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paperanddice · 3 years

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Image ID: Two pictures of game stat blocks for the zern. The first is for 5th Edition D&D and the second is for 13th Age. Full text is available below the read more. End ID.

The zern are a form of humanoid creature that have developed an exceptionally malleable body, capable of extreme transformations to better suit their needs at the moment, as well as powerful magic that can induce unstable shifts in another creature’s form. Outside of combat, this magic can slowly reshape a creature’s body to a new form, potentially allowing a zern to cause a permanent transformation, though these changes are difficult to perfect and only a few zern that have trained this ability to incredible levels can do so with fine control. Most simply use it as a form of attack, causing a target’s body to tear itself apart as bones, muscle and flesh pull and warp. This warping energy as they call it is exceptionally painful to most creatures, and is the basis of zern fleshwarping experiments.

Hostile zern factions are a terrifying thing, capturing other people and performing brutal experiments on them to reshape their bodies and minds into something more useful to them. Zern blade thralls and other fleshwarped monstrosities are the results of this, and for every success there are dozens of failures. More benevolent or kind zern often use their warping energy for healing purposes, and experts with the power will give voluntary transformations to patients who wish for their bodies to change. While painful, this is one of the few ways to be able to permanently change your body without the risk of the magic being reverted. Once a zern has successfully transformed a creature with its warping energy, the effect is permanent, stable, and most importantly, non-magical in nature.

The stat block above represents the most common zern warriors, who have trained to use their body to its most combat useful forms, and focused on their warping energy only to the point of effectively using it in battle to injure and kill. Those with their focus on other paths may have fewer or even none of the abilities of malleable form, as they haven’t trained their body to effectively take and hold these forms, but most will still have an affinity for transmutation effects and some innate ability to reshape their body. A scientist or wizard may have mastered the ability to grow an additional pair of delicate hands to better manipulate small objects, or a thief may have learned to gain a climb or swim speed without being reliant on the magic of alter self.

Zern average about 6 and a half feet tall, with rubbery skin that ranges from blue to purple to black. Their muscles are usually quite prominent, even with those who haven’t trained significantly, and their hair resembles a collection of short tentacles that are usually the same color as their skin.

Originally from the 3.5 Monster Manual IV. This post came out a week ago on my Patreon. If you want to get access to all my monster conversions early, as well as a spot on the Paper and Dice Discord server, consider backing me there! I’m actually really fascinated with the zern. Their original fluff simply placed them as pure villains, in the same vein as the duergar, drow, witchknives, yakfolk, yuan-ti, and the many other random evil humanoid creatures. The zern caught my eyes though because unlike so many of those other beings, their specialty is in transmutation effects rather than the enchantment that so many of these many evil slaver types use. That’s unique and interesting enough to do something with, so I gave them quite the detailed writeup and will have a few of their fleshcraft creations coming up over the rest of the week.

5th Edition

A zern can perform a surgery that may permanently reshape a creatures body by spending 1d6+1 hours using its warping energy on the creature and succeeding on a DC 25 Wisdom (Medicine) check. The end result of the transformation is equivalent to the Change Appearance effect of alter self, though features such as height and weight cannot be changed by more than 10% of their initial amount with each surgery. This transformation is permanent and non-magical, so it cannot be dispelled by dispel magic and doesn’t disappear in an antimagic field or similar effect. If the check was a failure, the result is a painful, twisted version of the desired result.

After the surgery, the creature must make a DC 25 Constitution saving throw, or have its hit point maximum reduced by 23 (6d6+2). The creature has disadvantage on the save if the surgery was a failure. This reduction is permanent until treated with greater restoration or similar magic.

Zern Medium humanoid (shapechanger), any alignment Armor Class 16 (natural armor) Hit Points 127 (15d8 + 60) Speed 30 ft. Str 16 (+3) Dex 17 (+3) Con 18 (+4) Int 15 (+2) Wis 12 (+1) Cha 11 (+0) Saving Throws Con +7, Wis +4 Skills Medicine +7 Damage Immunities poison Condition Immunities paralyzed, petrified, poisoned, stunned Senses passive Perception 11 Languages Zern plus any 3 languages Challenge 5 (1800 XP) Fast Healing. The zern regains 5 hit points at the start of its turn if it has at least 1 hit point. Malleable Form. The zern can use a bonus action to change its body and gain one of the following benefits. This effect is permanent until the zern uses this ability again. • Adrenal Surge: The zern's upper body grows more muscular, granting it a +3 bonus on attack rolls and weapon damage rolls. • Boneless Form: The zern's body becomes extremely malleable as its bones liquify. It can move through a space as narrow as 1 inch wide without squeezing. • Impervious: The zern's skin grows into plates of armor. Its AC becomes 18 and it gains resistance to bludgeoning and slashing damage. • Size Shift: The zern grows to Large size. While enlarged, the zern has advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws, and deals an additional 2 (1d4) damage with weapon attacks. • Speed Burst: The zern's legs lengthen and strengthen, increasing its speed by 30 feet. Innate Spellcasting. The zern's spellcasting ability is Intelligence (spell save DC 13). The zern can innately cast the following spells, requiring no material components: At will: alter self 1/day each: gaseous form, polymorph Actions Multiattack. The zern makes two spear attacks. Spear. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., or range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 7 (1d8+3) piercing damage or 8 (1d10+3) piercing damage if used with two hands to make a melee attack. Warping Energy. Melee or Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, reach 5 ft., or range 120 ft., one creature. Hit: 23 (6d6+2) force damage.

13th Age

If a character voluntarily undergoes a zern surgery, it takes 1d6+1 hours and the zern must succeed on a DC 25 check. The zern adds its level+2 to this roll. If it is successful the character’s body is permanently transformed, with its general appearance being completely customizable, while its height and weight can be shifted up or down by up to 10%. On a failure, the target suffers a painful, disfiguring effect that has no mechanical effect but probably makes them unhappy.

After the surgery, the target must succeed on a DC 25 Constitution skill check, or else it is weakened until it completes a full heal up. The DC increases to 30 if the surgery was a failure.

Certain specialist zern may have a higher bonus to their check to perform this surgery, but obviously the average soldier has not the time or experience to perform these very successfully.

Zern 5th-level troop [humanoid] Initiative: +9 Longspear +8 vs. AC - 14 damage Natural 18+: The zern can make a warping energy attack as a standard action on its next turn. [Special Trigger] C: Warping Energy +9 vs. PD (one nearby or far away enemy) - 20 force damage Natural 18+: The target is transformed into a tiny animal until the end of the zern’s next turn. While in this form, the target is hampered and weakened, and its attacks only deal d4s for damage. Malleable Form: The zern starts the battle with one of the following benefits. 1/turn it can choose a different benefit until it uses this ability again. • Adrenal Surge: The zern gains a +5 bonus to attack and expands its crit range to 18+ with its longspear. • Boneless Form: The zern is immune to opportunity attacks and can squeeze through openings just a few inches wide. Also, while in this form the zern is immune to conditions except ongoing damage. • Impervious Hide: The zern gains a +5 bonus to AC and resist weapon damage 12+. • Size Shift: The zern grows to incredible size. Its longspear attack can now target nearby creatures, and gains a +5 bonus to damage (hit or miss). • Speed Burst: The zern can take two move actions on each of its turns. Shapechange: As a standard action, the zern can change its form to that of any humanoid, or back to its own shape. A successful DC 20 skill check can see through this disguise. Shapeshifter’s Bane: The zern gains a +5 bonus to damage if it’s target is any form except its original one. AC 18 PD 17 MD 16 HP 80

#long post #DnD #D&D #Dungeons and Dragons #5th Edition #13th Age #homebrew #my homebrew #monster #npc #humanoid

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rebellect-writes · 4 years

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[SIZE=1][b]Name:[/b] Jess. [b]Age:[/b] 21. [b]How did you find us?:[/b] Well, you see. You found me!

[align=center] [color=WHITE]Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. -- [b]Edgar Allan Poe[/b] "The Raven"[/SIZE][/color] [IMG]http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lilkhvalW01qzozmk.gif[/IMG] [color=WHITE]Tell me would you kill to save for a life? Tell me would you kill to prove you're right? Crash, crash, burn let it all burn. This hurricane chasing us all underground.[/color] [/align]

[b]Name:[/b] Fallon. [b]Nicknames & Aliases:[/b] [LIST]Fall; He’ll acknowledge you if you’re not being funny. Autumn; He may change his hair colour a lot but that will get you smacked. Sadistic; Why thank you! Lust; No, he’s not a chick even if he wears guy-liner. [/LIST][b]True Age:[/b] 3004 [b]What He Says:[/b] 1018 [b]Date of Birth:[/b] December 26th [b]Age at Death:[/b] 30 [b]Gender:[/b] Male. [b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Bisexual, though guys are more his thing. [b]Occupation:[/b] Owns his own theatre plus company, sometimes steps in at Club Hell to help Noah.

[b]Bloodline:[/b] Belle Morte. [b]Power Level:[/b] Master. [b]Mind-Set:[/b] Dominant unless submissive suits the situation. [b]Animal to Call:[/b] Wolves. [b]Powers:[/b] [b]Standard Vampire powers:[/b] Like all vampires, Fallon’s got heightened physical strength and he has steel like grip. He could send a human flying with a slightest touch and like the newly dead, he’s capable of lifting a small car with ease. He’s also very fast, more than capable from switching from a death like stillness to a speed that’s perceived faster than the human eye can follow since he can cloud people’s minds. It’s like as if he vanishes at will! His senses are pretty spot on, Fallon can smell a human’s emotional state, and to some degree, he can taste weaker shifters or vampires and his hearing? Well, he can hear a whispered comment from the other side of the house. With his age, Fallon can disguise himself and appear mortal, but unlike a human, he can switch from being a completely animated being to something that is still, expressionless and silent. The last thing of note is that he’s extremely difficult to harm like most of the older vampires and wounds made from heavy objects, and even bullets, heal with moments even though it hurts like hell he doesn’t let it show.

[b]Feeding Via Mind:[/b] Now, this is a tricky thing for him to do since the human mind is complex. He has to touch people to do this, skin to skin, for it to work and he can only enter a person’s mind to feed from their more promiscuous thoughts and deepest fantasies. He can’t sustain himself on this for long, maybe a day or two extra, but he can use it to hold back the ardeur and the blood hunger. To avoid doing this often, Fallon takes precautions and wears a pair of leather gloves.

[b]Empathic Voice Manipulation:[/b] Fallon can use his voice to bring out the better aspects in peoples moods. He thinks of it more as a mental power than something actually physical because he doesn’t have to touch someone when he uses it, however it still gives off a physical sensation at times to the people he uses it on. In his mind, it’s supposedly like rolling a victim. They want to stay and listen to him, even if they wouldn’t normally do it or despise him. He's only ever really used this power on his wolf, Jesse.

[b]The Ardeur:[/b] Fallon is an incubus, and one of Bella Morte’s special little boys and girls. The most basic way to describe it is that anyone under its thrall is gripped by the intense desire to have sexual intercourse with the user or the closest person to them despite their general preferences. This power’s truly frightening because the Ardeur drains the energy from those it feeds on and can potentially drain a person to the point of death, so incubi and succubi have more than one general lover if they want to feed correctly.

[b]Animal/Human Servant Creation:[/b] In theory, Fallon could take a human on as a servant as well, outside of his animal servant Jesse Harley. Basically, this power allows Fallon to magically bind someone to him, making said servants greater resistance to injury and mental powers and almost complete immunity to his own power (first mark). It also allows him to draw power from his servant and experience what they eat and drink, and even enter their dreams (second mark). He has to take some of the servants blood, but by doing so, it conveys increased healing powers, immunity to poisons and allows him and his servant to communicate mentally (third mark). After that, it’s just a matter of getting his servant to drink his blood and he can make them immortal like him, it also gives them a bond of almost complete mental communication and allows the servant to draw on Fallon’s strength (fourth mark). However, should his servant die, Fallon’s would be metaphysically crippled and most likely go insane since he’s old enough to survive the death. [b]Rank:[/b] Témoin

[b]Face Claim:[/b] Jared Leto. [b]Description:[/b] [IMG]http://images.sugarscape.com/userfiles/image/july/0707jared2.jpg[/IMG] [i]Height:[/i] 5’10. [i]Weight:[/i] 166lbs. [i]Eyes:[/i] Blue. A very distracting blue. [i]Hair:[/i] Naturally, brown and stays brown. Unless he dyes it a different colour for fun! (and 6 months out of 12, it’s one colour or another.) [i]Build:[/i] Very lean, almost to the point he looks underweight but that’s a lie. [i]Visible marks:[/i] He has two tattoos, one on the inside of his wrist in Latin with a quote he forgot years ago, and the other ( a small triad ) on his collar bone. [i]Style:[/i] Normally loose clothes, grungy punk like clothes. Beaded bracelets, necklaces and so on. He can wear suits, if he does though that’s another story since they make him feel confined. He’ll wear them though, if the occasion calls for it and keep the complaining to a minimum.

[b]Special Skills:[/b] [LIST] [*] Can speak French, Romanian, Spanish and Italian. Oh! And sarcasm. [*] He can appear human, unlike newer vampires. [*] Since he’s second in command of Jackford, he does actually have a network of spies and snitches at his finger tips that he uses when he has to. He’s built this up over the years, so in a way it’s a special skill, because he uses it to keep Noah updated and the Kiss one step ahead of things most of the time. [*] It isn't really a special skill, but he prides himself on not being power hungry. [/LIST][b]Personality:[/b][LIST]Fallon is just a giant ball of multicolours. No, seriously, his hair isn’t the only thing that changes. Normally, he’s an ok kind of guy that doesn’t go out of his way to annoy people too much. He likes to help people out and offer them a shoulder to cry on or wall to bounce ideas off. He’ll give advice where it’s due, even if he’s stepping on toes or going to piss someone off, if he feels the need to say it then he will. He’ll always try and apologize afterwards, but he’s Old World, so sometimes things don’t click right despite being fairly modern. What most people don’t notice, and sometimes Fallon doesn’t either, is that he gets bored easily and he acts out, heck the only people that probably would notice one of his acting out fazes are his brother, cousin or Jesse because he goes beyond the typical theatrical, creative and eccentric, he strays into maliciousness. He’s a bit of a charmer when he’s not being a whacky nut case that should be locked away for societies own wellbeing. Fallon’s loyal and backs up any threats and promises, if he says that he’ll do something then he will do it, even if it makes him squirm and whinge like a kicked puppy.

With his vast age, Fallon’s adopted a slightly twisted perspective on vampires and other supernatural. He comes from a time when they were monsters and did drop bodies where they could be found by others then slaughter others. He’s also well versed in the way many Kisses are run. Masters of the City are treated with the utmost respect, and he would give his life if it was what his “master” would want. Masters within the Kiss don’t get instant respect either; if they’re not strong enough then they have to earn it. In a dog eat dog world, its sink or swim baby. Lower Kiss and fledglings jump when he tells them too…Or at least that used to be the way. Fallon treats the Kiss like extended family, they have their ups and their downs but at the end of the day they’re not that dysfunctional. That doesn’t mean he’ll put up with blatant endangerment of his family. If it’s for the better good of all, he will stop people by any means appropriate and has at times locked vampires away in coffins and forgotten about them, or simply ripped their hearts out. He hasn’t held the position of second in command by only being a funny bastard; he has his ruthless streak well hidden as it may be.

While he’s been in Jackford, he’s made it his job to be friends with all the local werewolves where he can and provide them with an alley should they need it. He’s only ever once called the wolves of Jackford without their permission and he won’t do it again. Those he call come to him willingly or not at all. It’s the same with any partners he has as force is very distasteful. No one in this life time has seen Fallon at his worst. Sure, he has his moments where he withdraws from the world and appears bored with what’s going on around him and with what’s going on in his life, but I’m not talking about a depressive vampire. The anger in him is deep, and it’s destructive and in some ways protective because he does rant and he does rave and he does lash out normally in his head these days and prays that he never needs to get violent properly. [/LIST][b]Likes:[/b] [LIST] [*] Playing video games with Jesse. [*] When there’s no trouble for the Kiss. Running around like chickens is annoying. [*] Riding his bike through the city. Screw your cars! [*] Shopping in person, though he’ll never own up to it when he does it online. [*] When it snows. [*] Swimming. [*] Protecting the Kiss. He wouldn’t be second in command of the city if he didn’t. [*] Tormenting Jesse on their [i]movie nights[/i]. [*] Writing poems, short stories, you name it. [*] Playing the guitar, that’s something only Jesse and Noah know about. [/LIST][b]Dislikes:[/b] [LIST] [*] Religious talk. Followed by the words "vampires have no souls." [*] Getting blood on his favourite clothes. It’s hell to get it out. [*] When Jesse gets into trouble and doesn’t tell him straight away. [*] Fighting with Noah. [*] Jesse disobeying him in some form or another. [*] Silence. He has to have a little noise around him otherwise his mind wanders. [*] People underestimating the Kiss. [*] People that try and hurt his wolf. [*] Getting blood on his clothes. [*] Having to make an example of someone. [/LIST][b]Strengths:[/b][LIST] [*] Goes to great lengths to make friends with the wolves before calling any. [*] Jesse makes him look at the world a whole new way again. [*] Is brutally honest when he needs to be. Suck it up, princess! [*] He’s pretty intelligent, even if he does look like a typical punk. [*] His brother. Enough said on that matter. [*] Can and will walk into a church, much to the surprise of many. What? He’s fine as long as there’s no flaming crosses or bible toting idiots. [*] Patience of a saint, it must be said. When things look rough, he’ll look for other options. [/LIST][b]Weaknesses:[/b][LIST] [*] Having to be invited into a home. [*] Holy symbols. [*] Jesse Harley. Hurt the pet and you hurt the Master. [*] His older brother Noah. [*] He has to feed the Ardeur or risk it getting out of control and no one wants that. [*] Has a habit of running his mouth off at times. [*] Likes blood a little too much. [/LIST][b]Fears:[/b][LIST] [*] Small spaces. He can deal for a little while but not long time frames. He feared them as a human and it has carried over as a vampire. [*] Seeing Jesse hurt and being unable to help him, he wouldn’t know what to do if he didn’t have his wolf around. [*] Noah's temper or Jaspers. He fears that in a big way like any baby brother/cousin would. [*] Being starved from touch again. [/LIST][b]History:[/b][LIST]Seven years after the birth of Noah, during a particularly rough winter, Fallon was brought into the world kicking like any normal babe to be welcomed by his older brother Noah and his father as his mother lay exhausted. His mother knew something was different about her second son; womanly intuition of course, brought on by the fact Fallon was quiet as a babe. Her first son and her husband didn’t seem to notice it, so she didn’t mention it to anyone. From the moment that Fallon could walk on his own two feet, his brother was teaching him all kinds of things as well as his parents. They were growing old; they wanted both of their boys to survive in the harsh life that had been given to them and in less than six years Fallon and Noah were left orphans as their parents passed on. Noah tried at first to make things work, he took up the responsibilities afforded to a man and Fallon tried his hardest too help, even at such a young age. Eventually the local story teller Alaric’s wife came and helped, and then the rest of the settlement rather than see the boys waste away since they had no other blood kin close to hand.

When he was ten, Fallon was left in the care of the story teller and his wife as Noah went off to fight for the clan and settlement with other young men. As much as he hated it, he couldn’t blame Noah much but he did feel abandoned. For most of his life Noah was the only constant in his life, and to be left with strangers that some in the settlement considered mad was a little…scary. After the first few weeks though, he was fine and Noah was the last thing on his mind. Up at dawn he would go hunting with the story teller while his wife kept the house and small farm that they had and they’d go into the woods to hunt birds and the like and every day Fallon was told a different story about Gods and Goddesses, demons and all kinds of great and wonderful things. He was also taught how to shoot a bow and arrow over the nine years he spent with them, he was also taught to hunt and forage in the woods and the land around them, and every night when he lay down to sleep he no longer thought about Noah like he had when he had when he’d been younger.

Nine years later and Noah stumbled back into the settlement. Fallon wasn’t the first to great him as he’d been out fishing at the time, but when he found out that his brother was back, he raced back. Only, things weren’t as they were. Before he embraced his brother, Fallon hesitated for a moment and he knew that Noah noticed it because his brother had to clear his throat to get Fallon to even move forward that last few steps. There was just something different about Noah that he didn’t like and yet he couldn’t explain it. So instead he pushed it aside and embraced his brother and tried to summon up the elation that he just couldn’t feel. Yes, he was happy that Noah had returned alive and whole, but it was the joy of having a warrior return from battle and not that of a baby brother. Maybe it was because Noah didn’t seem that enthused to see him or it was the fact that the entire settlement had hounded him. So, after a quick hug and a ‘I’ll see you later’, Fallon slunk off with his tail between his legs in no mood for the celebration.

Over the following years, the brothers tried to reconnect, they really did. Fallon showed him everything that he had learnt but Noah seemed to always find something to pick and poke at while fending off the women folk that wanted to hear tales of the war and offers from wealthier travellers that wanted a mercenary. Every time Noah poked, Fallon snapped, every time he prodded, Fallon hissed until eventually he just took off and left Noah to the mercy of the villagers. Alaric’s wife, Ava, tried to get the brothers to bond but to no good, and they got in to enough fights both verbal and physical that on occasions Fallon was left with a bloodied lip or black eye and Noah was left with another dent in his conscious. Fallon may’ve been good with a hunting knife or a bow, but his brother was deadly with or without weapons so Fallon never fought back. So in the end both brothers were left sitting on opposite sides of a chasm that only seemed to get wider and wider and ultimately led to Fallon’s mounting frustration and anger, even Old Alaric called him up on that a time or two when it cost them a night’s dinner.

Old Alaric died two years later, just after Fallon’s twenty sixth birthdays. Ava had passed the previous autumn before and it was the only reason that had Fallon alone on the coast watching a pyre burn rather than finding out about the war in the south. It was then he decided that he really wanted to make things up with Noah. He returned to the settlement too late, apparently his brother and the other warriors had gone that morning. Rather that race after them like an idiot, Fallon retreated to the old shack that had been his home for years with Alaric and Ava and broke down. He screamed and he raged and he prayed that his brother would return again, just one last time, but he never did. It was only then he realized how stupid he’d been for letting the gap between him and Noah stay so wide.

Noah never returned.

It was six months before he really gathered himself together to carry on with things. He became the story teller for the village like Alaric had been before him. He told the children stories that defied all possible imagination while the adults got on with things. After about a year and a half though, things got a little hectic. A very bad harvest had left the settlement running low on food and to make matters worse they’d gotten word of a small wolf pack that had been scavenging to close for anyone’s comfort. When the first body turned up and it was decided by the head of the settlement that they needed to do something about the wolves, when Fallon saw no one volunteering, he offered to go out and hunt the pack down. He was given a horse, supplies enough for a week if he stretched them, and sent on his way. Of course he wasn’t stupid and he didn’t really trust the villagers much, more so the so called leader that should’ve gone off with his damned warriors to war. He stopped by his home to retrieve what he would need, his bow was better than any dagger.

Setting out properly this time, he tracked the animals for a week before setting up a trap far enough away from the village that no one would be bothered by it. Rather than taking the wolves on all at one time he settled into picking them off, one or two over the space of a few days, then another few weeks would pass before he would take more out disrupting their routine and scaring them away from villages they even looked towards for their next meal. Eventually however, he got them all and returned home with the wolf pelts almost a full year later. It was a bit of a shock to find that the settlement had changed so much, so many of the elders had passed on and the leadership had shifted to a new generation. One that Fallon knew all too well. Abner, son of Esca; One of the other boys that had missed out on the last war had taken over the headship to allow his father some peace through his final days. Fallon wasn’t allowed to approach the old leader directly and when he brought his ‘case’ to Abner, the other male dismissed him. Called him mad, said he’d made a pact with the devil because no one would’ve been able to kill a pack of wolves alone. Rather than accept or deny, Fallon dumped the wolf pelts at the man’s feet before walking away as Abner made it a law before everyone that he should be shunned. Any help of any kind would be met with a punishment and so on and so forth, Fallon didn’t catch the end of it. He did work out what was happening though about fortnight later when no one would look at him, trade, and talk or even walk by him without warding themselves.

It hurt Fallon to his core because of what he and his family had done for the village, but he was determined to weather the bad patch. Only it was a bit longer than any patch, for six full years passed and he was alone through it all. Starved of touch and conversation, Fallon withdrew into a hermit like lifestyle living in the village so to speak but not a part of it. Then the strangest thing happened, after returning from a fishing trip on the coast, Fallon almost walked smack bang into his brother. His dead ice cold to the touch brother. Naturally he gaped like a caught fish before bolting for his home leaving Noah standing there like a statue. He must have been mad! For the next two nights he was scared to close his eyes and stayed locked away in his home and then on the third night Noah banged on his door asking to come in. Rather than have an argument with his dead brother, Fallon invited him in…and fainted.

The following night Noah walked right in and Fallon didn’t even flinch but kicked out a seat from his table and going back to his stew. Since he believed he was mad at the time, Fallon happily listened to what Noah had to tell him for the next few weeks. Fairies were real? Could’ve fooled him! People changed into animals? Get out of here! Noah had been turned into the undead on the battlefield by the Lord Fallon had seen with him weeks previous….No, seriously, get out demon. Fallon snapped and the brotherly fight lasted for weeks before either one of them were calm again to sit in the same room without threats of impalement of some kind, and not once did Fallon tell his brother what had happened in the village to cause him to live like a hermit. He didn’t mark the year passing, but he did try his damnedest to try and fix things with Noah despite his frustration and then one night – exactly a year to the day – he met Master Mikhail. Noah was powerless to do anything as the old Master vampire deep rolled Fallon and tore into his throat.

Sometime later, Fallon woke up starving with fangs in his mouth. Naturally he panicked because he was no longer in his home and he was out of his element. Noah caught him before he could bolt anywhere and tried to explain things before Mikhail came to them. Apparently Mik had grown impatient and turned Fallon and now Fallon would live forever if he fed on the life blood of the living. Gods be damned! If Noah hadn’t already been dead, Fallon would have throttled him or Mikhail. Since he didn’t trust Mikhail as far as he could throw him, Fallon stuck to his brother’s side as the Master told him what was going to happen next and if he didn’t stop hissing and spitting like an annoyed kitten then he could easily die the true death. Rather than argue, Fallon accepted his fate and in a roundabout way, thought of it as a way to see if the old stories Alaric had told him were true. It didn’t stop him from cringing and whimpering when Noah and Mikhail showed him how to feed, and yet again another argument erupted between the brothers that left Mikhail ordering Noah away for the evening while Fallon stayed with Mikhail. He probably would have been scared by his brothers parting words “No, Master Mikhail. You won’t use him.” But he wasn’t. He found it exciting, almost as exhilarating as the rush of blood he’d taken from the girl they’d gotten him. Truth be told, he’d never liked any of the girls in their village because they were stuck up.

He should’ve been humiliated by the actions he took with his master but he wasn’t at all. In fact it was the first he’d really felt in years after having been starved of touch. It also explained why when Noah and Jasper had pushed girls towards him growing up, Fallon had sent them away. He wasn’t a virgin by any means, but it wasn’t something that he’d broadcasted in life. For once in a long time he was happy and content, and in a way it opened himself up to all kinds of guilty pleasures. While he learned to control his new instincts, Mikhail would use him when Noah misbehaved, and when Fallon misbehaved, he would use Noah. Both fledglings learned fast that their ‘father’ wouldn’t be swayed by a honeyed tongue and sweet actions eithers.

Centuries came and went and they travelled all over the world, and then one day Noah reached his Masterhood and the attention shifted from the two of them to Noah. Fallon was jealous and he hid it be slinking off more and more on his own and risked his neck more times than he could count. His brother was only six hundred and forty seven years old! Why couldn’t he have new powers as well? Oh yeah, he sulked. Mikhail snapped one evening and threw him in a coffin while Noah was away for an evening. The sulking turned to panic and out right fear. Being trapped in a box reduced him to nothing within hours and when Noah tore through it, Fallon clung to his brother and cried his eyes out for all he was worth. Fallon didn’t blame Mikhail at the end of the day, he hadn’t told anyone about his claustrophobia ever thinking it humiliating enough, but it was a good century before he felt truly comfortable about his maker again.

More time passed and as Fallon approached his seven hundredth and eleventh year as a vampire, something happened that changed him. Something clicked inside his head, he could feel werewolves and without knowing what he was doing he called the local pack to him. However that wasn’t the only thing that clicked in him, the Ardeur. Unbeknown to him, Noah and Mikhail had gotten into a little trouble with the church and Mikhail was using Fallon as a proxy to feed from. The pack wolves that came were sent into a lust induced frenzy and Fallon was in the centre of it and enjoying every moment. It wasn’t until a few evening safter that he found out one of the wolves that had come had been barely fifteen years old, shocked by that revolution, he waited patiently for his maker and brother to return, still riding the high from the new powers and feeding. Mikhail and Noah were just as surprised as he was when they came back. It was nice…

And then six hundred years later the nice changed. Fallon had grown bored living in his brother’s shadow as well as Mikhail’s and asked if he could leave, after asking his brother of course. Mikhail granted his wish and the brothers said good bye but promised to stay in touch. One thousand and three hundred years old and it was safe to say he’d learnt a lot in his time. He’d gotten a hold of his master powers, fed his incubus side on a regular basis so there’d never be a mistake again with the teenage wolf from when they first showed. He eventually settled in Coventry at age two thousand one hundred, but he hid his powers from the Mistress that accepted him into her Kiss. Morgana was an interesting woman, he’d been drawn to her beauty and she’d been drawn to his bloodline powers. He was her personal toy for the next five hundred years, he jumped when she said so, he started to plot her downfall when she personally tore into a werewolf and rather than letting the poor shapeshifter die, Morgana infected it with her corrupting bite. He was forced to watch as the young boy – barely eighteen – rotted to death in slow agony on the floor because she’d been insulted by the shirt he’d worn. When she’d been lulled into a false sense of security and had had enough of Fallon, she traded him away for something new. Little did she know that he’d given the Temion of her kiss the keys to take her down and the last thing he heard from Morgana or anyone within the Coventry Kiss was that the manor house had gone up in flames.

Oh well. Jackford was interesting enough, even though he’d been ‘gifted’ to the Master of the City at the time to do with as he pleased. Luckily, Fallon won him over and fought his way to the top by wit, skill and sheer power once he was settled in. The Kiss from what he could tell was really new and finding its feet, so he used it to his advantage to get a hold on the city over the next five hundred years. The only interesting thing that tickled his fancy was meeting a werewolf in 2007 on the outskirts of the city. Fallon had been dealing with a rogue alpha that had been the companion of a vampire that had insulted a previous Master of the City and out of a misguided sense of comradeship, Jesse attacked him after Fallon had killed the other werewolf and Fallon had no option but to defend himself from the spirited pup’s mauling while nursing wounds from the other wolf. Jesse staggered off and Fallon traced him back to the Pack house, rather than leaving the wolf to stay unconscious on the kitchen floor Fallon took him back to his home outside of the Kiss manor and patched him up as much as best as he could. When Jesse woke up, he came back singing and Fallon unknowingly gave him the first mark as an animal servant as he taunted and teased the irritable wolf before explaining what had happened. Simple enough right? Right.

Jesse decided to stay with him as his willing blood donor the following year and Fallon was ecstatic. Then he got a call from someone he hadn’t heard of in a long time in early 2010. Mikhail wanted him to return to deal with some delicate werewolf issues for him. He was surprised because he’d thought that Mikhail would’ve known other wolf callers but apparently not anyone as experienced as he was. Shrugging off his curiosity, he bade Jesse fair well and slipped across the pond to New York. Trouble was an understatement, there were four packs fighting for one territory! Fallon was in New York for just under a year and counted down the days until he could get home, he even had a chance to drop by New Jersey and visit Noah for a few nights before him came home to find Jesse picking a fight in one of the local clubs. Then when the last Master of the City left Jackford, Fallon did the only thing he could as he was still wheeling from the trip and familiar faces, he called his Maker and got the promise that Jackford wouldn’t be without a Master for long.

A fortnight later his brother showed up. [/LIST]</span>

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isabellawaites · 4 years

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Name : Crimson tepes

Gender : male

Species : half-Vampire, half-spring of Psyche, Half-Human Romanian 9/10 Japanese 3/10 British 7/10 French 6/10

Age : 16 (beginning) 19 (at college) 29 (my goodbye) 99 (flim, the rose)

Hair color : black/maroon

Eye color : crimson red

Occupation : prince of all vampires, professional artist

Parents : count alucard tepes (biological father) Kanon Usui (mother) Athanasia edwards (mother)

Spouse : René noir Richard de Grantaine (29)

family's: karin maaka (grandmother) kenta usui (grandfather) ren maaka (granduncle) anju maaka (grandaunt)kenta usui's baby brother (granduncle) henry marker (great-grandfather) calera marker (great-grandmother) james marker (great-great-grandfather) elda marker (great-great-grandmother) rei braunlich (First Cousin Once Removed) elga marker (First Cousin thrice Removed) frederick marker (Second Cousin thrice Removed) Elsa's brother (great-great-granduncle) daniel armash (great-great-grandfather) cecilia armash (great-great-grandmother) edward edwards (twice-great-great-great-granduncle)

Appearance

He has black/maroon color for hair and crimson red eyes. Although crimson gets his looks from his father's side of the family (he is the spitting image of her paternal grandmother, Mina Harker when it comes to appearance and personality) his skin tone is pale.

Personality

Crimson is very cheerful, he is confident and brave. Crimson is also very diligent and strong-willed. contrary to some of his family members he's very mature, and is not afraid to stand up to anyone, including his other family members. he is a pure-hearted of gentleman, open-minded, strongly independent, intelligent, compassionate, very forgiving, resourceful and intellectually gifted beautiful young man.

History

Crimson is the biological son of count alucard tepes, the son of the king of vampires, Count Dracula. Count alucard was a donor of Kanon Usui, and Athanasia edwards. Crimson was raised in france, he lived in paris.

Powers & Abilities

Superhuman Strength - Like his father, and grandfather, crimson possesses the superior strength of 1000-10000 strong men. He can shatter wood, crush/reshape metal, dismantle cars, and single-handedly defeat a small army, challenging and overpowering/killing humans in combat and/or toss them across a room. He has demonstrated sufficient strength strong enough to tear off limbs, rip out throats bare-handed, and snap chains and casually hurl grown men through the air. His strength is so great that he could stop a 8 thousand vampire in his tracks with one finger.

Superhuman Speed - Like his father, and grandfather, crimson posesses superior speed, even to other Vampires. Dracula can move too much faster than the human eye can follow and swiftly chase down animals and dodge/side-step bullets fired at him at point-blank range. He can exceed the sound barrier when running at full speed. He moves around short and long distances rapidly making him look like a blur.

Superhuman Senses - Like his father, and grandfather, crimson's senses are heightened to 30. He can hear, see, and smell better than humans. Crimson can see in total darkness and has superior senses of smell, taste, and hearing compared to other Vampires. He can taste garlic in one's blood and hear sounds from afar.

Hypnosis - His eyes and voice command the obedience of Vampires, Humans, rats, bats, flies, vultures, crows, owls, and wolves. He can make humans do what he wants even with a click of his fingers. This is described as his "thrall". He can activate this power at will without the need of physical contact or even gaining the victims concentration, simply by commanding his victim immediately to do it. With it, he could reduce anyone into a Renfield-like state, making those he controls refer to him as his master, dedicated to please him in order to become a vampire themselves, turn against their friends, even change their mannerisms and posture into something resembling an Igor. However, crimson's influence on a Slayer doesn't totally remove their free mind but makes them willing and submissive if not hesitant. This however stops if or when they drink his blood, the shock of its' taste which is 'temptation' can bringing them back to their senses.

Vampire Creation - Like all vampires, crimson can turn human to vampire, due his grandfather being the Original Vampire.

Eidetic Memory - Crimson has perfect recall of events that happened many years ago.

Telepathy - Crimson can hear one's mind.

Super Healing Factor - Like all vampires, crimson can heal faster than humans. He heals from disabilities and gunshots, even ones to his head. He heals instantaneously from any bodily wound of any severity and is immune to disease.

Superhuman Agility - Like all vampires, crimson posseses superior agility, even to other Vampires and his agility and balance is superior to humans. He is highly flexible, can scale sheer surfaces, and jump very high several feet in the air with inhuman balance.

Wall-Crawling/Gravity Manipulation - Crimson can and has the abilty to climb and walk on walls, adhere to vertical surfaces, and even also crawl upsidedown in the ceiling like a large insect.

Teleportation - Crimson can teleport in a shadow-like manner.

Daywalking - Crimson can walk in the daylight.

Relationships

Kanon Usui : She loves her son very much and is always protective of him. When crimson is kidnapped Kanon gets really angry, she and her wife, athanasia go off to find him.

Athanasia edwards : Crimson is the one of if only people athanasia cares about, she is honest with her son. Her family and friends is the only thing that matters to her, so everyone else can drop dead.

Trivia

Crimson is Pansexual His blood Preference is fear, lust, missouri. He was born in July 11, 2040.

Quotes

"Maybe I'm foolish

Maybe I'm blind

Thinking I can see through this

And see what's behind

Got no way to prove it

So maybe I'm blind

But I'm only human after all."

#chibi vampire #oc

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thatboomerkid · 5 years

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City of Looking-Glass Shadows

City of Looking-Glass Shadows -- an urban-fantasy D&D 5E campaign

The year is 199X.

It’s been this way for a while now.

The world is a lie. We live within an artificial construct, a facsimile of mundane reality forged upon a pocket-shard of arable land -- adrift somewhere deep in the Shadowfell -- built with slave labor by the illithid to house, to monitor & to control a teeming, screeching, anxious mass of hand-selected human cattle.

The goal of their project is simple: we are here to generate new technological applications. We are a living algorithm, assembled by our starry masters to the endless & perpetually-accelerating task of spitting out ever-deadlier and more brutally efficient weapons of conquest & control, engines of wealth & war, tools of mechanical intelligence & information-manipulation.

No wonder we all feel a little ... stuck, huh?

The simplest, most brute-force way to produce the desired technological output at the necessary volume involved building an invisible cage and keeping several hundred million humans magically-illiterate, desperate, confused & tech-hungry.

So that’s what they built, way out here in the echoing void.

Welcome home.

A desperate, silent war for the future of this ugly, distant demiplane is being fought in the shadows, right now ... and the monsters are winning.

Brought to you absolutely free to enjoy, to test & to share – as always – by the fine folks of my Patreon.

Inspired by Big Trouble in Little China, Blade, Dark City, Hackers, Heavy Metal, Highlander, They Live & Werewolf: the Apocalypse.

This website references trademarks and/or copyrights owned by Hasbro, Inc. We are expressly prohibited from charging you to use or access this content. This website is not published, endorsed, or specifically approved by Hasbro. This material is posted under the Fair Use clause of copyright law.

Created by Clinton Boomer & Uncle Twitchy.

Special thanks to Jessica Redekop of Redcap Miniatures, Blaine Bass of Scrapfinder, Landon Bellavia of Quest Writer, Neal Litherland of Improved Initiative & Sam Berry of Nomad Tattoos for being my beta-readers.

image by jim pinto

Our false universe has been invaded. Several times.

Playable Races:

Awakened Human: Somewhere in the range of 99.9% of all humans within the City of Looking-Glass Shadows exist fully under the thrall of the illithid; seeing only what their masters desire for them to see, knowing only what their master choose for them to know, remembering only what their masters allow them to remember. But a small, ultra-select few have shaken off the chains. These are the crazy folks, the dirty & paranoid madmen. People like you: people who know that magic is real.

Duergar: The brick-&-mortar labor force of the illithid, thousands of mind-wiped duergar still serve deep beneath the earth in vast, dim-lit caverns, forge-pits and echoing armories alongside masses of grimlocks, ogres, quaggoths, troglodytes and other, less-describable slave races. The grey dwarves possess resilient minds, however ... and they are the most-common escapees of this prison.

Githyanki: Way back in 198X, a force of githyanki warriors and their red dragonborn allies stormed the gate between the Astral Plane and the City of Looking-Glass Shadows: it was an apocalypse of fire, psychic thunder, death-screams & silver heavy-blades above exploding skyscrapers and panicked crowds. It’s all been wiped from the history & memory of the world, of course: you’ll find nary a whisper in the official records. But a few survivors still plot in the shadows, rebuilding their strength.

Githzerai: Even further back, in 197X, a trio of githzerai dojos assaulted this stronghold of the illithid. Those who fled, bleeding, from the failure of that onslaught are still hiding here amongst a teeming press of the timid humans who huddle against one another in the delusion of warmth and safety. Within their sewer strongholds and rooftop dojos, these stubborn students of Zerthimon train, maintaining the secretive ZethiNet and making plans to strike once more.

Prized Exotic: Although there are only a handful of aasimar, tiefling & dark elf inhabitants of the world, some are kept as beloved pets by illithid masters. The rarest of escapees, these creatures -- once their chains are flung free -- are hunted a with singular devotion of purpose. A very few are rumored to have maintained their freedom.

Red Dragonborn: It is well known that Vlaakith the Lich-Queen, 157th of her name, bears the dread Scepter of Ephelomon; by means of this unholy artifact, she commands the obedience of all crimson-scaled wyrms for use in her eternal war. Far from her omnipotent influence, the red dragonborn who once served alongside the githyanki are free again.

Shadar-Kai: The original inhabitants of that stark chuck of rock from which the City of Looking-Glass Shadows rises are still here. They lurk, and they hate, and they take their kills where they can. Many are allied to the mysterious Sleeper in the Woods, and they make sacrifices around huge bonfires to whatever entity it is.

image from here

First-Level PC Character-Origin Options:

Awakened From Injury: Those abject horrors which open battle with the illithid can inflict upon a mortal mind & body are impossible to describe in any sane language. Some of the first through the gate into the City of Looking-Glass Shadows are only now being revived from their comas, their memories scattered like fallen leaves.

Recent Summoning: The githyanki & githzerai alike are highly active in their ongoing quest, attempting to pull resources & reinforcements to the demiplane in mass numbers. Unfortunately, the few who are successfully brought here via ritual-summoning are often limited in their abilities ... and unable to return home by magical means.

Thrown Off the Shackles: Most humans, duergar and assorted other slaves of the illithid are badly damaged, psychically, when they pull free of the influence of their hideous, alien masters: losing bits of themselves in the process of awakening to the world as it truly is.

Eleven Fun Facts about the City of Looking-Glass Shadows

Everyone looks like a human. If it has an Intelligence score higher than an animal and is approximately human-sized, it looks like a person. That means that the illithid and their monstrous slaves can function in public without disguises ... and you can, too. This is some unshakable type of artifact programming inherent to the original demiplane, and it’s one of the reasons they chose the site for their experiment in the first place.

Reflections show the truth. If you’re a non-human, or an Awakened Human, any type of reflection -- in a mirror, in water, whatever -- will show you the truth of who you’re talking to. This may require you to keep a particularly paranoid eye on your surroundings. Have fun!

Members of sentient non-human species can always “feel” the presence of others of their own kind. If a Shadar-Kai, for example, is within 30 feet of another Shadar-Kai, she gets a little “ping”; all gith ping in the same way, which causes a certain level of confusion amongst the two races. Awakened Humans have the distinct advantage of always feeling it when they get within 30 feet of any non-human sentient creature, but the reverse isn’t true: Shadar-Kai have no way of knowing if a given human is Awakened or not, for example, short of seeing the human manipulate magical energies in some way.

The illithid have access to 21st century technology. Everyone else is wandering around with pagers, beepers and battery-hungry car-phones the size of briefcases, while the illithid have smart phones, YouTube and GPS. This gives them several dangerous advantages.

The illithid occupy most positions of power. Not every billionaire CEO, mega-church pastor or politician is an illithid. Some are just their thralls. But it’s even money that if someone has a lifestyle in the top 1%, they’re one of the squid-faced, brain-eating elder horrors.

Sentient non-humans are immune to mundane guns. No one knows why, but anything that isn’t a human or an animal simply isn’t affected by firearms. This means that a single githyanki can casually stand up to an entire SWAT team ... and that an armed populace will never overthrow their alien overlords (for more on the topic, see “This is Not Guns Against the Darkness,” Bloodlines & Black Magic, page 160).

There are three Elder Brains in charge of the City. The three entities are in a constant state of “friendly” competition with each other; their genteel attacks, counterattacks & diversion-tactics drive innovation forward at an enormous cost in human life & sanity. Each one rules a section of the city from a hidden penthouse apartment, underground spa or other luxurious -- but inaccessible & highly fortified -- location.

Undead are dangerously common in the City. As a side effect of the demiplane’s location “within” the Shadowfell, these undead can spawn randomly; these spontaneously-generated undead are a HUGE problem for the illithid, who are on highest possible alert for any new outbreaks. This is often used as a smoke-screen by the Githyanki & Shadar-Kai, especially ... who mask their own operations behind seemingly-mindless attacks by the undead. Undead in the demiplane are also extremely resilient to being turned: undead have advantage on turn saves.

The illithid have access to the only stable portal into & out of the demiplane. While travel from the sprawling city is dangerous & relatively uncommon, the illithid can resupply much more easily than any other faction, moving to and from the deminplane in massive vessels once every month. Maintaining total control of this hidden portal is of the utmost importance to the mind flayers ... and taking the portal is the highest goal of every other faction.

Because of the demiplane’s “locked” property, spells that rely on dimensional travel or manipulation -- Rope Trick, Blink, Dimension Door, Conjure (Minor) Elemental, Summon Lesser/Greater Demon, Contact Other Plane, Conjure Fey, Planar Ally, Conjure Celestial, Plane Shift, Astral Projection, Gate and others, subject to DM discretion -- are unreliable. In order to cast any of those spells, the caster must succeed at a DC 18 save using their spell-casting stat at disadvantage. A critical failure when casting a spell of this type spontaneously generates an aggressive, uncontrollable undead creature with a CR equal to the level of the spell being cast. Casting such spells in a ritually-prepared “sacred space” allows a character to attempt the spell without disadvantage.

Something dangerous & ancient sleeps in the woods. Several rebel factions have made attempts to contact or awaken this unknown entity in a suicidal bid at challenging illithid control ... but what is it? None can say for certain. Some say it’s an ancient midnight-blue shadow dragon of unutterable age; others suggest that it is Moloch, trapped here after a disastrous attempt to gain the Raven Queen’s support to end his exile. Still others suggest that it’s one of the obscene Great Old Ones, which serves as a patron for some particularly cruel & debased warlocks ...

original photography by Resa LaMont, digital editing by Tim Jenkins of Battle! Studio; image also used here

10 Plot Hooks

Maybe you’re starting a brand new campaign from scratch.

Maybe you’ve just ended a long, complex story-line a little bit early, without all of the mysteries solved; maybe you can’t jump into the next chapter of your narrative until the PCs achieve a certain slightly higher level or meet a specific NPC or learn a particular secret; maybe only half of your players showed up to this session and you need a quick “filler” episode.

Maybe your PCs befriended & adopted the Godzilla, shunted the Terminator to Khyledonia, had the Voldemort removed from office in disgrace or otherwise drove your campaign’s entire plot-arc so far off the frigging rails that you need a few weeks to re-orient your entire game from first principles.

Whatever the reason, you need a brand new plot hook on the fly, and – simply due to setting-assumptions! – “goblins attack the village” or “the princess is a werewolf” or “local knights go questing for the Vast Horror” simply won’t cut it.

No sweat, friend. We’ve got you covered.

Just roll 1d10 on the chart below; if you roll a plot hook that you’ve already used, round up to the nearest unused plot hook (if you rolled seven or above), while rounding down to the nearest unused plot hook if you rolled six or lower.

A rumor starts circulating the underground magical community -- rebels & survivors, all -- about enchanted mirror-shades which allow an Awakened or non-human user to always see another creature’s true species, as if in a reflection. Who is making them, and how? And where are they?

A rumor goes out that the secretive ZerthiNet -- the private web built and maintained by the Githzerai -- came dangerously close to being breached by human hackers in service to the illithid. While this may or may not be true, it shakes the confidence of several powerful groups who are now desperate to relocate their clandestine bases of operation.

An insane derro, presumed to be an escapee of the illithid, is claiming that he knows the exact location of one of the Elder Brains ... and how to circumvent all of the security near it. He’s willing to trade this information to the highest bidder, and a shadowy bidding-war has begun between various war-party sects desperate to make a strike.

A group of traveling Shadar-Kai who are known to work in the city proper as well as to maintain a “clan base” in the forest have begun to trade in more and more powerful magical items, selling them for relatively small change. Some folks suspect that they’ve found something valuable out in the woods: the horde of a monster, perhaps.

A massive security-breach has the entire illithid population on damage control, as a massive shambling horror of undeath & rotting flesh has begun making daring daylight attacks on seemingly-random locations before vanishing once again. Is this the dark work of a single dedicated necromancer, of a clever cabal, or beast “breathed forth” by the strange Sleeper in the Woods?

The illithid were not the first to discover this demiplane. The wreckage of an ancient ship -- perhaps a Spelljammer -- has long been rumored to lie embedded beneath the city. Now, a recent escapee from a duergar slave camp claims to have found the ship, and perhaps even figured out how to get it flying again.

McHappy kids' meals are making the rounds with toys from the summer cinema blockbuster Secret Agent Kids, including see-around-the-corner periscopes that, as a source of reflected images, should show the truth. However ... (roll 1d3): (1) Human children have been “waking up” in unprecedented numbers, creating a “mental health crisis” among the City’s youth. (2) Awakened humans and non-humans who look through these "toys" see misleading images, showing some mundane humans as unnatural horrors, and the real horrors as mundane humans. This has led to certain ... misunderstandings. (3) The magically-initiated are completely unable to see through these periscope toys, and for 1d8-3 (minimum 0) minutes after trying, are unable to see creatures' true natures in reflections, seeing only their human guises. The rush is on to figure out how this happens, and how to exploit it.

An unknown black-market agent is selling illithid-grade tech to the opposition. Smart phones -- complete with GPS location services, dual high-resolution cameras, and Candy Crush pre-loaded -- are being picked up by rival factions. Are these bonafide goods, or is it all part of a larger mind-flayer scheme?

A charming dark elf swordsman has recently established himself as the undisputed master over a small section of the city’s criminal underworld, making a grand living as a “problem solver” for rival gangs and ruling through a combination of flair & intimidation. His ability to fence stolen goods or to obtain cars & guns is unparalleled, but he’s either an agent of the illithid ... or will soon be their slave once again.

A gang of Red Dragonborn have started a turf-war with a small coterie of githzerai living in half-crumbled public housing; each group is unwilling to back down, even as the fighting drags-on and the bodies pile up; each night of aggression & retribution risks alerting the illithid to both crews.

The world is a lie. Kill its masters. Burn it to the ground.

image from here

#Not pathfinder #d&d 5e #githyanki #githzerai #dragonborn #Action Horror #urban fantasy #campaign

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xxxdragonfucker69xxx · 5 years

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monstrous races

Presenting: options for a very specific illithid, vampire, and skeleton as playable PC races in 5e DnD. No subclasses, because these were written for specific characters.

VAMPIRE

Ages ago, Cisylvanian sorcerers summoned and married the devil-king Zagan, and bore dynasties of children with tainted blood. The result are the Cisylvanian vampires, who differ from other vampires as several ways. First, they are born into vampirism, and organize themselves as families rather than masters and thralls. Second, they lack many powers of other vampires but also many weaknesses. Strong lotion will shield them from the sun, and they can abide running water without much trouble. Cisylvanian vampires rarely stray from their dark forests, as they face stigma from both vampires and regular people who are not used to their peculiarities.

Ability Score Increase: Your Dexterity, Strength and Constitution scores each increase by 1.

Size: Medium.

Speed: 30 feet.

Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Bite Attack: Your unarmed attacks do 1d4 damage.

Empty Veins: You are immune to diseases and the poisoned condition, and resistant to poison damage.

Sunburn: You are vulnerable to fire and radiant damage.

Feeding: When you take a long or short rest, you may feed on the blood of a living creature, who takes a level of exhaustion for the next day. At any time in the next day, you may use this blood to gain advantage on an ability check or save. Feeding during a short rest refreshes this ability. For each week you go without feeding, you take a level of exhaustion.

Languages: You can speak, read, and write English and Infernal.

Shapechange: Starting at 3rd level, once per day, you may transform into a bat, rat, or cat. This animal form is clearly identifiable as you: it shares the shape of your hair or perhaps a distinguishing scar. If you take damage in this form, you revert to normal. At 5th level you gain the option to instead turn into a wolf or a spider.

SKELETON

If you ever knew where you came from, you have forgotten it by now: some wizard or priest animated you long ago, and by now all the flesh has rotted from your bones. You are a walking skeleton, brought to life by dark magic and given intelligence through some fluke of reanimation.

Ability Score Increase: Your Constitution increases by 2, and your Strength increases by 1.

Languages: You speak English and one other of your choice.

Darkvision: Technically you don't see with your eyes, so you can see in darkness.

Dry Bones: You are resistant to piercing and slashing damage, but vulnerable to bludgeoning and thunder damage.

Empty Veins: You are immune to diseases and the poisoned condition, and resistant to poison damage.

Undead Appearance: The living treat you as a monster, but undead will not immediately attack you.

Play Dead: When you take damage, you may use your reaction to fall apart into a pile of bones. In this state you are resistant to all damage except bludgeoning and thunder damage, but you cannot see or hear what is going on around you.

Rest In Pieces: You can detach limbs as a bonus action and continue to control them from up to 10ft away. Reattaching a limb is an action. You are your skull.

ILLITHID

Sometimes, an illithid escapes the grasp of the elder brain and gains a taste for free will, even independence. Sometimes an illithid escapes the Underdark and decides to become a pirate. It happens!

Ability Score Increase: Your Intelligence score increases by 2, and your Wisdom score increases by 1.

Languages: You speak Undercommon and Deep Speech.

Telepathy: You can telepathically communicate with willing creatures within 30ft. At 5th level this increases to 60ft, and at 10th level it increases to 120ft. At 15th level you can telepathically communicate with any being you can perceive. Telepathy does not require a shared language.

Darkvision: You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray.

Tentacles: You may use Intelligence with unarmed attacks. If you grapple a creature, it must make a DC (8+prof bonus+Int mod) Intelligence save or be stunned until the grapple ends.

Mind Blast: You project piercing psionic energy in a 15ft cone in front of yourself. Each creature in this cone must make a DC (8+prof bonus+Int mod) or take 1d8 psychic damage and be stunned for a turn. On a successful save they take half damage and are not stunned. The damage increases to 2d8 at 6th level, 3d8 at 11th level, and 4d8 at 16th level. You may use this ability once per short rest.

Brain Eater: You must eat the brain of an intelligent being at least once per week. You gain some of the memories eaten this way, allowing you to speak a language or gain a proficiency bonus possessed by your victim until you eat a new brain. If you eat the brain of someone with a Intelligence of 15 or higher, you may gain two such bonuses. You may also attempt an Intelligence check to access their other memories, at scaling DC depending on how secretive they were about it. For each week you go without fresh brains, you take a level of exhaustion.

Proficiencies (roll 2d10):

(blank)

Brewer

Calligraphers

Carpenter's

Cooks

Jewelers

Masons

Painters

Smiths

Tinkers

Tailors

Instrument

Athletics

Acrobatics

Sleight of Hand

Stealth

Arcana

History

Investigation

Religion

Animal Handling

Insight

Perception

Survival

Deception

Intimidation

Persuasion

Performance

Alchemist

Navigators

Thieves tools

Land vehicles

Water vehicles

Osmani

Coral (choose one)

Dragon

Jewel (choose one)

Norden

Marukani

Rathess

the skeleton doesnt actually have poison resistance but my skeleton player gave me endless grief about it so im putting it in here. not giving it to him though fuck that

took me like a month to realize i stole the mindflayer thing from izombie

my vampire players one specific request was to turn into a bat with swim shorts on

#tatterpigsgiving

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dicecast · 5 years

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Intro to Vampires

Throughout the world, there are many different forms of blood sucking creatures who prowl in the night, so many that many suspect there might be some larger link between them all. If such a thing is true, the default though is vampire, creatures who are so legendary that other creatures are regularly mistaken for them. These undead creatures are a scourge on the world, and even a single one can destroy an entire community through their transmutable bite.

Strengths of all Vampires

Increased Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution.

Vampires are extremely strong and fast. Claws: Vampires gain vicious looking claws which they can use to murder you.

Undead; Vampires have all the immunities that vampires have, they can’t be affected by mind effecting spells, they are immune to poison and disease, resistant to cold, supernaturally tough.

Can See Perfectly in the Dark: Vampires, regardless of what they were in life, are incredibly skilled Regeneration:

Vampires heal extremely quickly from most wounds, which makes defeating them extremely difficult. They can regrow limbs in a matter of mins.

Damage Reduction: Normal Weapons don’t do much damage to Vampires, their flesh is supernaturally strong. Powers (not all vampires have access to all these powers

Blood Drain: Vampires can heal themselves via drinking blood, and the more powerful ones can use blood to resemble enhance their own powers. They must drink blood from a living target and the process, while not painful for the victim, will leave them extremely exhausted at the end of it.

Dominate: Vampires can mind control somebody by making eye contact with them, though the effect is temporary. How powerful the control is varies on the vampire in question.

Slave: The most powerful vampires can have a specialized slave, called a Vorlog, a mortal who is utterly devoted to serving them. Vorlogs gain some special powers of their own.

Shapeshifting: Vampires can turn into a bat, a wolf, or a rat, more powerful ones can turn into Dire versions of each, or even swarms. Children of the Night: More powerful vampires can summon swarms of bats, rats, or wolves to serve them.

Spider Climb: Vampires can climb on walls like spider man

Silence: More powerful vampires can suppress any noise that they make.

Advanced Shapeshifting: The most powerful vampire vampires can turn into a shadow form or into a nightmare which can enter your sleep.

Senses: Most powerful vampires have a freakishly good sense of smell, hearing, and smell. Weather Control: The most powerful vampires can control Mist Forms: Some vampires can turn into mist

Coffin: Some vampires when killed, don’t truly die, but instead take on a mist form when they die and return to their coffin. The coffin must have soil from the land of their birth scattered inside it, and if it is destroyed then the vampire will simply die. If They return to the coffin, they will be able to restore themselves in 3-9 nights of rest. To kill them permanently, you must go to the coffin, stake them, and burn them at least.

Energy Drain: The touch of some vampires can drain peoples abilities (Stats) per hit, requiring a restoration spell to get them back. Every time they drain from you, the vampire gets more powerful

Life Drain: The most powerful vampire can drain life itself (Levels) from a target with a touch, becoming much more powerful in the process. Anybody killed from this power rises as a vampire Thrall.

Dust Form: Vampires can turn into Dust and harm everybody around them for a short period. Necromancy: More powerful vampires can create armies of zombies and ghouls as lesser undead bound to serve them

.Spells: The most powerful vampires can cast necromancer spells

Weaknesses (More powerful vampires might not have all of these weaknesses)

Sunlight: Sunlight is universally damaging to all vampires, beams of light will burn their flesh and direct exposure will kill them in a matter of seconds. All but the most powerful vampires can last no more than a few mins in direct sunlight before being destroyed

.Fire: Vampires are extremely weak again fire, and their skin burns much easier than human flesh, due to their decayed form. Damage taken via fire cannot be regenerated.

Silver: Silver is a holy metal and burns vampires in particular. A weapon with some silver alloy will hurt then just like a normal weapon, but a weapon made of silver is devastating to them (Deals double damage). The more powerful ones can’t be killed by this method but disabled. Damage from silver weapons cannot be regenerated.

Undead: They also have all the weaknesses of undead, positive energy, or Holy/Radiant/or Sacred damge. Future undead hunters be warned, they are resistant to Clerics ability to Turn undead. They also heal from negative energy. Holy, Positive, Radiant, or Sacred Damage cannot be regenerated.

Stakes: A stake through the heart will kill lesser vampires and paralyze the more powerful. However getting a stake through the heart is difficult, and usually requires them to sit stii so you can hammer it (aka not like in buffy)

Heart: A non stake weapon hrough the heart will paralyze any vampire, though only until it is removed.

Deprecation: The weakest vampires can be killed if their head is cut off.

Garlic Repels them but doesn’t harm them

Mirrors: They lack a reflection and it’s a sure sign of their true intention. Invitation: They cannot enter a house without invitation from its owner. Doesn’t apply to public buildings

Water: Water burns lesser vampires like acid, more powerful cannot cross rushing water. Even vamprires who can shrug off having water splashed on them will die if totally submerged.

Rest: Vampires must rest one day for every three full days they are active, for at least 12 hours. More powerful vampires might make this one day for every week, but Vampires do still need rest Blood addiction: If vampires cannot access blood, they slowly start to break down until they transform a feral monstrous vampiric creature.

Holy Items: Holy Water, Holy Oil, holy wafers and holy symbols all burn their flesh

.Crosses and Crossraods: Crosses can drive a vampire back and vampires can be paralyzed at a crossroad.

Sacred Music: It is said that there are some songs composed in the Heavens that when performed cause vampires to slowly burn from the inside. It is known that any chime made with a silver bell will hurt vampires, though not kill them.

Roses: White Roses can burn a vampires flesh.

Herbs: Healing herbs harm vampires. Vampires cannot easily pass a line of mustard seed, hawthorn can force them to reveal themselves, Holly bushes prevent a vampire form rising, and Foxglove can cure a victim of dominated.

Moonlight: While not as harmful as sunlight, the light of the full moon can disable some vampire powers. Iron Spikes: If driven into their body, it causes them to slowly become paralyzed unless removed.

Society and Reproduction

Vampires are undead, powered by Negative Energy and the spark of the Neverborn, and thus don’t have a true society as such. Instead they are pale imitations of the person they once were, and like most undead are extremely limited in terms of their psychology. As a rule, they don’t really grow as people and are usually trapped in the same mental framework as when they died, or they degenerate further into some sub human characteristics. Most vampires can put on a façade of humanity, but it is just that, a façade, and underneath that appealing looking mask is a soulless monster that exists only to feed. Unlike other vampire like creatures (Kindred, Cainites, Opir etc), “true” vampires are rarely subtle about their nature, as they are walking corpses kept moving by negative energy, with red eyes, corpse pale skin, and dark energy emerging from their pours. Vampires almost always dwell in hierarchy, each vampire usually has a group of lesser vampires serving it. Vampires are bound to serve their ‘sire’, in a general form of slavery. How vampire relate to humanity and servitude depends on the type, which will be summed up here. Vampires are created in one of four way, life drain, feeding, curse or necromancy. Sadly, vampires aren’t just limited to their bite in creating minions, those killed by their life drain power in combat will rise again as vampire spawn, semi-feral vampire slaves who exist only to serve their masters. Spawn aren’t mindless, but they effectively exist as extension of their masters, lacking even the self awareness to realize how horrible their own existence is. Should their sire die, spawn will go into a seizure, and they will either be destroyed or ascended to a full vampire Thrall.

Vampire Thralls:

These are the least human of the vampires, created not through feeding but instead through direct exposure to negative energy. IF the “Create Greater Undead” spell is cast on a corpse, the soul is dragged back from the afterlife and trapped inside the body against their will. However to their horror, the negative energy that animates them takes on a life of their own and controls the body, leaving the soul trapped forever as the negative energy spirit pilfers through their memories and force them to witness their body being used for ill purposes. Any good person wishes to destroy thralls, as the spirit is trapped in what is their own form of hell forever without hope of release. Thralls are effectively a new personality, module on the most negative feelings of the host, and while they are intelligent, they are hardly subtle, appearing utterly inhuman. They lack any of the sophistication or charm of their greater brethren, instead they are openly dedication to the elimination of life. Thralls actually don’t need to feed very frequently and can go into periods of hibernation that can last decades if they choose too.

Standard Vampire (Sometimes called Master Vampire or Greater Vampire):

When one imagines a vampire, this is the standard. These vampires are created by having their blood drained by another, and are bound to their power. When they are being drained, they have a choice, they can resist the process, or accept the vampirism. Those who resist become these, the original soul has been twisted against its own will to become some mirrored horrific version of itself. They can look superficially human but they can only maintain this disguise for a short period of time. They tend to come off an extremely unstable when they aren’t held in power by their masters, usually hunting down and torturing their loved ones to death in the most horrific way they can. However if one of them hasn’t drunk blood yet, a greater Restoration spell can cure them of their affliction.

Elder Vampire

(an elder vampire and 2 vampire spawn)

These creatures embraced their curse and thus are the only vampires who still possess their own soul. Once they are transformed, they have some time to renege on the choice either through a greater restoration spell or suicide, but once they consume the blood of an innocence (Usually a child) they are toughly damned and can never be cured. Their existence is one of constant pain, only finding temporary reprieve when they drink the blood of the living, but this physical pain is nothing to the self-loathing that dominates their existence. This self-hatred is usually spat out upon the world and they are usually bitter, cruel, and egomaniacal, hoping to make mortals suffer as they suffer inside, for they hate mortals. Looking at the living, they can only see what they lost, and what they desire. In theory, Elder Vampires are Free Willed, though few take up this choice, instead choosing to embrace their curse by making sick “families” of other vampire slaves and ruining all that mortals value. These creatures have a reputation for being needlessly ego maniacal, and making mistakes that allow others to destroy them (monologue, letting enemies go) for perhaps, deep inside, they hope to be destroyed and hate what they have become.

Ancient Vampire

Most vampires are created by others, in a parasitic cycle of undeath and sorrow. Some however, embrace Vampirisms willingly. Though necromantic magics or dark pacts with entities, whatever the cause, these creatures knew sought out vampirisms and embraced it. It is they who first brought the curse and it is they who stand at the center of the worse vampire nests. Their goals vary but it almost always involves the mass enslavement of the living. Legends speak of an ancient ‘Empire of Night” where the Ancients ruled over mortals who existed only to provide blood for their masters. These creatures are toughly damned and seek to destroy goodness itself, raising themselves in opposition to any form of justice of righteousness.

Other Species:There are other Forms of vampires who exist in the world, not tied to the hierarchy

Vampire Mist

If a vampire is staked for centuries without blood, their body rots away but their “essence” becomes a sentient hostile mindless mist which seeks out others in hopes of destroying them. Vampire LordAny time of vampire (Except spawn) who lives long enough will come to possess the powers of a vampire lord, as the negative energy within them grows more powerful. Not really a form of vampire so much as a greater version of what already exists.

Nosferatu

Nobody knows what creates these horrific monsters, but they the epicenters of diseases and plague. Hideous and utterly alone, these creatures dwell in dark places, resenting the world until they and their rat servants emerge to spread epidemics. They lust after the most virtuous of mortal women, but fear them, and it is said that the blood of a pure hearted women can destroy them (does not refer to virginity).

Dracula

Legends speak of an ever older species of vampire, created before the Ancients themselves. These creatures are created by a Curse, one uttered in the time of greatest sin. The most powerful form of Vampire it is said (except maybe Nosferatu) these creatures are simply more hideous version of what they were in life, cursed to embody their own sins forever.

Final Notes

For any want to be vampire hunters, beware. The world is vast and its mosntesr many, and there are many creatures who resemble vampires that are something else entirely. Opirs for example might resemble vampires but they aren’t undead, instead they are exemplars who have taken over the hosts body, and are much weaker. Kindred are cursed creatures who have an alien psychology and body from, while Vamypires are simply mortals afflicted with a disease. Nothing is simple and the world resists reduction, always be wary about what it is your are truly fighting.

#D&D stories #Vampires #Elder Vampire #Ancient Vampire #Vampire Thrall #Vampire Spawn

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theoccultranch · 2 years

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OC descriptions below

Neal "Diamond" Marshal; Cowboy Vampire

•He/Him pronouns

•Born sometime in the 1600s (Over 300)

•Owns the house and maintains the farm

•Transmasc, gay and aromantic.

•Charming by nature, as he's very socially awkward.

•Has an enchanted hat and boots that make him immune to the sun.

•Kept thralls over the years, usually younger men. Due to his immortality, he'd had to watch many lovers age and die without him, and at some point he grew tired of it and stopped seeing people altogether. He has a few one night stands here and there but bolts as soon as they try to label their relationship.

•He catches fish and live game to sustain himself because he refuses to drink human blood…unless he’s desperate.

•He didn't start going by Diamond until well after Neil Diamond's music career, which is where he got it from.

•Strangers, acquaintances and lovers call him Diamond. Gena and Audrey call him Neal. Brandie still calls him Mr. Marshall despite having known him the longest.

Gena Mares; Alien Anglerfish

•She/They pronouns

•17

•An ‘exchange student’ staying at the house

•Demigirl. Hasn't decided on romantic orientation yet.

•Bubbly and energetic. Mischievous.

•She wants to be a fashion designer.

•Vegetarian.

•Gena was sent to Earth through dimensions and galaxies because her home-planet was amidst a war where she likely wouldn't have survived

•Neal has been her parental figure since he found her as a small child.

•Her age is basically an approximate guess, as the planetary rotation of her home-world is different from Earth's.

•She doesn't refer to Neal as 'dad' but she does call Audrey 'aunt' despite Neal and Audrey not being siblings

•Smart but not great academically

•Doesn't really have any special alien powers other than her bioluminescence

Brandie Rosenburg; Demon

•They/Them pronouns. Also accepts it/its.

•Agender and Ace/Aro

•Age is unknown. Neal has speculated they were born between 1600-1800 due to previous political knowledge.

•Previous resident of the house before Neal.

•Helps around the farm.

•Quiet. Willowy. Blunt, apathetic.

•Wide, haunting eyes. Doesn't seem to need sleep.

•Feminine voice with a hauntingly deep undertone, like multiple people speaking at once.

•Loves all manner of plants and animals.

•Doesn't drink blood, has more of a paleolithic diet.

•Neal is the only person who knows of their previous life and why they were reborn as a demon. He's the only one they trust with that information.

•They have been friends with Neal since he acquired the house and they maintain the farm when he's away.

•Isn't confined to the house, surprisingly. They often go out into town for grocery shopping.

Audrey Wray; Greaser Vampire

•She/Her pronouns

•Born in 1940's

•Lesbian

•One of Neal's last living descendents.

•She showed up to the ranch one day, explaining she was in trouble and needed to lay low for a while. Once she was invited in, she explained how she and Neal were related. She didn't really have anywhere else to go so she stayed on the farm and got a job in the nearest town.

•Ditzy [Neal believes this is a learned behavior to mask feelings]. New York accent. Energetic but in an over caffeinated waitress kind of way

•Gets herself in lots of trouble legally and personally that Neal has to get her out of.

•Attends most of Gena's school events in place of Neal.

•Despite being Neal's direct descendent, Audrey is visibly more monstrous than him because she still feeds on human blood. The line between looking human but starving and looking like a monster but being content is a metaphor. Just by being born a certain way people will automatically be accused of being sinful and wrong (being queer) so they often have to choose between fitting into society or being happy with who they are

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pinnochiro · 2 years

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pinn reviews - final fantasy xiii

episode three of my running series where lizz and i play through all the mainline final fantasy games in reverse, and then i write a long rambling review that i barely proofread.

tags, because i'm not sure i should put them in the actual tags or not - long post, really, really long post, review, spoilers

following our playthrough of final fantasy 15, the next game up on the plate to play was final fantasy 13, shifting us back a console generation and onto the ps3. if u aren't aware, ff14 is actually an mmorpg, as is final fantasy 11, so we will not be playing those (lizz already plays ff14 and she tells me its like 200 hours long to mainline lol).

ff13 has a bunch of background lore, so before we even get into gameplay or anything like that, here's a brief outline/reminder of what the world of ff13 is like.

final fantasy 13 is set in a floating paradise world called 'cocoon', governed over by a selection of god-like beings called "fal'cie" (fahl-see), who raised the world of cocoon into the sky above their enemies land below called 'pulse' after an ancient war. inhabitants of cocoon live in relative luxury with their needs provided to by the fal'cie, but are constantly told that they must fear the hellscape of pulse below them, and especially the pulse fal'cie and their l'cie (luh-see), who wish for their demise.

any human being who gets too close to a fal'cie, one belonging to pulse or cocoon, will be transformed into a l'cie, a superpowered thrall of the fal'cie tasked with completing a 'focus', a mission given by the fal'cie. if a l'cie completes their focus, they are rewarded with 'eternal life' in the form of turning into a crystal statue to watch eternity through. but if a l'cie fails to complete the focus, they are instead transformed into a 'cieth' (seeth), a crystaline monster who only knows to attack others. a l'cie has no real autonomy, and it is widely known that pulse l'cie under a pulse fal'cie are always given a focus to destroy cocoon - so any interaction with a pulse l’cie or anything at all from pulse is horribly stigmatised, and must be avoided.

with that baseline introduction out of the way, what is the plot of final fantasy 13?

ff13 opens with an absolutely rad cutscene, featuring an intense battle on a futuristic train with two of our main characters, Lightning and Sahz. as explained later in gameplay, a pulse fal’cie has been discovered in cocoon, buried under years of rubble from the ancient war between pulse and cocoon. and to make it worse, the fal’cie has created a l’cie with the mission to destroy cocoon. while the l'cie has been captured, any citizens of cocoon who were in the vicinity of the fal’cie or l’cie have been sentenced to a ‘purge’, advertised as a deportation of any “tainted” people to pulse. in reality, it’s exactly as something labelled a purge could be, just slaughtering anyone who could be close to the l'cie. on this train ride, we're introduced to almost all of our main party members, who i'll detail here.

lightnight - a former solider of PSICOM, the peace-keeping militia of cocoon, lightning has abandoned her military immunity to the purge and joined it willingly, in hopes of locating the captive pulse l'cie, her younger sister and only remaining family member, Serah. lightning is to the point and quick to anger, and likes to punch Snow in the face, which i find absolutely hilarious. she hates him not only for being a goofy rebel and her sister's fiance, but snow was also partially responsible for serah becoming a l'cie in the first place and setting off the whole chain of events. her weapon is a gunblade, which i thought were only a ff8 thing but apparently not.

sahz - a civilian who was exempt from the purge, but also joined it willingly. while openly one of the most upbeat and comedic party members, sahz is deeply depressed and suicidal. in the days before the purge, he took his young (like 8 years) son dajh on a trip to purchase a pet chocobo, his favourite animal, at a location nearby a cocoon fal'cie. when a mysterious pulse l'cie appeared and tried to interfere with the fal'cie, dajh managed to slip away from his father and got caught up in the conflict, with the cocoon fal'cie making dajh a l'cie to protect it. dajh was almost immediately scooped up by the PSICOM military to be used as a tool to locate the l'cie, and sahz blames himself as a failure of a father. sahz fights with two futurey-looking pistols, and is always bouncing during fights, which is very relatable.

snow - the leader of an anti-PSICOM rebel group called 'Operation Nora', snow is a complete himbo with massive tits, fighting against the purge imposed on himself and his friends. that isn't snow's only goal however, as he also plans to find and rescue his fiance, the l'cie serah. he's good natured and barely recognises when someone doesn't like him, and is trying his best to get onto lightning's good side so she will approve of his and serah's wedding. snow's weapon is his fists, and he frequently assumes the best way to deal with something is to just punch it.

hope - a fourteen-year old boy who is sentenced to be purged with his mother. they are rescued by Snow's group, and when they're under fire from PSICOM, hope's mother (also named Nora) volunteers to protect the group, but falls to her death in the skirmish. hope blames snow for his mother's death, as he was the one who incited her to fight back in the first place. hope fights with a silly little folding boomerang called an 'airwing'.

vanille - a mysterious girl who was part of the group of purge detainees rescued by snow. vanille immediately stands out as she dresses in a unique (and probably culturally appropriative) outfit and speaks with an australian accent, while everyone else is american. she seems confused by maps and the workings of cocoon, and tries her best to support hope. as you can probably guess, she is from pulse. her weapons are 'staffs' in the loosest definition, and she constantly makes anime sex noises, but i still like her. while vanille has an australian accent, the dialogue itself was very obviously written by an american, as she says distinctly american turns of phrase and the like that i, as an australian, have never heard being used here.

you cannot choose your party members for the vast majority of ff13, and a lot of the early game will shift you from certain party members depending on the scenario. you're introduced to each of the first five party members by the story switching between them all in the early hours, giving you their backstory and a handle on their classes and fighting styles, which is fine for the first three or so chapters but is tedious when you're on chapter 11.

our five main characters are all somewhat linked at this point, but it really all comes together when the five of them entire the sanctum of the fal'cie. the group comes together to find serah right next to the fal'cie, but as lightning and snow approach, serah immediately is turned to crystal for 'completing her focus'. getting closer to the fal'cie (as lightning immediately tries to kill it in revent) results in everyone present being transformed and branded as a pulse l'cie. the fal'cie comes crashing out of the sky and onto the lower levels of cocoon with everyone on board, where they receive their focus - a blurry vision of cocoon falling out of the sky that seems to suggest the destruction of cocoon, as is the mission of all pulse l'cie.

waking next to the crystalised form of serah, the group realises that they've all become l'cie, the sworn enemies of their home in cocoon. while lightning is sure that the vision they've seen indicates that they're to destroy cocoon, snow instead thinks their mission must be to save cocoon, because he can't believe that serah would want to destroy cocoon. he manages to find a single crystal tear as the group fights and leaves him, pursued by PSICOM soldiers.

at this point, i'll describe the combat, because while there is combat before this point, it's only when the characters become l'cie that the combat and the levelling system really become important.

ff13 runs on the active time battle system, which means that a character is given 'atb gauges', a little gauge that fills over time and only when the gauge is full can a character take an action. this is my first time playing a game with the atb that final fantasy is known for, and i've gotta say, it's really solid. much prefer this over the combat in ff15, but we all know that was a wreck, so. you can either have the game autoselect moves for you, or you input actions yourself, but in my experience the game is very good at autoselecting moves based on weaknesses etc, and the battle stays moving quickly the faster you can input things, so it's greatly appreciated.

in combat, you control one character, while the other characters are cpu controlled and will use the moves given to their role. every character in your party is assigned a combat 'role', basically a class, which gives access to different moves. the five roles are 'commando' a dps, 'ravager' a magic-based dps, 'medic', which is exactly what it sounds like, 'sentinel' a tank, 'synergist' which buffs the party, and 'saboteur', who debuffs the enemy. at the start of the game, every character has access to two roles, and can obtain more as the story progresses. each role has a pretty obvious combat usage, and to help players cover these roles in combat, the game has the 'paradigm shift' system.

each time you have two or more characters in your party, the different classes they are set on are called 'paradigms.' the paradigm shift system allows you to change a characters' role at any time in combat - so you can start a fight with a set out that might be commando + ravager, and then switch to sentinel + medic if your hp gets low, and then to saboteur + synergist to buff/debuff. you can set any combination of roles that you would like in the six available paradigm slots, and change through them at any point in battle.

the paradigm shift system is honestly, really, really cool. the amount of choice and options it gives you during a fight is really excellent, and it feels so satisfying to switch between different paradigms and unleash different moves, and then switch back to defensive when the enemy is about to attack. the cpu controlling the other characters is really solid as well in my opinion, healers will generally prioritise whoever the player is controlling over others, which helps you to avoid game overs. if you're smart about your atb, you can line up your actions to occur right after a teammate has done their actions, attacking while they refresh and then attack again, and pretty much stun-loop an enemy into submission.

the paradigm shift is honestly amazing, and i wish that more video games had an option to change cpu companions' behaviour on the dime. i would much have appreciated if in kingdom hearts, i could set goofy and donald to say, focus on dps or defense in certain situations.

i have only one complaint with the paradigm shift system, and that is that every time a paradigm shift happens, an animation of every character doing a little pose one after the other plays. this would be fine if say, the game didn't have a time-based critical hit system, which i'll talk about next. but even then, the paradigm shifts aren't too obnoxious in the animations and i didn't really have any problems with it until later in the game (at least, when i played. lizz also played the majority of this one).

in combat with enemies, the game has a 'stagger' percentage on the top of the screen towards the right. you can increase the percentage of this bar by attacking the enemy, debuffing it, taunting it as a sentinel, and when the bar is full, the enemy is 'staggered' and all your moves do critical damage. the percentage you have to hit to stagger an enemy is different for each type of enemy, with some starting at full stagger and some being basically invicible until you stagger them. the stagger bar is not stagnant thought, and will wind down constantly after any increase. certain roles, such as healer, will also actively make it harder for the stagger bar to increase, so it becomes a fight against the ticking down of the bar to get an enemy to full stagger, and then kill it with the critical damage you're given. as mentioned above, since this is a time-based system, the delay of paradigm shifts can cost you in certain fights. while most enemies don't have a stagger gimmick, some do, and they all tend to be obnoxious. lizz hated the pulsework soldiers, which take forever to stagger, and i wasn't exactly a fan of the giant hedgehog lizards that you have to stagger to even damage. if you can sneak up on an enemy, you get a 'preemptive strike', which will put an enemy at full stagger at the start of the battle, but the enemy ai is very punishing on what counts as being 'spotted' by the enemy and these are pretty hard to trigger deliberately. there are items that can make it harder for enemies to spot you, but the only way to have a solid supply of these is by purchasing them at the store, and the game does not give you gil for defeating enemies, so it's pretty hard to come by.

after a battle, you are rewarded with a sonic-looking victory screen and a number of 'CP', or 'crystarium points.' as we're very mature, lizz and i took to calling them 'cock points' instead. you can use cock points to level up a character's combat roles, unlocking new moves, hp bonuses, new passive abilities etc. i quite like the crystarium, it looks very pretty and its fun to slowly fill out the board of a character's moves. it generally doesn't matter roles you focus on, except for one goddamn fight with sazh which is basically impossible to complete under the time limit if you haven't levelled up his synergist where it needs to be. each character has a 'crystal heart', so all their hearts are shaped differently, like lightning's being shaped like a rose, sahz's like a chocobo feather and fang's like ... a bong, i think? we couldn't make it out.

anyways, you continue through the game. the story chooses which characters you get to play as, so you get to experience different combinations of roles in the early game, which pretty much sticks to two-character parties to get you used to the paradigm shift system before you're given a third. the characters travel separately, with hope going after lightning, because lightning hates snow and hope wants someone to commiserate, snow staying behind at serah's crystal statue, and sahz and vanille also taking off when they see PSICOM approaching.

hope confides in lightning that there's something he really wants to do to take revenge on someone before he's stuck in his new l'cie enthrallment, and lightning, not knowing that hope wants to just straight up kill snow, gives him a knife and says 'yeah kid get it.' hope names this his own 'operation nora', this time after his dead mother, Nora. at one point lightning starts to despair about the hopelessness of her situation, which triggers the first eidolon battle of the game.

eidolons (i don't known how to pronounce this - aye-dole-on? eyy-dole-on??) are the summons of final fantasy 13. in the lore, they are sent by a fal'cie to a l'cie whenever the l'cie begins to waver in their focus. an eidolon's goal is to kill the l'cie - either the l'cie dies, and the fal'cie is free of someone who isn't following their focus, or the l'cie comes out victorious and gains the power of the eidolon as a summon.

in combat, the fights against the eidolons just. straight up suck ass. they are time-based, so if you can't beat it until the counter is done, you're fucked. they're also really hard to stagger, so it takes fucking ages to get their hp down and then the battle ends because you weren't fast enough. hnnng.

anyways, every character has an eidolon which you fight and unlock over the course of the game. lightning's eidolon, odin, is one of my favourites because he turns into a horse with a big sword. i also like snow's, shiva, because it's two sexy women who like ,, scissor so hard they turn into a motorbike? idk it's hilarious. when you summon an eidolon, all your party members disappear and you fight alongside the eidolon. if you can max out the eidolon's gestalt gauge by fighting with it, you can shift to 'gestalt mode', where the eidolon does a transformers roll out and turns into something your character can ride, and they do combined moves. lizz and i could never really master this, the moves of the eidolons seemed to be weaker and not worth even summoning them so we just kinda,, didn't for most of the game. that's probably on us for not levelling them up or something? i'm still not entirely sure.

anyways, lightning and hope decide to head for 'palumpolum', which is hope's stupidly-named hometown, so that hope can tell his dad that his mother died. sazh and vanille head to a themepark called the 'nautillus' as they've both more or less decided to make the most of their brief time on cocoon before they're killed or turned into cie'th, and snow is captured by PSICOM, where he runs into our final party member, Fang.

fang is a tall and very pretty lady with a giant spear that she can use to kill you. i like her quite a lot and she is lizz's favourite. when you meet fang, you see very noticebly that she has a l'cie branding on her shoulder, but instead of the dark tattoo marking that the rest of the party has, hers is entirely burnt out and white. she's also australian and wants to find vanille, and teams up with snow to do that. she's being looked over by the leader of PSICOM, Cid Raines, who sets her and snow free as he has a secret hidden agenda.

fang, snow, hope and lightning all meet up in palumpolum, where a state of emergency has been called, and anyone who even comes near the party of l'cie will be sentenced to purge. still intent on trying to kill snow, hope attempts to but is stopped when snow rescues him from PSICOM and his expectations about if snow truly does care for the others he protects are challenged. hope makes it to his dad who convinces him that maybe murder is not the answer, but not before the four of them have to fight through a bunch of PSICOM, are treated like shit by the general population, and feel quite bad about everything. snow gets his eidolon and you fight jihl, a PSICOM lady with giant titties and glasses, before everyone escapes.

on meeting up with fang, she slowly explains a little about herself. she, and vanille, are both pulse l'cie, but she can't remember anything that happened before she suddenly woke up from crystal staus the day the fal'cie was unearthed near lightning and snow's hometown. this excites snow as he's sure this means he can rescue serah from her crystal prison, and fang says that they need to find vanille.

meanwhile, vanille and sahz are enjoying their time in nautillus, more or less. they follow around some chocobos and sahz talks about how he bought his pet chocobo for his son dajh, who loves them. i forgot to mention this before now, but sahz has a tiny pet chocobo chick who lives in his afro. its here that the player, and sahz, learn more about vanille. you see, when she and fang woke up from their crystal slumber, over 700 years had passed from their original mission. while vanille is hesitant, fang assumes that they must have been woken to destroy cocoon again, and suggests that they target the closest fal'cie they can. the two of them attack the fal'cie, and in the struggle, a young boy is caught up and turned into a l'cie to defend it - the young boy being dajh.

this is revealed when dajh appears, reuiniting with his father, only for them to learn that he is still under control of PSICOM. having completed his focus of locating the pulse l'cie, dajh turns to crystal, and sahz and vanille left with each other - sahz blaming her and himself for dajh becoming a l'cie, and vanille, wanting sahz to kill her as punishment for what she's done, both with dajh and earlier in the past she claims to have forgotten. at this point, sahz's eidolon appears, and despite their suicidal tendencies, vanille and sahz defeat it, although sahz is knocked out and the two are captured by PSICOM. i really, really like this plot beat. the dynamic between vanille and sahz, the two most upbeat characters, slowly disintegrating - its filled with that interpersonal drama that i love in shit like this. the only downbeat is that,, sahz's eidolon fight is the one i mentioned earlier that you have to grind for specific abilities to be able to beat, which sucks ass and it still killed us like. five times :/

to rescue vanille and sahz, the rest of the party breaks into the flying airship that they're being held on ahead of a public execution in hopes of quelling the public's fears of l'cie. after fighting through the airship and rescuing your friends, you come face to face with the primarch of cocoon, who is basically president pope, dysley.

its here that dysley reveals that he's not a human, but in fact a fal'cie himself named barthandelus. if you can't pronounce that, don't worry, lightning will say it every time that there is a paradigm shift during fights with him. barthandelus is one of the fal'cie that supports cocoon, but he actually hates the humans that inhabit it, which is shown when he just straight up kills jihl. barty doesn't truly care for cocoon at all, instead wishing for the death of all the humans in a massive sacrifice at the hands of the beast 'ragnarok', so that he can be reunited with the maker of the fal'cie. kind of like evangelion? except, since bart is a cocoon fal'cie, he can't actually make any moves against cocoon. instead, he's trying his best to manipulate the pulse l'cie he's found to do what he believes is the true sole purpose of l'cie - becoming the beast ragnarok and destroying cocoon.

you fight bart in a pretty long fight and the team manages to escape - but instead of fleeing to somewhere else on cocoon, a decision is made to instead get to Gran Pulse, (the long version of just 'pulse'), the supposed hellscape below cocoon where fang and vanille hail from. they hope to return to their home village of oerba (pronounced just 'erba') and find a way to defeat barty.

as it turns out, gran pulse isn't a real hellscape - it's just overflowing with violent monsters. this is the only open-world area of final fantasy 13 and honestly, it was really, really jarring. everywhere in ff13 up until this point has been linear, with enemies in fixed spawn points. this is honestly to the game's detriment, as it basically forces you to fight every single enemy to advance, which with the limited enemy variables, becomes really, really tedious. and it's on the surface of gran pulse that i must admit to you, dear reader, a secret.

y'see, lizz and i didn't actually finish playing through this game. we uh. we quit once we got a decent chunk into gran pulse and just watched a cutscene movie.

whaaaaat??

well, yeah. that's what happened. i'll be honest, i didn't want to, i wanted to finish the game like we'd finished final fantasy 15 and every other game we'd played together before that. but, i'd stopped playing long ago. i wasn't the one who had to do every single repetitive encounter and whittle down enemy hp with their stupid gimmicks and struggle through the loooong bossfights against bart and the rest. that was lizz.

and well, i guess this is where i get to discuss kind of a difference in gaming philosophy between myself and lizz. y'see, i've mentioned i'm bad at games. i'm not good at actually playing them, the entire enjoyment of a video game comes from the story, seeing the characters interact and uncovering the lore. for me, combat is never what i look forward to in a video game. it can certainly be fun, as playing with the paradigm system was for me in the first early or so hours when i did pick it up, but it's never the reason i'm there. in my head, combat in video games is basically always a slog you have to get through to get to the fun parts, which is seeing the story progress, learning more about everything and the situation that you're in. this is why i tend to give the controller to lizz - i don't like the fights in video games, i like the story. when i play through the games that i really like, like persona or kingdom hearts or fire emblem, the combat and fighting is always just a backdrop to the things i'm actually there for.

lizz has, a different philosophy. primarily, she wants her games to be fun. which is something that's definitely understandable. lizz enjoys playing fighting games and the combat, seeing how an enemy changes and learning their tells so she can properly avoid attacks and strike back with the most damage. she tells me about how she likes to unravel the 'puzzle' of enemies in other final fantasy games, where you learn through fighting them certain things that make it tick until you can finally defeat the enemy. and she prioritises having fun in a video game over most other things. if you're not having fun, what's the point in playing, really.

so you can kind of see what the clash here was - i wasn't playing, i was very invested in the story and as i always do, i saw the combat as a slog as it is in every video game that you have to get through in order to get to the better part. but to lizz, the combat isn't just something you have to get through, since being a video game, it actually takes up a very large portion of what you're doing. if she has to spend such a long time on something that's lost its spark hours ago, she'd rather just watch a cutscene movie of the rest than deal with that pain. and yeah, while initially i was like, can't you just struggle through the rest, i gave in. i'm just watching it instead of playing it, so the only change there would be that we were on youtube instead of the ps3. so yeah. we watched a cutscene movie of the rest of the game.

and honestly, that encapsulates the main downfall of final fantasy 13 - the enemies. the combat system is fun, it's inventive and it's something new. the enemies are. mostly just walls of flesh that you beat into the dirt to get past. and it's not like you can avoid them, because as i mentioned, they tend to be specifically placed in your way in the linear environments of ff13 so that you do have to face every single enemy in the game before you can advance the plot. and that. that sucks. you get sick of the sixth recolour of the little robots and the flans that fucking scream at you with sirens. no amount of mastery of the paradigm shifts makes it more fun to whittle away at a big enemy's health bar for 30 minutes, especially when the only way to get better at doing it. is to level up by doing it a thousand times over. it sucked.

but, i do really, really really like the story of final fantasy 13. i think it's extremely compelling, and since we did watch the rest of the game as a movie, i can continue the story for you.

after landing on gran pulse, fang and vanille get into an argument, and its made obvious that vanille does know what happened before they were turned into crystals, and fang tricks her into spilling it out really.

oerba yun fang and oerba dia vanille were born into the village of oerba on gran pulse, over 700 years ago. the ancient war between pulse and cocoon was still raging, and fang and vanille were selected to become l'cie to defeat cocoon by becoming ragnarok, a beast with the power to kill all the inhabitants. the two made it to cocoon and fought their way to the fal'cie, where they were then to become ragnarok together. however, as they fought their way through vanille became afraid of the power of ragnarok, and she ran away. fang tried to follow the mission without her and became an incomplete ragnarok, destroying the outer rim of cocoon and cracking it open, but without vanille she wasn't able to complete her focus. on their failure, the pulse fal'cie froze them into crystal stasis, where they remained as untouched statues for centuries until the interference of barthandelus unearthed the fal'cie on cocoon and awoke them again.

vanille is deeply regretful of her actions - on reaching gran pulse, they find out that no humans on the continent survived the war after their failure, and their families and homes were destroyed by cocoon. as fang can't remember the past, she tries to make her feel better by saying that she (vanille) was the one who failed to defeat cocoon instead of fang, and that it's her fault everyone died, but fang eventually gets the truth from her. this is shown when they reach oerba, now destroyed and with only a cie'th stone left with the record of what happened to the people.

meanwhile, lightning eventually gets over her hatred of snow - it wasn't solely snow's fault that serah became a fal'cie, and it was really the machinations of barty behind all of it. over the journey, she's come to realise that snow is a pretty good guy, and gives her blessing for the two of them to marry once they've rescued serah.

as a group, everyone decides that there's really only one thing that they can do - defeat barthandelus to save cocoon and everyone who lives on there, before he causes anything else awful to happen and kills more innocent people. they pledge to make their own focus, regardless of what the fal'cie want, and the party charges back into cocoon.

we're treated to another gorgeous fmv as they break back into cocoon where everyone summons their eidolons and pronounces themselves to the world, hoping to draw out bart. they fight through PSICOM soldiers under cid raines until they come face to face with him, where they learn that cid is a l'cie of bart's. under his orders he overexerts himself and fights the party, but they manage to convince him that he shouldn't live only for the fal'cie, and he helps them by ordering PSICOM to stop hunting down the l'cie before he dies in a final attempt to distance himself from bart.

the group makes it to bart, who talks big shit about how awful the humans are and how they're just parasites with no autonomy, following the will of the fal'cie on cocoon. the game is pretty anti-government, with themes about how the government doesn't really care for their people and will manipulate the media, and victimise certain groups for everyone to rally against before 'disposing' of them to keep public order. i thought that was pretty cool, i liked it.

anyways, you fight bart and he is killed, his body then transformed into the fal'cie 'orphan'. orphan is another boss fight, but the party is unable to defeat them. using their power, orphan separates vanille and fang from the rest of the group and attempts to goad them into becoming ragnarok again. when they won't back down, the rest of the party is transformed into cieth that attack vanille until fang declares that she'll become ragnarok again without vanille, effectively sacrificing herself for vanille.

unfortunately, despite her rage, fang can't become ragnarok alone - it's a two-person deal, even though fang refuses to let vanille help. but eventually, vanille gets through to fang and they manage to shatter the illusion of orphan, revealing that the other party members are unharmed. together, they fight through two stages of orphan until it is finally defeated.

however, without orphan, cocoon doesn't have a fal'cie to control it. the entire structure begins to fall from the sky, so fang and vanille, hand in hand, vow to become ragnarok together and instead use the beast's immense power to help cocoon, instead of destroying it. together, they create a crystal pillar that holds cocoon in the sky, permanently entrenching fang and vanille as crystals saving cocoon.

the rest of the party reforms as crystals on the surface of gran pulse, cracking out of their stasis and realising that fang and vanille sacrificed themselves for them. as they look up to the pillar, two figures walk towards them - serah, holding hands with dajh. everyone reuinites together, finally freed from the fal'cie's curse, as the credits roll.

so yeah, that was final fantasy 13. i really, really liked the story of this game - the concepts of fal'cie and l'cie are really, really intriuging to me and i love how the game explored it, the interpersonal drama between the characters and their growth over the course of the story. i'm sure i mucked up certain things or didn't get plot details entirely right but. hey. did you not see how fucking long this review is? cut me a little slack, alright. i tried my best, and i really liked ff13.

despite that, again, we didn't actually finish the game. i may have adored the story, but that doesn't take away from the repetitive enemies and how much it sucked to get through that towards the end. was it really that terrible? idk, it definitely took a lot more actual effort to get through than final fantasy 15, which at that point, was the limit of shit to get through. so if you don't mind it being repetitive, i guess you wouldn't mind.

before i finish up, i just wanted to additionally mention that the music in this game is fucking wonderful - i really adore the promise/serah's theme, which is the main menu theme, and 'lightning's theme', as well as many of the battle themes for just being so fucking catchy and fun. 'blinded by the light' was my favourite of those, but 'saber's edge' and 'eidolons' also really fuck.

the game's art direction is also absolutely on point - the character's designs are all unique and interesting, and the environments were beautiful - i really loved the crystal forest, the futuristic city and the theme park areas, they were just so bright and pretty-looking. only downside is that the npcs are dressed like absolute idiots, most of them are wearing weird bathing suit-looking shit, so that was hilarious. i also really liked the character designs of snow's fellow nora comrades, basically everyone who was designed by tetsuya nomura looked rad.

so overall, i think final fantasy 13 is rather excellent in so many regards - the lore, the characters and their motivations, the setting and the combat mechanics, so many of them are just really on point. but it also suffers from the enemies being pains in the ass, the map design forcing you to take on all of them, and the plot being a bit difficult to parse out at times.

would you like this game?

what's your tolerence level for grinding? that's basically the main thing to consider if you'd like to pick up the game. it's a very strong game that's brought down by what is unfortunately a rather major element, but if you're willing to suffer through that, i'm sure you'll enjoy it. othewise, if you're not willing to suffer through that, watch a cutscene movie. the story is great, and i wish more people talked about this game. i know it gets ripped on a lot, but like, this game is the shit. i loved it, i loved the characters, the music, the setting, so much of it. i think it's definitely worth experiencing, even if you're just watching the cutscenes.

final score - hope should have stabbed snow, only for it to just bounce of his massive titties / 10

next game - final fantasy xiii-2. that's right, this game has a direct sequel, and then another direct sequel after that. look forward to my review when we finish that one up, probably soon considering we're already about halfway thru!

#pinn reviews #final fantasy 13 #im too scared to put anything else in the tags

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tisfan · 6 years

Text

WinterIron Mistletoe

Part One | Part Two

co-written with @27dragons for @ajanamyth

This section contains a little bit of Tony acting like a cat because he’s stuck in a cat’s body, and Bucky having a freakout.

Part Three

Bucky dropped off fairly quickly, which was a good thing, because Tony’s brain was racing. Bucky had a crush on him? A crush. On Tony. And anxiety issues, but hey, who the hell in this place didn’t have a few of those?

The important thing was that Bucky had a crush on Tony, and Tony’s stupid crush was not utterly useless, and also that Bucky was extremely hot when he was naked--

No, stupid brain. Focus on something other that Bucky’s dick. For now. Later, that was going to deserve some serious consideration, but for now, Tony was still stuck in a cat’s body and Bucky had been petting and cooing over him and that had been nice but was not even a little bit like the kind of attention he wanted. But to get that attention, he had to figure out how to not be a cat any more.

Preferably, ideally, while thwarting Loki and Enchantress’ plot. He had to get his hands -- paws, whatever -- on that stupid arrow. That apparently could transform into a sprig of mistletoe. If they couldn’t threaten him anymore, then he might be able to alert the others. Except they were probably all under Loki’s thrall by now.

God, the gossips were going to have a field day with that party. Loki-as-Tony had been slutting it up, hard. Tony wondered if Loki had used magic to nudge everyone into those kisses or if he’d always been just a few hard flirts away from--

Focus. There was no way he could deal with both Loki and the Enchantress, not alone. Bucky had seemed immune to whatever charm Loki was using to get the others under their spell, though, so maybe, if he could convince Bucky... But how? He’d tried demonstrating that he was smarter than the average cat, but Bucky had shaken it off with some rationalization or other.

Maybe it would be less easy to shake off once he’d slept off Thor’s mead. Or maybe Tony needed to be more obvious. About a lot of things, but for right now... He needed something he could shred.

(more below the cut, or read the whole thing on A03)

Thoughts finally focused in the right direction, Tony uncurled and stretched -- this body seemed to like stretching a lot -- and allowed himself one last drag of his face across Bucky’s stubbled jaw (mine!) before he hopped down from the bed and strolled into the bathroom.

Unrolling all the toilet paper was a lot more fun than it had any right to be, and halfway through, Tony’s swishing tail got caught in a loop of the paper and he just had to attack it.

By the time he finished subduing his errant tail, he had already succeeded in making quite a mess of the toilet paper on the floor. He flopped into it and panted.

He seemed to be acting more catlike by the moment. He didn’t think his intellect was changing at all, but his body seemed more and more determined to take over and do... cat things. Was that a thing that was going to happen? Would it eventually have full control, leaving Tony nothing more than a passenger in the cat’s brain.

Christ, he needed to get this fixed.

He shredded some more paper, and found a spot of clear floor that was big enough to use and not likely to be disturbed.

Manipulating the scraps of paper with only his paws was difficult at best. He had to resort to carrying them in his mouth to the right spot and then nudging them into place with his paws and nose.

Arranging bits of shredded paper into a readable message wasn’t easy, either -- he couldn’t see the whole thing at once, and when he jumped up on the sink to get a better view, the sink automatically turned on and got his whole tail wet. That, he discovered, was even more uncomfortable as a cat than as a human.

It took a lot longer than he expected it to, but finally, it was done. He went into the kitchen and ate the rest of the salmon. Then he had to have an argument with himself about the milk -- the body wanted it but Tony had seen the results of feeding a cat milk, and they weren’t pretty. Finally, he managed to drag his body away from the milk by reminding it that Bucky was still sleeping, warm and still and just begging for him to curl back up against.

His own desire to be next to Bucky turned out to be stronger than the body’s need for the milk, thank goodness. He jumped up onto the bed and curled up in the arc of Bucky’s body, an automatic purr rumbling deep in his chest. He deserved some rest.

Bucky woke up with classic hangover times ten; a mouth that felt and tasted like something scaly had died in there, aching muscles, a head that weighed eighty pounds, light-sensitive eyes, and the feeling that something horrible had happened.

It took him a minute to remember what the horrible thing was.

Right.

He was tempted to just pull the covers back over his head and pretend that he was asleep. He had a whole Tony-less life to look forward to, and he didn’t really feel like starting now. There were two problems with that. The first was a rather warm, curled up ball of fur that was sleeping draped over Bucky’s ankle and holding all the blankets down. The second was his bladder, which was screaming. Faintly at first -- quiet enough that Bucky ignored it in favor of not waking the cat for a while -- and then eventually getting to the point that Bucky was willing to risk grouchy cat to get his kidneys to shut up.

“Morning, fuzzball,” Bucky said, shifting his leg just a little. He wasn’t quite sure if Sherlock was one of those cats who became pointy-I’m-not-moving bits when woken suddenly or not. Or chased bed mice. That was always amusing. Bucky pulled his knee up slowly, getting his foot out from under the cat. “You don’t hafta move, I’m jus’ goin’ to the bathroom.”

The cat lifted his head and slitted deep gold-brown eyes. Bucky hadn’t really noticed much about the cat yesterday, aside from soft, and warm, but it really was a handsome animal; a tuxedo with a white face, a distinctive beard and moustache around its muzzle, white paws and a star in the middle of his chest.

“You really are the cutest thing,” Bucky told Sherlock, seriously. “I almost hope I don’t find your owner. Wanna keep you for my own.”

Sherlock chirruped agreement and stood up, stretching. He stretched up, propping his paws on Bucky’s chest, and meowed very seriously, then jumped down and led the way to the bathroom.

Bucky got his feet under him; ug. Standing. Why? Considered the idea of crawling to the bathroom. Freaking Asgardian mead hangover. Wouldn’t help. He still needed to do his daily calibration and he couldn’t do that if his weight was on his shoulder. He popped his neck and worked his way gingerly to his feet. Twisted his wrist and issued the calibration routine order, stretching his shoulder and flexing the muscles, venting any excess heat that built up during the night -- the machinery had never been made with human integration in mind. It tended to ignore things like sleep cycles when he couldn’t activate the heat dumps. Stupid design. He got all the way down to flexing his fingers by the time he made it into the bathroom.

Not tripping over the cat was an exercise in patience and dexterity; Sherlock weaved in and out between his ankles with every step. “Stop that,” he scolded. “I weigh more than the average. I will totally squish you if I fall on you, furbrain.”

He didn’t quite trust his aim to piss while standing, so he slumped onto the toilet.

And noticed that all the toilet paper was gone, just the cardboard tube sitting, smugly, on the holder. The rest of the paper was piled… everywhere.

“Really?” he asked the cat. “You just had to--”

He trailed off, staring at the floor in front of the tub.

Bits of the shredded toilet paper had been arranged into the word HELP. That couldn’t be any kind of coincidence. And as if to underscore it, Sherlock twined around Bucky’s ankles, then sat next to the P, tail forming an exclamation point. He meowed again, pointedly, watching Bucky intently.

“Th’ utter fuck?” Bucky whispered, too stunned to speak any louder. Did… “did you do that?”

Sherlock meowed and -- very deliberately -- bowed and lifted his head in a cat-equivalent of a human nod.

Bucky took a very deep breath, got up from the toilet. Washed his hands. And his face. And scrubbed mead off his teeth. Ignored the cat. It was still cat sized, even if there seemed to be more at work here than just feline mischief. He did not condone panic. Panic was not allowed. The cat had been in his room the entire night, while he was sleeping. If it intended him some sort of harm, drunk and asleep would have been a better time than awake and mostly functional.

And naked. Bucky squinted down at himself; claws on skin wasn’t fun, even for supersoldiers and their advanced healing. Getting dressed might make this all feel a little less surreal.

He was pretty sure he remembered Thor saying something about the cat last night, which meant -- probably -- that Bucky wasn’t hallucinating a cat that could spell.

Probably.

He stalked out of the bathroom and started yanking his clothes on.

Sat down on the bed and scrubbed his face with his hands. Looked up. There was still a cat in the room that hadn’t vanished into a poof of logical analysis.

“Riiiight. I’m losin’ my fuckin’ mind, that’s what’s happening here, right?”

Sherlock let out a pitiful meow, then caught Bucky’s pants leg in his teeth and tugged with what had to be every bit of his -- what? Maybe ten pounds? Trying to pull Bucky back toward the bathroom and that impossible message.

“You know you’re not the one t’ go to for reassurance, Sherlock,” Bucky said, then laughed. Sherlock. What a fucking appropriate name. “So, what… are you like, someone’s experiment or something? Has someone been makin’ smart cats down in the labs?”

Sherlock gave up trying to pull on Bucky’s pants and stropped against his leg, then bolted across the room to Bucky’s infrequently-used computer station. He jumped up onto the desk and began batting at the mouse.

“That is a mouse, not a… ok, great. Super smart cat c’n use a computer,” Bucky said. “Okay. Sure. Typing with itty bitty kitty paws. Is this even happening? Please, jus’ tell me this is some epic hangover thing, because I don’t know that I can deal with this.” Despite the whining, Bucky switched on the device, waited for the computer to do its loading up thing, and clicked over to a word processing application. “Have at, kitten.”

And then he had to fall into the computer’s desk chair, because he was pretty sure he was not going to be standing for much longer.

Sherlock tapped delicately at the keyboard. It was a slow process, but his first message was short: loki and enchantress.

Yeah. Sitting was a good plan. Bucky was happy to be a part of it. Actual. Words. From a cat. “You’re a magic cat?” That made as much sense as anything, which was okay, he could cope with that. Thor had spent a while as a frog some months back, so… yeah. Cat. Bucky’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.

im tony. loki stole my body.

Sure. Great. The cat was… oh fucking Christ. The cat was Tony. Tony was the cat. The cat. Tony. Bucky’s mouth dropped open in shock and then panic. Tony. Was the. Cat. Tony… who’d been in Bucky’s room for the entire bullshit scenario where Bucky’d been… oh fuck. Fuck him sideways through a rolling doughnut.

Sherlock -- no, wait, Tony -- was still typing. have 2 stop them asap.

Bucky held one finger up. “Excuse me a minute.”

He got up without looking back, went in to the bathroom, shut the door behind him and locked it. “Oh, my god. Ohmigod. Oh. My. God. This cannot be happening.” The toilet paper letters were still there, a little scattered from the movement of air in the room, but perfectly readable.

HELP

The fuck did Tony want Bucky to do about two magicians who turned people they didn’t like into cats?

Scritch scritch scritch. Tony was clawing at the door, trying to push it open. “Mrowwwwwww,” he complained loudly.

Not to mention-- “You heard all that, last night, didn’t you?” Bucky asked.

A pause. “Mow.” Whatever that meant.

Just like a cat, always on the wrong side of a closed door. Bucky sighed, letting his head drop. “Sorry, you can’t come in. I’m going to drown myself in th’ shower. Die of mortification or somethin’.”

“Mrowwww!” That sounded distinctly impatient. More scritching at the door, faster now, like he was trying to claw through it. Then silence. That was even more worrisome.

“What?” Bucky sighed. He couldn’t even look at himself in the mirror, how was he supposed to face Tony, like ever again? “You cannot expect me t’ handle this. I ain’t even remotely qualified t’ deal with demagicking anyone.” He washed his face again, as if the answer to everything could be found in a sink full of cold water. On the other hand, if… wait, wait, wait. If Loki had stolen Tony’s body, then--

“What the utter fuck was Loki doing kissing everyone?”

There was a rustle from the far side of the toilet and then a panel slid open and Tony came squeezing through. “Meow,” he said, irritably.

“Oh, come on,” Bucky snapped. “You cannot expect me t’ take this calmly. You’ve had… however long it was bein’ a cat t’ get all… adjusted. I’m still dealin’ with hangover an’ mortal embarrassment. Stop fussin’.”

He took a couple of deep breaths, tried to center himself. Okay. Fix Tony first, and then he could worry about finding some deep hole to hide in for the rest of his life. “Okay. I’m gonna make coffee,” Bucky said. “You… go play with th’ computer an’ tell me what I need t’ know.”

Tony huffed, but nosed up against the bathroom door and pushed through the instant Bucky cracked it, beelining for the computer.

Bucky tried to ignore that there was a cat on his computer and went in to his kitchen, setting up a pot of coffee and grabbing himself a couple of eggs to scramble. The plates he’d put down on the floor were still there; the salmon empty and the milk still there with a thin layer of skin over it. Yuck. He picked them up and dumped them in the sink.

He was pretty sure cats shouldn’t drink coffee -- Tony was bad enough when he was hyped up on caffeine, Bucky didn’t want to see what a cat-sized caffeine disaster was like. He split the eggs when he was done, and poured Tony a bowl of water instead.

Freaky.

He had to stop and gasp for air for a few minutes, before going into the other room with assorted breakfasts. “Come on, have somethin’ to eat,” Bucky said, putting the scrambled egg and water down on the table. He was also pretty sure cats shouldn’t be on the table, but it was weird to think of Tony eating at his feet. Yeah, right, okay, not going to think about any of this, beyond what to do next. When Tony didn’t stop pecking at the computer, Bucky sighed, got up, and scooped up the cat.

God, the fur was so soft, Bucky had the strongest urge to bury his face in it. “Eat first, if you want me functional.” He set the cat down at the table, picked up his coffee cup and drank.

Tony sniffed at the eggs and took a delicate bite, then looked at the dish of water. He looked from the water to Bucky’s mug, then back to the water. “Mrrrr,” he grumbled. He turned up his nose at the water and went back to eating eggs.

“You can’t have coffee,” Bucky protested. “I mean, you’re a magical cat, but I refuse to be responsible for poisoning you.” Poor Tony, he mused. If he was stuck that way. Bucky wasn’t sure he wanted to contemplate it. “Don’t eat so fast. You’re gonna hork it back up at that rate.” Bucky finished his food -- it wasn’t nearly enough, but it should keep him going for a while, baseline functional, which was all he needed at the moment -- and scooped Tony back up. He probably shouldn’t be carrying the genius around, but the cat was hard to resist. Fluffy. He sat down in the computer chair, cat in his lap, and looked over what Tony had to say, absently stroking the cat’s back.

Tony curled onto Bucky’s lap, apparently content with being petted. The typing he’d left on the screen was a lot less fluffy. loki and amora plotting vs thor. magic mistletoe, kiss = enthralled. can kill too. need to take away. think it will break spells. if not, find thor. hope he wi

That must have been where he’d been interrupted for breakfast.

“Amora’s that blonde bitch that came in with you-- er, not you, but Loki?” It was still weirdly painful, thinking of Tony, who wasn’t, apparently, Tony at all, necking with everyone in the room. Bucky shoved it off to one corner to stew by itself. He didn’t have time for it. “And everyone else is under Loki’s spell? That’s gonna make this hard. I don’t wanna fight my way through the team to get to you. Him. Whatever.”

Tony uncurled and reached for the keyboard again. work 2gether. u distract, i get arrow. tell him u reconsidered kiss. i grab and run.

“You better move damn fast,” Bucky said, chest squeezing strangely at the thought of kissing Tony, even if it was Loki, wearing Tony’s face. “I’m tough, but I ain’t gonna be much good against the god of mischief. Run where?”

bot tunnel. how i got in bathroom. human-size wont fit. will take 2 thor.

Bucky nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll try an’ give you a headstart.” And hope that Loki didn’t kill him, because that was not entirely unlikely. What did he know about the god; that Loki, like Amora, couldn’t cast if he couldn’t speak. Well, that was an idea. Bucky sat Tony down on the floor and dug in his closet. He still used a Winter Soldier face-mask during combat scenarios; his sense of smell went way up when he accessed his training, and the overwhelming sensations sometimes distracted him, so Tony had adapted his face mask. And to keep other people from messing with it, it was DNA imprinted, so only Bucky could take it off. It might work, if Loki wasn’t expecting it.

It was a little bulky, so Bucky pulled out a zippered hoodie and tucked it inside the hood. It wasn’t the most subtle thing in the world, but it was better than nothing.

“If… um,” Bucky said, looking down at his feet. “If this doesn’t work, I’m sorry ‘bout last night.” For that matter, even if it did work, Bucky was sorry he’d said anything. Tony didn’t need to have to deal with Bucky mooning over him.

Tony looked at him, a very cat-like, inscrutable look, and then turned back to the computer. im not.

Continue to Part Four

#winteriron #tony x bucky #christmas fic #stocking stuffer #loki is a little shit

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skittidyne · 7 years

Text

so uh. daisuga tentacle sex. set in the bbac verse. i don’t want to say anything else here that might incriminate myself further.

Daichi knows enough about magic to know that angels and demons don’t mix.

He also knows, in order: his boyfriend is kinda sorta partially angelic and not in the sense that he’s pretty or sweet, Suga has a really fucking weird job, and that this particular job involves a love spirit.

Daichi also knows that typed spirits tend to be annoying to take care of, and that the last love spirit incident had involved French maids and high heels.

This one doesn’t, sadly.

This one just involves Suga begging in that pretty, saccharine voice that doesn’t work on Daichi, and batting those big doe eyes that do work on Daichi, that he needs help with something. No, he can’t ask Tadashi, because Tadashi is too young to be dealing with love spirits. Yes, he needs help, because someone got the bright idea to try to make a chimera out of a ghost. No, he can’t ask Kei, because that’s unfair to him to bring up a love spirit/demon hybrid when he’s still sorting out his own shit. No, he absolutely will not ask Tooru or Iwaizumi. That’s just a no.

Daichi says yes.

Daichi says yes because Suga coyly informs him that it could get spicy, and he’d feel better with Daichi around, and honestly, he doesn’t know why he’s falling for any of this. They’re past the point that they have to dance around subjects. If Suga needs help with something, then he needs help, and Daichi will do it if he can.

Suga had explained, in explicit and great detail, what exactly they would be dealing with. Love spirits can give you a contact high, plus create concentrated aphrodisiacs, though he doubts this chimera could do much on that front. Demons can only have settled forms with time and practice, something Daichi has rather taken for granted in the cases of dealing with Kuroo, so there would probably be creative definitions of the term ‘limb’.

He’s expecting tentacles.

He got tentacles.

“We have to subdue it, not kill it,” Suga reminds him when Daichi reaches for his dogtags. “We’re getting paid to return this pet, not smear it on the ground.” Which is why Suga needed help at all.

Daichi takes one last steeling breath to remind himself that he’s about to try to seduce what looks, for all intents and purposes, like a be-tentacle’d pink blob. He doesn’t want to think about why someone created this. He doesn’t want to think about someone keeping this.

Suga, of course, doesn’t bat an eye, because Suga isn’t fazed by anything short of the apocalypse anymore and Suga also tends to forget that Daichi isn’t as into the magical community as he is. Suga disrobes, folding his coat neatly, and begins to unbutton his shirt.

“Suga,” Daichi says, eyes on the wriggling mass before them, “you’re sure this isn’t going to go somewhere weird, right?”

“It’s going somewhere weird, Daichi,” Suga deadpans.

“I mean—we’re not in danger, are we?”

“It’s part love spirit, which are harmless themselves and get off on others getting off, and part demon. It’s not an incubus or succubus. It doesn’t even have a mouth.”

Daichi thinks of Harlan Ellison as he pulls off his own coat. Maybe he should have taken Suga up on the blindfold offer. “And, just as a point of curiosity, what if certain parties can’t get it up in front of the tentacle jello mold?”

Suga rolls his eyes, but fondly, and that reassures Daichi on some level that must be a cosmic joke. Suga strides over to the beast—it’s about waist-high and despite having no visible eyes, it very clearly recoils from his approach—and grabs one of the tentacles.

Suga pets over it a few times, as if to reassure it of his intentions, and while it still quivers in fear before him, it also melts a little, too. It makes a sound that Daichi would certainly call a purr, and he hates himself for it.

Faster than Daichi would expect, another one of the tentacles whips around and curls itself around Suga’s thigh. He stumbles, forward, and it catches him with another. “Not exactly shy, are you?” Suga asks, and it wiggles happily.

And then tries to shove a tentacle in his mouth.

Suga splutters and grabs it, reeling back with a wet gasp, and Daichi can’t help but stare when he sees all the faintly pink and shining slickness smeared around Suga’s mouth. He licks it off his lips with the air of a very solemn researcher. “It’s supposed to taste like whatever you like. Daichi, come try this!”

And he waves the tentacle and splatters more of that pinkish goop over his face and neck.

“You’re going to stain your clothes,” Daichi points out, rooted to the spot.

“Help me take this off,” Suga coos, and Daichi has never seen buttons come undone so fast before. It’s a minor miracle nothing rips. Suga shrugs out of his shirt, and the tentacles greedily slide up his legs next, smearing over dark denim and cupping his crotch. “It’s really well-behaved. Is this how you want to do it?”

Suga had given Daichi two options: Suga distracts it, probably winds up in a puddle of his own juices somewhere, and Daichi herds the thing into their pen. Or, Daichi and Suga team up, and they both grab it after it’s exhausted, presumably because together they’ll still be able to move. Divide its attention, supposedly. Suga hadn’t pressured Daichi either way, and had made sure this job was alright with him to begin with, but Daichi hadn’t given him an answer yet.

The air smells sickly sweet and he is morbidly fascinated by Suga covered in that shiny goop.

It’d be smarter to have Suga in working order, in case Daichi needs help, right?

“Oh, it wasn’t supposed to be able to cast thralls,” Suga pouts. The nearest tentacle again tries to insert itself into his mouth, and he bats it away. It recoils with an unmistakable whine. He grabs it again, and soothes over it, like he’s petting a small animal or something.

Then, he shifts his hand, and it’s less petting and more stroking.

Suga keeps an eye on Daichi—trying very hard to seem like he’s not, which kind of makes it cuter—and casually jacks off the tentacle in his grip. His hand is covered and dripping with slickness, running down his wrist, and the tentacles around his thighs rub eagerly against him. “Pants off, these are getting tight,” he politely tells it, and he’s hardly done with the sentence before it’s deftly unbuttoning his jeans and yanking them down. Suga stumbles forward, and this time it doesn’t catch him.

He faceplants directly into the monster of the day’s pulsating body.

Suga rears back with a wet gasp, covered in that shining liquid, up into his hair and down his exposed thighs. He wipes frantically at his face, smearing it away from his mouth and eyes, and tries to stumble back. Daichi catches him, and the tentacle beast politely removes Suga’s pants from around his ankles.

Suga is a little more immune to it than Daichi should be, but that’s pushing it. “Well, shit,” Suga slurs, and his raspy voice goes straight to Daichi’s growing arousal. “‘Kay, I’m… I’m a lost cause now…” Suga turns his head, nosing shamelessly at Daichi’s neck, otherwise limp in his arms.

“Are you okay?”

“Juuuust fine,” Suga tells him. He sounds drunk. Daichi supposes it could be similar, though drunk Suga is usually sleepier and more prone to absolutely adorable secret-spilling. (Maybe he should get his hopes up.) “It tastes like cinnamon, Daichi. And you smell so fucking good.”

“That’s because you made me wear cologne on a monster-hunting job,” Daichi replies, somehow sounding far more composed than he feels. His eyes remain on Suga’s desperately tented briefs.

“I like the way you smell,” Suga tells him like this is a secret.

Daichi follows the way a tentacle winds its way up Suga’s leg, leaving a trail of pinkish slickness as it goes. It’s halfway up his thigh when Suga cants his hips upward, seeking its touch.

The Daichi Stays Out Of The Action plan largely hinged upon Daichi staying far enough away to avoid the worst of any weird sex pollen shit and allowing Suga to, as it were, act as distraction. Daichi is already pretty sure he has a buzz, or whatever the terminology is. He is definitely hard, and his nose burns a little from the sweet smell in the air.

He’s kind of curious what it tastes like for him.

“Join me?” Suga purrs against his throat.

Daichi wants to. So he does.

Still bracing Suga upright, he reaches out with one hand, and a tentacle eagerly reaches back. It’s cooler to the touch than he expects, and the slickness has about the same consistency of lube, though no surprise there. “Are we supposed to use this as lube?” he can’t help but ask.

Suga laughs like a drunk sack of potatoes. Daichi doesn’t know how the simile works, but it does, because Daichi is going to cut himself some slack with his remaining sobriety. “Y’know how, in college, you hear about dumb guys doing shit like putting booze up their asses to get drunk?”

“What the fuck kind of college experience did you have?!”

“I didn’t,” Suga tells him and pats at his chest. “You should take your shirt off.”

“Why are people putting alcohol up their asses, Suga?” Daichi asks, only halfway distracted by the tentacle monster shuffling closer with gross squelching noises.

“It bypasses the liver, and you get drunk, like, instantly. You also get alcohol poisoning and die, like, instantly.”

Daichi has forgotten why they’re talking about this. He’s mesmerized by the wet slide of the tentacle’s tip between his fingers. It’s a little softer than a dick, but harder than silicone, and the way it moves. No wonder Suga had been so enraptured.

“If you put this up your ass, you’re gonna be high and horny into next week,” Suga tells him and pats his chest again. He adds something else, about most love spirits not making this kind of shit, or something; Suga trails off just before Daichi’s attention does, and they both end up watching the way Daichi grasps the tentacle and allows it to thrust into his fist.

“It’s so…” Daichi doesn’t know how to finish it. His skin kind of tingles where it touches, but it’s fun to touch. It feels so strong. It’s not quite as thick as he or Suga, but there are a couple of various other sizes, and who knows what else tentacle monsters can do.

Suga grabs another and slicks both his hands with it. “This could be some fun finger painting,” he says as he draws his fingers down his own chest.

“Fun couples bonding activity.”

“Isn’t it?!” Suga exclaims with delight.

He finally leans his weight up and off Daichi, though he is instantly supported again by a thicker tentacle wrapped around his waist. Another slides up to cup him through his briefs, and Suga groans, rocking shamelessly into it. Daichi steps forward, wraps his arms around Suga’s waist right above the tentacle, and hooks his chin over his shoulder so he can watch.

“Have it take that off for you,” Daichi whispers in Suga’s ear before biting down on the shell of it. Suga moans this time.

“Undress,” Suga orders, and the tentacle beast purrs even more loudly, eagerly complying.

More tentacles circle around him, however, and begin pushing at Daichi’s shirt. They have to separate to do so, and Suga turns, then sinks down to his knees. He reclines against the tentacle beast, legs cocked wide, and it trails the tips of many tentacles over his skin, drawing wet, gleaming lines Daichi wants to follow with his tongue.

He pulls his shirt over his head with help, and by then, it already has his pants around his thighs. Suga crooks a finger and Daichi steps out of his pants, and towards him. The tentacle chimera should be sated by an orgasm or two, feeding off of the sexual high as well as come, and Daichi is more than happy to help by this point.

Suga tilts his head up to Daichi and his mouth falls open, tongue out.

A tentacle beats Daichi anywhere, however, and Suga makes a startled noise as it finally gets what it wants. He doesn’t usually have much of a gag reflex; Daichi is both worried and shamefully turned on by the sound of Suga gagging, even if it’s not on his cock.

Suga pulls the tentacle out of his mouth, saliva and pinkish goop running down his chin, and sucks in a wet breath. “Are you okay?” Daichi asks, cupping his face, pushing his hair out from his eyes, checking him over for signs of actual distress.

“It tastes like a shot of fireball,” Suga tells him, high as a fucking kite by now. His eyes are blown huge, lidded, cheeks flushed a beautiful rosy color. Suga opens his mouth again, this time pulling his hand free from another tentacle in order to pull Daichi closer. “Let me taste you next.”

Daichi wouldn’t want to disappoint, now would he. With more than a little help, he shimmies out of his pants and boxers, and Suga is leaning up and forward to mouth at his cock before Daichi can blink.

First: he notices immediately the difference between feeling that weird slickness and Suga’s own spit. Second: it feels really fucking good. Third: Suga is in no mood to tease, licking over Daichi just a few times before guiding him down and swallowing around him.

Daichi groans and cards his fingers back through Suga’s sweaty, slick hair.

Several come up to try to push themselves into Daichi’s mouth, too, but he bats them away and they take the hint. He does get the pink shit smeared over his lips, however, and he can’t help but taste; it tastes like watermelon, light and fruity, and Daichi finds himself wanting more just for the sheer novelty of it.

As if reading his mind, Suga pulls off his cock with a gasp and yanks Daichi down to his level. Their teeth click when they first try to kiss, but Suga tilts his head to better accommodate, and then things even out. They kiss open-mouthed and sloppy and filthy. A tentacle runs over Suga’s cheek, and Daichi tastes watermelon again, and soon he tilts his head to chase that instead.

Suga quickly grabs his jaw and shoves his fingers into Daichi’s mouth instead. Daichi groans and sucks on them, savoring the flavor, the press of Suga’s fingers against his tongue. At first, he thinks Suga is the one with his hand around his cock, too, but then Daichi realizes that Suga does not actually have that many hands.

Suga releases his jaw, and reaches down to the tentacle enveloping Daichi’s cock. Daichi groans, desperate, against his fingers. Arousal curls low in his belly, warring with the hot buzz of the chimera’s goop. He wants to come, he wants to get rid of the strange feeling, but more than that he wants to chase the feeling. He wants to get lost in it.

Suga, however, keeps Daichi grounded.

He pulls his fingers free of his mouth, trailing the wet digits down his chin and then his throat, and whispers against his mouth, “You’re going to come for me, Daichi. You’re going to be so fucking good for me, and I love you so fucking much. You’re doing so good, helping me with this.”

“Fuck,” Daichi pants against him. Suga winds him up better than any magical monster ever could. “Fuck, Koushi,” Daichi groans and his thrusts stutter into the matching grasps of the tentacle and Suga’s hand.

Suga surprises him and moans loudly against Daichi’s mouth, and comes into the grip of another tentacle. Come drips down around the tentacle, mixing prettily with the pink goop everywhere, and Suga gasps and keens as it keeps going. Daichi, enraptured, is blindsided by his own orgasm.

It isn’t exactly more intense than usual, but there’s something desperate about the way he climaxes, like he’d die without it. It takes forever, a high, cresting wave of pleasure, and Suga kisses him through it even as his hand stills and the tentacle takes over.

By the time the tentacles are withdrawing, dripping white, Daichi has slumped forward into Suga’s arms, feeling rather numb.

“Thought sex demons were supposed to give you multiple rounds,” he mutters, sluggish, into Suga’s shoulder.

“It will, but you can’t stand that,” Suga tells him, and rubs his back. “C’mon, up, you gotta get away from this before it takes it as an invitation.”

“What ‘bout you?” Daichi asks. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t want to move ever again.

“I got this. I’m a little sturdier than you, and I’m not the one who always falls asleep after an orgasm.”

“No, you just fall asleep during.”

“I got this,” Suga repeats and kisses Daichi’s temple.

Despite the fact that he trips and faceplants onto the monster again in an effort to corral it properly, now that it’s sated and just as exhausted as they are, Suga successfully wins. He captures the tentacle monster, they’re going to get paid, and Daichi still believes his brain is oozing out of his ears.

They end up sleeping two hours in Daichi’s car until the monster’s owner swings by to pick it up, has mercy on them, and gets them an uber home.

When Tooru checks them over the next day, he can’t breathe for how hard he’s laughing, but they get the prognosis anyway: they’ll both be high and painfully horny for another twelve hours at least. But they got paid handsomely, both of them have the day off, and Suga keeps eyeing Tooru’s couch like he’s about to mount Daichi on top of it. Tooru quickly sends them home. Daichi would have paid a significant amount of money to know Suga’s exact thought process, potentially as inspiration for later that night.

After washing thoroughly, and nearly fucking in the shower, they end up breaking their own marathon sex records twice over.

And Daichi ends up breaking Suga’s own record of longest period sleeping, too, which amuses him enough that he doesn’t make too many jokes about what he dubs The Second Love Spirit Incident.

“It wasn’t a love spirit,” Daichi mutters, angrily, into his pillow.

“If we call it the chimera incident, Kei is going to die a little more on the inside each time. He doesn’t have much left, Daichi.”

“Come back to bed.”

“Daichi, I think your dick will fall off if you try to get hard again.”

Daichi proves him wrong.

#bbac feelings #please laugh at my i have no mouth and i must scream joke #aw it's daichi's first thrall #i love putting daichi through the wringer when it comes to magical bullshit #it's okay tho suga's here to hold his hand (and other things) through it

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