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spotaus · 7 months ago

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The Judgement Hall

A semi-awaited drabble about Doppletale's Sans and Asgore! (Specifically about Sans becoming the Royal Judge!)

Word Count: 2,663

Tw: Death, Cannibalism(kinda? eating humans)

No revisions, I die with my typos 🫡

(aaaaand @oodlesndoodles and @mylackofgrammaristerrifying because it's not Oc lore but it's Dopple-stuff lol!)

(It's under the Cut for viewing convenience ♡)

The day was different.

Not like any others.

It'd been a week since Gaster's death. A week since Sans had had the hard talk with Alphys about quitting his work at the lab. It'd been a week since he'd moved as far away as possible, all the way to Snowdin to the vacant house at the edge of town.

Now he found himself in the Capital.

He'd gotten a letter asking him to come visit. King Asgore wanted to see him. To have some tea and chat.

Part of him worried the King was going to convince him back to the Lab. The CORE was structurally sound, but Gaster's research went unfinished and now was left entirely to Alphys. He knew one scientist couldn't handle it alone, but he couldn't bare to be in that place anymore.

Maybe Asgore would reprimand him for moving so far off. Away from the Capital where the King said his door was always open. Sans knew, but it hurt to think of taking up residence in the castle while other monsters were starving.

He worried on these thoughts as he walked down the streets. The buildings here stood tall and crooked, white stone buildings having been shoddily constructed when Monsters finally arrived here. The Capital held most monsters, but the numbers were dwindling.

Even now as his boots clicked against the white stone street, very few monsters were out and about. He thought he spotted Madjick entering a shop, two whimsum further down the street sat with eachother on the front steps of a building. It was barren compared to the lively and exciting streets he'd used to shy away from in the past.

It was a ghost town.

The castle that always loomed tall over the white stone city was closer now. He could see a few of the remaining Royal Guard stationed outside at the top of the steps. The doors were wide open. They were never closed, just as Asgore always promised.

Sans hardly acknowledged the Royal Guard when he passed by them. He doubted they'd even recognize him if he did say hello. The skeleton-look was new. Without his lab coat, his glasses were the only defining feature of his that was truly left.

It didn't matter. He clearly wasn't human, so they let him pass uncontested.

The halls were just as he remembered, if not a bit more dusty. White brick that was painstakingly chisled and pieced together. A far cry from the messy work outside. The walls, the floor, all flawless. The floors had long purple carpets running along them, and the walls were covered in tapestries, each one painstakingly woven before their imprisonment, and a few more that were made after.

One, at the very end of the hall, sat unfinished. Sans wondered if the one who'd been weaving it was taking a water break, or if they were long gone. He didn't bother to look for dust.

And soon enough? There stood the hall he knew well.

He entered, and he thought about just how much had happened here. The white pillars spanning up and far above his head into a ridiculously tall ceiling. It was completely consumed by shadow, but he could see the twinkling of crystals they'd had moved from Waterfall. He'd been the third to see it finished after all the construction. They still glimmers brilliantly like stars.

The windows were all stained glass, seemingly untouched by the years. Blue and purple glass, all of it picturing different monsters of glory from their past. Each one portraying them as they heroes they were. Sans knew no more would be added, but he humored hinself to think that a few monsters he knew deserved a glass pane of their own.

He remembered the coronation. The day the monsters big and small, disguised and not, gathered here in this hall as King Asgore and Queen Toriel introduced their children as their royal heirs. Asriel and Chara. They'd appeared in their disguises at the time, and they'd been the most precious little creatures. The underground had partied for a week straight.

No one regretted wasting those precious meals, it was worthy of celebration, but the memories were bittersweet now that both heirs were dead.

Sans sighed gently, dragging himself away from memory lane. The door at the end of the hall was still shut tight, but he knew it wasn't locked. It never was.

So, he pressed his palms against the heavy wood, the wood that had been stripped white with water damage, and pushed.

The hinges didn't squeak. The rush of hair that flew past was nice. Asgore's throne room had always doubled as his and Toriel's garden. A safe-space for them, so close to the barrier that sunlight could leak through the windows and allow sunlight to reach the plants. The burst of wind once smelled like a forest, earthy with a tinge of dew. Now it smelled of sickly sweet perfume. The plots that once held different types of plants only held buttercup flowers, the golden yellow blooms constantly swaying in an unseen breeze.

He missed that old smell, but he knew, at least, that the scent of Buttercups would always alert him to the King's presence. He hardly ever left this room anymore, as far as he'd heard.

At the thought, his eyes skimmed past the flowers and to the throne.

Empty.

He tried again. To the left, closer to him.

There.

Asgore was stood with his back to the door, leaned slightly over a small table that made Sans' soul squeeze with nostalgia. He hadn't seen that table since before Gaster's condition turned for the worst. Asgore had started bringing Tea to the lab instead of meeting here.

The king himself was just as Sans remembered. He was a perfect replica of a human. He was tall for a human, maybe 6'4" with his boots on. His shoulders were broad, and while he was a walking wall of muscle, his flesh was soft and jiggled when he laughed. His blonde hair was a bit messy, long enough to barely fall over his shoulders, and his beard was fuzzy and rough.

The king stood upright, and shifted a bit. His head turned, and from the few meters away that they stood, Sans could see his confusion turn quickly into a soft smile as the King recognized him.

"Sans, my old friend." His voice was deep and held authority, but his tone was perfect. Gentle lilts at the end of his commands that made them feel more like suggestion. "Come, sit."

Asgore gestured to the table, one arm escaping the confines of his heavy blue cloak. In the shadow, Sans could see the familiar galaxy mist that swirled purple. The truth behind the king's facade. Though as he started moving wordlessly, he couldn't help but notice how Asgore's hands were calloused and wrinkled with age, scars along his fingers that told the story of a kindly, aging king. One whose people were unjustly locked away.

Sans let the king leave his vision as he rounded to the opposite side of the table. A familiar tea pot sat in the center, two cups sat ready to be used, one where Sans sat, one where Asgore was moving to sit himself.

The king gazed at him, and Sans stared back. It was only a second to two, but it was enough for Sans to really take it in. Asgore's tanned skin had just the right wrinkles draped around his face. His eyes were soft and a bit sad. Disarming. The folds of his skin were largely laugh-lines, things you'd expect to see from a kindly older man whose spent most of his life laughing.

Hid eyes were a deep brown, almost black. His pupils were perfectly round. A few stray strands of his blonde hair fell infront of his face, his crown displacing the strands with its weight.

"It's been some time since we last spoke outside of our duties," Asgore supplied warmly to the silence, "How are you faring, old friend?" He knew the answer to that. Sans knew he did.

He answered anyways.

"I've been better." He supplied, "Losing G has been hard." It was obviously what Asgore wanted to bring up. He'd just get it out of the way.

Asgore nodded sadly. Knowingly. His movement was perfectly natural.

"I see that you've taken on a new shape. How long have you held your old one?" Asgore questioned gently. Curiously.

Sans thought for a moment. "Must've been 200 years or so." Being underground had gotten rid of the need to constantly make new disguises. He'd been content with his latest one.

Asgore took that with a grain of salt. Pretender kept an unconscious notice of how often Asgore blinked as the silence dragged on.

"Sans, I heard that you left the Lab. Alphys says you have no intention of returning, either." Asgore cut to the chase. His brows furrowed. He wasn't mad. The wrinkles on his forehead were still too undefined to imply he was mad.

Sans agreed. He really did have no plans of going back. He couldn't stand another second in there after what his team had done.

"Very well." Asgore said, then. "I will respect your wishes. Though, I do not want to let your kindness and talent go to waste. Your grief should not consume you." Many monsters had fallen down after the loss of loved ones. Asgore had seen some of the worst here in the Capital. One monster dusted, and entire families fell into despair and couldn't recover.

He thought the same would happen to Sans.

The skeleton said nothing, but Asgore didn't hear a refusal yet. He pressed on. "Old friend, our people are dwindling. Many of them have never hunted, those who knew how are losing themselves." He informed. The grim truth was just that: Even if they could escape, how would they survive? "I know you've always dedicated yourself to the survival of our people. I want to ask a favor of you once more." Asgore's voice was growing soft.

Sans couldn't help but be a tinge worried.

He'd met Asgore for the first time when the underground was first their prison. Sans had a surplus of supplies, as he was well-liked by his local humans and they'd escorted him to the entrance to the mountain without taking his things. Asgore and Toriel had been hard-pressed to provide for their people, and had asked Sans for assistance. He'd given all he had. It was for the greater good.

After that, he'd been the royals go-to for problems they just couldn't solve. Sans wasn't often called upon, but when he was he was efficient and smart with his solutions. That was how he'd met Gaster and joined the team working on the CORE.

Now Asgore wanted more?

"I have an offer for you, Sans."

The skeleton let one of his sockets fall closed as he tiredly tilted his head. "You stopped blinking." He said casually.

The grin grew on his face as Asgore jolted a bit and raised a hand towards his face. He rapidly blinked, seemingly startled that the skeleton had replied with such an absurd statement.

Then he laughed.

It was a hearty and playful laugh, one that held no malice or grudges. One that shook the tea cups on the table. Asgore was smiling wide. Pleased.

"You had me worried." Asgore chimed when he finished his laugh.

Sans shrugged slightly, "Have ta keep you on your toes, old man. How else are we gonna escape?" He teased right back, voice calm and drawling. "Now, what's this offer?"

Asgore, a lot less tense than before, smiled at Sans. His eyes squinted so much that Sans could hardly see his eyes past his eyelashes.

"That keen skill of observation. I'd like to offer you the position of my Royal Judge." He announced pleasantly. "Someone to keep myself, and the Royal Guard, in top shape. To help settle disputes. To tell us if a human has entered the underground and guide the Guard in how to properly hunt it." The ball was dropped. Asgore had outlined a job that Sans knew had been vacant for a long time now.

Gerson, he remembered. A turtle-monster who rarely looked human. He'd been through the ringer, but had an extremely strong moral code. He'd been the one to suggest that the Dreemurs keep Chara alive. He'd starved pretty early on, passing his lessons onto his apprentice...

"Isn't Undyne training the guard?" He voiced without thinking on it. Undyne was Gerson's pride and joy, abd Asgore had taken over training her when Gerson passed. Besides Asgore, she was the most human-like monster he knew.

Asgore's shoulders raised a bit as he tilted his head slightly. "She... is a skilled warrior, and is sure to train her men in combat, but she lacks the knowledge of what a human is meant to look like if it does not look like myself or her. The disguises beneath their armor are very... messy." He admitted wearily.

That would explain why the guard outside had their armor on. Monsters who'd not eaten or seen humans alive had a much harder time understanding how they worked. Had a harder time imitating them.

"Your disguise is like your very own skin, Sans. You know well what makes humans trust you. What's normal and what is not. Our people need that." He explained.

It was true.

Sans was friendly. He spent most of his life on the surface learning what drove humans. What their system of customs and morals were. Not because he cared, but because it made things easier for him. No one was suspicious when he had just the right amount of flaws, or threw an awkward laugh into the mix of his words. People never asked about his staring problem when he learned to seem hurt by it and explained his vision problems.

Every muscle twitch and hand motion meant something for humans, and he'd studied all of it for hundreds of years.

He'd also taken the time to hand-pick what humans he killed. That was something monsters couldn't afford to do anymore. He'd seen it time and time again, but did his best to work through it. He was lucky those he'd encountered in the past gave him bad vibes. He'd felt justified killing them.

He wondered how hard it would be to teach his fellow monsters human morals. He wondered if Asgore or Undyne would respect a judgement if he found it unreasonable to kill someone. Maybe they'd ignore him. Would he have any authority?

But then again. Humans weren't worth dying over. They'd trapped them down here. The humans were starving his people. He could teach the Guard how to survive this. He could kill again. Humans were food, and as much as he could delude himself into thinking otherwise, even the ones he liked were glorified animals. Things to let live because they behaved. Underground was different, and he couldn't afford that luxury.

"I'll do it."

His voice was still calm and confident. It didn't betray his racing mind. The idea that maybe if he'd given up these fake morals a bit sooner then he could've gotten more meat for the Lab crew. Maybe this would make up for it.

Asgore smiled at him, and Sans smiled back easily.

Sans was given his uniform, a heavy set of robes and sashes and belts. A hood could be pulled up to cover his face, and he realized it brought him a bit of comfort.

Every week he'd visit Asgore and the Guard. Every week he had tea. Every week he'd have a training session that could last 3 hours just to help the guard hone their disguises.

Every other day, he stayed at his home in Snowdin and patrolled. Every other day he walked the sane exact route.

Every day was the same.

#utmv #doppletale #dopple!gaster #dopple!asgore #pretender!sans #utmv au #tw death #tw cannibalism #cannibalism tw #death tw #If I need more tags lemee know?#spot!wrote #for the record Sans *respects* Asgore. he doesn't pay this close attention to just anyone #but there's no romance here. just two guys being dudes (with a weird power imbalance thrown in)#w/o Sans (or his supplies)? Asgore couldn't have kept the underground from rioting. They both know this. they never bring it up #Sans is an Acts of Service guy I. realize now... omg.#oh. and Undyne is double-mad at Sans rn. her Crush tells her that this guy just left her alone to the Lab and then said guy shows up and #ends up basically doing half her job as though she couldn't?? that's a slander on Two fronts now. She'd pick a fight if Sans wasn't so close #with Asgore. or if he wasn't actually kinda good at teaching disguises.

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skyward-floored · 1 year ago

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Man I just finished TFH on my completely not messed with at all 3ds and boy, what a game it was, I loved it! Though due to the whole 2015 game thing I had to use doppels and while I had fun, my god was the game not completely designed for them. But it was funny when i cheesed the last den level with dopple stack big bomb getting me the fierce deity suit early . But besides that, I loved it through the thick and thin (not doing challenges though, you could not convince me that someone actually playtested those with doppels)

You did the whole game with doppels?? Good sir I am impressed.

There are a few people who still do online multiplayer (like me!), so I did a lot of the later levels with actual people like them, I can’t imagine doing some of those levels with doppels, whew

Also AAAH HOW DID YOU DO THE DEN OF TRIALS WITH DOPPELS I’ve been trying for ages O_o

#I haven’t tried in a while mind you #but I can NOT get past the dark links #they’re just too fast #anyways glad you had fun!#answers from the floor #guy made of bees #tri force heroes

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billyhargroovy · 3 years ago

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i have quite a few theories for s4 involving max, steve and billy. apologies for not focusing on the other adults/teens/kids i just do not care as much.

okay so:

-lots of dream sequences w max or hallucinations???

-DOPPLE-BILLY

-we have only EVER seen two versions of someone in the upside down w billy

-i think billy was so damaged and broken already that his consciousness literally split from the bad version of himself bcus he could not handle his preexisting trauma on top of the flayers shit

-especially when billy was beat to shit after crashing and first getting taken and then the next day. not a single scratch on him? not a bandaid on his forehead? nothin? hmmmmmmmmmmm

-those tentacles??? they seem to be the vines attached all over the upside down. instead of it being the thing vecna is feeding w it is the thing keeping vecna (billy) trapped

-when max is at billys grave and it says BILLY that is a dream or hallucination -- when we see her levitating she's wearing the same exact outfit which means its at the same time and she was shown ALONE w BILLY grave then w steve, dustin and lucas w WILLIAM grave -- she will always see him as billy, as her brother

-vecna might be good? if it's billy just trying to escape

-if u compare flayed billy in the upside down in s3 (his dopple) to the voice in the trailer they UMMm kindve sound similar bruh like real similar especially cus dacre w that accent sometimes says stuff v v specific lol. but its just distorted enough (like in the upside down w flayed billy) to leave u questioning

-the voice over could be vecna (billy) talking to other baddies in upside down? idk.

-or hes still being partially used and manipulated by the mind flayer

-maybe we wont kno vecna is actually good or helping them until closer to the end

-if vecna is not good, then it could be billys body and spirit being used against max to get the upside down open again

-or billy is good, but trapped inside of this malformed upside down shell and is still desperately trying to get free

-voice over could even be the flayer talking to billy through himself like some kind of internal battle shit

-as soon as they think billy is alive, max convinces everyone they have to save him

-steve gets hurt in the upside down -- he changes into eddies jacket

-because maybe eddie has died

-then in set pictures we see a Very billy-esque person wearing STEVES FUCKING OUTFIT

-either billy is saved and steve gives him the change of clothes -- joe was seen wearing a whole DIFFERENT outfit at the same time as dacre/billy lookin dude is wearing joe/steve's

-or billys consciousness is trapped inside of steve somehow

-the maybebilly being in the same clothes means either he projects outside of steve and they talk face to face

-OR steve can only see maybebilly in mirrors, like a reflection (not entirely sold on this one tho)

-also billy might have some kind of connection to the house? or at least someone in his family maybe? (idk that i buy into this either but interesting to see if they somehow pull that off)

#billy hargrove #stranger things #max mayfield #steve harrington #harringrove #someone pls save my boy

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themsource · 3 years ago

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Y'know I have always had a love for Roger Rabbit and the world setup, and seeing the new trailers for Chip N' Dale reminded me of an old WIP idea I had outlined but never got around to writing.

It was called Pixelville.

(Rant Idea below the cut)

A story centered of course on a Sans/Reader concept it was set to take place in modern day several years after the Roger Rabbit movie, but with key elements from the book incorporated into it like speech bubbles and doppelgangers.

You'd have Toontown where all the hand drawn characters lived, Pixelville for videogame originated characters, and finally CGcity for all the movie and TV show original characters resided.

There was the idea of characters being able to adapt abilities granted to them depending on how large thier following was and the shared fanon concept about it. Like Sans having a massive UT fanbase that supports the idea of ecto, he'd be able to form ecto biological parts for exsample. (I was going to include that and he was simply going to find it hilarious) And I thought about AU inclusion and how characters could take on that persona and form at will, heck even use it for when they summoned a dopple!

Anyways, the Chip N' Dale trailer mentioned a CG surgery, and that got my gears turning.

What if the characters could all get One Time surgeries to change thier form? Like a Toon wants to be Pixeled? Or a Pixel Toon'd etc? And then it started giving me thoughts about how CGcity is like the ultra popular spot for peeps to want to live at, but there's decriminalization and requirements like you have to have gotten a movie or TV show deal and had gotten a surgery to make you CG to move there? And like Toontown is legit for the old money OG characters to live at from comic strip/book era, and Pixelville was more of a nuetral area were basically anyone could live, given already that not all residents came originally from videogames but videogames did come from toons and characters?

Anyways, I thought of like Papyrus having moved to CGcity with Undyne, the both of them having been granted a TV workout show and such. Sans being the lazy bumpkin he is was content living in Pixelville with Toriel, Asgore, and Frisk.

Reader was gonna be a cop, the great granddaughter of detective Valiant who was assigned a case around this new drug called Smoke.

Smoke was something that could hypnotize Toons/Piexels/CGs into doing whatever the user wished, all while memory wiping them once the effects wore off and all making them an addict to it. (Yeah an addiction to something they had no memory of, perfect angst) and Reader got assigned this case due to her grandfather's legacy of the great DIP bust of '98, which Reader was going to be bitter about that due to how she disliked Eddie's legacy. (She doesn't like anyone working outside the law which great grandpa did a lot, this was going to slowly be chipped at during the course of the story)

Sans was gonna end up being Reader's "Roger" basically, conviently showing up at unexpected locations (a fanbase ability) Reader just happened to be at until finally Reader accepted that they were for some reason stuck together.

Sans was going to be able to use his voice, (along with all fanbase accents if he wanted) instead of being dependent on speech bubbles - or in the case of pixels of which he is one- text boxes. (He was still gonna use the boxes but Reader was gonna convince him to speak, and lazy him was gonna do his in-game chatter but the meaning would translate for those he wanted understanding him)

It was going to be a slowburn, text boxes instead of turning to dust like speech bubbles were going to glitch out, etc.

I had/have so many thoughts and ideas on it, but my hands are full with so many things right now I just wanted to rant about the concept for a minute. Because IDK if I'll ever get to writing it XD

#undertale #undertale au #Pixelville #Ramble #My eternal wips oh how i mourn the #crossover #roger rabbit #my writing

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universe-in-the-void-in-the-cube · 3 years ago

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Suspicion

Day 7 - 1836

It had been a while since he started with Robin and Emil. It wasn’t hard to convinced them to let him stay since he did an excellent job helping them with their son Agnar, who kept calling him dada. But he didn’t mind. In fact, the 2P Icelander liked it. Much to Emil’s annoyance. The little baby couldn’t help it really. There was two men that looked exactly alike in Agar’s eyes and both of them looked like the man he recognized as his father.

So, Emil couldn’t blame his own son for not knowing the difference between him and his look-a-like by any means. The only true difference was the color of the hair and eyes. Egil’s hair was brown like Robin’s while his was platinum blond and his eyes were violet which Egil’s being red. But even then, it was hard to tell the difference. For all Emil knew, that Egil was really Agnar from the future to time travel to see his parents of some other strange thing.

Robin on the other hand enjoyed Egil’s company. He was kind, charming and very sweet. As well as great with Agnar. It made things easier for her with Egil around. She and Emil were able to get their government work done in half the time and someone was always watching out for Agnar while both of them were busy, even if one of them was working at home. Which tended to be Emil more than anything.

It was during this time that Robin showed him around various important places in her state so Egil would get a good idea what to film and what to avoid. Which helped Egil greatly and he thanked her for helping him out with everything. From helping around the house and taking care of Agnar when her or Emil couldn’t, Egil was a god send.

Or so Egil have them believe. He didn’t think he would luckily be living with them as he did his real work, which was watching Robin and keeping her at bay while the other 2P Nordics did their work for their mysterious benefactor. He would occasionally leave the house to go exploring as he told them, but in reality, he was just going to meet with one the other 2P Nordics to exchange information and such.

He would either say was going out to the bar for a couple drinks or doing various research for the movie if it was during day time. Which they believed and let him do. Egil wasn’t sure if these to were just too stupid to know what was going on right underneath their damned noses or to damn busy to the point to be blinded to the truth. Either way was good enough for Egil.

But as the days passed, Emil started to notice something about Egil, he was getting a little to damn close to Robin for his own good. Something told the 1P Icelander to watch out for this mysterious dopple of his and keep track of anything that might be enough out line. One small move or one wrong proposal for anything of a sexual manner the Egil made toward Robin, Emil would have to put his food to and probably his foot up Egil’s ass too.

And from what Emil have been seeing, that his dopple was to slick and sly to have Robin see. Same with him at first. But some sixth sense kept telling Emil to watch out for Egil. Maybe it was the slowly increasing number of nightmares he had been having as of late. All of which had the same theme of Egil seducing Robin and convincing her to divorce him to only marry Egil and run away with him taking Agnar with them. Each dream worse than the last.

It was to much for Emil to take and he had to do something, so he had to spy on their so-called house guest. He knew Robin wouldn’t forgive him for being such a creeper to Egil, but he was right he would at least have a chance to get rid of his companion. But if he was wrong, he will admit he was an asshole but Emil would rather admit himself being an asshole for being wrong instead of being right.

Emil followed Egil one night to a bar and was watching him as the 2P Icelander made a phone call on his cell. “Here Bernard. Got the goods? Good. I got stuff to tell you and the others. I hope it helps because it is getting to me being at that place.”

‘Bernard? Goods? Stuff to tell the others?’ Emil thought to himself as he over heard Egil at the bar where he was sitting in a booth hiding from his 2P. ‘What the hell is this guy really up too?’

“Yeah, it isn’t Robin or her kid Agnar that is driving me nuts. The kid is wonderful to be around and as for Robin, got I would love to tap that ass. But the only thing standing in my way is that damn blasted 1P of mine. If I could get rid of him, I would have Robin and Agnar all to myself. The dumb ass doesn’t deserve her or the kid. I do!”

Emil’s eyes widened as the pit of his stomach dropped. So, he was right. Egil wanted to get him out of the equation and take his wife and child away from him. But a few things didn’t add for him. Why was Egil calling him his 1P and what was he trying to get from this Bernard guy. He clearly had to find out and soon, because this was getting strange.

“How is Felicia doing? Oh, she did, did she? Good I knew that if I sent her to you, she would get the experience she needed in the film industry. Yeah, I know I am the better actor out of the four siblings, but she is gorgeous and very eager to learn. Even if her first acting jobs in film is being a porn star.” Egil said to Bernard.

Emil almost spit out his Coke when he heard Egil say that. ‘He sent his sister to get a job in acting in the porn industry and this Bernard guy is some sort of smut peddler. Oh god. That is the last thing I want or need Robin and Agnar exposed to. The darker side of the film industry.’

“Oh, really now, he first film debut is her getting her cherry popped by you. Awesome. That would skyrocket her to fame overnight. Especially since the guy doing the deed is the biggest porn star in all of Stockholm Sweden.” Egil said casually to Bernard.

‘I didn’t need to hear that. Not now, especially under these circumstances. My marriage is on the line and here the guy staying with use is BFFs to a damn smut peddler and a porn star. Great.’ He swallowed his soda hard with one galp, ‘My instincts about this guy were right on the money. He is very bad news. I got to find a way to stop him from getting any closer to Robin.’

“Yeah, I will meat you at the overpass next to the park-in-ride on 14th Avenue South East. Yeah, next to Watershed Park. Be there in fifteen minutes, need to take a piss and pay the bill before I go. Okay see ya Bernard.” Egil said as he hung up and kept finishing his drink.

This was more than enough time to motion for the waitress for the bill and pay for it and slip out before Egil spotted him. As soon as Egil left the bar to go to the restroom, Emil sped out to his car, started it up and headed to 14th Avenue South East park-in-ride and hide out in a good place and watch what Egil was going to and figure out who this Bernard guy Egil was talking to on his cell phone was.

He looked around for a good place to hid his car and follow Egil when he did show up to meet Bernard. When he found a space to hide, he stayed there. The first car to show was Egil’s which was good since it would make things easer for Emil to record the interaction between Egil and this Bernard guy. Then a second car came. Soon a very tall looking man that Emil couldn’t recognize, came out of the second car with a briefcase and walked to Egil.

“Heh Bernard.” Egil said shaking Bernard’s hand. “You got the goods?”

“Yeah, I sure do.” Bernard said opening the briefcase. And inside the brief case was money, documents, some kind of cases and a hand gun. “I hope this will help you. Why the hell do you need the gun for?”

“Oh, just to get rid of the competition and to use as a needed threat if needed.” Egil said looking the gun over.

Raising an eyebrow, “You mean Emil? Like Robin will fall in love with you if you hurt, let alone kill her husband.”

Emil swallowed hard. Was Egil that desperate to get Robin that he would go and kill him? ‘Good fucking luck asshole, I am immortal.’ Emil thought to himself.

“No, I mean the other competition. No damn gangs, corrupt politicians or mafia people are going to stop our plans for this world. Especially here. You know damn well that this state is of major significance to our mysterious benefactors plans. If our boss wants them gone, then I am happy to oblige her. As long as I get what I want in the end, I don’t give two shits what happens.”

“Just be careful. What is in the two bags are nasty but delicate things. All the instructions for their use are in the files here.” Bernard said as he saw Egil but the gun back in the briefcase and close it.

“Did the boss lady tell you or the others about what the good do?” Egil had to ask.

Shaking his head Bernard said, “Nope all I was told was to hand them to you and to tell you the instructions for use are in the files. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“I see. Well then. Thanks Bernard and tell Felicia I said hi.” Egil said as he took the briefcase and walked to his car.

“Will do bud, will do.” Bernard said as both men got into their cars and soon left.

Turning off his recoding device from his cell, Emil felt more confused. Egil and this Bernard guy seeing the mafia, corrupted politicians and gangs in Washington state as companion? Strange stuff in bags with instructions for use? And a mysterious female benefactor? What the hell was going on?

“Either I just walked into the Twilight Zone or there is something major going on that the others have to know.” Emil said as he sat in his car and started to think.

#hetalia #hetalia 2p #hetalia nordics #hetalia nordic 5 #hetalia 2p nordics #hetalia 2p nordic 5 #hetalia iceland #hetalia 2p iceland #nanowrimo

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tobeornottotc · 4 years ago

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Small observations about TKEM episode 12: Lim’s weakest bait

Why on earth does Lim think Lee Ji Hun’s mother is a good bait to get Gon to give the flute. It really annoyed me because if that’s all he’s kept her alive for then that makes no sense to me. I just wanted to mention according to my King Arthur analysis with Lim as Arthur, that Mordred is originally meant to be Arthur’s nephew/incestuous son. I thought it was interesting that Arthur had a different relationship with either his half sister or sister in law in some cases. I also found it intriguing that we learn about how Gon’s father and his mother met on the same episode where we see Ji Hun’s mum and her fucked up relationship with Lim. This brings me back to the theory that Lim cannot just be keeping Ji Hun’s mum alive as bait. I think Gon’s perspective on his parents meeting is not fully right because I think Lim also wanted/coveted Gon’s mum just as he coveted the ring.

-This means that he might have convinced him self that he’s keeping Ji Hun’s mother alive because she’s a bait but it’s because he wants her to love him. Remember he goes behind her in episode 1 and chooses her because she laughed at the dismissal of her husband, I can see him if he did love Gon’s mother thinking that he finally has a version of her that’s opposite that’s not his brother’s fan. He told her that her laughing had condemned her for life to him, and I think that’s it, the need to have something else that belonged to his brother. However he didn’t expect her to hate him the way she does, when we watch the episodes, he makes her cook for him, and she acts like a wife to him, gives her money, takes care of her prevents her from dying when he could just have left her in a dungeon if she was just a bait it doesn’t add up to me. He also also seems so frustrated at her self harm not just because she’s acting up but because he cares about her in his own way. That’s why he feels angry at seeing her scars, its not about her being an obstacle but about her hurting her self. That's what’s bothering him, and he hires people to protect her in that way.

-Lim might just want her because he’s lonely, again he has no one on his side that he’s in love with or someone like a maternal figure to take care of him. He might just be lonely and uses Ji Hun’s mother to fill up that void, to pretend he has that whole family dynamic he would have had, had he been like his brother and had the throne. Again, I think this reinforces how much fate is not on Lim’s side but his brother’s, his brother had everything, the perfect wife, the throne and the flute. His twisted way is to take everything his bother had, the love the people had for him (which he does by having people owe him and devote to him), the wife (Ji Hun’s mum who plays that role in his mind) and maybe even the son he never had (Shin Jae or Ji Hun (even though I’m now sure Hun is probably dead because Gon has the lightning scars which I think is caused by deaths of the other dopple ganger in a brutal way), so yeah I think Lim thinks he’s making a new idea of a companionship/family his brother had, by kidnapping and stealing and threatening. That’s why he took Shin Jae and is oddly protective of him (he acts as the son he never had) and he also has the woman he wanted with the same face playing a role as a wife. It’s a fucked-up sense of getting everything he believes his brother took from him. I also think that’s why he had that scene where Shin Jae sees Hun’s mother at the grave site because both are so connected to Lim’s most vulnerable side.

However as mentioned Fate is not on Lim’s side so every single thing he thought he had received by drawing the sword will end up being his downfall just as Arthur’s mistake with Mordred ended up being his downfall, and led to betrayal by those he thought loved him the most.

#tkem #the king eternal monarch #the king: eternal monarch #lee lim #lee gon #lee ji hun #kang shin jae #kim eun sook

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universal-kitty · 5 years ago

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ALRIGHT, Hit me up with your LoZ theories!!

OKAY, this is going to be a MAJOR DOOZY, so hear me out-! Buckle in, get snacks, a drink or two, cause whenever LoZ and I lock eyes, I write like a novelist who’s final draft is due Monday of next week…and it’s Friday.

First off, I’d like to introduce my building block to all of my subsequent theories involving this series: There’s a fourth goddess that would complete the Triforce.

This theory has…typically died out, but I won’t let it. I keep mine alive and kicking, because while most people try to nudge someone else into that empty slot (Goddess of Time, Goddess of Deserts (of the Gerudo), Hylia, etc), there’s a FAR more convincing, prior unknown option… One of darkness.

Four themes are actually more prevalent in LoZ despite threes being the sign of the goddesses and- you would think- be more common compared to fours, but… Hey, there’s a lot to work with when you have four, especially when you look at it from the perspective of the Japanese.

Anyways… Under the cut go the shorthand of my extensive notes.

We’ll start with four, the first basis for this theory I think of a lot: “Four” in Japanese can be read as “shi” [死 ]. This specific reading translates to “death” and is considered an unlucky number. If four goddesses could be unlucky….why not cast out for 3?

Though what’s interesting… I couldn’t find a source for it- so who knows, maybe the guy pulled it outta his ass- but there was a theory video involving Majora’s Mask that mentioned purple often being a color of death in Japan. Again, couldn’t find anything to back that claim up, but…. On the other hand…..

The image above is of the Shadow Medallion from Ocarina of Time. Not only is it in the color purple, but it’s found in the Shadow Temple (a place that seems to reek of death and horrors) and features…an upside down triangle, with three dots around it…… Hmm.

Equally baffling, the Four Poe Sisters from the Forest Temple in the same game. Four over three, again. Also, this is a trend we see repeat in ANY Four Sword adventure… Take a look.

Note how we can see the colors of the four goddesses represented here. Red for Din, of Power. Green for Farore, of Courage. Blue for Nayru, of Wisdom…and purple. The fourth, odd color out.

This is actually ANOTHER issue in Tri-Force Heroes. While on the surface, all Links would be accounted for…. There IS a fourth, forgotten Dopple…. Check it out.

Ditto for Minish Cap; four objects, purple the odd color out. Image link.

It’s suspicious, I tell you.

Four AGAIN shows up in Twilight Princess, wherein there are FOUR guardian Light spirits… Three helped the goddesses, while one was unaccounted for…. I believe this was Ordona, far removed in nearby Ordon Village.

Nintendo tries to state “Ordona” finishes Faron’s name (for Farore), but I personally find THAT a load of bologna.

Though not of four, Purple continues to be an important color in the LoZ franchise… Even when they remove it from the final product. See here, the removed Fairy Doors from Phantom Hourglass (Philos) and the almost-there sixth Lokomo of Shadow… See their art Here (Syda).

A theory persists Bryne might’ve still been the reincarnated “Shadow lokomo”, but it’s only a theory that’s never been confirmed. (Much like the stuff I do.)

As well�� What purpose would there be for the goddesses to create flaws? Who would create Demise? Where did he come from? The darkness, the evil….and all the creatures that bloom from it…?

Having also learned of beings like the Horned Statue and looking more into Malanya (BotW)… There are beings who don’t fit the norm of most “godly” creations, but STILL fit into the role of such “gods.”

(Which, I should note now, I use loosely; as someone else pointed out during my binge-watching, “gods” are probably used in translation of “kami”… Which is more like “god or spirit” in Japanese. Kami are a complicated thing for our mindset of what gods are, but… Essentially, all things have a spirit and are alive. A worship of them can go from “spirit” to “god” as far as translation goes, but….. Y’know.)

I just personally don’t see a bunch of well-intentioned goddesses go a’slippin’ and spill out some evil, especially one as chaotically evil as Demise goes…

So I brought forth the idea of Orona. An exiled fourth goddess of Shadow. Chosen color purple. Creator of Demise and the evil within the hearts of Hyrule.

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Oh, and the bit! About the Horned Statue and Malanya! That’s new!!! Which is what’s really gotten me jazzed about my theories involving LoZ… I just keep feeling like Nintendo is unintentionally validating me, even though it’d be a game-changer and probably would work TOO WELL for ending the series… Which is the last thing Nintendo would want to do.

….I mean, not that it’s going to stop me any. I can write out how my version of the series could end as Nintendo keeps making money and I keep giving it to them, too, LMAOOO. To be fair to them, don’t fix what ain’t broken….and I’ll sure keep buying Pokemon and Legend of Zelda long as the series keeps living up to the core of what they’ve always been, y’know?

Anyways, wanna drop one more theory on ya before I set you free. :3c

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So… Remember Groose? Skyward Sword? Red hair, kinda tanned skin, golden eyes? Wanted the girl, lost out to MC, grew enough by that time that he wasn’t bitter about it, and flew off with friends to go be cool somewhere else?

Yeah, that guy. So…. Here me out.

Groose got cursed by Demise, too. It wasn’t ONLY Zelda/Hylia and Link who were dragged down into the reincarnation cycle.

Hear me out… Most people have made a fair guess that- by endgame- Groose and Co. flew off in the way of Lanayru Desert. (Once a populous ocean and with green fields… I’d joke about it being a downgrade, but I live in a desert, too, so… FML.) This location- deserts, specifically- have been KNOWN for housing the Gerudo race.

Now…. Please look at Groose compared to an OoT Gerudo.

They might not be the most similar people in existence….but you try to tell ME that a few who-knows-how-many-generations later, his kids could VERY WELL end up becoming the Gerudo race.

(Also not a flattering picture, but I don’t have a lot to work with premade…and I currently don’t have the ability to make one of these on my own.)

So what am I getting at? Groose was cursed to have his descendants bear his new host.

Theory goes like this: Groose is cursed. Never knows of it. He has kids normally… They have kids normally….for a few generations. As time goes on, more women are born, less men. Until no boys are born, only little girls who resemble their mothers. It never ceases.

Until the day the first boy in thousands of years is born. He is hailed a king of their people, in honor of such a rare, undocumented occasion.

Ganondorf, they name him. Unknowing that within the boy, is a demon, waiting for his time. Ganondorf shall grow up with a hatred unmatched, nobody will know why, but the goddesses will. They will do nothing unless called down with might.

Unwittingly, Groose continues a line of a people scorned nearly always by Hyrule, who’s king is ALWAYS destined to lose himself to the madness of the darkness that consumes his very being.

EDIT: BEFORE I FORGET, I also think it’s very telling of BotW to say there’s “not been another male Gerudo since the King who became the Calamity” that’s very HMM, isn’t it?? (Reference: Creating a Champion / Master Works)

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My name is Aki, and I stan the LoZ franchise because I rebuilt it with my bare hands, how’ya doin’?

#thekingaboo #Aki answers #Legend of Zelda #idgaf if I put it in main tags #I fuss over this theory year by year #least I could do is have the bravery to put it in the main tags!!!!#anyways feel free to tell me whatcha think #cause OOP I'M STILL OBSESSED

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parasite-core · 3 years ago

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Note: sorry for the formatting, I posted this on Twitter first.

We had our first Strange Aeons session tonight. We started in media res, in a nightmare city being attacked and picked off one by one by a terrifying man we couldn’t escape. When the last member was going to die we snapped awake in reality

We were in cells and a doppelgänger was dissecting a still living person who was yelling for us to wake up, which is what finally woke our elf psychic friend from the nightmare as he was killed. Our dhampir paladin thought fast and started making a racket, luring over the doppelgänger, who turned into him and started telling him off, saying ‘he’d have his turn’. The victim got his foot loose and kicked the warden, knocking it into the paladin’s cell bars. Paladin grabbed the warden and started bludgeoning it against the bars. It was still alive.

Our oriad inquisitor used magic stone on some rocks in the cell she and my changeling cleric were in and then had the psychic throw them at the warden. Miss. The victim kicked the warden again, and its keys slid across the room towards the psychic.

Our inquisitor had better luck throwing her own stone, and killed the warden, while the cleric healed the victim—who the warden had knocked unconscious in retaliation—with channel energy. The victim introduced himself as an orderly of Briarwood Asylum named Camprey.

The rest of us couldn’t remember our names, so we ended up giving each other nicknames for the time being. The paladin is a Sarenrite so his name is Sun, the oriad inquisitor is Slate because rocks and a ‘clean slate’, the psychic is Noble because he thinks he’s nobility, or Fancy Lad because he chose to spend too much money on a royal outfit and we are not going to stop making fun of him for his pantaloons, and the cleric is Star because he’s a Desnan.

Each of us also had a random item connected to our past in our inventory as well that we know nothing about its significance yet. Sun has a feather quill, Noble has a bundle of sticks with a pink ribbon tied around it, and I forget what Slate had, and Star has a fucking *golden crown* worth 500 gp for some unknown reason.

So that’s a thing. He’s trying to convince himself it’s a prop. Bc in his mind the alternatives are he’s royalty, which he doesn’t want (or at least doesn’t think he wants given that he has amnesia and doesn’t remember anything) or he’s the sort of egomaniac who believes he should be royalty.

Anyways we made it out of the basement by climbing a mountain of corpses. This is not a metaphor. We met some survivors, who wouldn’t trust that we weren’t more doppelgängers unless we brought them 3 doppelgänger corpses of ones we’d slain as proof we were on the level.

So we went dopple hunting. Instead we found giant rats and a tentacle thing that bit Slate, and giant centipedes that poisoned Star. Then we found a ‘poor helpless injured woman’. Who of course with a detect evil pinged immediately and we knew it as a dopple.

Slate and Sun managed to get in close without getting mindread, so they managed to get the jump on it. Despite this, it critically injured Sun, leaving Star to run healing duty while the others tried to wail on it enough to kill it before it could kill our new friend. And we did.

We dealt with a haunt, then decided to rest for the night. Sun and Noble decided to go negotiate with the survivors for rations. Star had some, but he was the only one who did, so we’d be using them all in a single day if we relied on them.

Slate retrieved the dopple body from the basement and Sun and Noble brought the two bodies we had to the survivors to show our progress as a sign of good faith. They managed to trade a winter blanket for a night’s worth of rations for all four of us.

Camprey was being taken care of, so he didn’t need rations. He was camping out just outside the survivors’ encampment, where they could keep an eye on him but he didn’t have to go anywhere dangerous with us. They had willingly shared some food with him, albeit bare minimum.

We bunkered down in the place we felt we could best fortify and kept watch. That night we had another nightmare. We were not together this time. Still in the nightmare city, that yellow fog all around.

We ran, until we saw a building collapse, and saw a room, one too small for the building it took up. Inside was an old woman. She told us to seek the Doctor’s Tome, which would have the answers we were seeking.

The next day we continued our hunt for doppelgängers. Instead, we found a hanged ghoul trying to eat a man with aphasia. We killed the ghoul and unchained the man. He managed to mime to us that there were more ghouls in the next chamber.

We entered the next chamber. There was a curtain covering half of the room, and on the other side the silhouette of a doppelgänger. There were noises coming from a nearby vat, and a dead body on a nearby table.

Sun entered the room and used detect evil aimed towards the silhouette. As he suspected—there was nothing there. Instead, the body on the table pinged. The body that was directly next to him when he did that. The body which was a dopple mesmerist which got up and attacked.

While Sun dealt with the mesmerist, Slate was checking the vat. Which it turned out was where the promised ghoul was being kept. Slate and Star put the starving suffering thing to rest.

The ghoul’s final words were to Slate and to the Grey Lady. We found a Pharasman Phalactary of Faithfulness in the room so we think it was his before he turned and he was a fellow Pharasma worshipper.

Sun was getting pretty badly hurt again, so Star went to help him, but rolled like crap on his cure light wounds, so once again offense was the best defense to keep our favorite paladin alive.

Now we had the promised 3 bodies, so we returned to the survivors to see if they could tell us more about what the HELL was going on. The survivors were impressed and took us to their leader, another changeling named Winter.

Winter told us about how there had been a revolt amongst the patients and staff, who formed a cult around a man named Olver Zendalas. We’d already heard a little of this because we’d gotten into an argument with the guards up front about the man we’d saved from the ghoul

Apparently he’d been part of the cult. However we were 100% positive at this point he was harmless and just desperate for safety, so we convinced them to let him in. Winter explained that around the time of the revolt a yellow fog rolled in surrounding the island the asylum was on. They saw things moving in the fog, including the nightmare man we’d seen. Everyone had seen him in their nightmares. But the temple was safe, it had Desna’s protection, so we didn’t have to worry about nightmares there.

Also people who went to sleep outside of the temple sometimes didn’t wake up right. Some woke up as ghouls, or as doppelgängers, or as some other twisted monstrosity from the fog. So we’re definitely resting in the temple from now on, thank Desna.

We did some tasks around the camp to help out. Star healed a few people—a woman who’d been crushed by a fallen wall and a child who’d been bitten by another patient. Slate ‘chopped’ firewood by smashing pieces of wooden furniture, wooden beams, etc. with her morningstar.

And also navigated a young adult attempting to ask her out over her feat of strength awkwardly. Sun and Noble helped calm a patient who was having hallucinations and who didn’t want to take his medication. Noble talked him into letting him use his sleep spell on him so that he could get some rest and maybe have a pleasant dream for once. In the meantime he placed the suggestion that the orderly working with him cared about his well-being and that he should work with her and be more open to taking his medication through his dreams.

Depending on your opinions, that tells you about Noble’s skill set. Have I mentioned that Noble is evil aligned? Lawful evil. Right now he’s doing good things for the wrong reasons essentially. He’s helping because it gets him closer to being out of this nightmare too.

After all this we reconvened and together cooked an absolutely delicious meal for the encampment using the meager supplies they had, raising morale significantly and becoming quite a bit more popular with everyone, thanks to a nat 20 from Noble and high rolls all around.

We spent some time talking to some of the guards and some of the patients who had shared a floor with us, trying to learn more about ourselves. We didn’t get much. We were all brought in together by the head of the asylum personally, and she seemed very excited about us.

We were catatonic, unresponsive. Star was making his butterfly symbol with his hands the entire time. Sun’s mouth was hanging open and he was drooling and his eyes were blown wide. Slate looked like she was in a constant state of meditation. And Noble was twitching and muttering.

Sun was utterly shaken by the description of his state, believing it meant he’d fed on someone and he doesn’t remember it.

The party was pulled aside by Winter to discuss their next steps. She told them about what was behind the curtain, an eye with a mouth in it. She told us that every time someone had tried to harm it, it had screamed so loudly it could be heard at the chapel and beyond.

This upset the children and some patients, so she asked that if possible we find a solution to it that didn’t involve resorting to anything that would cause it to scream like that. We agreed we’d do our best.

Winter kindly checked up on our health and found two of us had contracted filth fever from the mountain of corpses, so she gave us potions of remove disease to cure that, and also used lesser restoration to cure Star’s ability damage from the centipede poison.

After that we began to wind down for the night. Sun went off to be alone to pray to Sarenrae, begging her to know that he didn’t feed on anyone on purpose, that he’d never do that. While praying he smelled the scent of dawnflowers, and it brought back a memory.

He remembered holding out a bundle of dawnflowers to someone—someone he loved—saying he hoped she liked them. In a broken voice he simply said “I loved someone” as he remembered. Now he was afraid this person might be who he fed on, if he did. He cried at the alter.

In the main chapel, Star was praying to Desna. He felt something dark was hanging over them. Like they had done something wrong, something they didn’t remember now. But he was going to set things right.

He swore to her, here and now, that he was going to rid this island of its nightmares. Speaking of nightmares however, Noble went to pray to his patron, Alazhra—a night hag who ascended to godhood.

He went into the chaplain’s personal shrine and blew out the candles, pulling out his unholy symbol and praying to his goddess to try to understand why she had him here on the side of the people working against the nightmares.

When he went to relight the candles, he got a sense of vertigo and that feeling of suddenly falling you sometimes get when you’re falling asleep. And suddenly he was in that foggy city. Because he wasn’t in the temple proper. He wasn’t protected.

He had to keep running, even though it felt like he’d been running for days, because if he stopped the creatures would surely get him.

And then he ran headfirst into a man. A man covered in yellow paint, like the cultist we’d rescued. He pushed past Noble and kept running, but Noble caught him talking. He asked ‘what have I done’ and spoke of how doomed everything was.

Then Noble woke up back in the chaplain’s shrine, where he’d dozed off. He quickly relit the candles and rushed out, where it appeared no time had passed despite it having felt like he’d been running for days.

Noble bedded down for the night and hesitantly glanced at Desna’s shrine for just a moment before going to sleep.

We leveled up, and with it regained some small memories. We’ve been getting little memories here and there triggered by certain smells, like the one Sun got, and also get memories related to one of our skills we level up each level as we remember how to do more.

While cooking the day before Star remembered being made his favorite pumpkin pie, being given the first slice as a child ‘because he was the specialest boy’. Autumn leaves had made Noble remember jumping into a pile of leaves as a child.

I feel like Slate’s had to do with her first day as an inquisitor of Pharasma but I can’t remember for sure.

Then when leveling Star remembered having to watch his back while alone in the woods, because he realized no one else would. But that was okay, because it was his choice to be there.

Sun’s was him cooking meals the person he cared for liked in the place he called home. Noble’s was just him studying. I didn’t catch Slate’s

(It’s nothing personal to Slate that I missed a lot about her, due to where the GM and her player were sitting, when they talked one-on-one the GM was facing away from me so I sometimes missed parts of their conversations)

Once we woke up we headed out to deal with the eyebite door. Which was easier than it looked. The eye was crying and asking “What have I become?” We spent some time thinking in circles before being offered a wisdom check, which we succeeded to realize we should look through our inventory to see if we have an item that might be of use. We realized we had a hand mirror we’d found. We held it up to the eye, which immediately imploded in on itself, leaving an opening where the door had once been.

And that’s where we left off, about to enter the other half of the asylum—and whatever horrors await us there.

#pathfinder #strange aeons #Ileark Keita #there was also an opening and closing bookend #of a detective tracking us down #whose story we’re ‘reading’#the Detective’s attitude is meant to be very Series of Unfortunate Events narrator and it shows #PF weekly

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idreamtofmanderleyagain · 7 years ago

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A post ep 16 Twin Peaks theory:

it's occurring very strongly to me now that maybe “Billy” is code for Cooper in some way. To everyone, Cooper has been missing, just as Billy has. Audrey is obsessive about finding Billy, she professes that she loves him and not her husband, she's convinced that something is terribly wrong with Billy. Other people in the Roadhouse who make reference to Billy mention that he's missing and that last he was seen, he was violent and otherworldly.

And yet we have never seen Billy, we have no idea who he even is outside of people’s conversations about his absence. The Roadhouse is in some way connected to Audrey, and pretty much every interaction in it feels rather suspect?

If Audrey realized long ago that Dopple!Coop wasn’t the real Cooper (...and I don’t want to get into any discussions regarding any interaction Dopple!Coop may have had with Audrey, I’m not at all ready to tackle the subject of Richard tbh, so lets just leave how she had that discovery ambiguous for now), it would make sense that - wherever she is and whatever has placed her in this mental state - the illusions she’s seeing are translating her distress into the narrative it’s built around her. How long has she been going through the “I have to find Billy!” struggle, if that’s the case?

Did she go into the Lodges to find the good Cooper? Did she sign a “contract” with some entity that is embodied in Charlie? Is she in that ominously mentioned “nuthouse,” placed there by her family after she started ranting about how she knew that Dopple!Coop wasn’t the real Cooper, and Charlie is her “Doctor?” If THAT’S the case, I wonder about what the “nuthouse” really is?

Also, the tattooed symbol on her left arm suggests that she’s part of some even bigger narrative; I wonder if Audrey is in fact the “Dreamer” mentioned in Gordon’s dream? I also wonder how much of her dream has been effected by the real world, and how much of the real world is effected by her dream?

#twin peaks spoilers #twin peaks ep 16 spoilers #audrey horne

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zippdementia · 8 years ago

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Part 11 Alignment May Vary: Undying

Today’s post is part 11 of an ongoing series detailing the converted 3.5 campaign of Tomb of Haggemoth into a 5th edition romp. In this post, the three players go on an adventure of my own creation, giving them the opportunity to level and to add some length to the main campaign.

First of all, a shout out this session to Rock, Paper, Wizard, a welcome oddity among D&D licensed board games. We played it before our session and it is a blast. Quick, active, and hilarious—the point of the game is to have your token be at the front of a small linear board by the end of the round (because you get more gold that way). To acomplish this, spells from D&D are dealt below the board (Burning Hands, Fireball, Charm Person, and the like). Each spell does some combination of advancing yourself, pushing another player, or stealing gold from another player. Each one also has an accompanying unique hand shape, like making horns with your pinkie and forefinger, or a circle with your thumb and forefinger, or a fist. Every player reviews the spells, secretly decides which one to use and on which player, and then you call out “ROCK PAPER WIZARDS!” On Wizards, everyone makes the hand gesture of their spell at the player of their choice, and then going around the table in turn order the spells are resolved.

The resolution of spells often leads to hilarity, as some of them do fun things like reverse your target’s spell back on themselves (this is how I fireballed myself in the face second round). Others might pivot the spell clockwise, or affect the people on either side of you. Also fun is that if two people use the same spell on each other, the power of their magic explodes and turns into Wild Magic—mechanically, giving them both random spells from the deck.

A game takes about 20 minutes to learn and play, plays up to six players, is simple enough that anyone can pick it up, and is a great pre-session warm up to get everyone in the mood for hanging out.

House of Horrors

Last we left our adventurers, they had followed a distressed woman to a mansion on an otherwise deserted island, only to witness the death of her husband as he expires with a final cryptic message: “You cannot leave!” The man is holding a teddy bear that draws some suspicion because it seems so out of place, but when Abenthy uses his Aasimir powers to detect demons, undead, or aberations he picks up on nothing abnormal about it.

This is the beginning of a one-shot adventure I came up with for this session, and which I’m planning to put onto DriveThru RPG, once I write it up and PDF it. I was inspired by a monster called the “Treacle” in Kobold Press’ Tome of Beasts—which is an amazing product well worth the $30 for any D&D DM—though I redesigned the monster extensively for my adventure.

This is a good example of how a single monster can be a great inspiration for an entire adventure. Read the monster manuals you have and pick a monster that piques your interest. Really delve into it—one of the benefits of modern gaming is the internet as a research tool. Many D&D monsters have been aroud for multiple generations of the game and you can learn a lot about them online. Just a single interesting detail might become the basis for an entire adventure, like how the Treacle is supposed to split in two after it eats enough, and how its most frightening targets are when it becomes a toy and drains the life from children...

The background is that fifteen years ago, a brilliant inventor, Franke LaCroix, took his wife, Maria, their two twin boys, Marcus and Tom, and baby girl Olivia, and moved them away from what he called the “taint” of Waterdeep out to a deserted island, where he built a manor to be self sufficient. He raised goats, hunted in the forest, and cultivated crops. He kept inventing—most of his inventions practical to make the running of the manor easier (such as special fertilizer to keep his crops healthy and needing little care) but some of them more playful (such as a recording device much like a video camera and accompanying projector). Overal, He and his family settled into a life free of the concerns and dangers of modern society.

He also studied spores and molds and fungi, of which there were several interesting varieties on the island. He became obsessed with one in particular, which seemed to be semi-intelligent, or at least responsive, and able to shift into several simple shapes. He kept this sample, which he labeled the “Dopple-Ooze”, in his workshop in the mansion he had built for his family.

And that was his first mistake.

The Dopple-Ooze proved to be a more malevont hunter than Franke had expected. It made its way from the workshop to the nearest bedroom, which was Olivia’s, and took the form of a teddy bear, which she snuggled into bed with. Having made contact with her skin, it sapped her strength and blood until she was an empty husk.

When Franke found out what had happened, a piece of his mind broke. He captured the Dopple-Ooze and locked it in Olivia’s room, using a combination of magic and technology to keep it there, semi-dormant. Under normal circumstances, the Dopple-Ooze would split into two after feeding. This was its normal “breeding” pattern. But Franke kept it from doing this, convinced that somewhere inside its limited intelligence was kept the memory and soul of his daughter.

Weeks went by, and again the ooze found a way to escape, calling out in Olivia’s voice to her mother, Maria, and then laying with the grieving mother while she slept her last sleep. With his wife and daughter now both consumed by the creature, Franke’s mind snapped and his plan changed. He gathered up the twins and fed them into the creature. Then, desperate to rejoin his family, he offered himself to the Dopple-Ooze.

It rejected him.

Perhaps some memory of his family did linger in the ooze, or perhaps it recognized its captor and was getting back at him. Regardless, the next several weeks Franke found himself the target of vicious taunts from the creature, as it took more and more the form of his family, calling out to him, but never devouring him. Never accepting so much as a drop of his blood. Franke kept the door to Olivia’s room locked, but it didn’t seem to matter. The Ooze seemed able to manifest through the walls of the home. Eventually Franke confined himself to his workshop and lost all motivation to live. He fell into malnutrition and sickness, and eventually passed, alone.

The Ooze remained, in a semi-dormant state, until a hunter came to the island to poach the pelts of the Displacer Beasts that lived in its forests. He went looking for pelts, but instead found Maria, who lured him back to the mansion under guise of being a lonely widow, and then trapped him in the house and (along with her twins, all representations of the Ooze) bled him dry. The man did not last long, and soon the Ooze was hungry again.

The second “guest” to arrive was an explorer and his crew. This time, the Ooze was slower, trapping the men in the walls of the house (which the Ooze was able to infect) and bleeding them almost to death, before releasing them, nourishing them back to health with the bounty still being produced by Franke’s inventions, and then doing the process again until finally they all expired from the strain. Their bones still line the walls of the twins’ room.

This baiting has gone on for over five years, and the house has become one entity controlled by the Ooze to the point where it can block doors and windows and control the forms of Maria and the Twins enough to tend the land and the animals to feed its “guests.” Most recently, it attracted a shipwrecked sailor and fed on him for six weeks, finally letting him die the night my players arrive at the house. They believe they are witnessing the death of Maria’s husband, Franke LaCroix, when really they are witnessing the death of the house’s latest victim.

Whispers of Fear

Abenthy knelt by the bed and began to pray. Twyin walked over to Maria and offered her a gentle embrace. “My lady, I am so sorry for your loss. Words cannot express the sorrow that fills my heart for you. If there is something I can do to ease your pain, but name it and it is done.”

“May Tyr watch over his soul on his journey,” Abenthy murmured, from his place at the foot of the bed, head bent in supplication.

“What am I to do?” Maria sobbed. “The children... what is to become of them? Of us? The fields and the goats, the hunting—this was all Franke’s work. I do not know how to operate his machines or tend to his gardens. We have enough set aside for a time, but...” she trailed off.

“... and may he find his way into your light, oh lord of justice...”

“You will come with us,” Twyin said. “We will set you at any port.”

“And then what?” Maria asked. “What do you propose we do next to care for ourselves?”

“I... I do not know, but we will figure out something.”

“... think well on his deeds, and judge him not only for all the good he did, but for all the good left undone.” Abenthy rose, as Maria moved away from Twyin.

“Supper,” she said suddenly. “The twins must eat. And so must you all. Yes, I’ll prepare our supper. Just like normal.” In a daze, she wandered off downstairs.

“Well that was awkward,” Karrina mumbled.

Though trusting of Maria and the twins, my players realize several things are wrong with the house while supper is being prepared. Twyin finds a locked door to the West Wing, underneaht the main foyer. When he tries to open it, it bangs and rattles in the door frame, and he hears a heavy moaning come from somewhere behind it.

Abenthy, meanwhile, helps Maria prepare supper, and discovers some of the history of her husband’s illness and a lot of the backstory that I described earlier (of course, stopping before any mention of the ooze is made). Olivia is conspiciously absent from this story, conspicious because while Abenthy is hearing this, Karrina finds the mansion’s study, where a large painting of the LaCroix family hangs. In the picture is Maria and the Twins, and Maria is holding a baby. Also, Karrina notices that the man in the picture looks very little like the man they saw die upstairs.

Supper is a quick affair, and afterwards Maria shows them to their assigned rooms (it is too dark to make their way down the spire tonight and besides there are displacer beasts out there). Karrina and Abenthy are shown to one room, and Twyin to another—though, after Maria leaves them, Abenthy forces Twyin to “do the gentlemanly thing” and sleep in his room, giving Karrina her own. Karrina is only halfway grateful, as the house has her seriously spooked, and this room is full of old toys Franke made for his children. The party agrees to sleep for a few hours, to stave off their exhaustion, and then to sneak into the sick room and get a closer look at the dead “husband.”

In the middle of the night, Maria comes looking for Twyin under the guise of desperately needing companionship. She wears naught but an open robe, come prepared to seduce him and be taken into his bed. Of course, what she really wants is to be taken into his bed so she can make direct skin contact and start bleeding him (1d8 necrotic damage to hit point maximum every hour), but Twyin traded beds with Karrina... so she crawls into bed with her instead.

Both Karrina and Maria are startled by each other, but Maria plays to Karrina’s sympathy and the Tiefling agrees to let this human girl (or so she thinks) sleep in the same bed with her—minus the seduction and aftermath. Maria doesn’t care: she doesn’t need sex, she just needs touch.

Meanwhile, Twyin wakes up suddenly, feeling something moving at the foot of his bed. He sees a dark shape there and leaps from the bed, turning on the lamp. He sees nothing out of the ordinairy... until he notices the teddy bear at the foot of the bed.

Wholely freaked out now, Twyin wakes Abenthy (”What? Is it time?”) and tells him: “That teddy bear was moving.” Cue long pause. “Are you feeling okay?” Abenthy asks.

Long story short, the two eventually decide that, whatever is going on, they aren’t going to be able to get much more sleep right now. So Abenthy gets his armor on, while Twyin goes to wake Karrina. He opens the door to see the mostly naked Maria wrapped around Karrina, spooning her. He takes a good eyefull before coughing politely and waking the two women up.

“Goddamit,” Karrina says, when she realizes who it is and what he has seen. Maria blushes and quickly covers herself. Twyin’s smirk died on his lips though, when he saw something glistening on Karrina’s chest.

“Is that... blood?” he asked.

Karrina, startled, rubbed a finger across her chest. No wound, but yes, that was blood. Fear took her as she remembered the man in the other room had died from some kind of sickness. Was it contagious? Why had they decided to stay in a plague-ridden mansion?

Before she could contemplate or regret further, they all heard a scream coming from down the hall.

“That’s Marcus!” Maria said, and turned deathly pale.

The point of this set up, as a game designer, was to give the setting some weight. We didn’t spend a lot of time on supper or exploring the house, maybe twenty minutes between the two, and a lot of this action was driven by the players, like deciding what to do before supper. It let them settle into the environment and become uncomfortable with the situation. The trick with a slower set up, esepcially a horror set up, is to give the players a mixture of “things to steer the action on” and “things to react to.” The first (examples: what rooms to explore, letting them steer conversations, giving them time away from the NPCs to discuss plans and change things, like what rooms to sleep in) is important because it keeps the setting from feeling like a tour of a bunch of pre-planned encounters and jump scares. The second (example: Maria coming into Karrina’s room, the banging door, the scream from the twins room) makes them feel like they are in the middle of something bigger than them and keeps the action moving forward.

Speaking of which...

Twin Trouble

Twyin did not waste time grabbing his armor. He ran from Karrina’s room down the hall, grabbing Abenthy on his way as the lithe Paladin entered the hall. The two burst into the twin’s room, Maria and Karrina not far behind them.

“Oh gods,” Maria said in a shocked whisper.

Twyin had to agree with her sentiment. The room ahead of them was lined with bones. They were in the walls, the remains of bodies in twisted positions. The lamps in here flickered on and off, casting disturbing shadows that made the bones look like they were moving, reaching for the interlopers at the door.

“Help me!” Marcus’ thin voice cried out.

The child was halfway in the wall between his and his brother’s bed, his arms flailing madly as he fought to pull himself free. Behind him, the wall was a mass of angry scars and pustules, and his screams spoke to something horrible happening to his lower half, already embedded in the wall.

Abenthy ran forward and grabbed the child’s arms. “Help me pull him free!” he called. Twyin was quick to respond, leaping onto one of the beds and getting a grip on the child’s arm.

In response, Marcus grinned at Twyin, wrapped his child arms around him, and buried his teeth in Twyin’s throat. Twyin yelled in surprise and fear. Karrina moved forward to help but then felt cold hands wrapping around her throat as Maria grabbed her from behind.

A small giggle came from another wall as Tom emerged into the room, pulling free of a stack of bones in the wall. He ran at Abenthy, and leaped onto the warrior’s back, seeking a place he could bury his fangs.

These three are the main baddies in the house. Maria is the easiest of the three, basically a weaker doppleganger. Her main point is to (a) trick the person whose bed she sneaks into, lowering their max hit points. In another scenario, the party might have slept a lot longer, but as our group decided to set a wake up call at around 3:00am to explore the house more, she only drained about 10 hit points from Karrina. After that, she simply exists to make the twins more difficult.

The twins are no joke. They have two main attacks. One is to try and latch onto a person with bite. If successful, it turns into an automatic grapple while they suck the life and strength out of the victim. But worse, they then try to drag that victim into the wall, where the escape DC becomes much higher, and their AC becomes higher. Also, the damage done each round while an opponent is grappled is automatic max hit point drain. It is a low die roll, a 1d4, but it adds up quickly. Twyin drops his hit point maximum by nearly half by the time combat is over!

Their other attack is a multi-attack swipe, which doesn’t do life drain like the bite, but which is heavy enough damage to keep party members distracted fighting them instead of helping their friend getting pulled into the wall.

The party plays against them perfectly. Abenthy lets himself take the brunt of Tom’s attacks, because his 19 AC is tough to break through. Karrina turtles up, too, using her arcane skills to cast Blade Ward and keep Maria occupied (and ineffective). Twyin takes the brunt of the hurt in this fight, as his arm is stuck in the wall and slowly being stripped of its flesh by Marcus, while he struggles to break free. But once he is free, he unleashes his dual weilding forces upon the wall where Marcus is hidden, until both twins flee.

Maria isn’t so lucky. One of the joys of this fight is that Abenthy refuses to attack the children with anything other than non-lethal damage, which does nothing to an these oozes. He simply can’t bring himself to harm children. But when Twyin chops Maria’s head off and it continues to scream at them despite hanging upside down from her neck, he finally presses the attack and chops her in half, sending her sprawling into the hallway in a bloody heap.

I wanted this house to feel less like a dungeon and more like an environment, so I moved away from the idea of filling certain rooms with certain encounters and opted instead to build a “creature” that could roam the environment, being fought in multiple locations. Thus, the twins ability to move through the walls. Doing something like this occasionally in your own game can keep dungeons from feeling too simliar to one another, and it works especially well in horror settings, where the focus might be better placed on a singular monster or two, rather than on a dungeon crawl.

The twins continue to haunt the players as they move through the mansion, throwing Karrina off the foyer to the entrance hall 20 feet below, and trying to pull Abenthy into a door frame. Finally, they have a last confrontation in the dining room, where Tom rushes Abenthy with butcher knives, and Marcus tries to absorb Karinna into a wall (he fails, as she does a barrel roll... no really, she barrel rolls over the dining room table to get away). This is where the twins are finally cut down.

Abenthy looked at the ruin of the child that had once been Tom. Your blades did this, he thought to himself. You brought this one’s life to an end. Even though he knew that this creature was no longer Tom, nor a child, and had likely not been for many a moon, he still could not get the image of cleaving a child in half out of his head. Was there nothing he could have done to save him? Was there nothing he could do now? A thought began to form in his head, and Abenthy knelt close to the body...

So Abenthy, who has roleplayed his character’s justice flaw so well, gained a minor madness here as he cut down what looked like a young child. I rolled on the random madness chart in the DMG and got “you feel compelled right now to eat something.” Abenthy and I looked at each other. “You start eating the child,” I said. “You believe you can take his soul into your own body this way and deliver him unto Tyr.”

And so things get gross for a moment.

The West Wing

With the Twins defeat, the door to the West Wing flies off its hinges and opens up the way to the rest of the “dungeon.” I’ve talked in previous blogs how I think a good adventure should have a mixture of four different kinds of obstacles:

Social obstacles, in which players have to interact and roleplay with NPCs, usually trying to get something from them, whether help, directions, or an item.

Skill obstacles, in which players have to use their skills and ability scores to bypass barriers or make something easier (jumping over a chasm, climbing up a tower, finding the secret door behind a bureau, beating the pirate king in a game of chance in exchange for his help).

Combat obstacles, in which players use their stats, spells, and abilites to overcome monsters and other enemies in combative situations.

Puzzle obstacles, in which players have to use their own minds to figure out how to beat an obstacle (solve a riddle, figure out a way past a trap, figure out where a hidden key might be).

So far, the adventure has started out with a nice dose of social obstacles, and then led into a long section of combat. Now I bring the focus to puzzles. Past the locked door are two rooms: Franke’s workshop (where his dessicated body still lies, untouched by the ooze) and Olivia’s room. The latter is locked (and is the location of the final encounter). The former hides the key to her room. The recording device I mentioned earlier is here, and by searching the room the players find the gems that activate the device and hold the recordings. From this, they learn the true history of Franke and his family tragedy as described before. They also find a ring which makes them look like Olivia. Disturbingly, Franke had used this ring to make himself look like his daughter, then record himself talking to himself as her. Later, when he would play back these recordings, he could pretend Olivia was alive and speaking to him, a mental mindscrew that speaks to just how far gone he was. His video says as much:

My mind is going... I’ve been putting things in the wrong place... I can’t remember one day to the next. I wish to rejoin my family...

Franke’s message here is a clue. Above the worktable is a shelf holding four jars. One holds a key—but it is a red herring. It unlocks nothing. The real key is hidden “in the wrong place,” inside a jar containing brown mold. In previous messages, they have seen him put the key away on this shelf, and say it is important, which does trigger Karrina to wonder if there is something to the other jars—but it isn’t enough.

My players figure it out eventually, and also find a way to destroy the brown mold and get to the key, but it takes some prodding and first they try pretty much everything else—searching the whole hosue for the key, attempting to pick the lock and break down the door... and this is after they’ve already gotten all of the clues to the puzzle. This leads me to believe that the riddle might be a bit obtuse—I think in the final version of this adventure I will change this and add in a skill based option to bypass it. Maybe a loose panel somewhere that leads into Olivia’s room through the woodwork—that could be freaky and also explain how the Ooze escaped from the room in the first place.

In any case, inside the room is the final boss, a creature that resembles a giant teddy bear dripping with ooze and pus (if you’ve seen Akira, you know my inspiration). It has Ogre stats, making it an easy to hit heavy hitter. In addition, it can try to grapple on a hit, and if successful forces a single character inside itself, pressing them into its gut where the ooze traps them, removing them from combat until they can break free. It also reduces damage against him by half, dealing half of it to the trapped character.

The idea in designing this fight was to create a monster that wasn’t too hard on its own, but would get harder depending on how much life the players had lost in the previous sections of the house. The beast can hit pretty solidly, possibly killing a character whose life has been drained to leave him with only a dozen or so hit points.

My players actually don’t have much problem with this fight, and I think I will ultimately toughen it up a bit in the final version, maybe adding a “Maria” or two to the room as well, to force players to split their attentions, or giving him a multi-attack to let him at least target multiple characters and try his grapple more than once. Twyin, in particular, makes this combat a breeze, trapping the teddy in a corner and going to town on it with his multiple attacks and special abilities. As a battlemaster he has acces to parry, which reduces damage by 1d8. He uses this to immense effect, saving himself from death dealing blows twice.

I’ll talk a little more next session about designing fights and monsters in D&D 5th Edition.

After this, there is not much else to tell. The players escape the house as it collapses, the ooze having infiltrated most of its structure and dying when its central brain was destroyed in the final shape it took. They eventually make their way back to the boat, where Krisp tells them they missed a rockin’ beach party last night, and that the repairs are done and they will reach the oracle’s island within a couple of days.

Everyone is now level 4. Karrina resolves her flaw, too! It used to be that she was racist against humans, but her time spent amongst them in the last month—not to mention having her past companions sacrifice themselves so that she might live—has changed her perspective. She realized this fully when she was willing to comfort Maria when the woman came to her in the middle of the night, claiming she felt so alone in the room she used to share with her late husband.

Karinna’s new flaw is a tendency to perform acrobatics in the heat of combat. Her natural arrogance has increased as she has survived more deadly encounters and now she is like a kid who has learned to ride a bicycle well enough that they start to wonder: “Can I ride with no hands?”

Next time, depending on how things go on the oracle’s island, we may get a chance to find out...

#playthrough #dnd 5e #Red Hand of Doom #Tomb of Haggemoth #epic #Dungeons and Dragons #Journey Log #Wizards of the Coast #fantasy #RPG

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