pay Tango half his fee up front, and half when they got back to the village safely.

It took them half a week to get up to the Citadel, and that was with the help and knowledge of Tango as their guide. Jimmy kept him at arms' length, not quite knowing why but deciding to trust his gut on this one. Tango was dangerous, in a way that he couldn't figure out. He'd brought it up to the others in his troupe, but none of them believed him. They all loved Tango. He was clever, quick to laugh and even quicker to crack a joke, and ever so useful.

By the time they made it to the door of the Citadel, Tango had become an invaluable member of the troupe.

Tango disappeared that first night, spent barricaded in an outlying tower and hoping not to freeze to death. Jimmy had been on watch, and between one glance and the next, Tango hadn't been in his bedroll anymore.

But-- he'd been right back in the morning, acting like Jimmy didn't know what he was talking about.

It was the little things that kept setting Jimmy on edge. Tango knew a little too much about the Citadel, he'd found the 'hidden' door to the crypts too easily, had pushed the troupe to descend into the depths faster than was safe, not letting them scout it with a familiar like they normally would. He could pick the locks almost like he had a silent knock spell in his fingers, and somehow knew his way through the maze of icy caverns like the back of his hand.

And every night, after everyone was asleep, he disappeared. Jimmy was the only one who noticed. No one else believed him either, did they just-- not notice the empty bedroll when they were on watch?

When they finally believed him, it wasn't until Tango disappeared for good. One morning, he just-- didn't come back.

Then the monsters started appearing.

One thing lead to another as they pressed deeper and deeper into the dungeon under the Citadel, icy crypts full of wraiths and furry beasts morphing into wet caverns covered in mushrooms and a pirate ship complete with it's undead crew; leading down into black mines that had supposedly been blocked off by cave ins over a hundred years ago-- and before they knew it they'd lost a member of the troupe-- their healer-- and then they were tripping tail over teakettle into a maze so dark and cold that even those in the troupe with darkvision couldn't see.

It spat them out into a chamber not unlike the throne room found mirrored high above in the Deepfrost Citadel. It was full of gold and magic and things that would make any adventurer drool at the prospect of having them to keep.

Jimmy hadn't felt 'safe'-- not since he'd first met Tango in that tavern all those weeks ago-- but the sense of someone watching them stayed his hand.

The rest of the troupe had gotten busy, plundering everything in reach and searching for the artifact they'd been sent to collect.

But not Jimmy.

When asked why he wasn't stuffing his pockets with gold, he waved off the troupe with the excuse of keeping watch. After all, there were the monsters to contend with still--

Tango's giggle seemed to come from everywhere at once.

"Oh, you really should have listened to poor, sweet Jimmy when you had the chance~"

And suddenly Tango was there, on the throne in the center of the room, but instead of the blond, brown-eyed and rough-hewn guide they'd come to know and trust, it was a creature made of frost and shadows.

Jimmy's heart dropped out his stomach.

"Dragon--!"

Oh, they were dead.

Scratch that. Apparently everyone but Jimmy was dead.

Not like that was much better.