#thank god it's folio friday

[dsireland86]

T.G.I.F.F.F

Happy Friday, Tumblr family

I've been sick with a stomach big for the past few days and have been feeling like utter dog crap.

These two make me feel so much better.

[collapsedglasshouses]

WOULD YOU SAY I'M WORTHY || ONE

PAIRING: Noah Sebastian x OFC ; slight Nick Folio x OFC

DIVIDER ART WORK BY @saradika-graphics

SUMMARY: When Eden meets Noah, her life is anything but perfect. Her heart is far more broken than Noah can even guess at this point. Will he be able to mend the wounds he hadn’t caused?

WARNINGS: angst, fluff, eventually smut, mentions of grief/loss, mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of mental health issues, mentions of illnesses

A/N: FIRST OF ALL, COVID DOESN'T EXIST IN THIS STORY! Second, hello! :) This is a new series. We will see where this goes. Thank you for everyone joining in before it was even a real idea haha. If you liked the first part, consider reblogging it! Thank you!

TAGLIST: @measuredingold @cncohshit @lma1986 @missduffsblog @cookiesupplier @thescarlettvvitch @bngurngheart @dream-machine-love @arkiliastuff @vinyardmauro @lacktoesandtoddlerants @princessmarshmallowx

If you wanna be added to the story's taglist or to my taglist in general, leave a comment or message me privately!

The rain was pouring down with no regrets. It had been like this for a few days. And still, the bar business was booming. It was a cold Friday evening in October and Eden was done. She had been on her feet since around six in the morning and she just wanted to cuddle herself into her blanket on her small couch at home.

It wasn’t like she despised her job at the bar, but she just couldn’t feel her feet anymore. She had been pouring beer into glasses for five hours straight and there was seemingly no end. Every time she thought she had a second to herself, the next person ordered something.

On the light side, she also really hadn’t had the time to think about anything outside of work, which was the exact reason why she went for the job. She had been living in Los Angeles for about three months now. Three months of none-stop working. Three months of keeping her mind of reality.

She was doing better than she had originally thought.

As she was giving a woman her change, she noticed how the door opened. She always noticed when the door opened and she surely always noticed him. A young man in his early twenties entered the bar and shook his head for a second to get rid of the excess water in his hair. Eden felt like she could breathe for a second.

When the man lifted his gaze again, he quickly was met with Eden’s exhausted but welcoming smile.

“Eden!” The man beamed. “Thank God, you are here. I thought, you weren’t working today.”

“I’m always working, Nick.” She answered the man, as he approached the bar and set down on one of the chairs. He leaned a bit towards her with a smug smile on his face. “The same as usual.” – “Everything for you, Nick.”

She poured another beer into the glass before turning back to him and setting the drink in front of him. She didn’t even have to tell him what it cost, the money already laying on the counter, “Keep the change.”

Eden smiled to herself. Her day just got better.

“How has your week been?” Nick asked her, before sipping on his beer. Eden sighed.

“Pretty good.” She said, as she always did. “Yours?”

“A lot of stuff with the band.” He answered.

Right, the band. She knew he was the drummer of this metal band. Sometimes she forgot Nick was somewhat popular.

Eden nodded, before being called to the other side of the counter to yet pour another beer. When she went back to Nick afterwards, he was quick to gift her a sweet smile.

“What are you doing tomorrow?" Nick asked her interested.

“The same as always. Cuddling on my couch and watching some movies.” She answered him and he looked shocked. “But it’s your birthday!” – “That is the reason why I’m doing nothing out of the usual.”

Nick shook his head. “It’s also Halloween, Sunshine.” Eden smiled a little at the nickname Nick had given her other the last couple of weeks. She knew it couldn't be further from the truth, but she enjoyed the image Nick seemed to have of her in his head.

“Don’t make it even worse than it already is.” Eden breathed out, not even sure if Nick heard it over the noise that filled the room.

Eden hated her birthday. It was a hard reminder of the time just slipping through her fingers. To her, it was even worse that she was also born on a national holiday. And if that wasn’t enough, she also had her name tied to said holiday. While her name was representing some kind of delight or place of pleasure, her parents had chosen that name for her, because they thought it sounded mysterious and spooky. Fitting for Halloween.

“Oh, come on.” Nick exclaimed, snapping her out of her thoughts. She blinked at him for a second, waiting for him to continue his sentence. “Enjoy yourself for once.”

Eden rolled her eyes. As much as Nick was a delight to her, she also hated his happy spirit in moments like this.

“Okay, hear me out.” Nick said, when he saw her facial expression. “A good friend of mine is celebrating his birthday tomorrow. You should come. This way, nobody will focus on you, you can enjoy my company outside of work for once and you’re out of your little hobbit-house for once.”

Eden tapped her fingers against the counter and started to think. It had been about the fifth time that Nick tried to get her to do something with him. Since now, she had always turned him down. Not, that she didn’t want to see him, she just was scared. She liked being alone. She liked being to herself. She didn’t even speak to anyone outside of work, except her sister and her parents, but even that contact was strongly limited by her. Nick was the only one she would call somewhat a friend.

Eden ran a hand through her hair and then over her face. She was going to regret this. She just knew it.

“Okay… Just once.” She gave in and Nick clapped his hands together in excitement.

“Fucking finally!” He exclaimed. “I was really starting to think, you hated me.”

“I do not, and you know that.” She reassured him before taking another order. When she was ready with the customer, Nick’s beer was empty. She allowed herself to look at the clock that was hanging over the entrance of the bar. Her shift would end in half an hour.

“So, where should I go tomorrow?" She asked Nick, who was still smiling to himself.

“Give me your phone number and I’ll text you the address.” He answered her and reached his hand out, waiting for her phone.

For a second, she simply looked at his hand. He was getting bold.

She sighed in defense and pulled her phone from her pants to hand it to him.

Right when he handed it back, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Her boss Michael looked at her. “You can go. Anna will be here in a second.”

Eden nodded, before looking at Nick again, who stood to his feet, also ready to head out.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” She exclaimed, before Nick nodded at her with a smile and left.

“The guy is cute.” Michael said to her, and she smiled a little. “Yeah, he is also a total pain in the ass.”

Michael only shrug his shoulders, before wishing her a good night and soon Eden was in her car.

It didn’t take her long to reach her apartment. She had been lucky, getting a flat close to her work. When she reached her front door and opened it, she sighed at the familiar sight of her home. Things hadn’t been easy the last couple of months. After moving to the other side of the country, she was just happy to have some peace again. She liked not living in that old house anymore, back at her hometown. Everything reminded her of her pain back there.

Not even twenty minutes later, she fell onto her couch, a bowl of instant noodles in her hand and some sitcom playing in the background, when her phone vibrated. Three messages from an unknown number.

She opened them.

?: Hey, here is Nick.

?: The party starts at 8, you have to come in a custome

?: [adress attached]

That's when it hit her.

She agreed to go to a party with a man, she barely knew, even though he was the closest she had to a friend in LA.

She was definitely going to regret it.

[dsireland86]

Thank God for Folio Friday's 🥰🥰🥰

Friday's are for Folio

[theonyxpath]

Our next Kickstarter is for the Legendlore RPG, and starts on this Thursday, March the 12th, at 2pm Eastern US time!

From the Kickstarter:

Legendlore was originally a comic, first published by Arrow Comics in 1986 and since procured by Caliber Comics, about four people who fall through a Crossing into the Realm. The Realm is home to fantasy creatures from elves to dragons, and the characters discover they too have ‘fantasy powers’ – the jock becomes a Fighter, while the bookish one becomes a Wizard, and so on. They go on adventures and some of them eventually find their way back to Earth.

This is the basic premise of the Legendlore RPG. You Cross into the Realm, where you become a hairfoot Bard, or maybe an elven Sorcerer. You can change any characteristics you like. For example if you have hay fever and glasses, you choose if your Legendlore self keeps or drops those. Your identity might not always match your outward physique, but your Legendlore character does. We’ve also updated the 1980s setting so Realmborn characters represent all ethnicities, genders, and sexualities. No one in the Realm will bat an eyelash at your agender panromantic self.

This comes hard on the heels of our fantastic Kickstarter campaign for Hunter: The Vigil 2e, which ended up at over 500% of the funding goal and just a couple of folks away from 2000 backers! Truly, the Vigil was a rewarding one, and we’re thrilled so many folks came along with us on the hunt.

Even though we’re jumping right into the new KS for Legendlore, Hunter 2e‘s campaign left us with a number of Stretch Goal projects to continue with, and, for us, Legendlore is such a different kind of project that creatively it is a nice break in our recent string of Kickstarters in the Chronicles of Darkness and V5 game worlds.

Legendlore will also be our newest game line to use the d20 system for 5e fantasy gaming, along with Scarred Lands and (much-simplified) the Realms of Pugmire, so that also gives us a chance to stretch some system creative muscles we like to keep toned up.

If you’re a fan of D&D, etc. then I think you’ll find a lot of fresh spins you’ll enjoy in how Legendlore treats genre expectations and tropes while still providing a sweeping setting ripe for adventuring in. And if you aren’t so much, I still think you may find value in supporting developer Steffie de Vaan and her creative team’s 2020 take on this multi-decade saga and setting.

Like almost every one of our Kickstarters these days, Legendlore is pretty much finished in the writing stages, and backers will get sections of the finished text during the course of the KS campaign. Steffie is working with at least one Twitch streaming group to create actual play episodes showing how Legendlore plays at an actual gaming table, and we’re really looking forward to airing those (and they’ll be linked on the KS page).

So, anyone interested is going to have multiple chances to check this project out in a way that works for them, as we’ve been working to set up with each of our KSs. And, James Bell, our Kickstarter Concierge will be back for this KS to once again provide information and guidance, as well as his patented affable banter!

V5 Chicago Folio art by Felipe Gaona

Items From Our Monday Meeting:

In no particular order, which is a lot like our meeting style!

DriveThruRPG‘s massive GM’s Day Sale has another week to go, and hoo-boy are there a lot of our PDFs for sale over there! All of our game lines are represented, as well as offerings from the Community Content sites!

This was a Twitter note sent out during our meeting by Eddy Webb:

“Thanks to Justin Achilli, I got to be in a work meeting where we talk about the aesthetics of urine and throwing bears at the moon.”

Which is pretty much true.

Mighty Matt McElroy was scheduled to attend Emerald City convention this coming weekend, but the whole con was postponed due to concerns about the Coronavirus (COVID-19). He’d already had a bunch of meetings cancelled out from under him and was figuring on cancelling, when boop! the convention cancelled instead!

You folks all take care of yourselves out there! We’re a virtual office, so aren’t going to infect each other, and we don’t have anything currently being manufactured in China, so I’m just encouraging all our folks to stay in and work 20 hour days at their computers. (I’m kidding.) (But not really.)

Mirthful Mike Chaney wonders how that’s any different than his usual day, anyway?

They Came From Beneath the Sea! Heroic Land Dwellers art by Brian LeBlanc

We’re still getting folks asking about whether projects that come out as Advance PDFs will be released in PoD versions or if Backer PDFs will be sold to the public, along with PoDs, on DTRPG. First, we’re always glad to answer folks’ questions, and second, yes, our sales strategy has always been to deliver PDFs and PoDs of projects on DTRPG and so we have been releasing them that way for the whole time we’ve been in business.

The only caveats to that are projects we might do like printed Screens offered on Kickstarters, which DTRPG can’t create in PoD form, and recently with the V5 Cults of the Blood Gods Stretch Goal rewards which will only be available in PDF as the V5 managers at Modiphius do not want PoD versions made available.

We’ve scheduled a nice surprise for the backers of Exalted 3rd‘s Dragon-Blooded KS that should put some folks’s concerns to rest about getting their rewards. So keep your eyes open for that, DB backers!

I’m out next Monday, so Dixie Cochran will be in as our guest MMN blogger! Please be nice to her as she wrangles the rusty and arcane controls for this blog, and I’ll talk to you in two weeks about our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

On Thursday, March 12th at 2pm Eastern US Time we start the Kickstarter for Legendlore!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday the Onyx Pathcast Terrific Trio take a deep dive into Vampire: The Requiem 2e‘s Spilled Blood! Messy, but fun!

As always this Friday’s Onyx Pathcast will be on Podbean or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

We’ve got a stupendous number of shows on Twitch this week! Tune in for V5, Chronicles of Darkness, Scion, Pugmire, Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition, Scarred Lands, MORE Vampire: The Masquerade, Changeling: The Lost, Mage: The Awakening, even more Scarred Lands, Werewolf: The Forsaken and a third Vampire: The Masquerade game! We’ve even got Eddy Webb’s Workshop, which takes you through the development process of our books! Hail Ming!

A big shout-out to our three Vampire: The Masquerade games running this week, which have been running week-in, week-out! You can subscribe to our channel over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath to catch up with any episodes you missed! This Ming’s a psycho.

Come take a look at our YouTube channel, youtube.com/user/theonyxpath, where you can find the following videos uploaded last week alone:

The Onyx Path News: https://youtu.be/zKo1h7bLPE0

Scion: Behind the Screen: https://youtu.be/v9Wo38rl5-Y

Changeling: The Lost – Littlebrook Reunion: https://youtu.be/hxSbemynBLs

Changeling: The Dreaming – The Last Faerie Tale: https://youtu.be/gKAm-zGxTW4

Even more Scion: Behind the Screen: https://youtu.be/QDSIS_ClFbE

A special shout-out to the Scion: Behind the Screen series, which has provided a wonderful entry point for people new to the game! Flying blind on a rocket cycle!

Do subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon if you want to be notified whenever new news videos and uploads come online! Spare me the madness.

In case you missed it last week, the Story Told RPG Podcast continue with their excellent Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition chronicle right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/the-78-laments-episode-3-riders-in-the-sky

And back once again, the Story Told‘s review of Trinity Continuum: Aeon http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/episode-40-trinity-continuum-on-overview

Red Moon Roleplaying‘s V5 Cults of the Blood Gods “The Family” chronicle continues on their YouTube channel, Spotify, their website redmoonroleplaying.com and everywhere else good podcasts and New York City girls might be found! https://youtu.be/J1qCIhMPn7Q

Now, the tributes from Ardentia.

Even more shows from Occultists Anonymous for all you Mage: The Awakening fans out there!

Episode 86: Risky Business Wyrd the Seer prepares to found a legacy and shape her soul. Songbird makes contact with the Carthian Movement. Atratus meets with the Phantasm Society who have a daring plan.https://youtu.be/9XWLaxl_B-Y

Episode 87: New Lives Wyrd the Seer pays the price for tying herself to the Rookery. Songbird makes himself useful at the Arrow Armory. Atratus kills Emily Miller.https://youtu.be/ZZklb6-fC7o

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

Update: the devs are working on the updates for the roller in both Android and iOS – here is the rundown from them:

1) Redo the UI for system for android.  It will look the same as the current design.  My goal is to have something ready by Saturday to send out to the Facebook users, asking them if this fixes the issues.  This will be a beta type thing.  This will break several of the fancy dice.

2) If the above worked out and the android users give all the clear, we’ll redo the graphics system to fix the fancy dice that got broken.  We’ll do another android beta through Facebook.  This might take up to two weeks, as my schedule allows.

3) If everything worked well, we’ll release to android for real at that point.

4) Port all of the existing stuff to iOS and release on that.

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero AND Trinity Continuum Core and Trinity Continuum: Aeon are available to order!

The massive GM Day’s Sale continues for another week with huge savings on PDFs from all of our game lines!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/rpg_gmsday.php

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the Advance PDF of Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed for Mage: The Awakening 2e AND the electronic, PDF, and physical book PoD releases of Haunting Shadows: the Wraith20th fiction anthology on DTRPG!

Conventions!

Assuming these conventions are not postponed due to plague, here is our current list:

UKGames Expo: https://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/

GenCon: https://www.gencon.com/

Tabletop Scotland: https://tabletopscotland.co.uk/

Gamehole Con: https://www.gameholecon.com/

PAX Unplugged: https://unplugged.paxsite.com/

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

RUST (Working Title) (Scarred Lands)

Under Alien Suns (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Mission Statements (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Adversaries of the Righteous (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Novas Worldwide (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Exalted Essence Edition (Exalted 3rd Edition)

The Clades Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

The Devoted Companion (Deviant: The Renegades)

Saints and Monsters (Scion 2nd Edition)

M20 Rich Bastard’s Guide To Magick (Mage: The Ascension 20th Anniversary)

Wild Hunt (Scion 2nd Edition)

Redlines

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Hundred Devil’s Night Parade (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Assassins (Trinity Continuum Core)

The Book of Endless Death (Mummy: The Curse 2e)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Second Draft

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

They Came From Beyond the Grave! (They Came From!)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Editing

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Post-Editing Development

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Indexing

They Came From Beneath the Sea! (They Came From…!)

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant – Awaiting replies to pings.

Hunter: The Vigil 2e (KS)

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2 – Starting to contract the rest of it.

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Some finals in.

Deviant

Legendlore (KS) – KS prep of bits.

Technocracy Reloaded (KS)

TC: Aeon Terra Firma – Contracted.

WoD: Ghost Hunters (KS) – Cover in, getting rest of KS art set.

Tales of Aquatic Terror

Pirates Extra Adventure – Loboyko lined up for this one.

Scion Titanomachy – Contacting artists.

In Layout

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad – Ongoing.

Contagion Chronicle – With Josh, interior proof coming.

Vigil Watch – Ongoing.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers

TCFBtS! Screen and Booklet

Ex3 Lunars – Yep, pretty much my March right here.

Scion Companion

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – Sending back to Aileen for errata input.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

Chicago Folio – Creating PoD files.

Pirates of Pugmire – Fixes in, working on cover.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – At WW for approvals .

Geist 2e fiction anthology – Backer PDF out to backers for errata.

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 – The Silence of Our Ancestors (Exalted 3rd Edition) – Backer errata being gathered.

Distant Worlds – Errata being gathered.

VtR2 Spilled Blood – Errata being input.

At Press

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Prepping to go live with PDF/PoD versions on DTRPG a week Wednesday (the 18th).

DR:E – Shipping to backers, PoD files uploaded.

DRE Screen – Shipping to backers.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties

Memento Mori – PoD proof ordered.

Scion Mythical Denizens – PoD files uploaded.

Wraith20 Anthology – ePub, PDF, physical book versions all live Weds on DTRPG.

MtAw2 Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Advance PDF on sale this Weds on DTRPG.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, and that’s certainly worth celebrating today as well! (Especially since here in the US we lost an hour from yesterday due to the return of our Daylight Savings Time. Typical).

Today, we heard of the death of actor Max von Sydow at 90. The man who played chess with death, acted in just so many roles in mainstream and genre films that I’m not listing them here, and, just for Matthew Dawkins, starred as Ming the Merciless.

[hereticpriest]

Bury a Friend Chapter 2

Warnings: Descriptions of stalking

The following two days were torture. Will had handed off his classes to take care of Rosalind, which ended up being difficult considering she didn’t want to be cared for. Her thank yous came through gritted teeth after the first couple of hours of Will not even letting her get her own glass of water. She went outside to sit on the porch, and he bundled her up in blankets even though she was perfectly fine with the dogs huddled around her for warmth. He wouldn’t let her cook, so all of her meals ended up being… satisfactory, at best. Will could cook a bit, but she had certainly got the bulk of the cooking talent. He took her further into Wolf Trap to get groceries, and she had gone into another aisle to grab only to turn back when Will began to call out for her in a panic. She was tempted to hold onto his shirt for the rest of the day just to reassure him that she was still there, and so he could stop looking for her every five seconds.

When Hannibal showed up on day three, he could hear the fallout of overprotective siblings going on inside. He approached the porch, listening in to see what exactly he was walking in on, watching the siblings through the front window.

“You were just attacked, Rosie, you can’t blame me for being a bit worried for you.” Will’s voice was raised, but he wasn’t shouting. Yet.

“Will, we are in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, Virginia. I think you can take your eyes off of me for five whole minutes without me getting raped and murdered.” Rosalind’s voice was raised slightly though not as loud as her brother. She was clearly trying harder than Will to keep her cool, and showing she was breaking by swearing.

“Jesus, Rosie!” Will slammed his hands down on the kitchen table, back to his sister so he couldn’t see how she flinched at the sound. Hannibal watched her shoulders stay tensed up, her chest fluttering with her rapid breathing.

“Sue me for being worried about you.” Will snapped, then breathed in harshly, “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You’re smothering me, Will. You sat outside the door while I bathed. You know, that’s almost creepier than if you’d just sat in the goddamn bathroom. I opened the door and you scared the hell out of me.” Rosalind’s voice was steady again, but Will turned to face her looking almost angry.

“Rosie, I’m not trying to smother you, but you used to sneak out through the bathroom window when we were kids and I remember that. I’m trying to protect you!” Will’s voice was raised again. Hannibal began to climb the porch stairs.

“Do you think I’m stupid enough to do that considering what happened? You know what? Don’t answer that. Why don’t you go pick out a collar and lead for me, huh?” Hannibal smirked a little at the thought, “Get me one of those ankle bracelets they give criminals. Or have you already tagged me with something?”

Will tensed, and Rosalind growled, “Oh my god, Will, did you fucking tag me with something?”

“No!” Will shouted, and Hannibal took this chance to knock on the door and interrupt the argument. The door swung open to reveal Rosalind, her face flush with contained rage, and Will standing not too far back with an almost identical flush.

“Have I come at a bad time?” Hannibal asked, and he almost smiled when Rosalind took his hand and led him in like he was her saviour.

“No, of course not. Thank you for coming, Dr. Lecter. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“Hey Hannibal, I wasn’t expecting you.” Will slumped down into an armchair, while Rosalind sat on the couch with Hannibal.

“I apologize for not calling in advance. I got out early from my appointments and decided to head up to visit and see if you would like a change of scenery.” Rosalind’s face brightened at that, and Will sighed as if both relieved and infuriated.

“I would love a change of scenery.” Rosalind replied, softening up immediately, “Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Not at all. I do not have any patients tomorrow, and then we have the dinner party arranged. I thought you could spend the night tonight, and perhaps we can go out tomorrow to find you something to wear for the party. If you have any interest, you can help me prepare food. If not, you could practice dancing, perhaps.” Hannibal offered, and Rosalind nodded enthusiastically.

“Oh that sounds lovely, thank you.”

“Hannibal, are you sure you can take care of Rosalind in public? We don’t know if he’s here yet, if he knows where she is.” Will shoved his hands in his pockets, and Rosalind shrugged.

“I’ll just have to get a gun, then.” Rosalind replied, “I’ve got bear mace and a legal knife, so that’s something.”

“I will take care of your sister, Will. I’m confident I can handle it.” Hannibal replied, and Will nodded.

“Keep your phone on you, and turned on, at all times.” Will said to his sister, “No ifs ands or buts. Not silenced, not left in the car or in another room. On your person. Do you still have the lockpick blade I gave you?”

“Yes dad. And yes, it’s still my waistband.” Rosalind replied sharply, though she looked cowed when Hannibal tutted.

“Your brother is looking out for you. You’re being too hard on him, just as he is being too hard on you.” Hannibal chastised her gently, “Go and pack a bag for a couple of nights. Will, you’ll still be attending the dinner tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.” Will promised, stopping Rosie as she passed him to give her shoulders a squeeze. She hugged him firmly.

“I’m sorry, Will.”

“Me too, Rosie.” Will gripped her tight for a second, then let her go and watched her ascend the stairs. He sat back down in the armchair with a heavy sigh, giving Hannibal a tired sort-of smile.

“She’ll be safe with me, Will.” Hannibal promised, and he meant it. He found himself surprisingly reluctant to even entertain the idea of hurting her. He’d only just opened the box, he didn’t want to break the toy before he’d even begun to play with it.

“I know. I know, I just wish seeing her again could’ve been a happy thing, you know? I made sure to keep her out of things for a reason. I didn’t want her getting hurt. It feels like I gave up a lot of time with one of the only people who really understands me… for nothing. For her to get stalked, hide it from me, and then get attacked.” Will grabbed a folio from one of his side tables, holding it out to Hannibal. He took it, opening it to find a file on Rosalind Graham. It began basic, typical information in a case file, but once he got past the outline, he found copies of emails, letters, and texts sent to Rosalind. There were transcripts of phone calls that were unnerving even with just a cursory glance. Last was the photos. They started out public: Rosie getting coffee, dancing at the ballet studio, group yoga in the park, and running by the water. They soon turned to what he figured was her house, first from afar, but soon closer. Pictures of different rooms through the windows, close enough that he must’ve been standing right outside. The last were the worst. A series of photos of Rosalind changing, naked from the shower, and even one of her masturbating that had been covered with a post it to warn of the content.

“This is…” Hannibal trailed off, closing the file and looking up at Will. He felt a bit of a stir seeing the details of her stalking, intrigued by the depths this man went to, and even more so by the reaction of the woman so far. He was excited to get her talking and having her rely on him.

“It’s a lot, I know. I made that copy for you because I was hoping you’d take a look and give me your thoughts. I have another copy upstairs.” Will removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, “I’ll send you the digital files. There’s audio for the phone calls, a couple of videos he sent her, and a mixtape he made for her. Uh, I’ll warn you though, there’s apparently a video of her getting undressed and… uh…”

“Like the last picture?” Hannibal asked, to save Will from dying of embarrassment.

“Yeah… Like that. He uh… recorded it and occasionally filmed himself… enjoying it.” Will nodded, clearing his throat.

“I will give you my notes after dinner on Friday.” Hannibal replied, standing and buttoning his jacket again as he heard Rosie descending the stairs.

“I’m ready when you are, Dr. Lecter.” Rosalind approached the sofa, touching Hannibal’s shoulder delicately as she passed him to sit on the arm of Will’s chair. Will steadied her with a hand on the small of her back as she leaned down to hug him. Rosie pressed a kiss to his forehead, cupping his cheeks.

“I love you, big brother. I promise you I won’t do anything stupid, and I won’t leave Dr. Lecter’s side unless it is to sleep. I won’t do anything to endanger myself.” Rosalind promised, laughing at Will’s gentle attempts to get her off of him.

“Rosie, stop kissing me, you’re so gross.” Will complained, which only made Rosalind laugh and kiss his forehead again. She knew he was mostly fighting the affection for show. He’d been starved of it for some time, as had she.

“Aww, Will, I don’t have cooties.” Rosalind laughed as Will put his palm to her face and pushed her away. Hannibal stood, and Rosalind stood with him, obediently getting off of her brother like the doctor’s mere movement was a command.

“Come Miss Graham, I would like to get you settled in before dinner.” Hannibal placed a hand on her lower back and slowly guided her towards the door, taking her bag with the other hand to carry it himself. Rosalind toed on her shoes and followed him out the door, tossing a quick “Bye Will!” over her shoulder. Hannibal led her to the car, opening the door for her, and she smiled fondly at him. Another stir. He put her bags in the back seat, along with her file.

“Thank you. I apologize, I didn’t ask before. May I call you Hannibal?”

“As long as I can call you Rosalind.” Hannibal replied, settling into the driver’s seat and starting his car. He pulled back onto the road and began the long drive home.

“Of course, Hannibal.” Rosie rolled his name on her tongue, then offered him a small smile, “Lithuania?”

Hannibal raised his brows at her, looking first confused, then impressed, “Yes, I was born there.”

“My form teacher was born in Germany, but she grew up in Lithuania. She has a seriously thick Lithuanian accent because she only moved to the US a year before she started teaching me. Yours is quite pleasant. Though, that may also be because you aren’t slapping my thighs and telling me my posture is horrific.” Rosalind laughed softly, while Hannibal raised his brows and contemplated the image.

“I’m glad my accent is pleasing.” Hannibal teased, offering her a little smirk that had her smiling in return, “I’m also happy that you are comfortable around me. I had worried, considering the circumstances.”

“I’m good at reading intentions. And while I don’t think you’re half as innocent as you want to appear, I don’t think you have any sort of interest in hurting me.” Rosalind replied, looking over at him to watch how he reacted to her comment. He looked over at her, catching her eyes and offering a slow smirk before he returned his gaze to the road.

“You have nothing to fear from me.” Hannibal confirmed, feeling a stirring inside of him that he hadn’t felt before. A pleasing warm buzz that made him feel strangely good. It was similar to how he felt when he met Will, but not identical.

[lavieendonna]

Brushwork || Art Major!Calum AU (Chapter 14)

Summary: An Art Major AU where Dallas - third year gawky art student at VCA -  makes a deal with Calum - her cute new neighbour and project partner - and they spend the entire year learning that the perfect masterpiece takes a whole lot of brushwork.

Date: 24 August 2017 Requested: as always  Pairing: Calum + Dallas Words: 3.4K Warnings: nothing other than the occasional f-bomb. A bit of Mali in this chapter too, and we all love her so.  A/N: IT’S A MIRCALE! TWO CHAPTER UPDATES IN ONE MONTH! AM I GOOD OR WHAT?! I’m so immensely proud of myself for sticking to my guns and pumping out another chapter less than a month from the last. Thank you to everyone who still reads this and to those who have kept up their faith in me and sent me positive vibes to keep going. This is one of my favourite pieces and I’m so excited to finish it with you all :-) big love xo 

Ask | Masterlist | ‘Brushwork’ Spotify Playlist | Next Chapter | ‘Brushwork’ News

Chapter 14:I Was Too Terrified To Speak Much Louder In Fear Polly Would Legitimately Tear My Head Off And Put It On A Spike At The Door To Warn Her Future Best Friend.

Now is probably a good time to mention that Mali had gotten my number the day after I left her in Calum's apartment. She’d messaged me and said that she felt bad for not saying goodbye before she went back to Sydney – and to be honest, I felt bad for forgetting that she was even leaving. But she forgave me soon enough – word travels fast in the Hood Family, apparently.

She messaged me not long after Calum had officially called our Friday night plans a date, demanding that I called her immediately. Part of me thought maybe she was just being nosey, but by the sounds of things she just really wanted to know how I was feeling. I told her I couldn’t talk yet, that I still had class and – oh, yeah – Calum was still with me and would be for the majority of the day. She wasn’t overly impressed with that, but it kept her off my back until 4pm on the dot when I told her I’d be back at home.

I dialled Mali’s number and as I waited for her to pick up, it occurred to me that maybe I should have been calling my own sister instead of the sister of my upcoming date. Isabelle would be squealing in her seat if she knew that I, Dallas ‘Social Anxiety Makes Me Inept and Useless’ James, was going on a date for the first time in Jesus knew how long. She’d be proud of me, even, and she almost never said that out loud. There was something about telling her, though, that freaked me out even more than the date itself. Once it was news in the family then I was never going to hear the end of it. And if things ended badly (which, you know, it usually did considering it’s me we’re talking about), well, that was something I didn’t think I could handle even slightly.

“I want to hear the exact words, okay, Calum is being surprisingly tight-lipped about this.” Mali didn’t even say ‘hello’ which lead me to believe that she was more excited about this than I was.

“Well,” I had to think about it. The last 24 hours were a bit of a blur, they happened so fast. “First we were talking about our mural.”

“Yawn.” I could almost hear her eyes roll to the back of her head.

“It was the lead up!” I defended her brother. “It was pretty smooth actually.”

“My brother? Smooth?” Mali snorted. “Who knew.”

“Yeah, it was… nice. He was confident.”

“Another miracle.” Mali laughed. “What did he say after that?”

“Uh, well he said he had a question for me and asked if I wanted to go see Luke perform at this open mic night thing on Friday.” Mali squealed, but quietly as if she was trying to wait until the very end of the story to let loose her fangirl heart. “I didn’t really catch that he was asking me out, though, so I said that I would go if Luke wanted me to and then –”

I paused to smile because Calum’s voice started ringing in my ears a little bit. I never thought I’d be That Girl that reminisced about every moment between her and The Boy, but it was hard not to be. Now that we officially had a date, every moment counted. And I hadn’t made it all up in my head, either. He’d said the words himself.

“Then what?!” Mali asked, impatient. I chuckled quietly.

“Then, uh. He laughed at me. He said it wasn’t Luke that wanted me there but him.”

“Wow.”

“Then I asked if he meant a date and he said it was. So, yeah, we uh. We called it a date.”

“Of course it’s a fucking date!” Mali exclaimed, and I could hear the grin in her voice. “You’re going on a date with Calum Fucking Hood!”

“Oh my god, can you…” I face-palmed, feeling the blush creep up my cheeks. It was all well and good when I whispered it out loud to myself that I was going on a date with Calum Fucking Hood, but when Mali said it out loud like that it made it seem like he was some sort of international heart throb guitar player and that dating him was a total miracle beyond belief. It was still a miracle, but not for reasons to that extreme.

“Look, it’s not a big deal.” I tried to continue, but I laughed anyway because that was the biggest lie I’d told myself in ages. Mali laughed too, and I did not blame her.

“I know, I know!” She said anyway. “Still. I’m glad for you two. This will be good for him, I can tell.”

“How can you tell?” I had my eyebrow cocked as if she was really here. I imagined her shrugging, but tapping her nose while she shot me a wink.

“It’s a sister’s intuition.” She said very matter-of-factly. “We all have it, even you.”

“Even me?” I feigned offense. “What’s that supposed to mean?!” Mali cackled much like my own sister would have. And that alone made me wonder if maybe, by chance, Isabelle wasn’t just bullying me our entire lives and I really was just as gawky as she was saying I was.

“You know what that’s supposed to mean.” Mali said very slyly, not giving me the benefit of the doubt in the slightest. “But anyway, how are you feeling? You are okay with this right?” I took a breath, though I wasn’t sure if it was because I was nervous or if it was because I was giving myself more time to answer. Likely, it was a combination of both. I lived nervous, and the longer I took to think about my words was always the better.

“Yeah.” I said, probably less enthusiastic than I meant. “Yeah, definitely. I, uh. I’m… I mean, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want this. I just convinced myself it never would I’m, like, in shock or something.”

“Why the hell not?” Mali seemed to demand of me and I shrugged because the list of ‘Why Not’ reasons was too long to even know where to start.

“Because it’s me!” I laughed. “And I don't look like Polly and I’m not like my sister or his friends. I didn’t think I was his type.”

“Calum doesn’t have a type.” Mali said after a small pause on her end of the phone.

“Really?” I asked. “I figured he was a tall, leggy, blonde kind of guy.” Mali scoffed and I kind of just accepted it as I wondered out of my room and out into the kitchenette (I’d made the realisation that I was starving when my stomach growled half-way through that sentence). She didn’t comment on how I’d just described her as Calum’s type – which I was glad for because I didn’t really want to re-visit that awkward conversation.

“Nah, nah.” Mali sounded like she was trying to reassure me of this (which I wouldn’t put passed her, if I was being honest). “Calum… He likes who he likes.”

That statement made me feel better than I thought it would. Because even though on one hand that meant I basically every human alive was my competition, it also meant that there was a chance I was good enough for something.

“Well, thanks.” I said dumbly while I stared at mine and Polly’s mostly empty fridge, frowning at the lack of appeal it had. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I say something unnecessarily sexual that he could charge me with sexual harassment for.”

“Wait, what? I need the story behind that one.”  

“Maybe another time.” I said with no intention of ever reliving the moments I’d accidentally come on to her brother. “When are you coming back to Melbourne?” I thought changing the subject might make this conversation less humiliating.

“As soon as you and Calum send out your save the dates.” Mali fired back, making me kind of regret ringing her to begin with. I laughed, though. Her dig at me didn’t seem to sting the same way as when Polly did it. “I do have to go, though, my Mum is calling me to help with dinner.”

“Alright,” I said, giving up on the fridge and trying my luck in the pantry instead. “Well don’t give anyone food poisoning.”

“I’ll send you a package for taste-testing.”

“I’ll pass. Talk to you soon.”

“Send me a picture of The Outfit!”

“If I remember.”

And then that was it. I found a box of chocolate Pop Tarts on the top shelf, and I had no idea how old they were, but you can bet like hell I was going to eat the shit out of them.

“What’ve you got there?” That was Polly. She’d wondered out of her bedroom, and that confused me because I was under the impression she had classes until later tonight.

“Pop Tarts.” I said with a grin. “Want some?”

“Always.” Polly nodded and I threw her a pack, knowing she didn’t much care to heat them up. I thought she was a monster for it, but I didn’t often say that out loud. Also, she was in a funny mood so I didn’t want to push my luck.

“I thought you had classes tonight?” I asked her as I unwrapped my snack and jammed them into the shitty toaster on the bench. Polly shrugged, sitting on the Ghost Stool on the other side of the counter, and rolling her eyes nearly into the back of her head.

“Got an email from the lecturer and the tutor. They’re both sick and out until next week so they’ve given everyone an extension on our folios.”

“Huh.” I raised an eyebrow. “Fair enough – I think?” Polly was chuckling darkly and making me second guess if this was a good thing for her or not.

“I mean, sure,” Polly scoffed. “But I don’t think they’re really sick. I’m pretty sure they’re fucking and have gone on holiday together.”

“You think so?” I asked. And Polly nodded wildly.

“Oh yeah. They’re both young for their jobs, in the same field, and they see each other every day.” Polly laughed again, this time less darkly. “Everyone can spot the sexual tension between them – they try to pretend they hate each other but it doesn’t work very well.”

I chuckled, not because what Polly was saying funny but rather, because Polly always had a knack for creating conspiracy theories about everything.

“Well, either way,” I took to saying as I switched the toaster off at the wall and just about threw the steaming hot chocolate tarts onto a small plate to let them cool down. “You got the extension to make up for it. And even if you don’t need it –” I could see Polly about to interrupt with that exact excuse. “– At least you’ve got time to do other stuff. Whatever you want, really.” Polly paused and then shrugged as if I’d made a good point.

“True.” She said simply before taking another bite of her Pop Tart. I took a chunk out of mine too, swearing loudly when the melted chocolate within blistered the roof of my mouth. Polly snickered at me, and I glared back.

“Rude.” I mumbled, sticking my aching tongue out at her.

“No.” She said, straightening her posture and staring me down very intensely. “No, what’s rude is my best friend scoring a date with a total hottie and not telling me about it.”

I flushed a brilliant red from neck to cheeks.

“You, uh… You heard about that?” I mumbled out. I was too terrified to speak much louder in fear Polly would legitimately tear my head off and put it on a spike at the door to warn her future best friend.

“Yeah, I heard about that.” She said. She was not impressed in the slightest. “Why did I have to hear it from Michael that you and Calum were finally dating?!” I opened my mouth to object, but then what she’d said hit me and I frowned.

“Wait,” My mouth was full of Pop Tart. “How did Michael find out?!”

“Luke!” Polly practically wailed, her mouth also full. This was the most uncivilised conversation I’d ever had, probably. We were such barbarians. Michael heard from Luke who heard from Calum.”

“Jesus…” I muttered, turning back to my Tarts. “Luke and Michael have such big mouths.”

“So do you, usually.” Polly pointed out and I sulked because she was right. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She sounded less annoyed with me now and more… upset. I looked back up to my friend and while she didn’t look like she was about to with the Oscar for Best On-Cue Crying, she did look like she wanted an explanation. And to be honest, she probably deserved one. I usually told her everything.

“Sorry, Pol.” I said with tight lips and a small, one-shouldered shrug. “I just… I didn’t want to bother you.” That wasn’t really the whole truth, but it was definitely part of it. Problem was, Polly frowned at me for it which probably meant she wasn’t buying it at all.

“Since when have we worried about bothering each other?” She deadpanned, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning on the counter on her elbows. “You know I don’t care about that, good news or bad.”

“I know.” I said guiltily. I felt like I was getting lectured by my parents – but worse, since I actually cared what Polly thought and what she had to say was almost always important to me. “I just… I-I was confused about how to feel. I’ve kinda only just come to terms with the fact that I liked Calum like that, and the idea of him liking me back was some kind of fucking miracle so… I dunno, I guess, I just wanted to work it out for myself, and I knew you were caught up doing whatever with Ashton so I just… I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

There was a pause, and I was scared because as soon as all of those words come out of my mouth they sounded like the wrong thing to say. And I hated that – when the truth is the truth but it feels like it’s not. And Polly was looking at me with these eyes that I just couldn’t read properly, so I didn’t know if I’d just offended the shit out of her or hurt her feelings or what.

“First of all,” She finally spoke after a minute or so of pure silence (aside from my heaving breathing as I tried to cool down the Pop Tart that was already in my mouth like a dickhead). “You shouldn’t feel like you need to do anything on your own. That’s why we’re friends, dude, and you need me just as much as I need you.” I nodded, still refusing to look the girl in the eye, just in case I turned to stone. “Second of all, it is a big deal. I knew you were going to like him like that the moment we met him – hell, I nearly liked Calum like that when we met him, have you seen the kid?!” I laughed at that one, rolling my eyes slightly at Polly’s theatrics.

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved her off as she reached over the counter to push me in the arm (gently – it was too awkward of a position to punch me for real). “Will you be less mad if I promise you can help me with my hair and make-up before I go?” I finally looked back up at her face and she was beaming cheekily the way she did, and it was a nice change to see her smiling at me. I could almost see the Old, warm twinkle in her eye.

“Always.” She said for a second time and she pushed me again. “Anyway,” She continued. “Third of all, there’s nothing going on with me and Ashton so that shouldn’t even be an excuse at all.” This time, Polly looked away from me and I shot her a challenging cocked eyebrow.

“Uh, yeah, because you and Ashton rocking up the next morning after a Tequila party in your underwear is ‘nothing’.” I shot. “Care to explain that one, since we’re on the topic.” Polly gave another wild shrug, her face pulled together in a grimace as she tried to find the words. She swallowed the last of her Pop Tart and shrugged again. I thought I could see the hint of a smile twitching in the corners of her mouth.

“We’re… Ugh, I don’t know, it’s complicated.” I furrowed my eyebrows together.

“What’s complicated?” I asked. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah.” She huffed.

“And he likes you?” She shrugged.

“I think so.” She sighed. “But there’s… there’s more to it than, that, we’re… well, we’re working it out.”

Polly gave a crooked, unconvinced smile before standing up to put her wrapper in the rubbish bin. She didn’t sound (or look) like she was going to say any more on the topic so I didn’t press for any more answers. I wanted to, because she was being very vague about this whole situation and I wanted nothing more than to ask her straight out if her and Ashton were sleeping together. I had the feeling they were, because based on this conversation alone, ‘more to it than that’ could really only mean one thing. I could have been reading into it too much, but I didn’t think so. It was Polly and it was Ashton. They had a habit of making things complicated with sex.

I was a little bit annoyed, especially when Polly wondered off back to her bedroom. She’d just grilled me (lightly) until I spilled what was on my mind and apologised for offending her and our friendship, and yet when I tried to do the same and get her to open up, she shut me out and got vague. I was finding it hard to understand how that was fair. Part of me felt like it was just me being dramatic and entitled, but like it had been all the time lately, there was something about this friendship between Polly and I that seemed very one-sided. I frowned, staring at Polly’s closed door for a moment before huffing and waving it off. It was a future problem for future Dallas. I had more important things to worry about.

I realised, as I sulked around the kitchen and put the rest of my things away and changed clothes, that I was quickly running out of daylight and I needed to haul ass down to the mural. Calum and I were slowly running out of time and considering we almost never had time to work on this shit together, we were relying on each other to pick up the pieces every time we worked on it separately. The last I’d checked, Calum had finished the last coats of base paint and, since he’d drawn and given me a copy of the final design, I gave him the creative freedom to choose his colour scheme too. That meant it was up to me, today, to start the outlining on the wall.

It was going to be tough, limited daylight aside. Calum’s design on paper was almost flawless, and I was crazy scared whatever I started on that damn wall wasn’t going to do it justice at all. I worried the whole way down to the atrium, and even more when I laid out the tarp and paint. I figured out that spotlights were going to help my sunlight issue – but they weren’t going to help if I fucked up big time.

For yet another night, I spent hours down working on that wall. Security asked me 3 times for my ID, my pass and the letter from our teacher explaining what the fuck I was doing painting on school property in the middle of the night. It was a new record. It was nearing one in the morning when I’d finished the outlines for each stage of our ballerina transformation, each one was only missing one thing.

Her face.

[souslejaune]

Auntie Dee Dee’s living room... (Folio 1: Part 2)

ii

Auntie Dee Dee’s living room had the best view of an Accra sunset I had ever seen. Through the hand-polished clarity of her first floor sliding doors, beyond the fragrant haze of the flower-filled porch, the day performed its bedtime rituals.

Amorous cocks strutted their seduction in circles around hens as dust rose from beneath them. The cry of roving fishmongers rose to mingle with the faint smell of bougainvillea – orange and yellow. “Red fish. Last for the day. Cheap red fish.” Shrewd housewives emerged from their homes for these last minute bargains that made chop money last a little bit longer. There was sweat on their bead noses. They had been cooking.

Cooking is why I loved going to Auntie Dee Dee’s. I didn’t go there to see the sun give one last jaundiced wink before it turned steadily red as it submerged itself in the sea. I went there because Auntie Dee Dee was a sorceress whose spells lay in the texture of chopped onions, the mildly singed smell of fried plantain, the spicy tongue of chilli, the slippery kiss of oil… The food of her fingers was edible temptation.

In Ghana, it is understood that such a woman can have any man. A woman who befriends her is said to open the door of her marriage to discontent. But she was my mother’s best friend. They had known each other since they were knee high and my mother insisted that Dee Dee had never stopped eating in all the time she had known her.

Every Friday at 4pm my mother would yell, “Kids, are you ready?” From obscure corners of the house, my sister and I would scream, “Yes.” My father would already be in the car. His pride and joy. A navy blue Datsun 120Y gleaming in the relentless afternoon sun. Polished from roof to tyres. He closed his shop early on Fridays so that he could come home and wash it. He said he didn’t trust me to do it then – maybe later. Naana, my sister, liked to tease him about the car.

“Ei Daddy! Are we using the car today?”

My father would raise his arms in a mockery of prayer. “Dear God, let my next daughter be intelligent! Teach her what it means when I sit in my car and start the engine!”

Our mirth would explode in synchronised chaos. My mother holding her side, my sister shaking her head, me stamping like a victim of soldier ants.

It is not unfair to say my father was protective of his car, but it would be wrong to say he was miserly with it. Although he only used it on weekends he let my mother take it shopping every Wednesday. Women drivers were a rare thing so my mother was a minor star. She was the envy of the market traders who sat outside the main walls of Kaneshie Market and she liked the attention. She took pains to walk round the car, roll all the windows up and lock the doors as the traders chattered.

“O wu sumɔɔ o sane. What a man he must be! Will you buy some tomatoes?”

“Madam, me adamfo, how beautiful you look in your car, my friend. Do you want some Gari today? Only two cedis for one america.”

One america is a uniquely Ghanaian measurement that is equivalent to one full tin of an acceptably large size. It is standardised by neither weight nor volume. I learnt this on my first trip to the market with my mother when I noticed that some traders battered their tins so that they would contain less produce, which they sold for the same price. When I pointed this out to my mother she laughed, jingling the car keys as her dimples caught the attention of the sun.

“The trick is knowing whom to buy from.”

The traders in Kaneshie market shouted out their prices with competitive sideways glances at their rivals. Never missing an opportunity to sell, they could convince the smallest hunchback of their incredible height; such were their powers of flattery. My mother always came home on Wednesdays beaming with childlike smiles. Fully gorged on sweet words.

On Fridays however, we only had one destination – Auntie Dee Dee’s. Usually my father talked politics with her husband, Johnny, who was the Minister for Education, whilst my mother discussed sports and cuisine with Auntie Dee Dee. My mother and Dee Dee both sprinted for Ghana in the 1960s. At the 1965 All Africa Games – the first ever – Auntie Dee Dee made history in the 200 metres semi-finals, becoming the first athlete not to compete for dietary reasons. The food supplies she'd packed from Ghana had run out by then and she couldn't find the right kind of groundnut paste to make the 'reviving' soup she ate with rice or gari at least 10 hours before her race day began. She had hoped to make up for missing out on a medal in Bamako in 1969, but when the games were cancelled because of the overthrow of the socialist government in Mali in 1968, she retired. Often, while catching up with my mother by the earth coloured stove, Auntie Dee Dee would beckon me to her side, put her heavy arm around my neck, and smile down at me. She called me her little husband and liked to play with my unruly Afro, occasionally poking her little finger in my right-side-only dimple. From my vantage point beside Auntie Dee Dee, I could reach out and pilfer some achɔmɔ – sweet fried dough snacks that Auntie Dee Dee never seemed to run out of – and watch Uncle Johnny talking to my father. Uncle Johnny’s parabolic eyebrows made it seem like he was always asking a question. I didn’t talk much. I was six years younger than my sister and I loved to listen to people speak. I liked the sounds of some of the big words they used; like imperative and amralofoi. Sometimes, when I wasn’t enveloped by the mango- and cinnamon-fragranced body mass of Auntie Dee Dee, I watched the sun set with Naana and Uncle-and-Auntie’s son Junior. When the smells started coming from the kitchen, we went to Junior’s room to play games. We needed to. Our parents didn’t like us to run around the kitchen and we always seemed to lose our minds when the smell of fried onions started to waft.

._.

In the first few years of my life that was Friday for me. Sunsets and full stomachs.

I got an early birthday card for my seventh birthday. It came on November 15, 1981 – a week early. It was in a textured cream envelope with a glittering red star stuck on the V of the seal.

I had been in a low mood for a few days; I couldn't explain why and my mother had been worried about me. I was lethargic and completely disinterested in things which usually excited me – like football and throwing stones. She asked me if I was ill and checked my temperature – normal. But it was clear that did not satisfy her. Her round face had a pinch in it, like a balloon in the clutches of a clothes peg. Naana always said Mummy looked as though she was in labour every time one of us got hurt, or got into trouble – as though she was reliving the moments of our birth. With no clear symptoms for my condition, she forced me to take an aspirin just in case. A few minutes after she gave me the tablets, I got heartburn and she panicked.

“Oh, Kojo.” She turned to my father with a hand on her mouth, her voice shrill. “Have I poisoned him? Should we call your mother?”

My father, son of a nurse, responded with the calm of his mother. “Relax, Sarah, he probably took the tablet too quickly. He’ll be fine.” He turned to me. “Ebo, does it hurt a lot?”

I shook my head. Trying to be brave.

Naana and my father tried to cheer me up by making funny faces, but my laughter had lost its energy. I wasn’t even ticklish anymore. Eventually they all gave up.

However when the early birthday card arrived a day later, my eyes lit up; so, although my mother wouldn’t normally have given the card to me until my actual birthday, she handed it to me. I ripped the envelope with a fork from our kitchen and pulled out the card. It had Pink Panther on the front and one hundred cedis inside. It was signed, Your favourite Auntie, Dee Dee.

“Mummy look! One hundred cedis!” I came alive like a fanned fire. For the first time I noticed the red serial number on a hundred cedi note.

“Ooh, lucky boy, let me keep it for you.”

My mother snatched it from me with a smile.

She had a trick with money. You always managed to spend it before she was due to give it back to you. It faded into the background like a country's history. If it were in a forest, it would be one amongst the leaves that cushion the forest floor – you would know it was there, but who could find it? The money became the last pack of sweets you had, or the cost of the new socks you were wearing; I knew I’d lost that money forever.

“Mummy, can I call Auntie Dee Dee to thank her?”

“Of course.”

The telephone rang and rang. No one picked up.

My father came home crying that day. Within minutes my mother was crying too. The news and its companion tears soon spread to Naana and I.

Auntie Dee Dee had had a heart attack whilst cooking. She was alone at home and died. The next day my mother gave me back the money Auntie Dee Dee had sent me. She mumbled something about last wishes and how the dead always knew things. Blowing her nose with a tear-sodden handkerchief, she took out the battered address book she kept by her side of the bed, called the friends she and Dee Dee had grown up with, and started planning the funeral. With every call, she cried again, as though Auntie Dee Dee had just died. She relived her devastation with each memory of Auntie Dee Dee rekindled by another friend. By evening my mother looked five years older; she could barely do anything without sobbing, so my father became her. His grief was a warm silence. He served us food, held our hands and made our mother endless glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice with lime. It was all she wanted. The sight of food intensified her grief. Naana and I grew red-eyed from watching our parents cry, wondering what our playmate Junior would do without a mother. We went to bed with headaches.

People converged on Auntie Dee Dee’s funeral in migratory bird fashion. In shining red and black mourning plumage. Wax prints so fresh that you could still smell the ink on them. Dutch prints quickly learning the language of African sun as they soaked up the sweat of grieving bodies. The women had quarter pieces of cloth show-boated into elaborate headgear, which they bore as heavily as their grief. The men carried themselves with a grace that belied the casual toss of dark Adinkra cloths over their left shoulders. I looked for Junior in the dark forest of tearful bodies but he was nowhere to be found. Uncle Johnny sat by the dead body; shoulders bent, clad in black, fossilised by sorrow, his eyebrows at odds with his tears.

My mother made me file past the dead body. Not caring for my seven-year-old sensitivity. Ostensibly for my own good. The waache seller down our road, who was single-handedly responsible for daily lunchtime pilgrimages of men from the Industrial Area, explained it to me later.

“If you don’t see a dead person in their coffin, there is a possibility they will visit you.”

Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a visit from Auntie Dee Dee. I had questions for her.

Anyway, I filed past the body; keeping my eyes down, trained on the gleaming black traditional slippers the adults were wearing. I only got a glance. She was adorned in all her finery, gold rings and a stiff smile. There was a red handbag trapped under her left arm to match the red dress she had been stuffed into. Red was her favourite colour.

“Quel gachis!”

It was the first time I heard French spoken properly. Auntie Dee Dee’s grandfather was French, and one of her cousins had travelled all the way from Paris to demonstrate his love by shaving his armpits to wear cloth the Ghanaian way.

Quel gachis! My father translated it later. What a waste! It sounded so much better in French. English just didn’t have the right sound for it. I resolved to learn French.

—–

continued >> here << ... | start from beginning?  | current projects: The City Will Love You and a collection of poems, The Geez

[monroecm-blog]

Who made it: Paulien Jacobs

What is it about: School assignments

Format: folio

[isaacathom]

Like. Monday 20th - lang lecture, then design presentation (lecture is anxiety inducing for being on my own, presentation induces anxiety for OBVIOUS reasons)

tuesday 21st - 1989 lecture (boring), lang class (fine, thank god)

wednesday 22nd - presentation of 1989 artwork and curatorial (EXTREMELY ANXIETY INDUCING)

thursday 23rd - setting up exhibition for pluralism artwork (fear! high stakes! fear!)

friday 24th - 1989 curatorial due to be submitted. a design ‘report of process’ due. Presumably also the design essay and folio that go with the presentation. due. all by 5pm for some fucking reason

miscellaneous - i think i have an online quiz on this week as well, which is luckily just multiple choice but i still have to fit it in somewhere sooooooooo

end result: I break down crying from stress in the shower on at least one of those days.

[dsireland86]

T.G.I.F.F !!!

He makes me happy!

[myyearofgivingdaily]

A Wedding of (Un)Fortunate Events

When my then-fiancee, Gwen, and I began planning our wedding, we did it the way most people do. We settled on a date -- 23 years ago today -- and then we flew into the usual panics. Where will we do it? How many people will we invite? What will we serve? What will the flowers look like? Who will make the bridal gown? What will the bridesmaids wear? What songs will be sung, and who will sing them? And how will we afford all this, on top of the student loan payments?

The stickiest questions we faced, however, were ones that many futureweds don’t have to worry about at all, yet weren’t the slightest bit surprising in the context of our lives: Who will perform the ceremony, and what will it say?

As I’ve noted previously while writing Causes and Effect this month, religion has always been a complicated subject in my life. My parents raised me as a Unitarian Universalist (when we got out the door on Sunday mornings at all), and I have long been on unfriendly terms with organized religion. Meanwhile, Gwen’s family identified as Jewish, but were not temple-goers and observed the tentpoles of Jewish life on an a la carte basis. By the time of our engagement, living in Manhattan in our late 20s, Gwen and I had long since settled in as devotees of the Church of the New York Times.

So choosing a wedding officiant wasn’t going to be an easy or obvious process. We knew we wanted someone with some personality, some pizzazz. We knew we wanted someone who could speak about us with some intimacy, having experienced enough impersonal weddings to know we didn’t want that. We knew we wanted the sermon to be about us, not about somebody else’s god or “the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church,” so the Book of Common Prayer was out. And with Four Weddings and a Funeral up for an Oscar, we knew we needed to avoid winding up with Mr. Bean performing the service -- no matter how resplendent I planned to look in my brocade vest and waistcoat.

What did that leave us? Of course, I lobbied for a Unitarian minister, but Gwen viewed Unitarian Universalism's roots in Christianity as a non-starter. She suggested we find a Reform Jewish rabbi, but I couldn’t get there. We spent a couple weeks at loggerheads on the subject -- until we conducted a little research into the organization behind my niece Anna’s elementary school on the Upper West Side.

The New York Society for Ethical Culture was founded in 1876 as a humanist movement dedicated to advancing social justice and furthering ethical principles via educational efforts for adults and children. As it was explained to us, Ethical Culture is to Judaism what Unitarian Universalism is to Christianity -- a liberal fellowship in which persons of all beliefs (and no beliefs) are embraced.

So we approached NYSEC and were referred to Jean Somerville Kotkin, the recently retired Executive Director of the American Ethical Union (the umbrella organization for Ethical Culture societies nationwide). We met with her in her office on Central Park West, and she was both brilliant and accommodating -- someone who would follow our lead on the content of the sermon, but who took enough interest in us personally that we knew we could trust her to offer the warmth and intimacy we sought.

As our wedding date grew closer, we conversed with Jean a couple more times and sent over some notes about our relationship and our lives, as well as a few sources from which we might like her to pull a few paragraphs. (Of course, if you’ve actually met me you no doubt understand that when I say “some notes,” what I mean is that I wrote up the results of Gwen’s and my typically obsessive research, and provided Jean with something far more like a blueprint than a sketch.)

Jean took the hint -- and in our last conversation before the wedding she assured us that she would stick closely to our guidelines, interspersed with a few of her personal perspectives. Then the day arrived, and when Jean arrived at the “party loft” we had rented on the Upper East Side she carried a folio containing her sermon, which was pretty much an exact recitation of the material Gwen and I had provided her.

What Jean didn’t carry across town with her that evening were her reading glasses.

The ceremony that ensued was one of history’s most adorable fiascoes -- full of fits and starts, self-deprecating jokes, and misread malaprops. Jean’s performance had the congregation in stitches, and the bridal party as well. At one point, she referred to us as “Owen and Jon” -- setting in motion a joke that my groomsmen ratcheted up with their decoration of my dad’s car that night, and has pinballed through all the years since.

Speaking of things that were all over the place: Our ceremony pulled elements from a variety of faith traditions, from the lighting of candles (Gwen was convinced she was going to set her veil on fire) to the stomping of a glass. The music we chose ranged from Pachelbel and West Side Story to Shaun Colvin, Trisha Yearwood and Wynonna Judd. My best man, the inimitable Bob Cashill, performed his toast as a Vegas lounge act. Our DJ followed our wishes, for the most part -- no “Play That Funky Music” (or Funky Chicken, for that matter), no “Wind Beneath My Wings,” etc. -- though our “do not play” list forgot to include the 10-minute Elvis Megamix he pulled from the pits of hell.

It was, friends told us, one of the great weddings -- and one that perfectly reflected Gwen and myself. Whether they were talking about the evening’s warmth and good humor, or about best-laid plans going hilariously awry, I’m not sure. But after months of being warned that the wedding would fly past, and if we weren’t careful we might not remember a thing about it afterward, I made certain to engrave every moment of it in my memory -- and even 23 years later it’s still right there.

We never saw Jean Kotkin again after that evening, and she passed away in 2003, so I can’t thank her now for sending Gwen and me off on such a side-splitting start to our married life. I can, however, thank all the friends and family who shared that evening with us and have continued to share our lives. And I can offer a bit of support to NYSEC in Jean’s memory; it’s been serving the free thinkers of Manhattan gloriously for 140 years.

And, of course, on our anniversary I can offer (once again) my eternal love and gratitude to Gwen. I offer it for that evening, which she just described as “a series of mishaps that added up to the greatest wedding ever.” And I offer it for all the days before and since.

Author’s note: The happenstance of my wedding anniversary falling on Memorial Day this year leaves me neglecting the obvious subject matter for today’s post. My apologies to anyone upset or offended by that fact. I would, however, like to take this opportunity to honor a pair of American heroes who recently gave their lives in an act of terrorism while defending America’s most precious -- if currently neglected -- values. Those men are Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, who were killed Friday in Portland, OR, while intervening to stop a white supremacist from spewing anti-Muslim hate speech at two women innocently riding a commuter train. In honor of Best and Namkai Meche...and in honor of those women, who never should have been placed in that situation in this nation...I’m also donating today to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

About the author: Jon Cummings has spent his career as a performing arts and music journalist at magazines including Billboard and Inside Arts as well as the pop-culture website Popdose. He also has served as a communications and publications specialist for organizations including the ACLU, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the U.N.-affiliated World Conference of Religions for Peace. After setting his remaining hair on fire last November 8, he became a co-founder of Indivisible: Conejo in the northwest suburbs of Los Angeles, and now serves as that organization’s communications guru. It’s about time he did his bit to serve his onetime colleague and longtime friend Melinda Newman’s Causes and Effect mission.

About this blog: Causes and Effect: My Year of Giving Daily was started in 2013 by entertainment and culture journalist Melinda Newman, who made daily donations to a wide variety of non-profits and wrote about her experience. USA Today music writer, Brian Mansfield took on this monumental task in 2014. This year, 12 individuals will contribute, each taking over the blog for one month.

[dsireland86]

Agghhhh !!!!! IT'S FERAL FOLIO FRIDAY!! THANK GOD 😊 🙏 🙂‍↕️

It's Feral Folio Friday: Friends Edition

[theonyxpath]

Because we’re all out this week, there was no Monday Meeting – but our emails have been flying all week as the kickstarter for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods funded in 50 minutes and it has been smashing through Stretch Goals since then!

It has perhaps been helped by a last minute change James and I made to the shipping costs for a bunch of our International backers – I mean I literally got the revised shipping costs from a new KS fulfilment shipper in the EU the morning the KS was going live!

Very glad we could bring those costs down – even if it is still an experiment until we get a few ship-outs actually out from these shippers.

As always, you can back at any time and you’ll get access to consecutive chunks of the manuscript as the KS rolls along – and you can cancel your pledge at any time before the KS is over if you don’t like what you read!

(And this is the case whether you have just stumbled on the Cults Kickstarter, are one of our long-time KS backers, or a friend of one of the creators!)

Also, related to our Kickstarter for V5 Cults of the Blood Gods, Modiphius has opened up the pre-orders for their V5 book, The Fall of London! You can find the info here on their website: https://www.modiphius.net/

You’ll recognize a lot of the creators’ names from our projects, so you know it’s at least worth a look: every pre-order for the hardcover physical book that’s yet to come gets a link to the finished PDF!

Chicago Folio art by Michele Giorgi

Since this is almost the end of the year, and is certainly a time when we can use some happy thoughts to go with the holidays, here are our Onyx Path Monday Meeting crew’s look back on what were some of our highlights from 2019:

Dixie:

It’s been amazing to streamline a few of our processes this year! However, to me the major highlights for me were holding certain books for the first time on which I and my colleagues have worked so hard, such as Trinity, Scion, Dragon-Blooded, and Chicago by Night. I’m glad we’ve been able to deliver so many great Kickstarters and am looking forward to those yet to come! Seeing our books go into stores has been amazing, too. Being able to walk into my FLGS and see a copy of Changeling 2e or Pugmire on the shelf is really rewarding.

Monica:

Community content has been a wonderful way to find new freelancers and those programs are giving fans an opportunity to create new titles for their favorite games. I think we’ve integrated the programs really well and I’ll be curious to see what happens in the coming months.

Ian:

Entirely self-serving of me, but: we ran the Trinity Continuum: Aberrant Kickstarter, which did gratifyingly well. We released the Trinity Continuum core rules and Trinity Continuum: Æon, which have been in development almost as long as Onyx Path has been a company! The feedback we’ve gotten has been really positive and I’m really happy that we finally got these out to the public. Squeaking in before the end of the year are In Media Res and the Æon Æxpansion, and we’re working on a new edition of Adventure! and other exciting projects. It’s been a great year for visible tangible progress.

Mighty Matt:

Teaming up with the DriveThruRPG team to launch the new Phone PDF format with the Pugmire core rulebook. As the RPG community grows it is very cool to have the chance to try new ways of using our games and the Phone PDF format means Pugmire (and now Scion: Origin) are available in a mobile format, which can be great to read on the go, use at conventions, and more.

They Came From Beneath the Sea! art by Brian LeBlanc

Mirthful Mike:

Two pillars of the Storypath System saw release in 2019… Scion and Trinity Continuum. And yes, Scion did have some bumps both before and after release… but we did learn from those and implemented some new procedures since then to make sure those bumps never show up again. Yes, a month long implementation of the Trinity Mindmeld was kinda stressful for me… but way less stressful than Scion‘s release.

Matthew:

My favourite moment of 2019 was conducting the second proof of They Came from Beneath the Sea! It’s been nothing but a joy to review a game I’ve overseen from conception to (near) publication, and I’m confident the people who buy it, run it, and play it will love the writing, the art, and the layout. It really is a testament to the creative excellence of the team who worked on this, and I owe a lot to their ingenuity and humour, and the faith Rich put in me and this game.

Eddy:

One thing I think we did really well: Process. 2018 was a year of onboarding, getting people trained up, and establishing process for our company. This year we saw how well it worked, adjusted where it didn’t work, and generally got things out faster and at higher quality than we did before. Next year is a natural step of refining or looking at better processes.

Lisa:

For me the good is the improvement of our office systems. Going through our in-house developers for contracts and pay schedules helps to keep these working smoothly and to both eliminate or clear up problems as we go. Hopefully, this makes it better for our freelancers to have their paperwork and payments in a timely fashion. 

RichT:

As for me, this last year has been one where we are starting to have things happen we set in motion years ago, like Ian mentioned about the Trinity Continuum, and also we announced Exalted Essence as another project we’ve been thinking about for quite some time.

Having the Trinity Continuum books available is particularly cool because they really illustrate how the Storypath System can be tweaked so that it meshes with the setting. Just wait until both Dystopia Rising: Evolution and They Came From Beneath the Sea! (and a bunch of unannounced projects) also become available and really put Storypath through its paces.

But also, in terms of other things besides projects, we’re working on new ways to print and ship our KS’d books, and how to build on the success we’ve had in getting our books into retail stores. Which might not really click until V5 Chicago By Night gets onto shelves. But that’ll be in our 2020 thoughts!

Memento Mori art by Brian LeBlanc

I’ve been thrilled by how our Terrific Trio of Terror have continued to post a new Onyx Pathcast every freakin’ Friday, and how we’ve ramped up our Twitch channel with fantastic actual plays and commentary pretty much every single day of the week! I really wasn’t sure we’d get so many loyal viewers, so thanks to all of you who’ve checked out our offerings!

Thanks to the always delightful James Bell, our KS Concierge, we were able to run 6 Kickstarter campaigns on our original KS account, and then James ran Mummy 2e and our friends at Handiwork Games ran the Creature Collection KS on our new Onyx Path KS account. Which is another thing we have been needing for years.

And we were able to continually roll out projects all year long that were created via our Kickstarter campaigns – both the main rewards and the Stretch Goal extra projects – which has been a juggling act as the older (ahem, later) rewards caught up and smashed into the newer projects that are getting made a lot more quickly under the updated processes Eddy and Lisa mentioned.

It was a satisfying year in that it felt good to demonstrate with all of our fantastic projects how we can create great and beautiful game books for both our licensed and our own lines. In a lot of ways, it was all of you and your responses – to our projects, to our posts, to our KSs – that truly made this an excellent year for all of us at the Onyx Path House of Ideas!

Thank YOU, for joining us last year in exploring our:

Many Worlds, One Path!

BLURBS!

Kickstarter!

V5 Cults of the Blood Gods funded in 50 minutes last week, and has thundered forward despite the holidays!

Onyx Path Media!

This Friday’s Onyx Pathcast Is our Holiday Special 2: Mario Kart Episode! Say! No! More! Check it out direct on Podbean, or your favorite podcast venue! https://onyxpathcast.podbean.com/

Topping the media list this week is Red Moon Roleplaying‘s actual play of Vampire: The Masquerade – Cults of the Blood Gods, to tie in to the currently running Kickstarter. Here’s part one, and do be warned, the content within contains scenes of a horrific nature: https://youtu.be/E_VtuU4y9JI

Additionally, Ekorren (of Roleplaying and Worldbuilding fame) has made a special V5 video, what with Cults of the Blood Gods being on Kickstarter: https://youtu.be/ir1MYLtD1EY

We’ve a festive line-up on Twitch this week, with a holiday special of Trinity Continuum, Dixie’s Holiday Twitch Takeover (which will be a hell of a lot of fun), another holiday special of Hunter: The Vigil, Uncanny Valley‘s regular Hunter game, Mage: The Awakening, and Scarred Lands!

Thank you to our streamers for such fantastic work this year, and even more thanks for those running games this week!

You can watch the games on our Twitch channel and subscribe to us over on twitch.tv/theonyxpath

Plus, we uploaded a barrage of content to our Onyx Path YouTube channel this last week, including videos for Pugmire, Aberrant, Changeling: The Lost, and more!

You can find our YouTube videos over on youtube.com/user/theonyxpath

What’s more, Matthew Dawkins continues his Gentleman’s Guide to Scion over on his YouTube channel, now covering the mechanics of consolation and Momentum! You can find Matthew’s channel at youtube.com/user/clackclickbang

If you’ve not been following the Occultists Anonymous series on Mage: The Awakening, do not despair! They have uploaded new episodes to their channel right here:

Episode 66: The Masters Songbird is called before his mentor, Colossus, to prepare for his initiation into an ancient legacy. Atratus begins to investigate a curiosity that Gabe has found. https://youtu.be/8HaJXY_iLk4

Episode 67: Baby, Take My Hand   Atratus speaks with the dead, determining how best she can help the ghost of Katherine. Gabe steps up to play a supporting role in helping the newly dead. Songbird tries something new… https://youtu.be/h3g3v5ntHn8

The Story Told Podcast continue their fantastic actual play of Exalted Dragon-Blooded right here: http://thestorytold.libsyn.com/fall-of-jiara-21-shall-we-spare-the-ravages-of-war

Over with Vampire: The Masquerade now, as The Sacrifice from Chicago by Night is run in Spanish over on webvampiro’s channel! https://youtu.be/PXMzZ69pl4Y

Returning to Red Moon Roleplaying, those folks have a whole load of content coming out for us, including: Changeling: The Lost: https://youtu.be/svXWhcGTNmc

and The Sacrifice, for Vampire: The Masquerade: https://youtu.be/b4T23Zy7s-4

Have you checked out the Botch Pit‘s guide to the Winter Court for Changeling: The Lost? If not, here it is: https://youtu.be/A_huXzRyghY

Drop Matthew a message via the contact button on matthewdawkins.com if you have actual plays, reviews, or game overviews you want us to profile on the blog!

Please check any of these out and let us know if you find or produce any actual plays of our games!

Electronic Gaming!

As we find ways to enable our community to more easily play our games, the Onyx Dice Rolling App is live! Our dev team has been doing updates since we launched based on the excellent use-case comments by our community, and this thing is awesome! (Seriously, you need to roll 100 dice for Exalted? This app has you covered.)

On Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

You can now read our fiction from the comfort and convenience of your Kindle (from Amazon) and Nook (from Barnes & Noble).

If you enjoy these or any other of our books, please help us by writing reviews on the site of the sales venue from which you bought it. Reviews really, really help us get folks interested in our amazing fiction!

Our selection includes these latest fiction books:

Our Sales Partners!

We’re working with Studio2 to get Pugmire and Monarchies of Mau out into stores, as well as to individuals through their online store. You can pick up the traditionally printed main book, the screen, and the official Pugmire dice through our friends there! https://studio2publishing.com/search?q=pugmire

We’ve added Prince’s Gambit to our Studio2 catalog: https://studio2publishing.com/products/prince-s-gambit-card-game

Now, we’ve added Changeling: The Lost 2nd Edition products to Studio2‘s store! See them here: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/all-products/changeling-the-lost

Scarred Lands (Pathfinder) books are also on sale at Studio2, and they have the 5e version, supplements, and dice as well!: https://studio2publishing.com/collections/scarred-lands

Scion 2e books and other products are available now at Studio2: https://studio2publishing.com/blogs/new-releases/scion-second-edition-book-one-origin-now-available-at-your-local-retailer-or-online

Looking for our Deluxe or Prestige Edition books? Try this link! http://www.indiepressrevolution.com/xcart/Onyx-Path-Publishing/

And you can order Pugmire, Monarchies of Mau, Cavaliers of Mars, and Changeling: The Lost 2e at the same link! And NOW Scion Origin and Scion Hero are available to order!

As always, you can find Onyx Path’s titles at DriveThruRPG.com!

On Sale This Week!

This Wednesday, we will be releasing the final monthly PDF installments for Exalted 3rd‘s Hundred Devils Night Parade and Adversaries of the Righteous on DTRPG!

Conventions!

2020: Midwinter: January 9th – 12th, in Milwaukee, WI. Check out David Fuller’s Athens, Ohio Scion actual play tie-in adventure (soon to be coming to the Storypath Nexus community content site) that will be running at Midwinter. The event url is below: https://tabletop.events/conventions/midwinter-gaming-convention-2020/schedule/402

And now, the new project status updates!

DEVELOPMENT STATUS FROM EDDY WEBB (projects in bold have changed status since last week):

First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)

Exalted Essay Collection (Exalted)

N!ternational Wrestling Entertainment (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Contagion Chronicle Ready-Made Characters (Chronicles of Darkness)

Trinity Continuum: Adventure! core (Trinity Continuum: Adventure!)

Duke Rollo fiction (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

TC: Aberrant Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

RUST (Scarred Lands)

Redlines

Kith and Kin (Changeling: The Lost 2e)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #2 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Many-Faced Strangers – Lunars Companion (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Second Draft

Player’s Guide to the Contagion Chronicle (Chronicles of Darkness)

M20 Victorian Mage (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Exigents (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Crucible of Legends (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Development

Heirs to the Shogunate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

TC: Aberrant Reference Screen (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Trinity Continuum Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum Core)

Monsters of the Deep (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

One Foot in the Grave Jumpstart (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2e)

Scion: Demigod (Scion 2nd Edition)

Tales of Aquatic Terror (They Came From Beneath the Sea!)

Across the Eight Directions (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Contagion Chronicle: Global Outbreaks (Chronicles of Darkness)

Contagion Chronicle Jumpstart (Chronicles of Darkness)

Manuscript Approval

Scion: Dragon (Scion 2nd Edition)

Masks of the Mythos (Scion 2nd Edition)

Titanomachy (Scion 2nd Edition)

Buried Bones: Creating in the Realms of Pugmire (Realms of Pugmire)

Post-Approval Development

Scion LARP Rules (Scion)

Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition core rulebook (Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition)

Editing

Lunars: Fangs at the Gate (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Let the Streets Run Red (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Geist 2e Fiction Anthology (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition)

Dragon-Blooded Novella #1 (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Legendlore core book (Legendlore)

WoD Ghost Hunters (World of Darkness)

Mythical Denizens (Creatures of the World Bestiary) (Scion 2nd Edition)

Pirates of Pugmire KS-Added Adventure (Realms of Pugmire)

M20 The Technocracy Reloaded (Mage: the Ascension 20th Anniversary Edition)

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad (Scarred Lands)

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant core (Trinity Continuum: Aberrant)

Terra Firma (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Deviant: The Renegades (Deviant: The Renegades)

Lunars Novella (Rosenberg) (Exalted 3rd Edition)

Post-Editing Development

TC: Aeon Ready-Made Characters (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed (Mage: the Awakening Second Edition)

City of the Towered Tombs (Cavaliers of Mars)

W20 Shattered Dreams Gift Cards (Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th)

TC: Aeon Jumpstart (Trinity Continuum: Aeon)

Vigil Watch (Scarred Lands)

Scion Companion: Mysteries of the World (Scion 2nd Edition)

Cults of the Blood Gods (Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition)

Wraith20 Fiction Anthology (Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition)

Hunter: The Vigil 2e core (Hunter: The Vigil 2nd Edition)

Indexing

ART DIRECTION FROM MIKE CHANEY!

In Art Direction

Contagion Chronicle – Finals coming in.

Trinity Continuum: Aberrant

Hunter: The Vigil 2e

Ex3 Lunars – Art is in.

TCfBtS!: Heroic Land Dwellers – Sketches in and approved.

Night Horrors: Nameless and Accursed – Contracted.

Cults of the Blood God (KS)

Mummy 2

City of the Towered Tombs

Let the Streets Run Red – Art notes and contracts finishing going out this week.

CtL Oak Ash and Thorn – Got artnotes.

Scion Mythical Denizens – Need sketches for fulls.

Deviant

Yugman’s Guide to Ghelspad

Vigil Watch – Getting stuff over to cartographer.

Legendlore (KS)

Technocracy Reloaded (KS) – Got notes out to artists for halfs and splats.

Scion Companion – Reading through art notes.

In Layout

Chicago Folio – Halfway through layout.

Trinity Continuum Aeon: Distant Worlds

Pirates of Pugmire – With Aileen.

Proofing

Dark Eras 2 – At WW for approval and they will be back after the New Year.

Trinity Continuum Aeon Jumpstart

They Came from Beneath the Sea! – Backer PDF out to backers soon.

VtR Spilled Blood

At Press

V5: Chicago – Shipping to the KS fulfillment shippers. PoD proofs ordered.

Geist 2e (Geist: The Sin-Eaters 2nd Edition) – Being printed.

Geist 2e Screen – Being printed.

DR:E – Being printed.

DRE Screen – Being printed.

DR:E Threat Guide – Helnau’s Guide to Wasteland Beasties – PoD proof on the way.

Trinity RMCs

Tales of Good Dogs – PoD proof ordered.

Memento Mori – Backer PDF out to backers, gathering errata.

M20 Book of the Fallen – PoD proof ordered.

Trinity Continuum Storypath Nexus Community Content – Getting it set up.

Today’s Reason to Celebrate!

Happy Holidays to One and All!

[dsireland86]

Do You Know What Today It Is??????

It's Freaking Folio Friday!!!!!

Hell Yesssss..... Let's Go!!!!

[dsireland86]

Happy Family Folio Friday!!!!!

Family don't end in blood 🫶🫶🫶

[dsireland86]

You know I'm going to do it!

I can't help it!

Folio’s worth celebrating every Friday

T.G.I.F.F

(A.K.A family friday)

It's been a hard week, but this bucket of sunshine 🌞 has been my life jacket.

Happy Friday to my awesome Tumblr family!! You're beautiful, loved, appreciated, and cherished. Hold on to hope and believe in the good. It's there. You just have to look a little harder :)