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thatfanfictionchick · 2 years ago

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TWST - Leona's braid

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Leona x Val[OC]

Rating: G

Warnings: Mention of blood;

Word count: 1351

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“What’s the herbivore doin’ here?” Leona strolled into the Savanclaw Spelldrive field, his gaze sweeping over Val sitting in the bleachers. She had her feet kicked up and was flicking through a book, a comically large straw hat on her head.

Jack pointed his thumb at Ruggie. “He invited her.”

“What?” Ruggie said innocently. “Leona likes having people watch him.” Leona glared at the smug tone in Ruggie’s voice but Ruggie was overtly interested in tying his laces.

Leona growled and grabbed his broom. “Whatever, let’s get started.”

Val was half-heartedly attempting to catch up on her Potionology reading while also watching the Savanaclaw team play. They were really good, and it made her wonder what the Diasomnia team must be like to have beaten them as easily as Leona claimed. Savanaclaw was agile and brutal; even against their own dorm mates they didn’t hold back. Jack was an absolute powerhouse, easily clearing the way for his side to score. Ruggie tended to hang back, causing all sorts of mayhem, but when he made his move he made it as flashy as possible. Leona seemed not to be trying to intentionally show off for once, but it was near impossible not to watch him anyway. He really was a sight to behold when he was actually making an effort.

She was trying to finish a passage on mandrake roots with little success when she heard someone yell. She lifted her head, barely catching a glimpse of the disc flying straight at her. She flinched, bracing herself for the pain. Instead there was a shadow falling over her, a grunt and a sound like a firecracker going off. She opened her eyes, holding her breath, only to see Leona crouched on his broom in front of her. The disc, sent arcing away, made a sharp turn midair and was quickly snatched up by Ruggie who raced to the far side of the field. Leona shook his hand before turning his head to look at her. He was careless with that block and blood welled up on his rapidly swelling knuckles. “You okay?”

She was halfway down her seat, her ridiculous hat lying on the ground behind her. Her hair was a riot of rainbow colors twisted together in at least a dozen braids. Her eyes were huge and as he watched she took a gasping breath before finally squeaking out “holy shit!” She stared at him for a long second before continuing. “That was…really cool.”

He had to look away so she didn’t see him smirking. Standing on the broom he waved his uninjured hand at her. “Well then…” but he trailed off as dark waves of hair suddenly fell over his shoulders. Somehow the elastic holding his hair had snapped. He scoffed and hopped to the ground, growling about the sudden inconvenience. He didn’t even have an extra to use. A small cry caught his attention and he turned to see Val tugging a black hair tie off her wrist from among the tangle of beaded bracelets.

“Here,” she said. “You can - your braid is loose.” He looked down and sure enough, another elastic was missing from the end of a dark braid, the hair beginning to unravel. “How did that even happen?”

There was just a moment for Leona to think, and suddenly he was leaning over Val in her seat, making her lean back in surprise. “Well?” he taunted. “Hurry up ‘n fix it.”

Val swallowed hard, huffing as she straightened up. He was very close and it was doing strange things to her heart. “Fine,” she said. “Because I owe you now.” He was smirking and it took a very concentrated effort to look at his hair and not his lips. She carefully ran her fingers down the loose braid and gathered up the strands, quietly surprised by how soft his hair was. For some reason she’d always expected it would be coarse. The hair was thick and it took her a second to adjust to it; her own hair was so fine in comparison. She reached the end and realized that the hair tie dangling from her pinky would be way too big. Fortunately when Epel had braided her hair early that morning he had used small different colored elastics which left her plenty to choose from. To be annoying she picked a pink one, pulling it free and quickly tying the end of Leona’s braid before he could complain.

“Cute,” he drawled. “Now finish.”

She scowled at him. “Oh come on, you can make a ponytail yourself.”

Leona lifted his injured hand, blood dripping freely from the broken skin. “Not really, no.”

“Ah!” she shrieked. “Your hand!” She made to hold it and he moved it away.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’ll deal with it after. Finish what you were doin’.”

She looked unconvinced, her brow drawn in concern, but after a moment she reached around his neck and combed her fingers through his hair. It would have been easier if he’d turned around but she got the feeling he wouldn’t just to continue tormenting her. “You’re a pest,” she muttered.

He didn’t reply. She was being stupidly gentle with his hair and it was honestly taking everything in him not to shiver as she carefully gathered it up before winding the elastic around it. It was almost enough to make him rethink his decision to tease her.

“There.” She gave the ponytail one last tug, maneuvering her fingers around his ears as she carded them through the hair on top of his head to smooth down any bumps and finished by brushing his bangs to the side. She smiled. It was always kind of nice to do someone else’s hair. Even if that person was the resident grumpy cat. She reached for his hand saying “now can I please-”

“Nope.” In an instant Leona had jumped back on his broom and was gliding away. There was absolutely no way she was going to hold his hand after that.

“Leona!” Val sprang from her seat. “Get back here! We have to take care of your hand!”

There were easy magical fixes for his hand, but he wasn't going to tell her that. She should know that. Besides, it was funnier to know she was worrying about it.

They made two more goals before Ruggie noticed his injury and put a stop to practice, chastising Leona for being careless. Val was waiting and she glared at him while Ruggie easily mended the broken skin.

"There," he drawled while flashing his hand at her. "All better. Ya happy now?"

"No!" she snapped. "You shouldn't have gone back out there with it like that in the first place!"

"You get hurt sometimes, not a big deal," he said. She huffed angrily and folded her arms across her chest, her foot tap-tapping on the ground. "Why're you so worked up about it?"

She refused to look at him, her fingers gripping her upper arms tightly. After a moment she quietly said "you got hurt because of me."

Ruggie's ears perked and a few feet away Jack stopped what he was doing. The both of them looked at Leona, waiting to see what happened next. A slow grin spread across Leona's face and he stepped right in front of her. She lifted her eyes to his and he held his newly healed hand in front of her face. "It's still sore," he taunted. "If you're feelin' that guilty you can kiss it better."

Her cheeks flushed and for a very long second she stared at him in disbelief. Then she did what Ruggie would go on to describe as “just about the suavest thing I’ve seen in my life”; she carefully took Leona’s hand in her own and, while maintaining direct eye contact, kissed each knuckle. Leona’s ears were plastered to his skull and Val was grinning like Floyd, which was unnerving all on its own. “All better!” she chimed in a sing-song tone. Dropping his hand she waved at Ruggie and Jack, making a swift exit. “See ya later!”

If her burning face was any indicator, she desperately did not want to see them later.

#twisted wonderland #twst leona #twst oc #val #i have a *lot* of oc fics that have been lounging for ages so i think it's time i get my ish organized and post a few #shuffle them to the bottom of my docs folder #anyway i imagine this happens somewhere in their timeline shortly after val tells floyd she thinks she loves him and he goes 'lol no'#'but you're still my shrimpy and i'll stomp anyone who hurts you'#'aw geez gettin' me all emotional over here thanks bean pole'

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maelwyth · 2 years ago

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Don’t wake up sleepy mandrakelotls.

#axolotl #cute #axotober #october #halloween #art #val draws things #mandrake #plant #plants

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evilhorse · 4 years ago

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And when it was done, Shadow Lass had won new honors...and a place in the Legions of Super-Heroes.

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tatiejosie · 3 years ago

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hhh brb drawing her with these,,

randomised gold

#.tagged #.val #.bella #mandrake would pick this style of jewelry for her...............

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tatiejosie · 2 years ago

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I posted 3,278 times in 2022

That's 1,155 more posts than 2021!

97 posts created (3%)

3,181 posts reblogged (97%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@through-thick-and-quinn

@killkillbitekill

@loogi-tooie

@funkybongos

@prometheus-adam

I tagged 671 of my posts in 2022

#.mandrake - 149 posts

#.bella - 114 posts

#art - 43 posts

#earwig and the witch - 37 posts

#.val - 37 posts

#bella yaga - 32 posts

#<3 - 29 posts

#ghibli - 25 posts

#mandrake - 22 posts

#.ml - 15 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#everytime i draw her i think about that post about artists whose fetishes become very obvious when you look at certain details of their art

My Top Posts in 2022:

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115 notes - Posted April 19, 2022

OH NO HERE COMES ANOTHER SUDDEN HYPERFIXATION THAT WILL FLOOD MY TUMBLR BLOG <3333 (threat)

idk i watched Earwig and the Witch and all of a sudden i’m out there filling half a sketchbook with Bella and Mandrake and dumb wholesome found family snippets????? i’m having so much fun drawing them with the intense size differences and their amazing dynamic!!!!!!!!

be warned that a swarm of Earwig-themed bullshit is about to arrive. no i will not apologize

simple lineart below!!

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127 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

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136 notes - Posted February 3, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

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a very autistic year indeed. shoutout to Mandrake somehow topping Bella in the tagging thing??? smh???

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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veeranger · 7 years ago

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there's a dangerous zombie gashat on mandarake for 800yen, it's in their nakano store

@mugen-nimbus

#ive never used mandrake but here you go pal #queen-val

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televinita · 4 years ago

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Books Read In 2020: The Why

In a tradition I accidentally started for myself in 2016 and now quite enjoy, at the end of the year I look back at my reading list and answer the question, why did you read this particular book?

Below, my 100 reads of 2020 are split into groups by target readership age, plus nonfiction at the end, now with a bonus note about how I heard of it. Which I probably won’t continue to do next year, but it was fun to try.

ADULT FICTION

I read each of these books because...

A Glitter of Gold - Liz Johnson. 2019. It had me at "her pirate tour business," but between the shipwreck & the museum-director love interest it was like BLOOD & TREASURE ROMANCE AU LET'S GOOO.

How I heard of it: a book blog

The Last Woman in the Forest - Diane Les Becquets. 2019. Recommended by a dog lover; I'm down for a thriller about a woman who has a dream dog-inclusive job like this.

How I heard of it: a book blog

Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman. 1990. I really enjoyed the miniseries and wanted to see if the book everyone loved so much was as good (for the record: it was not. at least not if you’ve seen the miniseries first; otherwise they are probably equal).

This Is Home - Lisa Duffy. 2019. Attractive cover + I flipped it open to a random page and just liked the writing style.

How I heard of it: library

Dear Mr. Knightley - Katherine Reay. 2013. I'd had this on the back burner for a while because the MC sounded like me, and one day I got sick of not being able to find any fluffy contemporary romances with beta male heroes and decided Matthew Gray Gubler was gonna star in this one. (spoiler alert: it is a good book but that did not work)

How I heard of it: a book blog

Rubbernecker - Belinda Bauer. 2013. Criminal Minds sent me into a tailspin so I went hunting for books to cast Spencer Reid in again; the Asperger's/case-solving/difficult relationship with mother combo sounded promising. (spoiler alert: the med-student element + his social cluelessness proved too strong and I was only able to picture the kid from The Good Doctor)

How I heard of it: Googling keywords

The Swiss Affair - Emylia Hall. 2013. I got a random hankering for a student/teacher novel, and after scrutinizing the library catalog this was the only one that fit my parameters for gender, lack of adultery, and focus on romance over sex.

How I heard of it: library

Love At First Bark - Debbie Burns. 2019. I was trying to cast Wes/Jules [Dollface] in a romance novel, so I browsed through a Goodreads friend's "dog-romance" shelf and accidentally landed in a Jeid AU [Criminal Minds]. Which may or may not have been a large part of what turned me into a Jeid shipper (outside canon only).

The Mermaids Singing - Val McDermid. 1995. One final attempt to cast Reid in a novel -- a user in a Reddit post asking for this very thing suggested this, and "profiler with idiosyncracies" certainly fit.

The Wire in the Blood [and 9 subsequent novels] - Val McDermid, spanning 1997-2019. Turns out aside from being British, Reid paints onto Tony Hill EXCEPTIONALLY well, and I accidentally found myself with a little Jeid AU in the process, so obviously I read the entire series. Good crime-solving fun and all that.

Horse - Talley English. 2018. Random library pull because I connected with the writing style and it appeared to actually focus on horses.

How I heard of it: library

A Sparkle of Silver - Liz Johnson. 2018. I liked the author's other book and this was pretty much a remix of the same story, but now with a cool mansion/estate setting.

How I heard of it: looking up other books by this author

Everyone Is Beautiful - Katherine Center. 2009. Went looking for stories about strong marriages, found this on a Goodreads list of "second chance marriage" books, tripped into something like a season 9 Jim/Pam scenario. How I heard of it: Googling keywords

The Lost Husband - Katherine Center. 2013. Loved the previous book of hers I read, and the "starting life over on a goat farm" angle sounded like an ideal life to try on.

How I heard of it: looking up more from this author

The Shadow Year - Hannah Richell. 2013. Fixing up an old house?? I am THERE. Doing this in two timelines, one of which involves off-the-grid homesteading, is even better.

How I heard of it: used book sale

Mandrake Root - Janet Diebold. 1946. I needed a non-library book to bring on vacation, and after spinning in circles over what I thought would appeal to my mood in that setting, my brain randomly said "reread this one."

How I heard of it: estate sale

Path of the Jaguar - Vickie Britton & Loretta Jackson. 1989. Bought cheap for cheap thrills: a Yucatan adventure/mystery. Read now so I could get rid of it. How I heard of it: library sale

Burying Water - K.A. Tucker. 2014. The library didn't have The Simple Wild, but they DID have a book w/ an equally pretty cover that talked about a badly beaten young amnesiac (!) recovering on a horse farm (!!). What is: my top romance trope (hurt/comfort, bonus points for animals and rural setting).

How I heard of it: library

Happiness for Beginners - Katherine Center. Established quality author + summertime hiking inspiration.

How I heard of it: looking up more from this author

The Visitors - Simon Sylvester. Cool cover + setting, and a teenage protagonist usually makes adult fiction more accessible. How I heard of it: Goodreads

Becoming Rain - K.A. Tucker. 2014. I was in this companion novel solely for mentions of Alex and any people by the last name of Wells, but figured I might as well read all of it to ensure I didn't miss any. How I heard of it: looking up more from this author

The Guest List - Lucy Foley. 2020. Honestly, it just sounded like a cool thriller (and cool setting). How I heard of it: a book blog

You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik. 2011. Fell down a Will/Rachel [Glee] rabbit hole and ravaged the student/teacher keyword in my library catalog again to scratch the itch.

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson. 1959. Mom's been trying to get me to read this for years, and this time when it came up in conversation it was the right time of year, so I randomly decided to give it a shot. How I heard of it: Mom

The Walker in Shadows - Barbara Michaels. 1979. Gothic ghost story + beautiful architectural details in a historic house = yeah!

How I heard of it: Goodwill

YOUNG ADULT

People Like Us - Dane Mele. 2018. Needed an audiobook; a girls' boarding school murder mystery seemed most likely to hold my attention of the limited options. How I heard of it: Library

The Possibility of Now - Kim Culbertson. 2016. I will read anything by this author, and girl having a meltdown over a test = me. How I heard of it: looking up other books by this author

Rob&Sara.com - P.J. Petersen & Ivy Ruckman. 2004. Mostly I wanted to go back to my high school days and enjoy the format of a novel written in emails, but also, I like Ruckman. How I heard of it: used book sale

For Real - Alison Cherry. 2014. Fictional Amazing Race!! + awesome summery cover + sisters How I heard of it: library sale

The Summer After You + Me - Jennifer Salvato Doktorski. 2015. The awesome summery cover, mostly. How I heard of it: a book blog

You'd Be Mine - Erin Hahn. 2019. Gorgeous cover + the chance to vicariously follow a budding young country music star on tour for the summer.

How I heard of it: a book blog

Juniors - Kaui Hart Hemmings. 2015. The neat setting(s): a live-in guest on a wealthy estate in Hawaii. How I heard of it: Dollar store

Lion Boy's White Brother - Alden G. Stevens. 1951. Bought cheap because vintage juvenile book in a unique setting. Read now to see if I could get rid of it (NOPE).

How I heard of it: used bookstore

The O.C.: Spring Break - Aury Wallington. 2005. I keep meaning to finish this short series, and it was an easy title to count for my Mount TBR challenge.

How I heard of it: used book sale

Echo Island - Edward Karlow. 2017. Bought cheap because of the beautiful summery cover; easy read for Mount TBR so I could get rid of it. How I heard of it: library sale

Confessions of a High School Disaster - Emma Chastain. 2017. Read because of THE SUPER CUTE SUMMERY COVER (and diary format).

How I heard of it: Dollar store

Kentucky Daughter - Carol J. Scott. 1985. Working my way down the “Inappropriate Student/Teacher Relationships in YA" list because I'm in that kind of mood this year; chose this because 80s books tend to deliver the subject best*, the character reminded me of the girl in Send No Blessings, and Open Library had it. *this one was just blatant sexual harassment, though, and belonged very literally on that list

How I heard of it: Goodreads

What They Always Tell Us - Martin Wilson. 2008. I sorted the library catalog to see the oldest contemporary YA novels they still have before they get weeded, and "loner being taken under the wing of his older brother's (male) friend and falling in love with him" hit a couple of good tropes. How I heard of it: library

Bobby's Watching - Ted Pickford. 1993. Browsing around on OpenLibrary and saw they FINALLY had a copy of this book that scared me too much to finish as a kid, and which I've wanted to revisit ever since I remembered what it's called (Interlibrary Loan doesn't have it and it's Not Cheap to buy).

How I heard of it: library

Powwow Summer - Nahanni Shingoose. 2019. Always interested in modern-day Indigenous girls connecting w/ their heritage, especially if they're from my home state's tribe.

How I heard of it: a book blog

The Princesses of Iowa - M. Molly Backes. 2012. Appealing cover + heft suggesting a solid Midwestern contemporary, plus I liked the student teacher element (without a slash this time, as in "college student who is almost a teacher")

How I heard of it: library

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares. 2001. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood - Ann Brashares. 2003.

Long-intended reread of a college fave because I wanted see Mike Vogel in the movie, and it was summer so the stars aligned. Continued because the first book was as good as I remembered. (I would have kept going but Life distracted me for a bit and by the time I was back on track, it was no longer summer) How I heard of it: I...can't remember. Am the worst!

The Distance From Me To You - Marina Gessner a.k.a. Nina de Gramont. 2015. Hiking inspiration + an appealing-sounding romance. How I heard of it: Goodreads

Where Have All the Tigers Gone? - Lynn Hall. 1989. Will read any of her books, but specifically read this one because it seemed fairly autobiographical, and I read it NOW because it seemed durable enough to take on vacation. How I heard of it: looking up books by this author

And Both Were Young - Madeline L'Engle. 1949 (text of 1983 edition w/ material from original manuscript added back). Something reminded me of its existence and I requested it because it was the only non-animal-focused vintage teen novel I could physically get my hands on before Interlibrary Loan opened back up, and I had a craving for just that.

How I heard of it: library

The Other Side of Lost - Jessi Kirby. 2018. Established quality author + throw me ALL the thru-hike novels!

How I heard of it: Goodreads

The Vow - Jessica Martinez. 2013. Perfect scenario to run an Abed/Annie [Community] AU!

How I heard of it: I want to say...an article on a book website (not personal blog this time) back in 2013.

Moon and Me - Hadley Irwin. 1981. Was just in the mood to read an 80s teen novel and this one helped me knock off a title for the Mount TBR challenge. From an author I like, w/ bonus horse content.

How I heard of it: used book sale.

Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls - Lynn Weingarten. 2015. I bought a blind bag at the library sale and this was one of the only contemporary YA novels in it; figured I might as well read it since I'd liked a previous book of hers.

How I heard of it: Library

History Is All You Left Me - Adam Silvera. 2016.

With the Glee rabbit hole came a Klaine spiral; this was my season 4 Tragic AU dream for them and I've been saving it for a Klainey day ever since it was published. (No I am not sorry for that horrid pun.)

How I heard of it: googling keywords

The Museum of Heartbreak - Meg Leder. 2016. The cool cover/concept of a "museum" of items reeled me in; I bought a copy a while ago 'cause the library didn't have it. Read now to see if I could get rid of it (NOPE).

How I heard of it: Goodreads

Me & Mr. J - Rachel McIntyre. 2015. Student/teacher novel that looked especially appealingly tame so I'd been saving it, but then Open Library notified me it was now only available in 1-hour increments, and I got paranoid it would disappear altogether (it's not cheap to buy or available via ILL), so I wanted it in my brain.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

Dear Evan Hansen - Val Emmich w/ Steven Levenson, Benj Pasek & Justin Paul. 2018. Fell in love with the DEH soundtrack. Play's summary sounded good -- getting to experience it in YA novel form?? Amazing.

How I heard of it: Wikipedia

Saddle a Thunderbolt - Jo Sykes. 1967

Bought a while ago because vintage horse story. Read now specifically to alleviate my pre-homesickness about moving by imagining living in an even more beautiful place than home.

How I heard of it: either a used book sale or a used bookstore...

Learning to Breathe - Janice Lynn Mather. 2018. This was mentioned on a lost-book forum and "girl with unplanned pregnancy supports herself by getting a job cleaning" piqued my interest; the setting (Bahamas) and cover made it better.

How I heard of it: Reddit

Everglades Adventure - James Ralph Johnson. 1970. Standard vintage boys' adventure-in-nature story; I like those.

How I heard of it: Goodwill

CHILDREN’S/MIDDLE GRADE

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott. 1868. Seeing the new movie and falling head over heels was what it took to FINALLY convince me to reread this childhood fave.

How I heard of it: can't remember; I was a kid

A Little Princess - Frances Hodgson Burnett. 1905. I was perusing a lot of books about classic children's books and it started to bug me that I had skipped this appealing-sounding one as a kid.

How I heard of it: can't remember; I was a kid

Little Men - Louisa May Alcott. 1871. LW sparked a fandom revival and I wanted more detail about the Marches' adult lives (esp. Jo & Bhaer), even on the fringes.

How I heard of it: library

Lady and the Tramp - Ward Greene. I saw a quote from the new movie under a gifset on Tumblr that sounded like it came from a book, and upon Googling out that one existed, I obviously could not allow the book version of a beloved childhood animal-movie fave to go unread. Especially after finding out it was super rare so reading it would be a privilege.

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. 1910. Read for the same reason as A Little Princess. Can’t have one without the other, you know.

How I heard of it: was a kid; can't remember

The Mother-Daughter Book Club - Heather Vogel Fredericks. 2007. Much Ado About Anne - Heather Vogel Fredericks. 2008.

Always thought the series looked cute/reminded me of The Teashop Girls, but the fact that the first book they read is Little Women gave me the impetus to finally read this one. First book was darling so I continued to the next (but failed to continue beyond because COVID shut the library down until I was out of the mood).

How I heard of it: library

Nature Girl - Jane Kelley. 2010. I wanted walking inspiration.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

From You to Me - K.A. Holt. 2018. Mistook it for a similar-looking book I'd seen at the same time (See You On A Starry Night), but figured I'd give the 8th grade bucket list idea a shot once I had it. How I heard of it: Goodreads

Semiprecious - D. Anne Love. 2006. Cute cover + I'm starting to be a big fan of what I call "contemporary historical," for stories set mid-20th century.

How I heard of it: library

Dandy's Mountain - Thomas Fall. 1967. Vintage horse-inclusive children's book in a rural setting, I'm sold. Not to mention, love reading a summer setting in summer.

How I heard of it: used book sale

Littler Women: A Modern Retelling - Laura Schaefer. 2017. The only way to make the Little Women MORE magical is to make them younger, modern, and written by a proven quality author.

How I heard of it: a book blog

Behind The Attic Wall - Sylvia Cassedy. 315 pg/1983.

A Goodreads friend strongly recommended it as similar to but better than Mandy, and reading about it in 100 Best Books For Children sealed the deal. Read now for the Mount TBR challenge.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

The Jigsaw Jungle - Kristin Levine. 2018. I am a COMPLETE sucker for books told in non-traditional/scrapbook-esque format.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

Runt - Marion Dane Bauer. 2002. Wolf story by a quality author. Read now after owning it for a decade to see if I could get rid of it.

How I heard of it: used book sale

The King of the Cats - Rene Guillot. 1959. Bought cheap for a quick read because vintage animal story. Read now so I could get rid of it.

How I heard of it: used book sale

Just The Beginning - Betty Miles. 1976. Found cheap; always down to read a vintage book about an average girl (and I wanted to know how she'd cope with her mom being "a cleaning lady in a town full of classmates who HAVE cleaning ladies").

How I heard of it: used book sale

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - J.K. Rowling. 1997. Been meaning to reread the series for a while now; finally got motivation to check out the illustrated edition 'cause Christmastime.

How I heard of it: originally Mom; a book blog for this edition

Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk. 2020. Almost entirely because of the incredible clipart cover, promising me nature and a dog (and because I could get it as an e-audiobook from the library).

How I heard of it: a book blog

Knock Three Times - Cressida Cowell. 2019. I needed another audiobook for bedtime/walks and I know that David Tennant will provide.

How I heard of it: more by this author (more accurately, narrator)

NONFICTION

The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming A Life Through The Pages Of A Lost Journal - Lily Koppel. 2008. I'm kind of obsessed with the concept of historical 5-year diaries -- and finding one like this is The Dream.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life - Anne Bogel. 2018. Attractive and compact book about the pleasures of being a reader? A headspace I want to be in.

How I heard of it: library

100 Best Books for Children - Anita Silvey. 2004. I'm big on looking at lists of books for children this year. These are the kind of books I know, love, and want to hear people talk about, now that I know books about these books exist.

How I heard of it: library

The Coming of Saska - Doreen Tovey Originally bought because it was cheap and featured animals, I needed a non-library book to bring on vacation, and this one is a durable ex-library copy in plastic wrap that featured a similar setting to where I was going, so: thematic.

Cats in the Belfry - Doreen Tovey. 1957. Wanted more of her books, and lo and behold the library had the first one.

How I heard of it: more by this author

Sorry Not Sorry - Naya Rivera. 2016. I'll read anything the Glee kids write, and this doubled as an easy number for the Mount TBR challenge.

How I heard of it: entertainment news websites

Living Large in Our Little House - Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell. 2016. I love tiny houses. And this one specifically mentioned living with dogs. And had color photographs.

How I heard of it: used bookstore

I'm Your Biggest Fan: Awkward Encounters and Assorted Misadventures in Celebrity Journalism. - Kate Coyne. 2016. Found cheap at a library sale -- loved the chapter headings and the fact that they were all about celebrities I knew.

Adrift - Tami Oldham Ashcraft w/ Suesea McGearheart. 1998/2018 edition. The movie was so awesome that I couldn't wait for more details about the real story in her own words.

I'll Be Gone In The Dark [NF] - Michelle McNamara. 2018. Been reading a lot of true crime write-ups on Reddit lately; decided it was time to pick up this well-received one.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

Dear Evan Hansen: Waving Through A Window - Steven Levenson. 2017. Much like The Grimmerie for Wicked, once I fell in love with the DEH soundtrack and looked up the plot summary, I wanted to read the musical's detailed background/behind the scenes story + libretto before I watched it.

How I heard of it: Wikipedia

Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune - Bill Dedman & Paul Clark Newell. 2013. Love me a story about a mansion (or three). Or the reclusive and insanely wealth heiress who owns them, that works too.

How I heard of it: Goodreads

JUVENILE NONFICTION Mascots: Military Mascots from Ancient Egypt to Modern Korea - Fairfax Downey. 1954. Animal book from an author I like; read now to see if I could get rid of it (yes).

How I heard of it: secondhand bookstore

Come on, Seabiscuit - Ralph Moody. 1963. Bought because vintage kids' horse book; read now to see if I could get rid of it (and to count it towards my Mount TBR challenge 'cause it was short).

How I heard of it: secondhand bookstore

#why i read

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comicwaren · 5 years ago

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From Marvel Comics #1001

“Moving On” -- Tony Isabella, Tom Mandrake and Neeraj Menon

“Spa Day” -- G. Willow Wilson, Pasqual Ferry and Ian Herring

“Turf War” -- Carl Potts and Espen Grundetjern

“Happy Deadpool-Versary” -- Brian Posehn, Scott Koblish and Val Staples

“Selfie-Aware!” -- Bob Budiansky and Matt Yackey

“Comic Zone” -- Trina Robbins and Marguerite Sauvage

“The Rest of Your Life” -- Marc Guggenheim, Pere Pérez and Mattia Iacono

“Hulk Cookies” -- Audrey Loeb and Dario Brizuela

“Destroy All Robots!” -- Simon Furman, Nick Roche and Josh Burcham

“Comics For Victory!” -- Bill Morrison

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thecomicsnexus · 6 years ago

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A Song of Pain and Sorrow!

HEROES AGAINST HUNGER 1986 BY JIM STARLIN, CARY BATES, ELLIOT S. MAGGIN, PAUL LEVITZ, MIKE W. BARR, MICHAEL FLEISHER, BOB ROZAKIS, ROY THOMAS, J. M. DEMATTEIS, ROBERT BLOCH, ROBERT LOREN FLEMING, MARV WOLFMAN, TONY ISABELLA, GERRY CONWAY, BARBARA RANDALL, ANDREW HELFER, DAN MISHKIN, LEN WEIN, ED HANNIGAN, MINDY NEWELL, STEVE ENGLEHART, JOEY CAVALIERI, PAUL KUPPERBERG, DOUG MOENCH...

GEORGE PEREZ, PARIS CULLINS, DENYS COWAN, JAN DUURSEMA, KEITH GIFFEN, ROSS ANDRU, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍA-LOPEZ, CARMINE INFANTINO, MARSHALL ROGERS, BERNIE WRIGHTSON, JOE BROZOWSKI, SAL AMENDOLA, CURT SWAN, BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH, ERNIE COLON, WALT SIMONSON, EDUARDO BARRETO, DAVE GIBBONS, JACK KIRBY, TONY SALMONS, DAN JURGENS, JOE KUBERT, DAVID ROSS, JIM SHERMAN...

KIM DEMULDER, TONY DEZUNIGA, VAL MAYERIK, ALFREDO ALCALA, JOE STATON, KLAUS JANSON, JERRY ORDWAY, MURPHY ANDERSON, KARL KESEL, MIKE KALUTA, GRAY MORROW, JIM APARO, JOHN BYRNE, JEFF JONES, TERRY AUSTIN, STEVE LEIALOHA, ROMEO TANGHAL, BRUCE PATTERSON, AL MILGROM, TOM MANDRAKE, BILL WRAY, JOE RUBINSTEIN, HOWARD CHAYKIN, GREG THEAKSTON, ALAN WEISS...

DAINA GRAZANUS, MICHELE WOLFMAN, GENE D’ANGELO, CARL GAFFORD, ANTHONY TOLLIN, TOM ZIUKO, GEORGE ROBERTS, LIZ BERUBÉ, NANSI HOOLAHAN AND TATJANA WOOD

SYNOPSIS (FROM COMIC VINE)

Superman delivers an acre of top soil to Ethiopia. A sirocco threatens to blow away the top soil, but Superman's quick actions save the majority of it. Lee Ann Layton, a member of the Peace Corps, casts doubt on Superman's ability to truly change Ethiopia for the better. Superman carries out his task to pepper the Ethiopian landscape with acres of top soil. The top soil is blasted out of Superman's hands. Miles away, Batman investigates the crash of an airplane, which was delivering food to Ethiopia. Seeing Superman flying overhead, Batman signals the Man of Steel to join his investigation.

A cursory glance with his microscopic vision reveals that a particle beam brought the plane down. Superman tasks Batman with enlisting the aid of Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. Batman tasks Superman with discovering how their unknown foe knows the schedules of the famine relief planes. Superman's investigation brings him into conflict with a trio of androids, which Superman destroys. Superman traces a broadcast signature to an alien craft, buried miles beneath Ethiopia. Superman confronts the Master, an alien that feeds off hopelessness and entropy.

Superman battles the Master, only to find himself teleported away, back to the surface. Batman storms Luthor's island base. Batman confronts Luthor. Batman convinces Luthor to use his plant growth formula to aid Ethiopia. Luthor only consents to prove his superiority over Superman. Batman, and Luthor, rendezvous with Superman. Suddenly their surroundings are plunged into pitch, as the entire planet is encased in a sphere of total darkness. With the Earth completely cut off from the light of the Sun, all life on Earth is in jeopardy.

Luthor locates the Master's ship, just outside of a refugee camp for famine victims. Luthor is visibly shaken by his encounter with the starving children. Luthor tasks Batman with evacuating the camp. Luthor teams up with Superman to confront the Master. The Master teleports Superman into another dimension. Luthor attacks the Master, who grows stronger feeding off Luthor's despair. Layton chastises the Batman for placing the camp in danger. Batman races to the Master's ship to render assistance. Superman flies faster than the speed of light to escape the Master's dimension of abject darkness.

Playing the instrument lodged in his chest, the Master releases four fireballs, each threatening a different city. Superman is forced to abandon Luthor, to deal with the new threat. Superman dissipates the fireballs. Luthor continues his desperate battle against the Master. Batman joins the fight. Luthor projects a force field around the Master's destructive instrument, preventing the Master from playing it. Nonetheless, the Master closes on Luthor, intent on crushing the life from him with his bare hands. Superman intervenes, and beats the Master into submission.

Superman wrenches the instrument from the Master's chest, then hurls the Master into the dimension of darkness. With the threat of the Master ended, Superman works with Luthor to end the famine in Ethiopia. Luthor's plant growth formula, however, fails. What worked on Luthor's world, Lexor, is incompatible with the soil composition of Earth. Layton explains that it took man years to turn Ethiopia into a desert, and a single afternoon of super-heroic efforts was never going to restore it. Layton states that it will take a concerted effort, on the part of the entire world, to save the African continent. As Batman, Luthor, and Superman depart, Layton allows herself to feel hope for the future.

BEHIND THE SCENES

1983-1985 FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA (FROM WIKIPEDIA)

A widespread famine affected Ethiopia from 1983 to 1985. The worst famine to hit the country in a century, in northern Ethiopia it led to more than 400,000 deaths, but, according to Human Rights Watch, more than half its mortality could be attributed to "human rights abuses causing the famine to come earlier, strike harder and extend further than would otherwise have been the case". Other areas of Ethiopia experienced famine for similar reasons, resulting in tens of thousands of additional deaths. The famine as a whole took place a decade into the Ethiopian Civil War.

The famine of 1983–85 is most often ascribed to drought and climatic phenomena. However, Human Rights Watch has alleged that widespread drought occurred only some months after the famine was under way. According to the organisation, and Oxfam UK, the famines that struck Ethiopia between 1961 and 1985, and in particular the one of 1983–85, were in large part created by government policies, specifically a set of so-called counter-insurgency strategies and "social transformation" in non-insurgent areas.

The economy of Ethiopia is based on agriculture: almost half of GDP, 60% of exports, and 80% of total employment come from agriculture.

In 1974, a group of Marxist soldiers known as the Derg overthrew the government. The Derg addressed the Wollo famine by creating the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission (RRC) to examine the causes of the famine and prevent its recurrence, and then abolishing feudal tenure in March 1975. The RRC initially enjoyed more independence from the Derg than any other ministry, largely due to its close ties to foreign donors and the quality of some its senior staff. As a result, insurgencies began to spread into the country's administrative regions

By late 1976 insurgencies existed in all of the country's fourteen administrative regions. The Red Terror (1977–1978) marked the beginning of a steady deterioration in the economic state of the nation, coupled with extractive policies targeting rural areas. The collapse of the system of State Farms, a large employer of seasonal laborers, resulted in an estimated 500,000 farmers in northern Ethiopia losing a component of their income. Grain wholesaling was declared illegal in much of the country, resulting in the number of grain dealers falling from between 20,000 and 30,000 to 4,942 in the decade after the revolution.

The nature of the RRC changed as the government became increasingly authoritarian. Immediately after its creation, its experienced core of technocrats produced highly regarded analyses of Ethiopian famine and ably carried out famine relief efforts. However, by the 1980s, the Derg had compromised its mission. The RRC began with the innocuous scheme of creating village workforces from the unemployed in state farms, and government agricultural schemes but, as the counter-insurgency intensified, the RRC was given responsibility for a program of forced resettlement and villagization. As the go-between for international aid organizations and foreign donor governments, the RRC redirected food to government militias, in particular in Eritrea and Tigray. It also encouraged international agencies to set up relief programs in regions with surplus grain production, which allowed the AMC to collect the excess food. Finally, the RRC carried out a disinformation campaign during the 1980s famine, in which it portrayed the famine as being solely the result of drought and overpopulation and tried to deny the existence of the armed conflict that was occurring precisely in the famine-affected regions. The RRC also claimed that the aid being given by it and its international agency partners were reaching all of the famine victims.

Four Ethiopian provinces—Gojjam, Hararghe, Tigray and Wollo—all received record low rainfalls in the mid-1980s. In the south, a separate and simultaneous cause was the government's response to Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) insurgency. In 1984, President Mengistu Haile Mariam announced that 46% of the Ethiopian Gross National Product would be allocated to military spending, creating the largest standing army in sub-Saharan Africa; the allocation for health in the government budget fell from 6% in 1973–4 to 3% by 1990–1.

Although a UN estimate of one million deaths is often quoted for the 1983–5 famine, this figure has been challenged by famine scholar Alex de Waal. In a major study, de Waal criticized the United Nations for being "remarkably cavalier" about the numbers of people who died, with the UN's one-million figure having "absolutely no scientific basis whatsoever," a fact which represents "a trivialization and dehumanization of human misery.". De Waal estimates that 400,000 to 500,000 died in the famine.

Nevertheless, the magnitude of the disaster has been well documented: in addition to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions were made destitute. Media activity in the West, along with the size of the crisis, led to the "Do They Know It's Christmas?" charity single and the July 1985 concert Live Aid, which elevated the international profile of the famine and helped secure international aid. In the early to mid-1980s there were famines in two distinct regions of the country, resulting in several studies of one famine that try to extrapolate to the other or less cautious writers referring to a single widespread famine. The famine in the southeast of the country was brought about by the Derg's counterinsurgency efforts against the OLF. However, most media referring to "the Ethiopian famine" of the 1980s refers to the severe famine in 1983-85 centered on Tigray and northern Wollo, which further affected Eritrea, Begemder and northern Shewa. Living standards had been declining in these government-held regions since 1977, a "direct consequence" of Derg agricultural policies. A further major contributing factor to the famine were the Ethiopian government's enforced resettlement programs, utilized as part of its counter-insurgency campaign.

Despite RRC claims to have predicted the famine, there was little data as late as early 1984 indicating an unusually severe food shortage. Following two major droughts in the late 1970s, 1980 and 1981 were rated by the RRC as "normal" and "above normal". The 1982 harvest was the largest ever, with the exception of central and eastern Tigray. RRC estimates for people "at risk" of famine rose to 3.9 million in 1983 from 2.8 million in 1982, which was less than the 1981 estimate of 4.5 million. In February and March 1983, the first signs of famine were recognized as poverty-stricken farmers began to appear at feeding centers, prompting international aid agencies to appeal for aid and the RRC to revise its famine assessment. The harvest after the main (meher) harvest in 1983 was the third largest on record, with the only serious shortfall again being recorded in Tigray. In response, grain prices in the two northern regions of Begemder and Gojjam fell. However, famine recurred in Tigray. The RRC claimed in May 1984 that the failure of the short rains (belg) constituted a catastrophic drought, while neglecting to state that the belg crops form a fourth of crop yields where the belg falls, but none at all in the majority of Tigray. A quantitative measure of the famine are grain prices, which show high prices in eastern and central Tigray, spreading outward after the 1984 crop failure.

A major drain on Ethiopia's economy was the ongoing civil war, which pitched rebel movements against the Soviet and Cuban backed Derg government. This crippled the country's economy further and contributed to the government's lack of ability to handle the crisis to come.

By mid-1984, it was evident that another drought and resulting famine of major proportions had begun to affect large parts of northern Ethiopia. Just as evident was the government's inability to provide relief. The almost total failure of crops in the north was compounded by fighting in and around Eritrea, which hindered the passage of relief supplies. Although international relief organizations made a major effort to provide food to the affected areas, the persistence of drought and poor security conditions in the north resulted in continuing need as well as hazards for famine relief workers. In late 1985, another year of drought was forecast, and by early 1986 the famine had spread to parts of the southern highlands, with an estimated 5.8 million people dependent on relief food. In 1986, locust plagues exacerbated the problem.

TL;DR

The famine was caused by a series of events, most of them of politic nature (and the cold war didn’t help). But apart from the human causes, the region has been suffering draughts for a long time (and still does), ruining Ethiopia’s main industry.

AID (FROM BBC)

BBC's Michael Buerk achieved something very rare - he not only reported the world, but changed it a little bit.

His vivid on-the-spot coverage of a famine "of biblical proportions" in Tigray in northern Ethiopia pricked the conscience of the richer part of the world.

The money came pouring in. Bob Geldof's Band Aid and Live Aid led the way in galvanizing public attention, raising cash and mobilizing a huge relief effort.

As a result, many thousands of lives were saved - and tens of thousands of those facing starvation received food.

BBC World Service has broadcast an Assignment documentary based on the testimony of key figures on the ground in and around Tigray in the mid-1980s. Presenting evidence, that some of the famine relief donations were diverted by a powerful rebel group to buy weapons.

The documentary has revealed some uncomfortable facts and provoked a strong response. This morning a British newspaper, The Independent, gives over its front page to complaints from Bob Geldof and several leading charities. They accuse the BBC of "disgracefully poor reporting".

This documentary was put together by Martin Plaut, Africa Editor at BBC World Service News. He has a particular expertise in the Horn of Africa, and indeed reported from there on the famine back in the 1980s. He has spent almost a year gathering material and doing research for this documentary - and the BBC stands by his journalism.

As so often is the case, the famine that afflicted northern Ethiopia was compounded by war. Much of Tigray was controlled by a hard left-wing rebel group, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front. They were fighting the Ethiopian army, then the largest in Africa. This was also the era of the cold war - and the Americans were seeking to undermine the Soviet-aligned Ethiopian government.

It is not in dispute that millions of dollars of relief aid was channelled through the Relief Society of Tigray (Rest), which was a part of the TPLF rebel movement. It was the only way of reaching those in desperate need in rebel-held areas. What Martin Plaut's documentary uncovers is the systematic diversion of aid received by Rest to buy arms for the TPLF.

Martin tracked down two key former members of the TPLF who explained how they managed to divert the money.

They are now at odds with the then TPLF leader, Meles Zenawi, who is currently Ethiopia's Prime Minister. But they are credible voices.

One of these former TPLF fighters, the rebel army commander at the time, makes an allegation which has attracted particular controversy - that the organisation made a policy decision that only 5% of the money received by Rest would be spent on relief, with the bulk going directly or indirectly to support their military and political campaigns.

Among the other accounts featured in the World Service programme, Robert Houdek, who was the senior US diplomat in Ethiopia in the late 1980s, states that TPLF members told him at the time that some aid money and supplies was used to buy weapons. A CIA document paints the same picture.

Bob Geldof was given every opportunity to express his point of view while the documentary was being made, but declined to be interviewed.

Some relief agencies - including Christian Aid and Cafod - pointed us towards their staff involved in directing food supplies 25 years ago, and those voices were included.

Two key aid workers active in and around Ethiopia in the 1980s confirm in the BBC World Service programme the way in which relief was channeled through Rest - though they dispute that there was a significant diversion of money for arms buying.

"If we were being conned, I think it was on a very small scale," said Stephen King, then overseeing from Sudan the work of Catholic charities in providing food to the starving.

The documentary did not say that most famine relief money was used to buy weapons - it did not suggest that any relief agencies were complicit in the diversion of funds - it explicitly stated that "whatever the levels of deception, much aid did reach the starving".

But there is a clear public interest in determining whether some money given as famine relief ended up buying guns and bullets.

And that's what the evidence suggests.

REVIEW

So, if you paid attention to the story behind this book, it was done by pretty much the same people that did Heroes for Hope (Marvel’s version). Now, I’ll be very direct here, I think this one works better than Marvel’s.

Marvel’s version is too vague and abstract about the problem (there is one panel explaining how they weren’t responsible enough with trees).

In this book, even with a crazy super-villain involved, there is at least one explanation about the cause and what WE can do from our comfy homes. Which was the whole point of the campaign. Sure, in my quick research I couldn’t find any evidence that peanut crops were involved, but let’s just say that the book doesn’t spend too much time explaining the issues.

In fact neither of the two stories explain the ongoing civil war. There are at least some vague references to conflicts in the area in this book.

Luthor’s involvement was a nice touch. But just like with “Heroes for Hope”, here the heroes involved only make a glorified World’s finest issue.

The villain is there only to give the heroes an excuse to stay longer. I cannot say that story makes much sense, but it is pretty much the same motivation the villain had in Heroes for Hope.

But at least the three characters involved were Batman, Superman and Lex Luthor, and everyone knows these characters. So it is accessible.

The character of Lee Ann Layton... I am not sure if this is an actual real life person or what, but she should calm the fuck down a little!

She starts attacking Superman’s efforts, and pretty much anything they try to do because they are not bringing money. Lady, at least they are trying!

The art feels a bit more uniform in this book than in Marvel’s version. Perhaps because the artists involved were mostly from DC, with experience on these characters.

In the end, it is important to remember that the artists involved did this for free.

How successful was this comic-book? I never found the exact figures and no one recovered the comic book sales charts of the eighties yet. Maybe some day someone will tell us. In any case, if only 5% went to help the people, and the rest to keep them hungry, maybe it is best not to know.

I give this special a score of 6

#neal adams #dick giordano #heroes against hunger #dc comics #comics #review #1986 #live aid #modern age #superman #batman #lex luthor #ethiopia #famine

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angelfccdie · 6 years ago

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lifts leg. pretend theres a symbol here.

Music for Muses | Accepting

Supervixen - Garbage

Little Toy Gun - honeyhoney

Break Me Shake Me - Savage Garden

Vals of the Mandrake - Javier Navarrete

#paellax #;;answered by masha #jfjfkda i went for songs that #where #the Sound reminded me of him #or #maybe the Feel #supervixen tho i think #that one i Stand By #tho it also reminds me of sasha's frieza rip #also would #bubblegum bitch be cheating.........

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valdim-heyworth · 7 years ago

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Old Memories Never Die.

The snow was perpetual. It fell in what felt like sheets, the omnipresent wind driving the chill into his bones. His muzzle turned, looking for the path before his large, canine feet. In such a violent place, there was little need to hide his true form, beast-like and terrible. Clawed fingers tightened around his staff, the opposite hand moving to tighten the scarf around his neck. The cool even somehow managed to drive through his thick fur.

Suddenly, the sound of slicing tearing through the air, a blade erupting from the snow. Rusted, and long since worn by time forgotten. The blade soon embedded in his shoulder, catching him wholly by surprise. The Undead were little concerned by the cold and now. He twisted, growling out a terrible roar. The staff suddenly erupted with arcane energy, given life by the will of its master. The blast shattered the putrid creature, splattering rotten ichor, its body reanimated and hopefully long abandoned by its master. Valdim growled from his throat, ripping out the blade, tossing it aside. His wound steamed in the chill. He cursed, “Fuckin’ Fel…”

Digging a health potion from his packs, the Worgen poured the scarlet fluid down his gullet, mouth wide, tongue hanging to the side. The felt the wound start to close. The snow finally seemed to abate, and in the distance, he found the home from his searches. Terrible, even in its abandoned state.

His claws tried the handle of the door, having found the lock having long ago been broken, the door kicked in. Eyes scanned the forgotten rooms, the gaze once feral and wolf-like, but shifting into his curious human eyes. “Guess it was too much t'hope th'bastard would be ‘ere, eh, Val…” Wandering, he found remnants of an old research area, broken and discarded bottles of fluid. He examined a bottle with a bit of fluid remaining, sniffing it a little, wincing…

“Mandrake Root. Nightmare fuel. Th’ stuff of twisted visions…” He continued to wander, finding a collection of morose cells. Valdim found another room, filled with large cages. He was at once curious as to what they might contain but decided not to linger upon the thought. Finally, in the last of the rooms, the Worgen found a room with a table, chains, and torture instruments, cast aside and left to rust. His eyes traced over notes in balled parchment. They were not complete, but enough for the Arcanist to realize that Samuel had been working on experiments manipulating the Worgen curse. “Splendid, tha’…” His words were laden with sarcasm.

Moving to leave, his tired eyes looked over one of the cells. They found something with shine, missed prior, tucked beneath a rotting mattress. A piece of jewelry had begun to fall. He approached it slowly, tugging on the chain. It had been wrapped around rolled up the parchment, flattened by the weight of the mattress and age. His eyes immediately began to water, reading over the text, drops splattering across the pages, smudging it. Words from a woman he’d loved so totally.

He’d wept over a letter that hadn’t included him in the slightest. It didn’t have to - this wasn’t his life, it was a life he'd been asked to walk away from. Sad memories, refusing to die. A search for resolution to the children remaining. The focus needed to be on those, those he may still be able to save.

He gathered the necklace, solemnly, he gathered the pages, tucking them away with trembling hands.No more tears. “I need t'find this Percieval… Get those Journals back…” Valdim did, what he always does, buried his emotion under duty. There was work to be done.

( @rian-kestavin @thalsianiii )

#rian's family history #wow rp #sad day #house holt

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ghchgc · 3 years ago

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The mini tablet has lots of graphics processing power

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cursewoodrecap · 4 years ago

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Session 14: Nice Sociable Folk

Everyone is very nice to us, except one grumpy guy.

This one fought me, folks. And Quarantine Depression didn’t really help. So it’s a bit less pared-down than it could be. But speaking of people who should probably be quarantined, have some virulent fungus.

We return to the scene: Valeria has just unceremoniously yanked a mandrake root out of the ground, and it’s doing what mandrakes do, screaming at the top of its lungs (...do plants have lungs???) and raising hell. Which is not GREAT if you’re in the middle of the Spooky Woods Where Monsters Live.

We’re reckless idiots, but that’s on brand.

Shoshana rolls a Nature check to know it’ll stop screaming on its own eventually, and that getting it into our Haversack will stop or dull the noise. Otherwise, the recommended mandrake-harvesting technique is that extreme heat or cold will stun its screaming. Usually people harvest them with daggers heated over a flame.

Problem: Shoshana is only one who knows this, Clem and Val are stunned, and it’s LOUD, so it’s hard to talk. So it’s up to the sorcerer to handle it. She doesn’t want to burn the dang thing to a crisp and make it useless as a spell component, so blasting it with magic is right out. She snatches a torch out of Clem’s backpack and lights it, heating up her small dagger.

Clem fails to shake off the stun, but Valeria recovers. Gral throws an inspiration at Clem, who’s still stuck, and frantically glances around the area to see if the BIG LOUD NOISE has alerted any enemies. In fact, it very much has. A variety of heavy shapes are uprooting themselves out of the dirt, turning blank mossy faces towards us.

Shosha tries to hurry up on silencing the mandrake, but her haste causes her to fumble it. At least she doesn’t damage the plant.

Gral, still watching, sees the grassy, lumpy creatures pick up rocks and start hurling them. Shoshana gets bonked. A rock bounces off Valeria’s armor. Gral’s looking at those ones, when another one hefts out of the ground behind him and conks him with a big ol’ stone.

“Ah,” Valeria observes. “Yeetroots.”

Clem, even with inspiration, still fails to unstun herself, clutching her hands to her sensitive elven ears.

Gral swings his sickle into a yeetroot’s rooty, tuberous body, a thick sap dripping from the gaping wound. Meanwhile, Shoshana takes a second stab with her hot dagger and manages to silence the awful screaming.

The one Gral bloodied picks him up entirely and yeets him at Clem. Gral bounces off the drow’s armor comically. Clem remains completely undamaged while Gral pouts at being unwillingly Fastball Specialed. Valeria and Shoshana scatter, dodging another volley of heavy rocks.

Taking an entire orc to the face, though, finally breaks Clem out of the stun. She’s ready to lumberjack down some trees - oh, wait, Gral’s lying there moaning. The battle medic gives him a good slather of Space Mayo, and he’s fine, though he probably smells like a sandwich.

Gral and Shoshana pop off a couple of spells for minor effect, the tuberous creatures shrugging off most of the effects. They’re bothered enough to retaliate, though; the one Valeria’s facing off against hefts her into the air for another round of PC Bowling, flattening Shoshana. The hail of rocks from the rest of the Yeetroots doesn’t let up, but their aim is only mediocre.

Aethis snacks on a root-person Valeria nicely carves up for them, and as Clem gets to slicing and dicing it looks like the fight’s falling in our favor.

Suddenly, a short human guy in rough clothing charges ungracefully out of the woods, crossing through the undergrowth strangely quickly for someone so unathletic-looking. He clonks a Yeetroot over the head with a long wooden staff, whacking it a few times for good measure so it stays down, and then looks up at us with a frustrated expression. “What the hell are you kids doing? Get out of here!” he shouts irritably, like we’re trespassing on his lawn.

He’s got a bit of an accent. It’s much heavier than Shoshana’s; even by her small-town standards it’s the rural accent of someone who speaks Old Valdian regularly.

Gral Dissonant Whispers a Yeetroot, causing it to run past Clem and the Old Dude. It runs straight into Clem’s sword and dies. Shoshana, Valeria, and Aethis efficiently dismantle the last one standing.

Clem’s ears, still sore from the mandrake’s cry, pick up additional movement through the woods. Sounds like the Yeetroots weren’t the only ones interested in loud, clumsy prey.

The old man seems to know it too, and he starts to scold us. “Pulling a mandrake while the woods are like this? Dummkopfen! Now get outta here! Scram!”

“I’m sorry, we didn’t have a choice-“

“What are you doin’ yakkin’? MOVE!” he shouts, turning and dashing into the underbrush. Shoshana barely catches him muttering “those IDIOTS” in Old Valdian as he scrams.

Well, we’re definitely not gonna stick around either. Old Dude went northeast. The Sturmhearst camp is to the south. We’re all thinking this weird crotchety old man is a druid, so he’s gonna know the best way to go and also we could totally ask him a few burning questions. With a concise nod to each other, we dash after the druid, Valeria swinging herself up onto Aethis’ back.

The wooooooooods are aliiiiiiiive, with the sound of monsterrrrrs, but following the druid’s trail we manage to dodge down an old gully and manage to shake any of them who came to investigate the commotion. Unfortunately, we’ve just put all those monsters in between us and the Sturmhearst camp. We pause, crouched in creek bed, as the last walking tree’s footfalls fade into the distance.

Gral breaks the silence: “…wait, was that a druid?”

Shoshana grumps. “How are we gonna FIND him? He could be a SQUIRREL by now! And I’m surprised he even speaks city-folk Valdian.”

We got the sense of how he moved – he hasn’t left a footprint, but we’ve picked up his pattern a bit. We could keep following him, and Valeria suggests the quest will give time for the monsters attracted by our noise to disperse. Gral doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity to find out what the Druids know about the Prisoners, and Valeria’s hopeful he might have seen the other Order of the Rose knight about.

Shoshana beefs her Survival check. We’ve been doing well following his pattern of not disturbing plant or animal tracks, trying to think like a druid wood. But we hit a dead end.

And then Clem casually points out some tracks none of the rest of us can even make out.

Please. Clem Haxan has tracked wood elf partisans. One aging human is nothing.

We follow Clem’s lead for about an hour. As midday approaches, we notice the sense of vibrant, chaotic, suffocating life is fading a little, and the sickening-sweet scent of flowers and spores has lessened. We come upon a grove of trees, standing tall, centered around one utterly massive tree in the middle whose canopy is just barely open enough to allow beams of light to spear through. In every beam, a sapling has begun to grow. Others, a little more seasoned, have grown tall and thin to push up through the great tree’s canopy.

Deeper in the grove, Shoshana can hear a voice in Old Valdian, and it’s mostly swearing.

“Dumb fuckin’ kids, I swear, first it was those meshuggenah bird mask idiots, now we got - what the hell were those morons doing, stirring everything up? Hard enough when the woods are just tryin’ to kill ME without having to keep an eye our for-”

It seems to be a one-sided conversation. Rambling, but pausing for responses that we can’t hear. Shoshana cautiously steps closer.

She wants to be respectful, but the closest thing Old Valdian has to deferential is a greeting without commentary. “...Hello?”

The voice pauses, and then speaks to its silent companion. “Do ya hear something? Go check it out.”

We all roll real bad Perception. Gral is starin’ real hard, and he only sees a squirrel loop the big tree. We don’t hear the druid say anything else.

She tries a Message cantrip: “We wish to respect your solitude, but we need to speak with you.” Hopefully a decent Persuasion roll will do.

“Wait. Hold up,” the voice grumbles in Old Valdian, heaving a massive sigh. “They’re idiots, they’re not gonna-”

Something big makes a “GRAAHK” noise.

“No, they’re not gonna go away unless I talk to them. Look, they followed me here. I knew it was unavoidable.” He calls out to us in common Valdian. “All right, come on in, no funny business.”

Being seasoned D&D players, we’re hesitant to cross the giant patch of fallen leaves, but it turns out it’s not a booby trap; it’s just what happens when you’re under a big ol’ tree. They are pleasingly crunchy and probably serve as an excellent intruder warning.

The druid isn’t pleased with our caution. “Either leave or come over here! Let’s get this over with.”

We circle the tree to find a small hut in a sunbeam, with a little garden. The old guy, looking like a hippie Danny DeVito, is sitting outside on a fallen log, prodding a small campfire with a stick as he heats a kettle over it. More notably, there is an owlbear curled up next to the fire.

“I wouldn’t get too close, he likes eatin’ fingers,” the druid grumps. “That’s why he’s called Fingers.”

“Oh! This is Aethis, and I’m Kyr Va-”

“Yeah, yeah, get to the point.”

“Are you a druid?”

“Ah, right to the point.”

We manage to stumble over a quick introduction, and that we want to ask him about the Druids’ actions against the artist’s colony in Holzog.

“So all druids know each other, huh?” He starts peeling a potato, unimpressed.

"I don’t know how druids work! There was an organized attack against cultists of the Key, at an artist's colony at Holzog Valley. Do you know of this, and are the Druids in an organized resistance against the Prisoners?"

“Are druids an organized anything?” Shoshana snarks.

Druid DeVito rolls his eyes. “Look, mask guy. I go where I’m needed. I don’t know anything about what’s going on in Holzog. I barely know what’s going on here, I just got here!”

“You... just got here?”

“Yeah, like a month or two ago. Hard to get lay of the land when EVERYTHING’S TRYIN TA KILL YOU, not to mention it’s hard to get a handle on things when idiot adventurers are runnin’ around STIRRIN’ THINGS UP!”

Gral soldiers on. “Well, what do you know of the curse corrupting this area? We were here gathering supplies for a ritual, but it seems like there is also trouble here, what with the villagers and the trolls."

Gral is very polite, so the druid grudgingly answers. “Look, here’s how it goes. This” – he taps the tree – “is Mother Tree. It’s important, for reasons. There’s always supposed to be a druid warden here. But something happened. She’s gone now. So I heard it through the grapevine, and I got called in.”

“Was it a literal grapevine?”

“The old bag and the windy bastard have ways of getting in touch with us, if we’re needed. They told me I gotta go here and – well, so I came. I’m tryin’ to figure out what happened to old warden, figure out what I can do to keep the place safe. It’s a lotta work! But right now I’m trying to make lunch. Because lemme tell you, this owlbear is a lot calmer than most of his type, but he WILL eat me if he gets too hungry.”

“As far as what I know about it? Half the valley got taken. Everything west of the river got overgrown. Haven’t spent much time on the other side; I don’t wanna get spotted. You see what happens when somebody gets a look at me.” He gestures dismissively to all of us. “No good deed, and all that.”

“So half the valley got overgrown. My sources tell me the other half is honestly not doin’ much better, even though it looks better on the outside. Like I said, I’m still tryin’ to get my networks up and running, which is difficult when most of my sources are working for the enemy.”

“Yeah, the villagers have fungus brain,” Shoshana tells him. “Someone who came from this village seemed to be corrupted by fungus, and was working to encourage its spread. Also, they’re bringing in a Fuckton of Trolls to Bad Herzfeld. Which, if they get fungused, is...bad.”

Valeria, meanwhile, is attempting to feed the owlbear some granola. After a moment, she elects to just toss the bag in its direction. Handfeeding an owlbear is Not Wise.

“I’ll add that to my list of problems,” the old man grumbles. “Bunch of sporebrained trolls, sporebrained villagers, plants tryna kill me…all right. How many they got so far?”

“One troll was definitely fungused, but he’s dead. There’s about 8 at the troll moot now. Their food stores look spore-free so far, but we’re going to be looking into the village more.”

“Yeah, they wouldn’t want to be corruptin’ ‘em yet, it’d tip their hand too early. Trolls are usually solitary types. With how the sporebrains work, any new arrivals would be majorly creeped out. They’d want to get a critical mass before they try to get ‘em brainwashed.”

We agree that’s probably the plan. We explain the situation in Holzog, and ask what he knows about the druids’ actions there and whether the druids are the Prisoners’ jailers.

He shrugs. “Me and mine, we don’t talk to each other much. We each got our beats to cover. It’s not like they give us a manual – we’re not super fond of writing things down. Rumor is there’s old sources – real old – that have some knowledge, but otherwise you gotta get lucky and get a visit from the bosses themselves. But they’ve never been the most reliable.”

“The...bosses? Like Baba and Gramps?” Shoshana asks, referring to the old grandmother and grandfather gods of the woods.

“Yeah, they don’t exactly come when you ring a bell. Now I don’t know what old rattlechains, or the angry lady, or the quiet guy, or the sneaky bastard are like, but the chiefs aren’t communicative at the best of times. And since this fakakta Curse thing started they’ve been harder to get a hold of. We get our orders, they keep us busy, but there ain’t much in the way of answers. I’m told to guard this place, and do my thing. The ‘Prisoners,’ or whatever? That’s new to me.

“Look, stay away from the villagers, anyone especially friendly, anyone who talks about love, togetherness, caring, all that crap. Don’t go anyplace overgrown, anyplace with too many mushrooms. Spores will get in your brain.”

“I just do what I’m told. Or infer, really, I’m not told enough to do what I’m told.

If you wanna be helpful – something’s spreading this. The Curse spreads enough on its own, but something’s deliberately spreading it around. Go hunt for whatever’s doing that. Also, I can’t find previous warden – y’know, the person whose beat this is supposed to be.

He’s mostly losing interest in us, but can’t resist one last jab. “What do you need that mandrake for anyway? Half the things you think they can do, they can’t.”

Valeria jumps at the chance to talk about her Quest. “Over in Mornheim they’re dealing with the undead sort of curse. There’s a disease in the water affecting the whole population, and we found a ritual to purify the river! It’s not the sort of magic I usually work with, but I think I can make it function with the plants that I need. I’ve got almost all of them!”

“Hmm. Whatcha missin’?”

We check our notes. “Norbert’s Wort?”

Those Sturmhearst guys might have some, if you wanna try to get it off ‘em. Or there’s a bunch of it growin’ not far from the riverbank. Lemme see this ritual of yours, I wanna make sure you’re not wastin’ your time.”

He gives it the once-over with a surprisingly appreciative eye. “Oh, huh. Rosalind’s work.” He rolls up the scroll, slaps it back into Valeria’s claws, and turns to walk out into the wood. “Get outta here. I got things to do. If you stick around, Fingers will eat ya.”

Wait.

There’s a beat, and then Shoshana starts yelling. “WAIT, ROSALIND? BECAUSE WE FOUND THIS IN THE HOUSE OF A LADY NAMED ROSALIND. AND I DIDN’T THINK YOU GUYS WERE INTO HOUSES? WAIT COME BACK SHE’S A GHOST NOWWWWWW-”

He’s gone. Dammit.

We wave goodbye to Fingers.

As we cautiously make our way out of the grove, Gral is asked to make a Charisma check. A leaf, still stuck to a small bent twig, falls from the great tree and gently helicopters down. He reaches up a hand and catches it out of the air, easily, as if it was intended to find his hand. With an excellent perception check, he glances up and sees the silhouette of a motherly face in the branches. It’s hard to spot among the rustling green canopy, but it’s looking down at us from the branches - he can almost see a wooden torso in one branch – and then the shape pulls back into the branch, moving through it like sand.

Gral experiences an internal hell yes.

Gral has received: one twig with some leaves! It has vibes. This thing is definitely special, and a gift – not from the druid, but from the Mother Tree.

It clearly has Properties, but we do not know what they are.

So, what next? Trying to get the last plant for the spell has a nonzero chance of getting us lost overnight. We could stop by the Sturmhearst annex, or check in on the trolls....wait. Dang it. This morning we told that old lady we’d stay in town overnight. And we’ve already stood up one dinner invitation this arc.

As Clem capably leads us around dangers and toward Sturmhearst, Gral stares at his twig. He can see the leaves seem to move without wind, and he slowly realizes he’s able to predict which ways Clem is gonna lead us based on which way the leaf radar blows. It seems the gift can help find safe passage in the wood!

With a good survival check, we manage to skirt all dangers and the riled-up zone. Once again we smell acrid smoke from Sturmhearst camp and pass by the impassive looking giant owl guards with their flamethrowers. We see Rita the robot chicken hop by with something in her mouth, and follow her into camp. She ignores us and bops right up into the house that contains Prof. Ulmus’ lab.

Hey, we should go check on Flynn! A student directs us to where they’ve set up their clinic in an old barn, and soon we are confronted with a steely-eyed Fiona, arms crossed, glaring at us. “Hi, we, uh-”

She is silent, as usual, but Valeria rolls a nat 20 insight and can read her face like a book. She’s mad that we didn’t come back when we said we would – we made them worry, and also left them alone in this den of academic madness.

Valeria stumbles over a sincere apology until she is interrupted by a solid barbarian hug.

The paladin takes this as her opening to gossip about our day. “We got plants! And got real lost! We slept over a troll’s place!” Fiona makes a surprised gesture. “Yeah, there’s like eight. They have HOUSES. It’s surreal?!?!?! One of them thinks he’s a doctor!”

She’s interrupted when Dr. Ulmus sticks her hand through a curtain and hands off a vial of blood. Valeria now has blood. “Take this to my lab, please.”

Valeria blinks. “O...kay?” She dutifully leaves to take the blood to the lab.

Shoshana can’t keep her mouth shut. “Uh, ma’am? ….did you not notice that wasn’t a grad student?”

“Hm?”

“You gave this to the paladin.”

“…Good. She’ll follow orders. WAIT, YOU’RE BACK!” The doctor bursts through the curtain, beak-first.

“We come bearing fungus!” Clem gives her a vial of fungus. Clem is then ordered to take this to Prof Ulmus’s lab. She does.

So now we have two tanks in a lab. They try to flag down a grad student and make them do it . No, too bad, they’re busy. Clem is like, what if I’m enormous and intimidating? But the grad student is not impressed. “Please. Do you know what kind of horrors I’m studying? You can’t terrify me.”

Valeria is like FFFF CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME WHERE THE BLOOD GOES. But the grad student leaves.

Oh hey, that rack has vials of red stuff. She puts the blood in the blood rack.

Clem shrugs, sets the fungus on a random table, and leaves.

Back at the clinic, a pale and haggard Flynn stumbles out and leans on Fiona. “My sister was very worried,” he tells us, making a flimsy effort at his usual grandiosity. “I, of course, had total confidence in you!”

Fiona, deadpan, signs: [He cried.]

Professor Ulmus finally emerges in full. “Well, Mr. Fairgold, I’d say you’re well on your way to recovery! Practice those breathing exercises I showed you and take it easy for next few days.”

Valeria and Clem hustle back, spouting apologizes for missing dinner, because Valeria is polite and Clem is genuinely upset at missing the opportunity to pick the doctor’s brain about medicine.

“Hmm, yes, you’re back! Well, you’re all alive…” Professor Ulmus starts inspecting us, her beaked mask tilting this way and that. “…oh dear.” She prods Clem a bit. “Yes, hmm.” She briskly hands Clem some sort of compressed herb poultice. “You’ll want to eat this.” Clem immediately makes a med check. It’s some kind of medicine, I guess. Clem swallows it. It tastes super gross.

“So!” she chirps. “I look forward to hearing what you’ve learned. How was your expedition, did you find what you were looking for?”

“Most of it,” Valeria admits. “We’re still looking for Norbert’s Wort.”

“I have a bit, but it’s spoken for, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I believe a dinner was planned! It’s a good thing you didn’t show up last night, I forgot all about it. I had to do quite a lot of work on Mr. Fairgold. The fungal infestation in his lungs should be cleared up, although the treatment did leave some aftereffects. Nausea, some trouble breathing for a few days. Nothing major.”

Valeria just sort of awkwardly lifts her hand, offering Lay Ons. He waves her off, bluffing his way past her insight. Sure, he’s fiiiiiiiine.

“He was fortunate. Not the worst I’ve seen – something worse would have required a substantially more radical treatment. More invasive, too. Were any of you exposed?”

“Uhh, not to that, but to other things?” We tell her about the Snorlax bear over a plate of sandwiches.

“Yes, I’ve seen similar phenomena – a fungal colony hijacking a living creature. Unfortunately that’s where my expertise ends – I might have to discuss with my, ugh, colleague in the aberrant biology department.”

Valeria tells her about the dream mushroom feast. “So you tripped on mushrooms and hallucinated and fought some mushroom men. We’ve all been there.” The professor waves it off with disinterest. “Yes, spooky curse magic messing with your mind, I’m sure it was harrowing. And/or enlightening. But I don’t have time for spooky magics; I’m a woman of SCIENCE! Speaking of, Clementine, where did you put that fungus?”

“On a table with similar looking specimens?”

“Pardon me a moment.” She immediately stands and runs. We see a huge guard stomp toward the lab. Then flamethrower noises. There’s a bit of screaming.

She emerges slightly scorched, fixing her coat. “That…was the wrong table. It’s cross contaminated! Well, I suppose that’s the cost of science. Sometimes, in order to make great discoveries, you must burn a table of samples before they kill you.”

“I’m sorry, I asked a grad student and he said put it anywhere, really!” Clem bluffs.

“Which one?”

“....um, a short guy wearing a bird mask?

“Ah, Jean-Pierre, I know him. We will have words later. Never trust an entomologist, they’ve all got a head full of beetles or something. So! What’s next for you? I can’t say we have a ton of room here, but I’m sure we can try to find somewhere for you to stay...”

Valeria idly taps the clear bead on her earring chain. “Well, we DID promise to stay at the inn in town tonight...”

Ulmus hums discontentedly. “I trust the villagers precisely as far as my guards can throw them.”

Shoshana butts in. “Right? Okay, because the last time we stayed in a fungus person’s house I was RIGHT and it SUCKED.”

We go back and forth, deciding we’ll keep our promise but stay in the annex for dinner. A feast in Mushroom Town sounds...ominous.

Clem, determined, asks the professor if she can have a flamethrower. Sadly, it doesn’t matter how much Clem pleads her strength and skill, those had to be SPECIALLY REQUISITIONED from the ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT. She had to call in favors! Now if you’ll excuse her, she has work to do.

We have an early dinner, and then head to other side of river for the first time. The difference could not be more marked. If this wasn’t German old-growth forest, the other side would be a jungle (a fungus jungle? A fungle.); these are lush, rolling, well-tamed agricultural fields dotted with quaint farmhouses; rural but civilized.

The “town” is a bare handful of buildings clustered around a small mill. A general store, the mill, the inn, a sheriff’s office, and that’s really it. Blacksmith. Handful of tradespeople. Pretty standard – these are people who live to support the surrounding farmers.

Not far from there we can see the Farmers’ Temple we heard about, a plain round wooden structure with large carved symbols for Rack, Torme, and Lethe. By Valeria’s standards, it’s the absolute bare minimum of what counts as a temple. “They’re trying, I appreciate that.”

As we travel into town, Valeria can see that the people on this side of river seem to fall firmly into 1 of 2 camps: some are incredibly healthy, almost overly large and well-fed, and very happy. The other half seems sickly. Not as bad as Mornheim, but we can easily sort people into Kinda Sickly or Big Healthy. There’s a lot of coughing. Perhaps the Medusoid Mycelium?!

It’s nearly sunset; we head down to the inn. There’s a couple of people sitting around the inn, farmers getting a drink after making deliveries to the mill. A friendly innkeeper named Aaron greets us. “Ah, you must be the people I’ve heard about!”

“Yes, Zelig told you about us?”

“Yeah, I’ve got some rooms prepped for ya. What brings you to town? We don’t get many of your type around – knights, or whatever you are.”

“Oh, we heard there’d been another Knight of the Rose around,” Shoshana probes.

“That’s what Zelig says, haven’t seen him.”

“Well, uh, thank you for your hospitality?”

We head upstairs, breaking into our usual pairs of roommates - Clem with Gral, Valeria with Shoshana, Aethis in the stables weirding out the horses.

Clem, the wary soldier, checks around to ensure the room is secure. She finds something! A note has been tucked into the mattress. “YOU ARE IN DANGER. COME DOWNSTAIRS AFTER THE SERVICES START AT THE TEMPLE.”

Huh.

She tells the rest of us. Everyone is like, “...yeah, we already knew that?” But it’s excellent news that not every villager is in on it.

There’s a knock on Clem’s door. A nervous young woman is standing there, holding a tray full of pastries. “Hey, uh. My dad wanted me to give you these. They’re leftover, they’d just go stale anyway.”

“Oh, uh, thank you! Much obliged. Um, will that be all?”

“Try ‘em, at least take a look at them. They’re pretty good,” the girl tells her insistently, and scurries off.

Clem and Gral immediately inspect the pastries suspiciously. Pulling one apart - sure enough, there’s a note stuffed in a pastry! It says “CHECK UNDER THE BED.”

Under the bed, where Clem found the first note.

Gral pops down to the tavern area to get a few more deets from Aaron the innkeeper. Turns out temple services start after sundown. “You’ll know it, you’ll see people headin’ towards it. Why, you thinkin of attending?”

“We have a paladin with us, she’s always interested in the local religious customs.”

“It’s nothing you’d be interested in. More of a town hall meeting than anything.”

“I understand. Thank you for the pastries, they were absolutely delicious!”

“Oh, thanks kindly! Sleep well.”

Sure enough, as the sun sets we see lights in the dark as people start streaming in from across the valley to the Farmers’ Temple.

Once it looks like the last stragglers have made it into the service, Clem knocks on wall separating our rooms, as a signal, and we head downstairs. We try to be quiet about it. Aaron and his daughter are there, cloaked and ready for travel. His daughter has a hooded lantern in her hand.

“I don’t know what you people came here for, but you’re not gonna find it here,” whispers the innkeeper urgently. “You have to leave.”

“What kind of danger?”

“I keep my ears open. Zelig came back this morning, told some people about some outsiders, guests – told us to have rooms ready for them, and then stay out of their way when they came for you tonight. I don’t know how long we have – they always go to temple first, but the clock’s running. I don’t know you much, but you seem-“

“This has happened before?” Valeria breaks in, concerned.

“Not in so many words, but, yeah. People have gone missing. Last time we couldn’t do anything about it. We weren’t warned; they just showed up in the night. This time they were worried – there’s more of you, and better armed. Last time was just traveling merchants.”

Gral nods. "We came here looking to find what 'they' were planning at the troll moot. We don't just want to run away, but if you're in danger for housing us, that can wait. What's next?"

“The troll moot? Yeah that’s fishy, but I don’t know how to warn ‘em away. You folks seem connected, can you get word out about this place? But be discreet. I’ve heard stories about the Penitents, and I don’t want no part of that either. There’s still good people here. A lot of people in that temple there, though – I would have sworn they were good people too, until this all started. I’m not sure what it’s all about. We haven’t been going to services, and so far they haven’t forced us to. But they had folks posted in the inn, makin’ sure you showed up tonight.

“You gotta get moving. Rebecca can get you to someplace safe. Slip out now, and finish leaving the valley tomorrow night.”

Clem insights ‘em, and then seem genuinely honest and concerned for us.

“Whatever this is, something about you guys has them spooked, so I wanna make sure you survive. There’s strange things afoot in Herzfeld these days.”

“Would they let you leave?” Valeria asks.

“I don’t wanna know what would happen if we tried. So far they’ve been content to let us keep running the inn, serving ‘em drinks.”

“How have you evaded their influence?” Clem asks suspiciously. “What makes you the exception?”

“Not everybody’s one of ‘em. The woman, Zelig, she came out of the woods a couple months ago after the other side of river fell. She started talkin’ to people, sayin’ she knew way to protect us. People were scared, ‘specially since the old cleric went over to the other side of the river and never came back. A bunch of people went down to the temple to hear her say her piece.

“Those that went – not all of them came back. Afterwards, she started holding services regularly. Meetings, gatherings, whatever. Those that go, their crops flourish, they get strong and healthy. Those that don’t start to get sick. Their crops die. And once people start getting sick, everyone tells ‘em to go to temple and pray about it.”

I don’t know why Rebecca and I have managed to avoid the brunt of it so far.”

Rebecca pipes up. “I’ve snuck into the temple during day, it’s open to everyone. It seems fine mostly, bit run down – everything seems to be in place. But whatever’s going on there, it’s weird. The point is, I can take you to a safe place.”

Her dad nods. “I dunno where it is. Safer that way.”

Rebecca continues, her face too grim for her young age. “I’ve been smuggling people out of the valley. Mostly, people who oppose Zelig just vanish. Dad keeps the inn running and keeps his ears open. Anyone we suspect might be in danger, we get them out.”

Valeria considers. “We’re not going until we figure out what’s going on, but staying safe for tonight is not a bad idea.”

“I don’t know how long the service will go. It can be ten minutes, it can be an hour. We have to get moving, now.”

We hurriedly discuss: we want to know what happens at the mysterious services, but Valeria and Clem aren’t exactly built for stealth. Rebecca says that during the service itself, the town’s pretty deserted - everyone either goes in or stays well away.

We decide to split the party: Rebecca will take Team Clank to meet her friends at the safe house; Gral and Shoshana will sneak up to the temple.

“I can’t tell you where safe house is; if you get captured, you’ll spill. Meet me at the top of hill there. I’ll be hiding in the bushes right by the old fence.”

The shadowy huntress and the subtle bard manage to get close without giving themselves away. Gral gets right up next to a window, and listens in, staying out of the window’s line of sight.

Zelig’s voice booms out, rich and strong: “Brothers, Sisters, we come to our next business. You have heard of the outsiders. They come, they question us. They question our ways, our motives. They endanger our sacred project with our brethren amongst the trolls. Do not fear, for we have a solution: I sense in them a great capacity for love and understanding. Tonight we shall find them, and give them a chance to join in our love. Should they not, should they hold hatred in their hearts, then those hearts may be hollowed and made ready for our love. Come brothers, come sisters, come family.”

Gral minor illusions the hue of the night sky onto his face, hoping it’s enough cover to peek in the window unnoticed.

“It is time. First, let us renew our bonds,” the old woman intones. Zelig stands in the center of the circular room. All the people around her are tall, strong, and glowing with health, crowded together, holding hands. Zelig taps a floorboard, and Hans and Frans solemnly move to pry up the board.

Underneath is a lush green carpet of plant life. Fungus and vines creep out of the floorboard, growing at an impossible rate. Everyone stands as a wave of vegetable and fungal matter extends through temple, climbing up the worshippers’ legs and enveloping their bodies entirely. As Hans and Frans pull back the boards, a frame rises up; vines work their way into frame, forming a picture. Blooming flowers and different shades of leaves and lichen form the image of a female figure, motherly looking, bound in roots. Yet another tapestry?

The worshippers speak in eerie unison. “Though bound, she will be free. She is the growth. She is our love. She is protection. She will grow free of her bonds. We will grow as she does.” The chanting does not falter as the wave of plant matter entirely consumes the chamber. Gral ducks back under the window as the air chamber starts to fill with dense, cloudy spores.

He’s been relaying everything he sees to Shoshana with Message, and they both agree: We’ve seen what we can see, it’s time to get the hell out of here.

Meanwhile, Rebecca leads Valeria and Clem out of the town proper to a set of rolling hills near an abandoned granary. There’s a cleverly hidden trapdoor set almost invisibly into the sod, leading down into a small network of caves.

“They used to use these caves to make cheese! Hmm...it should be this one tonight.” She bypasses several doors set into the earthy tunnels, stopping at one seemingly at random and knocking softly.

A voice on the other side whispers, “Who are you?”

“One who seeks freedom,” Rebecca whispers back.

“And who are we?”

“The last Free Thieves!”

...What.

The door opens a crack, and Rebecca hurriedly herds the tanks through. “The guy in charge is the little guy. His name’s Henri Decannes. Him or one of his people will help you get out. I have to get your friends.” She runs back into night, vanishing into the darkness.

Valeria groans. She understands that stabbing Henri is not an appropriate action at this time, but dang would she enjoy it. And now she’s gonna have a DEBT to him? Maaaaaaaan.

As Gral begins to sneak back over to Shoshana, behind them, they hear the congregants start to move.

#bad herzfeld #the growth #valeria argent #gral omokk'duu #clem haxan #shoshana bat chaya #druid devito #professor ulmus #henri decannes #session recap

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