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getallemeralds · 3 years

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explorers of arvus: heading back / 3.11.21

zoom and enhonse

LAST TIME ON ARVUS taure passed out and we are now down a healer! also we met a disciple of halvkar, and surprisingly did not murder her. this is fine. we have instantly gotten distracted by our various carts. cats. our various cats

DID ANY OF US CATCH TAURE, SHE FELL OVER sieron tried to catch her and smacked charlie+thorne in the face (he rolled a nat1, f) BUT the catboy is to the rescue bc silje is the designated Not Incompetent of the group today

CONSULT THE CHILD hewwo yrel yrel: her mind is being consumed by the serpent of nightmares. :D charlie: HELLO?????//

so, dendar(?) the night serpent is imprisoned beneath arvus! she was formed from the nightmares of the first sentient being, and sometimes she eats people's nightmares. if she's exceptionally hungry, she'll force nightmares onto people for her to feed off their fear. yrel thinks taure will Probably wake up. there's a thing on arvus mentioned by the locals called a "sleeping sickness" where people will fall asleep for a few days, sometimes longer, but will wake up. its magical in cause, the people afflicted by it have horrific nightmares, and its just kinda. a thing. wowza

(i have gone back to spelling yrel's name as yrel bc i think it looks nice)

OH HEY SOMEONE POSTED A THEORY ON ONE OF MY STICKMOLUS ANIMATIONS man i should get back to stickmolus sometime. once dsmp releases its awful grip on me.

i keep getting distracted by seeing myself in the camera preview. i have a tooth gap! what the fuck its cute?? K I KNOW WE'RE SUPER BLURRY IN FRONT RN BUT PLEASE HELP ME STAY FOCUSED I SWEAR -leo

we're gonna build a sled! to put taure on. thorne: i have a good strength score. ....i say, out loud charlie: i am four feet tall. [cue argument between thorne & sieron about them both being horcs but sieron has a +0 bc strength is his dump stat] OH, OKAY, THORNE ROLLED A NAT20 TO CARRY TAURE. NICE

[discussion about what to tell everyone at camp vengenace] thorne: the last thing we need to do is a witch hunt charlie: --and we already hunted the witch! the witch has been hunted.

time to discuss strategy! we need to figure out how to head back to camp vengeance, eg if we want to follow the path we already took or if we wanna do some trailblazing. looks like we're gonna try and take the most direct path! which means we'll prolly risk tangoing with some undead but im willing to risk it TINY HUT STAIRCASE sorry i just remember it now and then

nyx: [meowing at his cats] thorne: uh... why is silje meowing? jorb: silje's food bowl is empty jorb: you look at silje's food bowl and there's a divot in the middle and the food is all on the sides emotionally, we must bully the catboy silje saw something interesting and started meowing

thorne: ill take first watch silje: ill also take first watch. charlie: [quietly] gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy (but, like, extended for 15 seconds)

silje: [takes watch] [rolls a nat1 and gets distracted by looking at his crush]

THORNE HAS LOCATED A DOG the dog does not give a shit about the tiny hut. THE DOG HAS PEED ON THE TINY HUT goodbye dog

EVERYONE IS ROLLING AT LEAST 1 NAT1 thorne: wow! that sure is a dog. thorne has drawn the worst possible dog. thorne has erased the worst possible dog. we dont speak of the worst possible dog its the dog version of honse. DONSE

sieron is now on watch! MAN we are havin trouble rolling today. at least kali's here to make sure sieron doesnt stare at a rock for 50000 years sieron sees a mouse! bottom text

charlie is now on watch! kali is havin a big ol thonk. nothing meaningful has come of this

i am perceiving some deer. sieron is not perceiving some deer. silje is perceiving some deer, but better the deer are fucked up and undead! silje has gone from "we should hunt these deer for food" to "we should hunt these deer for sport"

charlie: i do not feel like being jumped by five thousand skeletons

charlie takes first watch with sieron! WHY ARE OUR ROLLS SO TERRIBLE taure is super cursed right now. that's not very pog charlie: this place sucks. thorne: to be fair, we havent-- charlie: YOU'RE ASLEEP, SHUT UP

oh hey coolname galvanic finally partied. nice.

thorne is at watch! solar: hey, is leomund's tiny hut an orb? there's a critter digging around! AH, THE CRITTER IS UNDEAD. this could be a problem

solar: hey michael, how much does the horrific sin against god dog i drew look like this creature michael: [dice roll noises] about 50%.

michael: if anyone likes, they can make a nature check-- solar: ME MEMEMEMEME ME ME ME

its a bulette! aka a land shark. problem: they are not normally undead. this one is undead.

jorb: imagine if you could tame one of those and use it as a mount. leo: IT WOULD JUST DIG UNDERGROUND AND LEAVE YOU THERE

we are just calling it a weird dog

we're going to mail a letter to the heart of arvus. HEY, CHECK OUT THIS WEIRD DOG,

JORB FOUND ART OF A BABY BULETTE. WEIRD PUPPY!

solar: hey guys, check out this sick art of a bulette i found

silje kept a lookout for the weird dog but its just fucked off. goodbye, weird dog give it up for day 3!

man there's been like, three incinerations today in blaseball. what's up with that. I SWEAR IM MOSTLY PAYING ATTENTION its just been an eventful day in blaseball. also im wearing my garages bomber rn. jaylen is home wooOOOO the wind smells stinky. this is fine.

we're actively avoiding whatever combat michael keeps nudging at us bc we're carrying around an unconscious person and i SWEAR hes gonna throw something directly at us once he's done with our shenanigans

UHH MICHAEL ASKING FOR PASSIVE PERCEPTION LOL

huh. this place used to be inhabited? we're in the woods rn but there's some like, stone ruins? like, VERY ruins. like, not really any structures standing, but enough evidence to show there Were things. WE FOUND A STATUE charlie: i want to smash my face against the lore.

used to be a circle of standing stones, but most of em fell over or got overgrown. inside of the circle has been cleared, although v roughly-- ground's torn up statue is of fjolnir! warrior holding up a spear and shield. AH, THERE ARE CORPSES, a human got REAL fucked up here. one of the corpses is straight up impaled on fjolnir's spear. n ... not pog.

i am trying so, so hard to pay attention. but i also kinda wanna take a nap.

charlie: [stares at statue] [rolls a 4] i wonder if he had a dick.

okay so something rolled in, tore up the overgrowth inside the circle, and murdered a couple dudes. and was also super tall and human-adjacent. hrm.

oh my god why are we rolling so shit today. time to stealth away and hope we dont get casually dismembered

k: jorb's hair is so long... leo: K, PLEASE,

time for a break! i am very tired but im gonan see if i can push through a little further. nyx is petting his cat why do orangatangs look like that

first watch is thorne and sieron! have they even, like, talked thorne unhabby ): thorne's worried we were tresspassing when checking out the statue, meanwhile im thinking about that one time when sieron got bit by a groundhog

(oh my god this is from late 2018)

leomund's tiny hut, aka the anti-sea bear circle we are getting SO much mileage out of the tiny hut. SILJE HUMS A SONG WITH KALI cute........... FINALLY I HAVE ROLLED ABOVE A 14 wait no i rolled a 16 twice. anyway we are not dead

nearly at camp vengenace! boy howdy i hope camp vengeance didnt get burned down. AH FUCK TAURE IS UNCONSCIOUS SO WE CANT CAST FOR DETECT POISON kaepora nearly made us all shit ourselves but its okay he just saw some bison and thought it was cool Michael Is Consulting Several Tables

WHY DOES JORB'S CAMERA ZOOM LIKE THAT why am i hungry. i have so many questions

HEY, TALL GUY [smacks sieron]

camp vengeance looks better! like, nobody's Obviously Sick anymore, the medical tents arent overfilled, we did it! we saved the dayyyyyy time to report to ryder! taure's getting dropped off at the medical tent

man remember when charlie didnt wear pants

oh man, with taure unconscious charlie is now taking point with social interaction. wild. jk im making jorb do it bc im tired HAHA NAT 20 PERSUASION BC OF ME HELPIN SIERON man ryder is such a cock. he was totally ready to keep throwing troops at heaven's brazier to die until we managed to persuade him out of it. jorb: did we tell ryder about the vision? michael: you kinda just took a look at him and went STINKY BOY!

okay yeah anything that dies on arvus will just pop back up as undead. man, arvus sucks.

ryder: alright, dismissed. charlie: seeya, soldier boy! :D hahahahaha im gonna eat his knees.

SILJE NEEDS ENRICHMENT IN HIS ENCLOSURE

charlie: ive decided he sucks. silje: we've already arrived to that, you're late!

LMAO WE WALKED IN ON INGRID AND HER CRUSH they fuckin. nice. you go, you funky lesbian

jorb: we've got the tiny hut, we could go anywhere leo: we could go to SPACE! nyx: we could not go to space. leo: WITH A TINY HUT STAIRCASE, WE CAN,

we are 320 miles away from the spaceship that exists on arvus. nice.

michael: justin sees you-- roll a strength saving throw. leo: i cant wait to die! [rolls a 3] I AM CRUSHED BY MY DOG michael: he rolled a nat20.

BOSS ENCOUNTER: CHARLIE'S DOG (the small circle next to him is one of the medical tents.)

THORNE IS PACT OF THE GUN solar: PARRY THIS, YOU FUCKING CASUAL

sieron, to ingrid: seems like youve been doing well charlie: i punch sieron. sieron: sieron: the camp, of course.

man we have no idea if the heart of arvus is actually related to the prophecy or not. theres a Lot of stuff lining up, but not enough, and its hard to say how much of it couldve been literal?

solar & michael: [discussing exposition] me: [cracking up bc penn sent me a funny dsmp joke]

prophecies are weird.

charlie is just s she is just sitting here SILJE PLAYED CARDS REALLY GOOD AT ME nyx rolled a nat20 and took all my money

oh cool we can talk to yrel telepathically! time to hoist yrel. THIS IS SO SCUFFED thorne mentioned yrel and now we're trying to explain to ingrid that we have a magic talking snake charlie: I WANT TO GO HOME. thorne: we cant go, we have a GOD-KING to kill! "i think theyre insane, theyre talking to a snake" "ingrid, druids exist" "oh. im gonna go back to getting railed by my 7 foot tall girlfriend"

#leo chirps #ttrpg #explorers of arvus #OKAY WE'RE CAUGHT UP NOW sorry abt that lmao

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voidcrow · 6 years

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Before Venturing Forth (Rev. 2)

(( This is a tweaked version of a prologue I wrote for a roleplayed run of Baldur's Gate a while back. I wrote it before I actually knew what was going on in the story and upon coming back to this, I felt it needed some corrections. I'm nothing if not a stickler for consistency. ))

Candlekeep. 1358 DR.

In all of Faerun, there was no grander a library than this. Some say that there are also none where the visitors' need for a peaceful study environment are given more respect. As such, the only real noise here at the moment were the echoes of a solitary monk chanting prophecies.

Laciel found the chants calming. To have heard them for nearly the whole of her ten years of life so far meant that they were familiar-- a part of home-- and helped to dismiss the devious impulses so she could focus on her studies. She loved this place dearly, but could not help fantasizing about it burning to the ground at times.

Currently laid upon the lectern before the elven child was a spell scroll, and beside it a second roll of parchment onto which she was beginning to transcribe the runic array on the former.

Noticing a subtle shadow creep over her work, Laciel turned around to find someone standing over her shoulder-- a red-headed human girl, right around her own age. Warm sentiment washed over Laciel as she noticed this person, having regarded her for years as a surrogate sister.

"Imoen?" The elf had questioning eyes. "I thought Winthrop had you on dusting duty at the inn."

"And now I'm finished." Imoen nodded. "Yep. Old Puffguts is gonna be able to see his reflection in those shelves."

A deadpan expression came to Laciel's eyes as she looked at the human. Slowly, a silent grin spreads across Imoen's face before she stuck her tongue out at Laciel, prompting a chuckle from the latter. "You really stink at lying," said the elf.

"Says you. So what'cha doing with your free time?"

Laciel turned back to the lecturn, smiling. "Yesterday, I finally did it. I memorized a spell. Cast correctly, it'll create a dazzling illusion. Now I'm seeing if I can memorize a sec--"

"Neeerrrd!"

Laciel pouted.

"It's so nice outside today, Laci." Imoen put her hands behind her. "We could be out in the gardens instead of in here with these dusty ol' books."

"What if I like the books? What if Daddy catches me goofing off instead of doing something productive?"

Imoen placed a hand on Laciel's shoulder and shook it. "Come onnn~. I don't want to pace around out there by myself."

The elf huffed with bemusement. "Then just go back to dusting the inn's furniture, like you were told."

"Hey, I know!" Imoen's mousey voice squeaked as she raised it; in her excitement, she wasn't wholly mindful of being in a library. "Why don't you try casting that spell you memorized while we're out there? If Gorion sees you doing -that-, he won't be mad. He'll be impressed!"

"I am not impressed with her progress," Gorion wearily rasped.

The aging human, clad in gray robes, was addressing someone that seemed an even older man than he. "Laciel is eager to learn the ways," continued the sage, "but her mind races back and forth. There are some lectures where I doubt she is paying any attention."

The man Gorion was addressing looked at him from the shadow cast by the brim of his red hat. "Thy foster child is exactly that-- a child," said he, while grasping his upright staff with both hands. "Did the discipline of the arcane come so easily to thee, before thou came of age?"

"No, but if the news you came to deliver me is accurate, Laciel will not have the luxury of time as I did." Gorion's expression was grim. "Are you certain of it, Elminster?"

Elminster Aumar gave a simple nod. "I am, friend. He hath perished."

"Then Alaundo's prediction about the legacy he left behind is certain to become a reality."

A child's voice could just barely be heard shouting "Daddy!"

Elminster continued addressing Gorion: "Until that day, do not let thyself be ruled by paranoia. Relish the peace thou and Laciel haveth here whilst it lasts, and leave thy worries for the future to me."

Gorion's brow lowered. "I would rather this not be your burden to bear."

"Daddy, look at me~!" echoed the young girl's voice.

"Thou art short on years left on this mortal plane; live them in peace, and keep in touch with thy Harper contacts." Elminster gave a smile of reassurance. "I shall watch the Sword Coast for signs as I travel. If I suspect the fated hour has arrived, no later shall I inform thee."

The girl's voice was next heard alongside the hum of mystical energy. "Veritas..."

Finally, the two elders turned to look at the source of the voice, finding the two children about twenty yards off. Gorion was the first to react, asking: "What are you doing out here?"

Laciel's hands were glowing, her lips curled into a grin. "Credo..."

Gorion looked surprised. "Are you--?!"

"Oculos!" Runes appeared in front of the young elf, but quickly became twisted and jumbled, and the energy of her spell dove into the grassy ground.

Things were mostly quiet after that. At least until that patch of grass split open, and a skeleton-- held together by sinews and bearing glowing yellow orbs in the sockets of its skull-- pushed itself up from it.

"That's not dazzing!" exclaimed a panicking Imoen.

With a twisted cackle, the skeleton began to chase the two girls across the courtyard. Immy screamed in fear, but Laciel seemed to laugh with a strange glee as she fled for dear life.

Gorion drew a wand from his belt and shot a single magic missile from it, casually destroying the undead creature. As Laciel and Imoen stopped to catch their breath, the sage approached his surrogate daughter, and crossed his arms once he was standing over her. "I wish you would have waited to cast your first spell until tomorrow's lesson."

Finally appearing sheepish, the elf avoided eye contact with Gorion. "I was trying to do an illusion. Honest."

"Indeed. I could tell by your incantation."

Laciel looked up to the sage and lofted one of her eyebrows. "So what even happened just now?"

"Do you remember when I taught you about wild surges?"

Laciel let a silence go by as she pondered. "Oh, yeah." After another pause, she got another puzzled look. "How could one or two mistakes in the spellform make it go from conjuring harmless sparkles to animating the dead?

Gorion let his arms down. "Quite easily, as a matter of fact. Now, hopefully, you better understand the importance of absolute precision."

"Yeah, kind of," pouted an ashamed Laciel. But when her eyes wandered to the scattered bones that remained of her accidental summon, her embarrassment quickly gave way to a chipper smile as she asked "Can I keep the skull?"

"Wh--? Nu--!" Gorion stammered, "Why?"

"As a memento of my first summoning."

"Your first wild surge, you mean. What would you want to keep as a 'memento' had you unleashed a poison cloud, or... or caused a cow to fall and crush Imoen from above?"

"Well, obviously I'd want the cow's skull."

Gorion sighed.

#Forgotten Realms #baldur's gate #dungeons & dragons #story #non-canon

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hardcheapknock-blog · 6 years

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We did it! We passed the time for 50 days by providing memorable Star Wars related content for you the humble and gorgeous viewer(s). Holy craps what a ride. Well, we are on day zero and probably have seen or are seeing The Last Jedi as we speak. So for now here is some bonus goodness from some of our beloved authors before we go on a much needed holiday hiatus and Last Jedi binge. See you in 2018!

Gundy

The Audacity of A New Hope

Our 50-Day Countdown was really tough. What really surprised me about my performance during the countdown is I never really ran into a creative block. My biggest challenge was finding the time to do what I wanted in the time allotted. If it became clear that I would not have enough time to create the post I wanted, I somehow found a way to post something faster to buy myself extra time.

Each of us had to publish every four days, and with each other as our own best critics, the posts had to be solid. JERMAINE SOLID.

Sometimes an idea hit me and I had it turned around in 24 hours: “Rey Mind Trick“, “Midichlorox“, and “Chalmun’s Cantina Sippy Cups” are good examples of this. One post, “‘Made To Suffer’ by Guest Artist Edvard Munch“, actually happened by accident and I just followed it to the new conclusion which was really fun!

The Red Arm Diaries

C-3PO’s red arm was a source of hilariousness for me. It’s absurd how it is introduced, made to be an object of mystery and speculated upon, and then by the end of The Force Awakens, replaced with the normal, gold arm.

I’d planned to focus almost entirely on the Red Arm in a series called “The Red Arm Diaries”. This would include equally-absurd theories of how the red arm came to be. Yes, I am aware that the real story behind the red arm is out there to be discovered, but the average movie-goer isn’t going to do that. I had planned to create one-page vignettes around what transpired between Episode 6 and 7 that could account for the red arm.

In the end, I only did one comic, “Reunite Us, Interruptus“. I’m not sure if I got tired of drawing old Goldenrod or just lost faith in the idea. The other ideas that I did make a priority are still things I’m very happy with. In general, I just wish I’d done more comics.

The Reject Pile

Here are some ideas I decided NOT to do…

“The Red Missile”

I had the idea for a short comic where “Holiday Special” Boba Fett’s backpack missile kept getting him in trouble whenever he wanted to rent a creature to ride – by accidentally firing and choking them. So he’d have a reputation for just being a lousy customer and not the bounty hunter everyone fears him as.

In starting the research, it made me really sad to hear about all of the incidents in the 70s that led to toys no longer being able to fire missiles on which children can choke. So I scrapped that idea. I really wanted to make that pop culture reference work, but not on the backs of dead children. Well, this time.

“The Shortest Fan Cut of ANH”

I thought it would be funny to show how simple things would be if R2-D2 had simply started flying as he did in Attack of the Clones but in A New Hope.

So, the droids land of Tatooine… C-3PO mounts up on R2, they bypass the jawas and the Lars farm and simply fly to Obi Wan’s hermit hut. They fly to Mos Eisley and hire Han and Chewie AND they are able to arrive on Alderaan before it blows up! Later, they simply mount a bomb on him and send him into the exhaust port, flying, kamikaze-style. The end.

“A Christmas Falcon”

I have a lot of great photos from my childhood, opening Star Wars toys on Christmas morning, wearing Star Wars pajamas. I just couldn’t think of a way to make that slice of nostalgia into a post.

Yeah! The Imperial Troop Transport!

Christmas Falcon! PJs!

Whoa, how did this get in there!

Thanks for reading!

Samson

It really doesn’t surprise me anymore about how much back story can be created pertaining to the most random stuff in A New Hope. Case in point, the large skeleton of some beast that roamed the Dune Sea of Tatooine, which 3PO just happened to walk by, in search of rescue. I don’t know when they first started calling it a Krayt Dragon. It must have be a while back ago, cause when I was looking up images of the skeleton, I knew to look up “Krayt Dragon.” Apparently they are the apex predators of Tatooine. Too bad we didn’t see a living one in the film take down a Bantha or some Jawas.

My problem isn’t so much with all the back story stuff, be it official or fan fiction. My problem is with all the art being created hypothesizing what the creature actually looked like in the flesh. All the renderings pretty much show a traditional, elongated dragon head complete with horns around the back of the head. Even Terryl Whitlatch, who designed a lot of the creatures for Episode I, drew her dragon with fairly long snout. I really love the illustration, but that skull just doesn’t match the source material. If you look at the skull in the film, it’s a stubby head with no horns. It almost looks like a Camarasaurus (sauropod dinosaur) head, but with pointy, needle teeth. The only illustration that comes close to the skeleton on film is a painting by Ralph McQuarrie depicting two sand people hunting a Krayt Dragon. I think it was part of the original pitch art he created for Uncle George, but I’m not entirely sure about that. It may have been done much later for some book, regardless the head on this dragon looks rather stubby. Either way, there sure is a crap load of stuff for a background skeleton that only appears for a few seconds on screen. But that’s the appeal of Star Wars. All these little details, bringing the world to life, that people will obsess over and latch onto… even 40 years later.

FlippyCrap™®

Counting down origin

Well a quick tale of truth is 2 years ago I decided to countdown the days till The Force Awakens by myself despite Phil Collin’s song Against All Odds. Well take a look at me now Phil! I started at 100. That’s one more bottle of beer on the wall per the song and I don’t even drink! And without any preparation or knowledge of Star Wars(lie). Yeah in retrospect it was a crazy venture seeing how there is life. But I went with it. Using facebook as my vehicle of display, each day I posted something new. In the beginning it was just me googling the hell out of SW related items and trying to find the funniest or most interesting ones. But then I started to actually create my own. It seemed more ownable and frankly the kids (7-12 friends) loved it.

Some of those “classic” ones were inserted into this countdown because dammit I could do what I want. Those were The Star Wars Halloween Special (day 45) and Thanksgiving message from the bounty hunters (Day 22). But the rest were new, fresh and stupid! Just don’t forget to tell Kanjiklub!

So short, long story brief, my colleagues at HardCheapKnock decided to do one together for The Last Jedi. This way it was not as daunting with multi folks on it. In truth it still was tough but we frickin’ did it!

Writers notes

Some of the inspiration behind my posts:

Yoda’s Suffering (day 35) – this was intended to be a message about the struggles of children in Uganda. You should read about it on the web if you have time.

Not again Threepio NSFE (day 35) – again about Uganda

Walrus Man Discount Replacement Limb or Other Club (day 2) – This one took about a month to do. Mainly the drawings of every body and part. Actually I had this mostly done before we even started the countdown. Just tweaking it along the way.

Utini Speeder Wreckers (day 15) – This was a homage to a local CHICAGO TV commercial from the early 90’s. Took about 2 weeks to do. And if you think the quality looks shitty that was the intention so wah! Here are some clean behind the scenes photos then jerks.

Anyways God bless you if you sneezed within the hour (otherwise this is void). And God bless Star Wars.

As a reminder although the countdown is over you have 11 more days to enter the: LAST JEDI COUNTDOWN CONTEST! We are giving away a $100 Dollar Fandango Gift Card!!! We know you are going to see The Last Jedi…so we want to buy your second, third or fourth viewings! So it’s quite easy to play. You can do one or all of the following for a chance to win:

Visit Hard Cheap Knock on Facebook

Follow @hardcheapknock on Twitter

Post a tweet

List the hidden numbers you found throughout the countdown – HINT there are 7 of them!

All of the above options must be activated through the fancy little entry form below:

Entry-Form

The more options you do the more your chance of winning increases! Enter today through December 25, 2017. Must be 18 years old to play and be a resident of the USA. For full official rules click here.

0 Days to The Last Jedi! We did it! We passed the time for 50 days by providing memorable Star Wars related content for you the humble and gorgeous viewer(s).

#50 Days of Star Wars #creatures #illustration #Last Jedi #Star Wars #The Last Jedi

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