#and mercer will give us both everything eventually

[venndaai]

source

#critical role #liam o'brien #caleb widogast #i may get quite sad sometimes about not seeing blorbo #but i never get too down about it because i know lob and i are on the same wavelength #and mercer will give us both everything eventually #also bless this interviewer for being a shipper lol #shadowgast #blumendrei

[dalekofchaos]

If Arthur Morgan never got Tuberculosis

Hypothetically speaking. Arthur doesn't get TB. This is how I see the story going.

Short version.

After the countless unhinged murders throughout chapters 4-6, Arthur sees that Dutch has lost his mind and that everything that he believed in was a lie and that Dutch is not the man who he thought he was and Micah is just poisoning his mind. High Honor. Arthur leaves a brutally beaten Micah to the point of death and as he leaves Micah makes one last attempt to kill him, Arthur gets out of the way and Micah falls to his death. Arthur leaves to find Mary. Arthur and Mary build a farm for themselves and a family and get the life Arthur always wanted with Mary.

Low Honor. Arthur brutally murders Micah and just leaves Dutch looking at him with nothing but shame "We gave you all we had and you let him damn us all. Arthur takes the money, splits it with John and goes their separate ways. John lives in Beecher's hope and Arthur becomes a bounty hunter. Eventually Arthur is found by Ross and is given the offer he gave John in canon. Kill Bill, Javier and Dutch. And after he kills Dutch, Ross forces him to tell him where Marston is. Arthur would rather die than give John and his family up, so Ross kills him.

Long version.

Thomas Downs refuses to take Strauss's loan so Arthur doesn't risk getting TB in the first place and absolves the loan because he remembers Dutch's old philosophy. "Kill folks who need killing and save folk who need saving." Arthur absolves the debt and the Downes family lives in peace.

Skip to Chapter 6 and Dutch still makes Micah second in command due to Micah never doubting Dutch and seemingly always allying himself with Dutch. This said, Dutch listens to Arthur more often than in canon RDR2. Dutch leaves Arthur to die at the oil fields and Arthur more furious than in canon RDR2. Otherwise, Arthur and Eagle Flies manage to escape alive after Eagle Flies kills Colonel Favours. Arthur shares his experiences with the other gang members which sparks doubts in the ears of Javier and Bill.

The robbery on the patrol train still occurs and Abigail gets kidnapped. Arthur and Sadie go into Van Horn to save Abigail with both of them storming in the town. When Sadie heads in the fence, Milton holds Sadie with a gun to the head and demands Arthur turns himself or Sadie will die. Arthur kills Milton and cuts Abigail free and finds a letter indicating Micah had been sharing information on the gang. Arthur is still furious with Dutch and Micah so he tells Sadie to get Abigail to Jack and Tilly. Arthur heads back and shares the letter to Dutch. This makes Dutch confused but still deciding to side with Micah after John reveals to be alive. The gang is torn apart between Arthur, John and Javier since Javier has witnessed John being left for dead and hearing about Arthur's experience at the oil fields. They are disrupted by the Pinkertons and Arthur, John and Javier run off. Javier suggests they go back to get the money, John has a family so Arthur has to choose to go after the money with Javier or help John escape.

If Arthur decides to go with Javier, Micah will shoot Javier with his last bullet and Arthur and Micah will fight. Arthur would fatally stab Micah and Dutch would walk away like in the canon. Arthur would live as a bounty hunter. Until one day Ross and Fordham come a knocking. Offers him the offer he made John. Kill Bill and Dutch and he can be a free man. Arthur kills Bill at Fort Mercer because he doesn't have Javier to run to. "You were always a weak minded fool." Arthur kills Dutch. He looks at him with disgust. "Hello Arthur, my son." "Oh, I'm your son, am I? That didn't mean a damned thing to you all those years ago when you chose the rat over me." "I....I did no such thing, you and John BETRAYED ME and now you're working for them." "It's either work with them to kill you or I die" and look at you, using another tribe of Indians like you used Eagle Flies. You're pathetic." "If it's all the same to you,I'd rather kill you Dutch." During the shootout on the mountains, Arthur is mocking him for allowing the once great man to be reduced to his shell of his former self. Dutch telling Arthur he should have left him on the streets to die. Arthur mocking his lack of plan and just telling Dutch to "have some goddamn faith" When he has him on the cliff of Coachinay, Arthur just mocks him. "The great Dutch van der Linde, the man with a plan!" For the first time in his life, Dutch shows an ounce of humility and takes responsibility. "Arthur, I let him damn us all. If I had just listened to you, Hosea and John, we would've made it." "If I had just let him hang, we would be in Tahiti" At the end of the mountain, Arthur and Ross are by Dutch's corpse. Arthur demanding to know if he's finally free. Ross tells him one more mission. Kill John Marston and before Ross can say anything more, Arthur grabs Dutch's gun and kills Ross. Fordham sees what transpires and mocks Ross "Oh trust me, it'll look better in the report" Fordham telling Arthur what makes him think they won't kill him. "You know why? I know too much. See, I know why you used me. Your governor Nate Johns election is coming up and he needed you and you needed me to clean up the state. Lets just say I told some folk and if word gets out I'm dead, then mr Johns won't get reelected. You leave me and John Marston alone and no one talks. And just like that, Arthur and John live.

If Arthur chooses to help John, Javier will go after the money and escape while Arthur and John will try to escape. Arthur notices that they are outnumbered so Arthur sacrifices himself to get John to Abigail. Micah runs after Arthur but Arthur tosses him down the edge. Arthur beats the shit out of Micah and kills him. Dutch would return to see Micah's body laying there. Arthur returns to Mary and they live their life in peace.

Arthur would return to Mary with a bunch of money and eight years later, John, Arthur, Charles and Uncle will help build Beecher's Hope. After John and Abigail's wedding, Arthur, John, Sadie and Charles parts ways, and with no Micah leading Ross to Beecher's Hope, neither John nor Arthur are forced to become Ross' puppets and they live their lives in peace.

#Red Dead Redemption #Red Dead Redemption 2 #Arthur Morgan #John Marston #Javier Escuella #Micah Bell #Dutch Van Der Linde #Charles Smith #Mary Gillis Linton #Arthur x Mary #Marthur #Sadie Adler

[twdmusicboxmystery]

TWD 11x19: Variant - Time and Clocks

@wdway: 

The big WOW for me was that time was moving backwards. I’ll show you below.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Totally didn’t notice the time moving backward. Awesome! Already giving me some direction for my rewatch.

@wdway:

The most obvious one is with the 12:01, 12:00 clock.

@twdmusicboxmystery:

Yeah for sure. And that clock already felt very Grady-like.

@wdway​:

I thought I would give you the thoughts I was going to give the other night and got sidetracked with the walker images from the opening credits. This is me revisiting the clocks with a few changes in my initial reaction now that I've watched the episode a few times.

This scene is the first that we see a 10 something clock. I believe it reads 10:12 but I think the most important thing is that it's a 10ish something clock. I was mistaken when I first watched the episode that the time on this particular clock changed during the scene. I think it was just the angle that I was looking at. 

During the scene, Princess does make a comment that she had been at the station for 3 hours being questioned. I say that because there's also going to be a question about 10 am or pm. I assumed it was a.m. because we see that it is daytime when Rosita is brought in, and it seems they gathered a lot of people at the same time. Which would mean that they brought everyone into the station at around 7am.

This is the first shot of the clock in the room with Mercer and Max. The window in this shot makes it look like it's flooded with light. It is light from both windows; it just isn't as strong as it is seen here. Notice the clock not only the time of 10:09 but where the clock is placed on the wall.

Within the same scene but slightly later, a minute or so the time on the clock is 10:04. We have moved forward in the story but backwards according to the clock. The other question is is this a.m. because of the light or p.m., roughly 12 hours after he spoke with Princess in his office? 

We did see Max being taken in at night. I'm just pointing out inconsistency of the clocks/times and the light in the windows. Tptb is screwing with the time and leaving questions about the order of what we see and what that might affect the story. I will say that the clock itself and the time jumping backwards is related solely to this scene and these people because the clock doesn't appear in this room with Mercer and Rosita.

Rosita was the first person to be interviewed. We saw this scene before Princess’s or Max's. Are we seeing them in order in the episode? I don't know, I'm just saying that they've left us enough strange little hints to question the order of things.

I want to point out the empty chair across from Max. Mercer does eventually sit in it, but for most of the scene, it is empty. 

It made me think of the empty chair on the train platform near Dary in New Deal. The empty chair in both scenes made me think of Beth being present but not physically. Max has been a major Beth proxy since she was introduced and the combination of her and Eugene is probably the strongest parallel to how we will see Daryl and Beth as a couple. 

I also feel strongly that maybe we are seeing the foreshadowing of Beth not willing to leave the situation she is in because she wants to do the right thing by the people she's been working and living with.

Later in the episode Max speaks of her and Mercer's father, who was a moral and honorable person. It sounded so much like the way Beth would speak of her father, Herschel. These similarities, along with so many others, just seem too much to be a coincidence.

@galadrieljones​:

Love this, @wdway. I definitely didn't realize time was moving out of order. I haven't been able to rewatch, so I'm thankful for your keen observational skill!! That is so fitting with everything we've seen happening so far this season. 

A little while back I know I talked about Warlords, and how I think that episode is there to teach us about non-linear narratives and how tptb are willing to tell stories out of order, and how this is also informed by Eugene's novel, which contains many scenes that seem to "lack context"; however, said contextual information will be revealed in chapters that haven't been written yet. 

Tales episodes like Blaire/Gina and Davon are also asking us to grapple with time "travel" and non-linear narratives, when until "Find Me," we haven't gotten a ton of non-linear storytelling at all in TWD, unless you count 4b, but 4b isn't really non-linear. It's simply not on the timeline at all. Time feels "stopped." So I absolutely agree that tptb are trying to get us to question the order of events.

The whole timeline of TWDU is non-linear. The three shows we have, they're all in different slots on the same timeline. TWD is taking place about 12-13 years "after the fall." WB is happening two years ago, while Fear is operating like 6+ years ago. 

It's crazy to think that while all this has happened, a bunch of nuclear weapons have detonated in Texas. Everything happening with Morgan and Madison and the kidnappings is happening way long ago, and who knows what it's now become. 

Baby Morgan would be like 7 years old now, or more. She'd be as old as RJ. Sherry will have already had her baby, and her baby would be like 5 years old. Who knows where Alicia is by now, or Al and Isabel, or the Bennetts. Hope stayed in the northeast while Iris went to Portland. Did she make it? 

There are so many questions and open lines of storytelling that could reveal themselves at any moment and in any way, and maybe they already have. We just don't know what we're looking for, yet. It's very exciting. And most importantly, I think, is the Grady storyline. According to Greg Nicotero, everybody at Grady has died. Why would he say that? Why would there be ANY information about what happened to the Grady faction if it weren't somehow still in play? The Grady storyline left off like 10 years ago, right around the onset of Project V.

So, yeah. This stuff with time going all wonky is, I feel, definitely important!!

I also like your comparison between Max and her dad to Beth and Hershel. I did not think of that. I first thought of Tyreese and Sasha, whose dad also factored into their characterizations. And now I'm thinking about siblings, and their complex relationships to their fathers, and how there are a lot of examples like that: Daryl and Merle, Beth and Maggie, Tyreese and Sasha, Mercer and Max.

So, @twdmusicboxmystery​, I saw that ask about black/white and Snow White imagery on insta today and it reminded me of another element of Snow White that I was recently reminded of, in terms of Beth’s story. 

In Snow White, the original Grimm’s fairy tale and to some extent the Disney movie, when the magic mirror tells the Queen that Snow White is the fairest of them all, the Queen sends a huntsman into the woods to kill Snow White. In the fairy tale, she asks the huntsman specifically to bring her Snow White’s heart so that she can eat it and achieve immortality. 

Daryl is ofc a huntsman, but the heart thing is also really interesting to me. Beth as a character wears a lot of hearts, and she’s the only character who does. She has hearts on her necklace, her cowboy boots. There’s evidence that the answer to fixing the walker problem lies in the circulatory system, aka the heart. There was also the heartless walker in Joe/Evie while they’re camping near Toledo. I feel Beth’s hearts are important connective tissue here, linking her to CRM research and to the Snow White fairy tale.

But maybe Daryl as the huntsman is a red herring. In Coda, Beth is shot so high up on the forehead, I know it’s been discussed as to whether or not this was purposeful. What if whoever shot her did it on purpose, like if they were ordered to kill her so the CRM could harvest her heart for research, but whoever it was, the agent, couldn’t bring themselves to do it, so they shot her high enough on the forehead that she’d have a chance to survive. 

If that’s the case, the huntsman could be someone we know, or someone who met Beth off-screen, who we have yet to meet. Or maybe a CRM researcher who was there at the onset of Project V and who grew to like Beth. Pure head canon, but could be Lt. Colonel Kublek who would have seen in Beth some aspect of her daughter, with whom she shares a very fraught relationship. Anyway. Just something that crossed my mind.

Because I know we all agree that it’s hard to tell how much Beth knows in the end. During her final conversation with Dawn, Beth seems considerably jaded. Also why did that conversation take place in Carol’s room? And with Carol beginning to wake up in the end? To give opportunity in the future to fill in missing context maybe? 

Maybe Carol heard something that didn’t make sense at the time but will at some point soon. I think it’s possible Beth was onto the situation. She was so pissed off when Dawn took Noah back. It couldn’t just be about Noah and them being friends. Noah is even very cool about it. He doesn’t fight. But Beth is so angry. Maybe she knew something Noah didn’t.

Because clearly Noah knows nothing.

@twdmusicboxmystery​:

That’s about all I have for ep 11x19. I’ll post some outside-the-show stuff over the next couple of days. Then, we’ll have episode 20 on Sunday. How is everyone liking 11c so far?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E123 (Feb. 2, 2021)

After last week’s thoroughly relaxing and brief episode, tonight’s guests are Sam Riegel and Liam O’Brien!

Brian, to Sam: “You look like Tim Curry moved to Nantucket to become a sommelier.”

How did Caleb and Veth approach the ally-ship with the Tombtakers? Sam: “I mean, we got some information, and I think we got a little closer to Lucien and knowing whether he has any of Mollymauk inside of him, which is I think the most important knowledge that we’re seeking right now. Is there someone to be saved inside there? We got glimpses, and we got a little hint that Mollymauk is maybe still in there? Maybe? And we got a little more insight into their plans, so that was useful.” Liam: “We know why we were having that fucking dream.” Sam: “But other than that, it was just a road trip with assholes.” Liam: “All our plans have been ripped in a new direction, and it’s just been improvisation.” Sam notes that it feels like we’re always about to rip into Caleb’s backstory, but haven’t yet followed that thread all the way through. Liam: “It’s partially frustrating, to be sure, but also I like the idea that-- his whole shit has been selfish, it’s been dealing with the trauma that he’s been through and not the greater world, and that’s been shifting somewhat.”

Does Caleb think the book was worth it, and is he still interested in reading more? Sam: “How do you ask Caleb not to read a book?” Liam: “Caleb has spent enough time with the Nein to know you shouldn’t put a hand on a hot stove. After what happened with the book, he knows it’s a terrible idea. But maybe. But it’s a really bad idea. But reserve judgment, but it’s a really terrible idea. I think that Caleb is very aware that mages and people like him very easily fall prey to their curiosity and it can lead to bad places. But there is still that amount of scientific endeavor where you think there is value in knowing and learning, and maybe we can ride that line. He was True Neutral at the start of the campaign, and maybe he’s Chaotic Good now, but part of him is hubris, even if it’s a little bit, still.”

What about Otis has drawn Veth’s focus? Sam: “I mean, he’s a little shit. She was curious about Otis because he’s a small like she is, and in talking to him, he seemed to be real creepy, but he was just creepy and distant and didn’t value his past or family or anything like that. She sees someone who’s like her, but so not like her, and maybe that scares her a little bit more.”

How does Caleb feel about Beau being on this ride with him? Liam: “The dream is another example of how Caleb had very narrow vision of the things he wanted to do. It used to seem so massive to him, but now... To have Beauregard involved feels right. If anyone in the group is going to stop him from grabbing something he shouldn’t, it is probably Beauregard. She’ll punch him in the fucking face to stop him, which I think he needs, to a certain extent. They’re two different kinds of nerds, and I kind of like that, that this group of nine philosophers, they’ve reached out and somehow grabbed the two nerds in the party.”

How do Caleb and Veth see the Somnovum? Sam: “I mean, they seem real bad. Anything that’s a quorum of powerful entities heading towards your planet to unleash an energy of any kind, typically bad? I assume they’re bad, or at least the Tombtakers wish them to do ill.” Liam: “I think they want the kind of peace that comes from snapping your fingers and turning people to dust. Caleb sees them as a cautionary tale; they’re the worst-case scenario for arcane inquisitiveness.” He sees Allura Vysoren as the antidote to that.

Why the staunch refusal to use Halfling Luck? Sam: “I don’t like Luck! I just don’t like Luck. I think it’s cheap, I think it’s a cheat, I think it’s stupid. It just feels like a do-over.” Liam: “I am your antithesis! If I ever voice a halfling, I am going to hammer that feature!” Sam: “What I love about D&D is that you don’t know what’s going to happen. If you roll bad, okay, that’s it. If you roll well, it makes the success more enjoyable to know that it’s a pure success and don’t one where you’re like well actually... it’s so stupid. If someone was about to die, I would probably use the fuckin’ Luck feature. Well. It depends who. If it was Travis, yeah, no, he’s fucked, sorry.”

Liam drops that he’s picked Sam’s character class and race again for a hypothetical campaign three. Sam: “It’s not what I was thinking for future characters, but I’m excited to explore.”

Cosplay of the Week: an amazing Mollymauk by KatofValkyrie!

What was it like to bring the Tombtakers into the tower? Liam: “It is complicated, because he does not like him. Lucien’s just a fucking dick. But Caleb also knows that Molly’s in there somewhere. That tower’s only for the M9, and Lucien’s not in the M9. Their situation with these people is shitty, it’s terrible. Caleb doesn’t feel like they have the upper hand. He doesn’t like that they’re even going on this journey per se, because life is bigger than his bullshit. He feels like they’ve been losing over and over again, so it was a gamble to try to get on equal footing.

What spurred Veth into making sure she and Yasha have some one-on-one time? Sam: “Yasha hasn’t been getting a lot of moments to shine. Now that she’s back, I just got the impression that Yasha feels out of place sometimes, or timid, or unsure of herself. When Veth was Nott, Nott certainly had her share of those moments. I think she sees a kindred spirit and wants to make sure that she’s been giving all the opportunity she can to flourish and thrive. Dani, you’re just laughing at my mustache, aren’t you?” Dani: “Yes, that’s the only thing I’m laughing at through this whole bullshit.” Sam denies all knowledge of trolling, but eventually admits, on the topic of Yasha and Beau getting together: “They’ve made me wait this long... I’m going to make them wait a little bit longer!”

What was it like to show his friends the upper floors? Liam: “I kinda expected somebody to sneak up there before that. That being part of the tower is not even a conscious choice of his, it just is. The reason Caduceus has creeped Caleb out for a long time is because he talks about how-- Caduceus is a really kind person and wants Caleb to let go of the past. And in a really simplistic way, turn that frown upside-down. And that’s just not who Caleb is, and it’s not who everybody is. There is something to be said for trying to stay open and positivity, but thinking you can shut out the past, especially a traumatic one, is just not true. When things happen to us, we carry them. But to candy-coat it and say, ah, I’m free, or everything is good, or I’ve turned the corner... life is way messier than that. It’s not flipping a switch, it’s not bad-to-good, it is such a work in progress. Even when you make strides and start to get to a better place, you can backslide a lot. So the tower is who he is, and the tower is 7/9ths love for his friends, and 1/9th hope, but there’s still a percentage of him that carries everything from the past, and knows that he should, and knows that he should not go back to where he was. And the way to do that is not to say everything is rainbows, but to remember it. The tower is just like an extension of who he is. He’s never going to forget the past, and he’s never going to be like, I’m good, or I’ve turned a corner. He should remember the past, and he should do better, always.”

Does Veth still believe it’s possible to get Molly back? Sam: “Well, she was a person trapped in another body for many years, so has some experience there, and definitely believes that the spirit and soul of Molly is in there and just needs to be unlocked somehow.”

Fan Art of the Week: an amazing group shot by HarpySN!

How are Caleb and Veth dealing with their guilt and fear about being in the middle of this? Sam: “It definitely was a deep conversation that might have repercussions going forward. The problem with all of what we’re doing now is that we don’t have time to deal with our petty problems anymore. It’s all high tension all the time!” Liam: “It’s true; they’re not in control of their situation at all anymore.” Sam: “It’s good to have these check-ins, but it’s not like we can do anything about them. We’re reactive right now.” Liam: “He’s not happy with where they are, but they wouldn’t even be this far if the goblin hadn’t pulled him out of the mud. So part of it is, you saved me from where I was and got me on my feet again, and now it’s disconcerting to see it all just get knocked sideways by something he never could’ve predicted. I think Caleb felt nostalgic for when things were simpler, in a way, for them, when we’re both troubled drifters.”

What was it like to see Gelidon’s return? Liam: “I am the least superstitious person at the table. Ashley’s dice suck.” Sam: “It was fun fighting a dragon!” Liam: “Two massive battles in one episode, neither of which came away with a victory. I guess surviving is a victory.” Sam: “I’d forgotten about the dragon, honestly.” Liam: “I loved it. I was so upset at the idea that we were going to stealth and not get into it.”Sam: “Mercer doesn’t keep a live dragon around and not do something with it. That dragon’s coming back.”

How do Caleb and Veth feel about going to see Essek? Sam: “He can be very helpful, I believe, but as Sam Riegel, a player of D&D, I’m super suspicious. What the fuck is Essek doing up there, so close, now? I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. And I can throw him pretty far because he floats.” Liam: “I 100% agree with you. I do not understand what Essek could bring to what we are going through. I know the audience loves him, I love him too. He’s a really cool character. But he’s fucking toxic. He out of curiosity caused a war between two nations. And Caleb has been changed for the good by the M9 from months of travel with them. Essek has had none of that. Caleb has changed for the good, but not because of people like Essek. Essek is where Caleb came from. We kept the lid on the pot during the whole treaty at sea and it almost all went fucking sideways, and only because we pressed him into a corner. I hope that guy finds some sort of balance and peace for himself, but I do not see how his input here would be helpful. There’s other heavy hitters that I would try to pull in.”

Liam notes that the Cloven Crystal is in the Bag of Holding. Sam: “Do I have Fluffernutter, or is Fluffernutter gone?” Liam: “Nope. 300 pounds of fireworks? Gone. A dead mage, a threshold crest, and fireworks.” Dani: “Your basic essentials.”

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long text post

[yourlocalfictionalenthusiast]

IN LIFE, IN DEATH...

PART THREE

Part One, Part Two

Warnings: just some swearing

May 1995

“We’re totally gonna get a record deal!”

Luke said for the tenth time in the past hour as he bounced in his seat.

It was Friday night and normally, you would all be messing around at the park, the beach, or just watching a movie in the studio. But when your phone rang and it was the booking manager for the Orpheum telling you that Sunset Curve is officially the new opener next month, the boys insisted on being there the second your shift at the diner was over.

So instead of arguing about having another Star Wars marathon or playing at the pier, you were all packed in your regular booth at Cece’s for celebratory milkshakes. You sat on the very edge of the booth, practically falling asleep on Alex. Ever since you got the call that morning, every cell in your body felt supercharged with excitement.

But now that the day was coming to an end, you could hardly stay awake enough to pay attention to the conversation.

Bobby, who was in your usual spot, pinched Luke’s arm. “Don’t jinx it, dude.”

“It’s not jinxing if you know for sure.” Luke said. “I mean, we’re awesome! And we’ve worked so hard to get to this point. It’s all gonna pay off.”

As much as you wanted to believe him, you were still nervous. There was nothing you were prouder of than your music, and you knew that a crowd that big would be good for gaining a lot of new fans. But the idea of that many people seeing you perform and hearing your lyrics was nerve-wracking.

You could tell the others felt the same way. Bobby was biting his nails, Alex was bouncing his leg so hard it almost hit the table and Reggie was slumped against the wall. Luke just stared at all of you, his bright smile never fading.

He snapped his fingers so loud that you jumped at the noise, then he started digging in his pockets. “I know what’ll cheer you guys up.”

Luke pulled out a safety pin, then brought its point down into the table, his tongue poking out of the side of his mouth in concentration. After a few minutes, he brushed off the table and presented his design proudly. It was four words in huge slanted letters.

‘SUNSET CURVE WAS HERE’

“Seriously, Luke?” Alex said, his eyes wide. “Cece’s gonna kill you!”

Luke just smirked and handed him the pin, gesturing to the space under the words. “‘C’mon, man. You’re up first.”

It took a lot of convincing, but Alex eventually gave in, and one by one, you all signed your names.

‘Alex,

Bobby

Reggie

Luke

(Y/N)’

You heard the sound of Cece’s heels hitting the floor as she exited the kitchen. Panicking, you shoved the pin in your pocket just in time as she came up to the table. 

Before she could even see that anything was different, Reggie pointed at Luke.

“He did it!”

Cece frowned before inspecting the table, letting out a deep sigh and putting her hands on her hips.

“Are you vandalizing my diner, Patterson?”

Luke paled. “It was a group effort.”

“But it was your idea,” Alex said with a smirk, no doubt trying to pin the blame on Luke to keep his spot as Cece’s favorite. You had to bury your head into his shoulder to contain your laughter.

You could tell from the way that she was struggling to keep a straight face that Cece wasn’t actually mad but you weren’t gonna tell Luke that. He tried to kick Alex’s leg under the table but he hit yours instead. You hissed in pain and Luke paled even further.

“Shit, sorry, (Y/n).”

“And abusing my staff?” Cece joked, shaking her head.

Luke flashed her a charming smile as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry, Cece. Just got a little excited.”

“I can see that.” She laughed then turned to you. “Hey. Get up. I got you something.”

You looked up at her in confusion but she didn’t offer you any answer as you dragged yourself up. Cece pulled a small blue box out from behind her back and handed it to you. “What’s the occasion?”

Cece rolled her eyes. “Just open it.” 

The first thing you saw was a folded piece of paper with your name on it, under it was a silver key. You picked it up and held it in between your fingers as you carefully unfolded the paper to see three words in Cece’s careful handwriting.

just in case

You looked up at her, eyebrows knitted together. “Cece?”

She just winked as she put her hand on your cheek. “Honey, you know that I couldn’t have more faith in you and your rockstar dreams. But just in case things don’t work out...well, I couldn’t imagine giving this place to anyone else.”

You flew into her arms and hugged her so tight it was a little painful. Of course, all you wanted was for Sunset Curve to get signed to a label and take over the world. But this place was like home to you and the idea of owning it some day made your heart swell. “Thank you!”

The booth erupted in cheers and Cece playfully glared at them as she tucked you under her arm. “But you have to promise you’ll keep these boys of yours from doing any more damage to the property.”

Bobby scoffed. “Hey, we’re not-”

You slapped your hand over his mouth before nodding at Cece. “I’ll try my best.”

The bell on the door jingled to announce the arrival of another customer, and Cece left to greet them. You twirled the key around in your hand and looked at the boys' smiling faces, unable to hide your own.

As you settled back in the booth and took a sip of your milkshake, you couldn’t help but feel like everything was coming together.

2020

L.A was somehow so different, yet exactly the way you remembered.

The way the bright lights flooded the streets, to the way that every surface you see was decorated with a piece of art, made you anxious to re-explore the city you loved so much. 

You couldn’t help but stare through your swinging legs at the crowds walking around below, listening to the soft buzzing of the Orpheum’s sign above your head.

An hour ago when Luke had suggested walking around the city, you figured you would end up here eventually. But now that you were actually here, you couldn’t help the hollow feeling that settled in your stomach.

It must’ve shown on your face because Luke launched into one of his motivational speeches. “C’mon, guys. I know being dead wasn’t our first choice. But you gotta admit, it is easier to get around.”

Reggie pouted. “Easy for you maybe. I lost my shirt on that one.”

You hadn’t even noticed that he was shirtless until it reappeared in a flash and he sighed in relief.

“So, why did you bring us here?” Alex asked Luke. “Just another painful reminder of where we never got to play?”

You smiled sarcastically. “Yeah, thanks, Luke.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “Because, we’re not done yet!”

He slung his arm around Alex’s shoulder, and gripped yours as he poofed you all down to the sidewalk, pulling away from you as fast as possible once your feet were back on the ground.

“I’m telling you.” Luke said. “We’ve been given a second chance. Let’s go see how many clubs we can hit before sunrise!”

He started walking down the street and Reggie was quick to follow, leaving you and Alex behind. As you watched them skip down the sidewalk, Alex let out a sharp ‘hey!’ and you whipped around to see him rubbing his shoulder.

A man in a long black suit stared straight into your eyes before tipping his hat to Alex and disappearing down the street. Every hair on your body stood on end as you stared at the spot where he was just standing.

“That was weird.” You said, turning to Alex. “You okay?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I’m good.”

You could hear Luke and Reggie’s excited shouting as they ran down the street, but you and Alex kept your distance. He reached his arm out to you and you took it automatically.

Over the last six months, Alex had become your best friend. You had always been close but last summer when things got bad with his parents, he turned to you.

And when things started to get weird between you and Luke or you had a fight with your mom, Alex was the only one you wanted to talk to. 

“Alright.” Alex sighed. “Out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“I know you’re dying to talk about Luke.”

“I am not!”

Alex raised his eyebrows, clearly not convinced.

“Besides, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Nothing-” He took in a sharp breath. “(Y/n), for someone so smart, you’re acting like a dumbass.”

You put a hand on your chest, dramatically gasping. “Alexander Mercer! I had no idea you were capable of using that kind of language.”

He flashed you his middle finger before unlocking his arm from yours and pulling you into his side. “Seriously though. What’s rolling around up there?”

You were quiet for a few minutes as you rested your head on his shoulder. “I just want to know what I did, you know?” 

Alex nodded, but didn’t say anything, as he knew that you were just getting started.

“I mean, he’s always been there. He's always been my person. The one who I could count on for anything. Then that night in the studio, I thought…” 

You trailed off and Alex held you a little tighter. Even though he wasn’t there, he could probably describe that night in exact detail from the amount of times you had told him about it. “I just miss him."

“Yeah, I know.” Alex said, his eyes glued to Luke’s back. “But, hey, you know that he loves you, and that didn’t change because of one night.”

He started to say something else but cut himself off as he saw Reggie and Luke approaching, both with big, goofy smiles. Reggie took your arm that wasn’t around Alex’s back and locked it in his.

“What are you guys talking about?” He asked.

“Nothing!” You said way too fast, cringing to yourself as you dragged Reggie down the sidewalk. “Come on, Reg. Let’s go see if that old comic book shop is still around.”

As the night wore on, you became more and more thankful that you weren’t able to get tired.

You spent the whole night sneaking into concert venues, clubs, and pretty much any place you wanted now that there was no chance of getting caught. It wasn’t until you passed a small street-side café that you let yourself think about the one place you hadn’t been yet.

Cece’s Diner.

When Julie told you it had been 25 years, you assumed that it had closed down. That Cece had moved away. Maybe even reconnected with her son and lived out her life. It seemed like such a perfect thought that you didn’t want to ruin it with reality. 

But now that you had seen the way things had changed in the time you had been gone, you were now filled with a sense of urgency. You launched up the sidewalk until you were in front of the boys.

“Hey, guys?” You asked. They all stared at you curiously as a smile slowly spread across your face. “Anyone up for milkshakes?”

-

When you walked up to the diner - for only an instant - it was as if no time had passed. You felt the urge to run inside, throw your hair up in a ponytail, and make a beeline for the kitchen before you got in trouble for being late for your shift. 

Only as you got closer, you realized how much had changed. The building, which had always been a little ordinary and worn like a well-loved home, now felt about twenty stories tall. You dragged yourself forward toward the door, unable to look away.

The boys lingered behind you, but no one said a word. 

Your hand reached for the doorknob before you remembered that you wouldn’t actually be able to touch it.

I really gotta get used to that, you mumbled to yourself as you walked through the door.

It looked so different that you almost didn’t recognize it.

The bright blue paint had been replaced with brown on every wall, bookshelves lined the corners of the room, and long leather couches had replaced the booths and tables. The old jukebox had disappeared, and some old jazz song was playing over speakers over your head.

“Can I help you?” 

A voice asked from behind the counter. It was a boy that looked a little older than you, messy black hair and an uninterested smile. He dragged a blue pen across the margins of a book as he waited for your answer.

“You can see us?” Alex asked, to which the boy rolled his eyes.

“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” He said, raising his eyebrows when you all failed to answer either of his questions.

“My, my. Aren’t we chatty.”

“Who are you, exactly?” You said, trying to mask your annoyance with a smile.

“Teddy.” He said, pushing himself off the counter and making his way around until he stopped just a few feet ahead of you. “And you’re (Y/n).”

A shiver ran down your spine. “How do you know that?”

“You were a friend of my grandma’s.”

Before you could ask what the hell he meant by that, a man came walking out of the kitchen. He looked so much like Cece that it made your stomach flip. It was her son.

And as you looked back at Teddy, your mind slowly connected the dots. “You’re Cece’s grandson?”

He nodded.

“Okay, this is just too weird.” You said as you rubbed your temples. There was no way that this was actually happening, right? Maybe you somehow fell asleep and are having some weird ghost dream. 

“Okay, well I definitely feel old.” Alex sighed.

Your head was spinning. “What is even happening right now.”

Teddy smiled. “Well, it’s too bad we’re dead or else I would buy you coffee and explain it to you.”

You internally cringed at his pick-up line but you couldn’t help but laugh a little. Normally, random guys flirting with you made you uncomfortable but behind his cocky attitude, he seemed like a genuine guy.

Maybe it was the way that he twirled his pen between his fingers the way that Cece used to, but something told you that there was more to him than meets the eye.

Before you could answer, Luke spoke up. “Well, it was nice meeting you. But we really should be getting back home.”

You could see that he was right as the pale light came in through the windows as the sky started to lighten.

But you couldn’t help but notice that this was the first time he had interjected in the conversation since you got there, and a small part of you wondered if that had anything to do with the way that Teddy was staring at you.

You shook those thoughts from your head, giving Teddy a soft smile.

“Maybe next time.”

Though you weren’t capable of getting cold, you still shivered a little as you walked through the door and back out onto the street. You could feel Luke’s eyes on the side of your face, flickering down to the sidewalk when he saw you looking.

You gave him a light nudge on the shoulder, and he gave you a soft smile that you couldn’t quite decipher the meaning behind.

That was pretty much all you got from Luke these days.

“So,” Luke said, his enthusiasm returning in full force as he threw his arms over Alex and Reggie’s shoulders. “I think it’s safe to say we’re officially back in business.”

-

The second that you landed in the studio, your jaw dropped.

Julie was sitting at the piano, her voice shaky but full of passion as she belted out the most beautiful song you’ve ever heard. Her fingers hit the keys expertly and you smiled.

You closed your eyes, listening to her voice echo through the room and getting lost in the warm feeling the lyrics filled you with. It wasn’t until she stopped singing and sniffled quietly that your heart dropped.

Both you and Alex surged forward to comfort her but Luke shook his head and swirled his finger, signaling to meet up outside. You wanted to protest. To stay and comfort your new friend.

But Julie sniffled again and you thought that maybe it would be a good idea to give her space. You made a mental note to talk to her later and poofed out of the garage.

-

In Life, In Death Taglist:

@ifilwtmfc @instabull @wanniiieeee @tenaciousperfectionunknown

JATP Taglist:

@caitsymichelle13

Let me know if you want to be added!

#luke patterson #luke patterson x reader #luke patterson imagine #julie molina #Reggie Peters #Alex Mercer #jatp fanfic

[lupiningwolves]

Dreams come true | Lily Evans x fem!reader

summary: You are in love with your best friend Lily but she doesn’t know until you play truth or dare

warnings: slight swearing, kissing, just pure fluff (tell me if there is anything missing)

song: Line Without a hook cover wlw by Lola Mercer (full version on YouTube)

—

As always after a won quidditch match, there was a huge party with all the Gryffindors. One of your best friends, James Potter, in the centre as he was the captain.

Slowly, more and more people went off to bed and only the small group of your best friends remained; James, Peter and Remus sat on one sofa, Sirius in front of it between Remus‘ legs as the werewolf absently played with his boyfriend‘s hair. Mary and Marlene sat on chairs next to each other. Which made you and your best friend and crush Lily share the armchair. That the two of you were sat so close to each other made you happy on the one hand, but also uncomfortable as none of them knew that you liked girls.

„So“, Marlene started. „We should play truth or dare.“

„That‘s boring. We always do that“, Sirius retorted.

Marlene smirked and pulled something out of her bag. You immediately knew that the liquid in the little vial was truth serum. „But not with this.“

„Is it what I think it is?“, Lily asked and Marlene nodded.

„What is it then?“, Peter asked confused.

„Truth serum“, you answered. Sirius‘ and James‘ eyes lit up. The two best friends looked at each other and grinned, just as if they knew what the other one thought.

„I‘m in“, they said at the same time.

„Me too.“ Peter watched as James impression changed and he was proud of him.

„I don‘t have a choice in this, do I?“ You knew Remus didn’t want to share his secrets, but surely he was excited about finding out about the ones from his friends.

„Y/N? Lily?“, Mary asked.

„Yeah, why not?“, you said. Deep down you hoped Lily would have to take a drop of the serum and spill her secrets. The more you hoped that she would say that she liked you. But you knew that this wouldn’t happen.

„Okay“, Lily said.

„Yes!“, Marlene stated. „Okay, who‘s first?“

„I am“, Sirius said. „So, James, truth or dare?“

The boy thought for a second and answered then. „I‘m going with truth.“ Marlene handed him the vial and he took a drop. After he swallowed, Sirius asked his question.

„What is going on between you and my brother?“ You choked on your own spit and your eyes went wide. The reactions from the others weren’t different and all of you waited eager for an answer.

„Regulus and I are in a relationship. I have to tell you, Pads, your genes are the best. That boy - damn, he is something. His kisses - wow. And the-“ Remus threw his hand to James‘ mouth before he could say more, which you were more than happy. He waited a moment before removing it.

Sirius sat there in shock. „You and Reggie?“ James nodded shyly. „Fuck, prongs, why didn’t you say anything?“

„Thought you might hate me.“

Sirius shook his head. „I could never hate you. Just don’t break his heart. And if he breaks yours, tell me and I put him in his place.“ You chuckled and looked at Lily, who looked very pleased.

„Okay, enough bromance“, Mary said. „Peter, truth or dare?“

And so it all started. Many secrets were spilled; Sirius said I love you to Remus, he returned it. Marlene finally came out and said she has a girlfriend. Even though everyone already knew that.

Mary had to lick your foot. In return, you had to smell James quidditch hoodie. You nearly threw up by the smell of his sweat.

„Y/N, your turn. Truth or dare?“, Remus asked. „And no dare again. I want to know your deepest secrets.“

Even though you didn’t want to as you were too afraid Lily might find out about your crush on her, you practically had no choice. Mary gave you the truth serum and you let one drop fall onto your tongue.

„So, do you have a crush on someone?“, Sirius asked. You felt the heat rise in you cheeks but nodded slightly. „Who is he?“

„What‘s his name?“, Marlene asked excited.

„Is he a Gryffindor?“ Peter wants to know.

„Is he older?“ Another question from Remus with the wrong pronouns.

„She‘s a - she’s a lady“, you said. „And I am not a boy.“

The room fell silent and everyone looked with a shocked expression to you. Peter‘s mouth opened and closed. Sirius‘ was just open, the same with James, Remus and Mary. Marlene just smiled. But Lily, you could swear you heard her breath hitch.

„Oh my god“, Remus whispered, then he smiled. „That‘s - that‘s great Y/N. I think I can talk for everyone that we fully support you and are always there for you if you need to talk.“ Everyone nodded and smiled at you. But you didn’t dare to look to your right to see Lily‘s reaction.

„Thanks, guys“, you replied.

You stopped playing and talked for another hour until all of you went to bed. You couldn’t sleep that night. Your thoughts wandered to Lily every time you closed your eyes and you were afraid that you just ruined you whole friendship with her.

~~~

One week went by and you didn’t talk to her one time. Sure, she said good morning and good night when others were around. But when you were alone, which luckily wasn’t often, both of you stayed silent.

Now, on Saturday, you already had your homework done and just laid on the sofa in the common room as you heard the portrait hole open. You sat up straight and hoped it wasn’t Lily. But it was.

She smiled as she saw you but intended to go into her dorm when you stopped her. „Lily, wait, please.“ She turned around and faced you. „Can we talk? Can you sit down?“

„Of course“, she mumbled, put her bag next to the sofa and sat down next to you.

„Is everything alright between us? We didn’t talk after … Saturday.“ The last part came out rather quiet.

She breathed in through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, which she just did when she was nervous or stressed. „I-I don‘t know what I am supposed to say.“

„See, Lils, it‘s okay. You don’t have to, let me do it. I like girls, okay? Okay. It’s not like I like you … You‘re my best friend, right? You don’t even like girls.“ You giggled as an attempt to smooth the vibes, but only made it worse. And lying to her felt horrible.

She straightened herself and looked down at her hands. „You don’t?“, she whispered.

„I -“ You didn’t know what to say. Eventually you decided to just give it a shot. She must know. She had every right to know that you loved her. And there was a slight chance that she liked you back. „I do. I do like you. I-I love you. Not just as a friend. I am in love with you.“ You breathed out but continued and tried to make it better. „You don’t have to like me, obviously. Don’t say a thing. I shouldn’t-“

She grabbed your face in both of her hands, turned it to her and smiled at you. „Please, Y/N, just shut up.“ She pulled your face towards hers and looked into your eyes one more time before pressing her lips down at yours.

You rested your hands on her hips and pulled her closer to you as yourlips were moving together. You never wanted to do anything else than this, she was just so addicting. If you could’ve stopped the time, you wouldn’t have to think twice.

But the two of you ran out of oxygen, so you pulled away from each other. There was just a bit of space between you. Your eyes were still closed, you were overwhelmed with what just happened. You couldn’t believe it.

„Y/N?“ You opened you eyes and looked and her smiling face. „I love you too.“

„Really?“, you asked in positive shock.

„Wasn’t it obvious?“ You shook your head and she laughed. „Yes, I love you. So much.“ She kissed you again, this time it was a soft, small kiss.

And your dream came true. Lily Evans loved you back.

#lily evans #lily evans fluff #marauders #marauders fluff #lily evans x reader #harry potter fluff #marauders x reader

[chaos-burst]

Hey! :) I’ve wanted to play d&d for a while now, and after getting into critical role i finally decided to convince my friends to play with me. None of us have played before, so im both exited and a bit nervous since i’ll be the dm. We don’t know anyone who plays, and i’m not very comfortable with palying with strangers, so we’ll be diving right in together! Do you or your followers have any tips or good resources to recommend for new players and/or dms? Any tips would be greatly appreciated! :D

Hey there!

I’m very flattered that you would ask me for DMing tips, but I just have to preface this saying that I am a first time DM myself and I am currently on session 13 of my campaign. But I can see if I can list some things that I found useful building my first campaign :) And I totally feel you not being comfortable with strangers, I play with a group of friends and we were all first time players when we started!

Let’s start with resources! (I will put the links in a reblog bc tumblr is a dick about posts with external links in them. Sry for the hassle!)

Probably a bit redundant, but nevertheless very helpful: The core rulebooks for D&D. Which is to say The Dungeon Master Guide, The Monster Manual and The Players Handbook. Bc those are expensive as fuck, check out this lovely thing (1).

Then, depending on whether you play online or live: Roll20.net (2) You can invite your players to your campaign and make maps for encounters with minis on them, you can insert music that plays in the background and it also rolls dice for you if you have to roll a big amount of dice and don’t want to do math ;)

There is an encounter builder on kobold-fightclub (3) that can help you balance encounters according to your party’s level! I have found it quite helpful and it’s also an easy way to filter monsters for a specific terrain when you know that you’ll be running through a swamp/desert/cave etc.!

I also found this this cheat sheet very helpful, esp regarding the different conditions that I can never seem to remember.

Then, ofc, one of CR’s sponsors: dndbeyond (4). Me and my friends bought a subscription bc damn is it useful to be able to click on anything on your character sheet and see what the hell it means. It also helps you track your spellslots/HP etc. during combat. 

Something I also did was watch Matt’s videos (5) on how he DMs. Altho it bears to say: Don’t compare yourself to Matt Mercer. It will only stress you out. 

You like maps? So do I! Check these out (6/7). 

You want to keep track of your npcs and important lore and places and everything? You could try worldanvil (8)! It’s like building a wiki for your own world!

And then about tips. It is probably easier to give tips when you have specific questions than it is to give general tips, but I’ll do my best! I’m sure many experienced DMs want to chime in and add to it :)

Communication is (as with most things in life) key to everything. Get together with your players for a Session 0 and just talk about what kind of game you want to run and what kind of game they want to play. There are people who like combat more than roleplay or vice versa. There are people who want to play an evil campaign or they want a lot of political intrigue or they are soft marshmallows like I am and don’t want permanent character deaths and so on and so on. Just get together and talk about what you guys want to create. Also talk about the characters with each individual player.Ask them about triggers they have, so you can avoid topics. Ask them how they feel about an NPC flirting with their character. It goes the other way around as well! Tell them about your boundaries and your expectations. One of my friends wanted to make a character with a neutral evil alignment. I told that it’s fine, as long as there’s the prospect for the character to evolve towards a neutral or good alignment, bc I have no interest in dm-ing an “evil” campaign. 

Something that might make running a campaign easier for you is if your players’ characters already know each other before the game starts. If you’re like me you will sweat bullets thinking about how to get them to work towards a common goal. If they’re already friends/rivals/lovers/colleagues/members of the same adventuring guild you will not have that problem. And they can give you some notes on how they envision the relationships to be/how they met.

You can start your adventure with one of the official adventures that are out there if you want to! You don’t have to do a whole ton of worldbuilding like I did bc I’m a crazy person and have my whole setting homebrewed. If not, you can always make life as easy as possible for yourself and start small! Build a small town with a few key NPCs, put a small assortment of possible quests there and then only roughly sketch out what you want the “outside world” to look like. I as a player love some context when I build characters, so if you want to give your players a small introduction into the campaign setting, I think that would be helpful and also helps creating characters who fit into your setting! If you want to run a campaign that has tons of dragons and poisoned oceans that cannot be crossed by mortals it would be sad if a player came to you and gave you the character sheet for a sailor.

If you do a whole campaign, I found it helpful to have a rough idea about different factions and two or three major events that shape your world. Ideas for later quests will eventually tie into big world events when the players get higher level!

Draw yourself a map. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or anything, but at some point there will be a question about “where is the next big city, we need to buy healing potions” and you will feel much safer if you just have a piece of paper (analogue or virtual) with like... a rough outline, some landmarks and some cities on it. At least that’s how it was for me!

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Don’t beat yourself up if your first quests are “standard” stuff like “Take care of this giant rat infestation in the cellar of the tavern.” or “My purple dragoncat has been abducted, please get him back for me.”. I started my campaign with small quests before getting to a small arc and then I want to work towards bigger arcs eventually. But for new players and a new DM I found it very helpful to keep things low stakes to not stress anyone out too much. If you fuck up the giant rat infestation, the world will not end, you know? That is nice. Also works well as a tutorial for everyone! Combat is intimidating! So many rules! Take your time to figure out how stuff works with some nice, small quests and some not-too-complex-combat encounters!

You don’t have to follow every rule. There are so many rules for everything and that can be helpful but it can also be stressful. You don’t have to do everything by the book and if you notice that some rules annoy you and your players, you can always change them as you go along! (Cats have nightvision. Sometimes the rulebooks are dumb.)

Don’t get hung up on too many details. I love worldbuilding, but I get obsessive easily. Sometimes I think my world isn’t ready enough bc I tend to think like a writer who has to have everything figured out. That is not the case with d&d! Sure, It’s good if you know stuff. But d&d is not only about planning, it’s also about improvising. And the world will grow while you play in it! Before you know it you’ll go like “I want to have an encounter with this cool ice monster. I need an icy landscape.” and then you will make one. And maybe it wasn’t there before, but who cares. Your players will be excited and you can make up the lore as you move along! 

Did I mention communication? 

If you have specific questions about certain aspects of DMing or how to start, feel free to message me anytime :) I hope this helps a little bit! I’ll reblog in a second with the links!

#Anonymous #dungeons and dragons #d&d #ask #anon #screeching into the void

[quillsandtypos]

Our Stars Collided- Part 4 (1/2)

Summary: As the reader finds herself joining an on the rise ghost band, she quickly makes friends with the bassist. But how long can she keep herself away from the lead guitarist?

Words: 3.2k

Warnings: none except sexual tension

Pairings: luke x reader, mention of willex

I had too many word blocks so I had to split this in two in order to upload

...........................................

By Sunday morning you had mostly forgotten about your little prank war. So you did not expect to see someone in your living room that morning. “Reggie!” you screeched.

Reggie looked equally as surprised to see you and jumped back.

After you calmed down, you walked up to him, “What are you doing here?”

Reggie glanced around nervously. “What are you doing here?”

“Umm this is my house,” you reminded him. He was obviously up to something.

He pulled his hair back. “Right, yeah, I knew that, duh.” He rolled his eyes for good measure.

“So then what are you doing here?” you questioned. You watched as he strained to come up with some sort of response.

“Oh yeah, I came here to talk to you abouuuuuuut,” he trailed off as he looked into space.

You waved your hand at him for him to continue.

“Goddamnit I can’t do this,” he muttered.

“Luke are you almost done?” he called out.

It took you a moment to realize that you didn’t need to worry about your parents hearing his yell. But then it clicked that Luke was somewhere in your house.

Your eyes widened in fear. “What did you do Reggie?”

Luke popped in next to him. “Oh he just might have helped me out a little,” Luke said offhandedly. Though the smirk on his face told you that he was quite proud of whatever he had just done. You tried to make your fear invisible to them.

“Okay, let me rephrase this, what did you two do?” you crossed your arms and glared into Reggie’s eyes.

Luke moved closer to you to catch your eye and leaned against a chair. “Well let’s just say Reggie decided he would rather be on the winning team,” Luke taunted.

It finally clicked that your favorite bassist had betrayed you. “YOU, you are so dead Reginald,” you threatened. Despite the fact that he was already dead, he did look slightly afraid. You licked your upper lip smugly, in the satisfaction that he was somewhat affected.

Luke clicked his tongue, “I would be more worried about your room if I were you,” he warned. There was no doubt in your mind that he was enjoying this. You were torn between wanting to threaten your opponents and wanting to know what Luke had done.

“This isn’t over,” you grumbled. You raced back to your room, and nearly slipped on the flooring. You opened your door with a shove to find that everything was gone, nothing was there. Meaning legitimately nothing, those assholes had somehow gotten everything moved out of your room. It was completely bare, minus your bedframe and mattress. And you had fallen for Reggie’s distraction. You knew you would have to come up with something drastic to get them back for this, but you first needed to figure out where they had hidden the rest of your stuff.

You stood in your room as you tried to figure out what to do; until you remembered that the boys were still downstairs. But when you retraced your steps, you realized they were long gone. You sighed in frustration as you decided where you would need to look. Your first thought was Julie’s, it was most likely too easy, but she didn’t live more than ten minutes away. So you hopped in your car and drove over.

You arrived a short nine minutes later and knocked on the Molina house’s door. Julie opened it with a very puzzled look on her face. “Y/n what are you doing here?”

You held one of your hands in the other. “So this is gonna sound like a weird question, but have you seen any mysteriously appearing furniture?”

“No, should I have?” Julie questioned.

“Ugh, okay, I knew they wouldn’t put it here. Thanks any-” you stopped. Reggie was just behind Julie, wearing your favorite blanket as a cape. Julie looked confusedly at wear your gaze is, only to watch Reggie poof out.

“Reggie,” you growled under your breath.

You then brought your attention back to Julie who was giving you a cautious side eye.

“I swear there’s a reasoning behind this,” you promised.

“For something, as weird as this,” she pointed to you and where Reggie previously stood, “I would think so.”

“So you know how Reggie helped me take one of Luke’s shirts?” you started.

She still looked weirded out, but she nodded her head.

“Well, now Luke has somehow gotten Reggie to be on his side and the two of them took everything out of my room,” you grumpily explained.

Julie was still a little confused on what you meant. “Define everything.”

“Like the only thing still in my room is my mattress and bedframe, kind of everything,” you specified.

“Oh shit really?” she exclaimed. She quickly glanced around to make sure her brother wasn’t in ear shot.

You nodded your head.

“Do you have any idea where they put it?” she questioned.

“No, I was hoping you knew,” you wistfully admitted.

“I mean, have you checked the studio?”

“That seemed too easy.” You paced back and forth trying to think of where they could’ve possibly hidden your stuff. You heard another poof behind Julie and just as you were about to start your interrogation, you realized it was Alex.

“I’m guessing you’re here for your stuff,” he speculated.

“Yeah, do you know where it is?”

“I do,” he admitted.

You weren’t entirely sure where he was going with this, and his face gave no hints as to his motive either. “And are you going to tell me where it is?” you inquired.

His lips twitched upward in satisfaction. “They are back in your room.”

“Did you put them back there?” you confusedly asked.

He smiled before nodding.

Your eyes went wide, “Oh my god, thank you Alex, if you weren’t dead I would hug you!” you exclaimed.

“But now I kinda need to be on your team since I helped you.”

You grinned wickedly. Those two had no idea what was coming for them. “You’ve got a deal Mercer,” you agreed. You went to shake hands but you just went right through him, so you settled for shaking the air where you could see his hand.

“Guys, I hate to inte-” Julie was then cut off from a faint yell that you assumed to be either Reggie’s or Luke’s.

“Run?” you suggested.

“Run.” Alex agreed.

“Guys, what am I supposed to do?” Julie called out.

“Pretend you never saw us!” you yelled back.

She gave you a thumbs up before heading back inside her house. You quickly backed out of your driveway and quietly took off down the road. You breathed a sigh of relief as you turned the corner off of her road. When you got home you went straight to your bedroom to find that everything was back in its place.

You flopped down on your bed. It was only noon and you were exhausted. You decided to take a quick nap. You set your alarm for two pm and you quickly fell asleep.

When you woke up, you felt pretty groggy, but still better than you had before. You turned on your back and stretched. You couldn’t yet be bothered with getting up.

You couldn’t have been laying there for more than five seconds when you heard a poof in your room. You sighed internally, you didn’t have the energy to be pranked a second time in one day. You choose not to give him the satisfaction of looking over, and instead kept your eyes towards the ceiling.

“Luke what do you want?” you whined.

“Hey, why does it necessarily have to mean that I want something?” he pretended to be offended.

You slowly turned to look at him with an unamused look on your face.

“Okay, so maybe I do,” he admitted. You nearly broke your demeanor at his comment but you were determined, so you turned to look away from him so he wouldn’t see your smile.

He looked around the room. “I see you got your stuff back.”

“I’m willing to bet you already knew that,” you guessed.

“True, but I wasn’t expecting for you to be able to turn Alex against me,” he retorted. You couldn’t see him but you were certain you could feel the warmth of the fire in his eyes.

“How did you manage to do that?” he puzzled.

“I plead the fifth,” you responded.

Luke continued to try to coax an answer out of you, but he was getting nowhere. You just remained silent and continued to look at a wall.

“Come on y/n you’re gonna have to talk to me eventually,” he reasoned. He sat down on your bed as you continued to ignore him.

“Y/n,” he sang, as he kept tapping your side. You couldn’t actually feel it but you could see his hand accidentally going through you.

You couldn’t help the growing happiness bubbling up from your stomach. “I’m going to throw a pillow at your head,” you playfully threatened.

“See, I knew you were smiling,” he teased.

And swiftly turned around to throw a throw pillow at him. Of course you knew it wouldn’t hit him, it was more for dramatic effect.

But not long after, you heard a soft ‘thump’.

“Did it just-” you stopped in shock.

The pillow had hit him squarely in the face and he caught it in his arms.

Luke was equally as confused. “How did that happen?”

“I don’t know, I was expecting for the pillow to go right through you,” you babbled.

“That shouldn’t be possible, right?” he looked at you for assurance.

“Luke, I have no idea,” you admitted. The both of you just sat there for a minute in a silent bewilderment.

“Can I try something really quick?” he asked, his voice was a touch lower and harder to hear than usual.

You nodded, you weren’t certain where he was going with this, but for whatever reason; you trusted him. He reached over to one of your arms rested on your leg. Slowly he moved his hand to try to brush over your forearm. You could feel your heart beating in your chest and you held your breath. His fingers moved closer, you were now touching, but you couldn’t feel it. He just phased through you.

You felt your face fall and you quickly worked to make sure he didn’t notice. “It was worth a shot,” you added.

Luke looked up at you, he was not attempting to hide his disappointment. But it only took him a couple of seconds to recover, he looked like he had gotten an idea.

“Let me try something else real quick,” Luke trailed off.

You started to ask him what he meant by that, but you were rudely interrupted by a pillow going straight through you.

"Hey!" you yelled.

"I had to see if it was gonna work!" he loudly explained.

Laughing, you felt your mood start to lift, just by a little bit. “So what exactly did you want?” you asked.

“I don’t actually remember now,” Luke realized.

You felt the words tumbling out of your mouth before you could stop them, “Well I’m glad you came anyways.”

You were expecting for him to be smirking at you but instead he just smiled in that way that made you want to melt into the ground. “I’m glad I did too,” he agreed.

He got up from your bed to poof out, when you stopped him.

“Luke?”

“Yeah?”

“No more pranks when you’re in my room or involving my room. You come here almost everyday so it makes sense to have it as a peaceland,” you requested.

He charmingly winked at you. “Sure thing princess,” he agreed then poofed out.

You were really glad he left when he did so you could die from that nickname in peace.

-----------

When you woke up the next day you were a little surprised you hadn’t gotten any texts from Julie. But you figured you would catch up with her at school

“You,” she growled as soon as she spotted you heading to her locker.

You immediately put your hands up in surrender. “Woah, what did I do?” you asked.

“This,” she pointed to her outfit. It consisted of a jean jacket with paint on the back, a cropped sunset curve t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and white sneakers.

“What?” you puzzled, you genuinely had no idea what she was talking about. But she evidently believed that you should’ve known based off the look she was giving you.

“Because of you, I somehow got pulled into your prank war and they stole the rest of my shirts,” she finally explained to you.

“Well in that case their prank backfired because you still look stunning Jules.” You caught her eyes as you spoke and she smiled before narrowing her eyes at you.

“Do not try to compliment your way out of this!” she threatened.

You grinned and moved back from her accusatory finger. “I’m not, you genuinely look stunning. But if you want to threaten someone, I suggest it be the two who actually did it,” you argued. You grabbed your books and turned away to almost walk straight through Reggie.

Reggie threw his hands up in exaggeration. “Julie, this was supposed to be a prank, how do you still have a killer outfit?” he moaned.

You chuckled at his dramatics.

“Yeah, making the shirt look good should technically be against prank rules,” Luke agreed.

“Well Luke, it looks like you're technically losing.” You smirked.

“Not for long,” Luke scoffed under his breath, though it was obvious he wanted the three of you to hear him.

“Alright, point to the ladies, for this time at least,” Reggie trailed off ominously.

You threw your arm around Julie, “So does this mean you're officially on my team?” you asked.

“Yep, which means the two of you are officially going down,” she leaned into you and glared at the boys, as you smirked in satisfaction.

“That won't last long,” Luke boasted. He and Reggie poofed out, but not before you stuck your tongue out at Reggie.

Julie wrapped an arm around your waist. “So what’s our next play?”

“Well that is where Alex is going to help us,” you started to explain to her as you walked to class.

------------

The two of you anxiously sat in Julie’s room, you hoped that Alex would be the only one to poof in. You both heard a knock on the door and knew it had to be him.

“I heard we were coming up with a plan?” Alex inquired.

“We are but we need your help with actually getting it to work,” you explained.

Alex plopped down on the bed next to the two of you, “I’m all ears.”

“Okay so y/n had the idea of scaring them since you know it’s not usually the ghosts who get scared,” Julie started.

“Right, so how are we gonna pull that off?” he questioned.

You turned to Alex. “Well that’s where you come in. When would they least be expecting us to show up?” you asked.

Alex looked off into the corner of the room for a moment before coming back to you. “Probably when you’re in school or in the middle of the night. Since you guys sleep we are usually mostly alone in the world at night,” Alex divulged. He said it so casually, like being alone was a part of their routines; which sadly, it was. You tried not to think too deeply about it for the moment, but made a mental note to ask him if he wanted to talk about it at some point.

Julie walked around the room as she talked. “So school is obviously not an option, but doing it at night time seems easy enough.”

“Except we need to make sure it’ll actually scare them,” you added.

Julie pointed at you as she added that to her mental list.

“Well what scares people who are already dead?” you wondered. You looked to Alex for answers.

“I mean I’m biased with fears since I’m anxious most of the time; so I might not be the best person or ghost to ask,” he regretfully admitted.

“That’s okay, just tell us whatever you’re thinking of,” you reassured him. He looked nervously in Julie’s direction, but when she softly nodded at him, his gaze turned back to you.

“Your best bet is to jump scare them, I mean we’re the ones who can poof places, so they wouldn’t be expecting for you to be able to scare them,” Alex suggested.

“Ooh I like that idea,” Julie excitedly agreed.

"I do too, oh also I might be able to throw something at them," you added without thinking.

Your two friends looked at you with very confused faces. You suddenly remembered that you hadn't told anyone about the incident the night before.

"OH, I threw something at Luke yesterday and it hit him," you explained.

Your friends' faces didn't change, they shared a look before turning back to you.

"What?" they exclaimed, almost in complete unison.

"Well Luke was giving me shit and so I jokingly went to throw a pillow at him but then it actually hit him," you elaborated.

"And you're just telling us this now?" Julie marveled. Alex deadpanned.

"Well you seemed pretty upset about the shirt thing," you started.

"Y/n! Do you know how crazy that is?" Julie intently asked.

“I do, but there’s one problem we still can’t touch. We tried,” the last part came out quieter than the rest.

“What?” Alex asked.

“We tried, I still couldn’t touch him, and he couldn’t throw something at me without it going through me,” you divulged.

Alex looked at you through curious eyes. “Do you have any idea why?”

You through your hands up in exasperation. “No, but I wish I did.”

Julie walked up to her desk and searched around for something. “Alex, here try to catch this,” she spoke as she showed him a notebook.

Alex readied himself in the event that he would actually be able to catch it. But the book just went through his hands.

“Huh, okay y/n you try throwing it to him,” Julie directed.

You backed away from the bed and shook your hands. You were nervous even though you knew you had no control over how this would turn out. You tossed it into the air, but once again, the notebook just hit the bed.

“Damn it,” Alex hissed under his breath.

Julie shrugged, “Well it was worth a shot.” She tried to sound nonchalant about it, but it was evident that she was upset about it too. You all sat in a somber silence until you piped up.

“Guys I think I have an idea on how we can set up this prank,” you thought aloud.

The mood suddenly shifted and all eyes were on you. They eagerly listened as you explained your plan.

Taglist: @sunsetcurvej

#quillsandtyposwrites #q&t- jatp #q&t- x reader #jatp #julie and the phantoms #julie and the fat ones #jatp x reader #luke patterson #luke patterson oneshot #luke jatp #luke patterson imagine #luke x reader #luke patterson x reader #charlie gillespie oneshot #charlie gillespie imagine #charlie gillespie #charlie gillespie x reader #owen patrick joyner #julie jatp #reggie imagine #reggie peters #alex mercer #willex #julie molina #our stars collided

[bobbyshawsupremacy]

‘tis the season

for @thesevenumbrellas birthday!!! you said willex fluff, and willex fluff it is

There was a soft knocking noise, and Alex rolled over, squinting. His room laid cold and dark and empty. Probably just the-

Oh.

Oh, Jesus.

He was out of bed in a moment, scrambling across the room, and yanked his window open, pushing it up. “What the fuck?” he hissed. “What are you doing, oh my God-”

Willie grinned at him, that familiar sharp smile that always tugged Alex into whatever the hell he wanted. “Hey, Al,” he greeted easily, as if it weren’t midnight and he weren’t dangling outside Alex’s window in the snow without a fucking coat on. “How’s it hanging?”

“I hate you,” Alex said flatly. “I hate you. You’re absolutely terrible-” He helped heave Willie in, brushing at his shoulders with a frown. “You’re going to catch your death,” he hissed. He tugged at Willie’s shirt to straighten it out. “You’re an absolute disaster, do you ever use your brain-”

“Alex.” Willie grabbed his face. “Alex. I’m totally okay.” Alex froze, staring at him. The room was still cold and dark and empty, still just another room with boring wooden paneling in another suburban house with a copied floor plan, but something about Willie’s eyes flooded it with light, and suddenly it was warm and bright and full of the both of them, full of the entire world in the few scant inches between them.

Alex’s hands twitched in Willie’s shirt, and he swallowed hard. “Still worried,” he replied, although his voice had lost a bit of its emphasis. Willie hummed, his thumbs rubbing over Alex’s cheeks. His face was soft. Open. Alex could fall into it, if only he leant forward-

Nope. No. No. Definitely not. He tugged himself back and pulled his scowl back on. “You’re an absolute idiot.”

“Mhm.” Willie still looked completely at ease as he reeled an arm around Alex’s waist and reeled him in so that their chests were pressed together. “Don’t let go, I’m cold,” he added, pouting. Alex meant to protest, but Willie was warm and solid and touching him tasted so sweet, so his words turned into a sigh and he wrapped his arms around his friend, holding him tight. Willie’s head laid onto his shoulder, breath ghosting over Alex’s neck. “You feel so nice,” he murmured.

Alex forced out a laugh, even if it was a bit choked. “You’re totally okay, huh?”

“Maybe I just wanted a hug.”

“Well…” he sighed again and tightened his grip. “That’s okay, I guess.”

Willie hummed. His head tilted a bit more, his cold nose pressing into the crook of Alex’s neck. His lips were on Alex’s collarbone as he murmured, “You give the best hugs,” and Alex couldn’t breathe.

They stayed like that for a while- maybe a minute, maybe an eternity, hovering together in the bright dark frigid warmth of Alex’s room, locked together with the wind still open, Willie’s lips sending shocks through Alex’s skin and bones. He let his eyes drift closed, enjoying the feeling of someone in his arms, enjoying the feeling of Willie sagging almost bonelessly into him, giving all his tension away in favour of Alex’s arms. This was a dangerous game, but he’d never felt this safe. He’d held home this close to his heart before.

Eventually, Willie pulled back to look up at him with those sparkling eyes that doomed him in the first place. “I didn’t just come for hugs,” he admitted. “Come on, I’ve got something to show you.”

“Now?”

“Yeah!” Willie tugged his hand. “Let’s go!”

“But-” Alex’s head spun slightly. “It’s midnight, and my pajamas, and the snow-”

Willie tightened his grip and fixed Alex with a pout. “But Al,” he whined. “I came all the way here, just to get you, and I want you to come so bad.” His pout deepened. “Please?” Alex lasted for all of two seconds before he caved. He did shove his Vans on first, though. Together, they clambered out the window, making it slowly down to the snowy ground. Alex shivered.

Willie noticed and slung an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “I brought my car. It’s around the corner. Didn’t wanna wake your parents.”

Alex laughed, though the sound was shaking with cold, and leaned heavily into Willie’s side. “My genius,” he joked. Instant regret flooded him, because he’s not yours, dumbass, but Willie just laughed and grinned at him. The stars and the sun were still in his eyes.

The car was warmer, but not by much, and Alex spent several minutes grumbling and trying to wrap himself up into as small a ball as possible before he noticed the route they were taking. “Wait…” he peered out the window suspiciously, and then back at Willie. “Are you…” Willie did not answer, just kept smiling until they pulled to a stop. “You brought me… here?” Alex squinted at him. “So when you said you had something to show me… you meant your house? Dude, I’ve seen your house.”

Willie laughed, reaching over to squeeze his hand. “Hey, I’m more creative than that,” he defended. “I know, uh-” he shrugged. “I know it’s been kinda hard for you, moving here, making new friends and stuff, and I know you miss California, but… you’ll always have me, you know that, right?”

Alex blinked. “I- yeah. I know.” He shifted to face Willie a little more, frowning slightly. “What’s all this about?” he asked, still slightly wary but mostly warm, full of a content that swelled through his bones.

Willie smiled. It was a touch nervous, Alex noticed, which was odd. Willie was rarely nervous. “Well, just-” he fidgeted for just a moment before jerking his head towards the house. “Come on, let’s go.” Alex followed him up to the front door, mind churning. What the hell kind of twist was Willie pulling this time?

The click of the door shutting echoed loudly. “Are your parents asleep?” he asked, keeping his voice soft in case they were.

Willie fidgeted slightly. “Um… no, not exactly,” he admitted. “Just…” he took a deep breath. “Come with me?” He held out his hand hopefully, and- well, it was Willie. What could Alex do but take it? He led him into the living room and pushed him into the armchair- literally pushed, Alex went tumbling into it and had to right himself with a grumble- before assuming a place in front of him with his arms clutched around himself, rubbing at his own arm with his thumb.

“Hey,” Alex said. He reached up to lay a hand over Willie’s. “Don’t be scared. Whatever this is, it’s okay.”

Willie smiled faintly and twined their fingers together. “That’s the thing,” he said softly. “It’s… you know, it’s always okay with you.” Alex blinked. He went to open his mouth, but Willie cut him off. “Don’t say anything. Please. Not until I finish.” He took a deep breath and squeezed Alex’s hand once before dropping it. “I, William Jarah River Covington,” he began, which was an odd enough beginning to have Alex reeling already, “Hereby swear that I am going to give you, Alexander Inez Mercer, the best fuckin’ Christmas of your entire life. But-” he paused. Took another deep breath. “I also swear,” he started again, his voice shaking a little, “That every year, till you don’t want me to anymore, I’m gonna keep trying to make it the best. And I’m gonna keep trying to make it better. Every single time. I’m gonna figure out your favourite foods and how to make them, and I’m gonna figure out your favourite Christmas songs and find the prettiest versions of them to play, and I’m gonna buy you the best gift I can, and-” his fingers locked together tightly, his eyes bright and insistent on Alex’s even as his vice wavered. “And I’m gonna make it all happen,” he promised, “Because I care about you so, so fucking much, and I’m gonna do it all standing right by your side, holding your hand, and making sure you know that you make everything in my life better. Making sure that you know you’re the best gift I could possibly get.”

Alex’s breath had caught in his chest, thick and stuck and keeping him in place, mouth half open, hands trembling slightly on the arms of the armchair. He let out a little squeaking noise, trying to shift forward, trying to reach out to Willie, but his body refused, still stuck processing.

Willie swallowed hard. “I just want you to know that you can always come to me if you want to come home for Christmas,” he finished quietly, and that was what it took to launch Alex up out of the chair, flinging himself into Willie’s arms.

“I don’t know what to say,” he half-gasped into his neck. “I- God, Willie, I don’t even-”

“Please, just-” Willie pushed him back by the shoulders. “I, uh. You do know how gay I sounded, right?” His voice was spiked with worry. “And you gotta know, like, you gotta know that was intentional.”

Alex reached up to cup Willie’s face. “Willie,” he breathed. “I know. I know. I-” he didn’t get to finish his sentence, because Willie was surging forward, and there they were, kissing at midnight, his hands on Willie’s face and Willie’s chest pressed up against his, and it was clumsy but it was sweet and perfect and full of an adoration Alex had never tasted before. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Willie kissed him again. “Don’t thank me,” he whispered. “You know I’d do anything for you.”

And right now, being held like a treasure, staring into the sun and stars and moon that hovered in Willie’s eyes, standing a room that wasn’t cold or dark or empty, where he was coveted and covered and not alone- yeah. Right now, Alex can believe that pretty damn well.

#jon doesn't know how to write #julie and the phantoms #otp: i'd do anything for you #ch: skatin' the streets #ch: i've always been a little anxious #sorry it's a lil short it's just a lil bit of fluff for you <33 #ficlet

[unholyobsessions]

Scavenger Hunt

Pairing: Julie x Luke

Description: After a not seeing each other for years, Julie and Luke are brought back together by their home town’s annual Christmas scavenger hunt

Requested: Yes @riverdalefan2019​

Warnings: none i think

Word Count: 4.6k (i know it’s long. please give it a chance)

Masterlist

High school relationships don’t last. That’s what Luke and Julie heard all the time. They started dating halfway through Freshmen year, during Christmas to be more specific. 

They live in quite a small town so it is quite normal for everyone to host different activities, one of the most popular being the Christmas Scavenger Hunt. It’s a tradition going as far as well…Julie isn’t sure how long. Everyone participates, the only rule is if you’re younger than fifteen you have to be paired with an adult. 

After turning fifteen Julie is excited to finally get paired with someone around her age instead of neighbors and family members. When the mayor announced her name along with Luke Patterson she froze. She and Luke had been in the same class their whole lives but never really interacted as they were on very different sides of the social spectrum. While he hung out with the ‘cool’ kids she stuck with the ‘nerds.’ She never minded but there was always a part of her that was extremely curious of the brown haired boy. 

They worked surprisingly well together, and for the first time in twenty years, two teenagers won the hunt. Right after they were given their small trophy he asked her out on a date and things sort of just proceeded from there.

Looking back, Julie doesn’t regret anything, but she does wish they had broken up before they left for college. They were so sure that they could survive the distance, that they would prove everyone wrong. The only thing they managed to accomplish was missing each other, losing their trust, and extinguishing their spark. Days consisted heated arguments over the phone and words that they couldn’t take back. It ended the same way it started, one chilly December night. 

Luke stood at Julie’s doorstep with tears streaming down his face and she had to look away. Words were exchanged, hearts were broken, and all Julie could do was accept it as Luke walked away from her. 

That was years ago though and Julie is completely over it. She’s now a high school music teacher and choir director. 

She’s dismissing the Junior class that she had for last period when a familiar face pokes through the door. 

“Mr. Mercer, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Julie turned back to her desk, knowing that Alex would follow her into the room. 

“Well Miss Molina, as it is tradition, Willie and I are inviting you to Christmas at our house and as it is tradition you will say,” Alex pauses and gestures a hand toward her, causing Julie to laugh lightly and roll her eyes. 

“That you don’t have to. However, I do have plans this Christmas,” Julie says as she starts collecting the papers on her desk. Alex gapes at her, at a loss of words and thankfully he doesn’t have to say anything because another voice breaks through the silence. 

“What is this I hear? Julie actually has plans and won’t spend her Christmas moping alone in her apartment?” Willie walks in and stops next to Alex, throwing an arm over his shoulder. Alex smiles and unconsciously leans into him. Julie smiles at them and has to remind herself that she is supposed to be annoyed at them. 

“Hey!” She calls out in protest. “I do not mope and yes I do have plans. My parents want me to go home this year after years of avoiding it.” 

Alex nod in understanding. “Ah yes. Avoiding the high school ex. Really mature Julie.” Willie snorts but immediately covers it up with a cough when he catches Julie’s glare. 

Julie reaches across her desk to slap Alex’s arm, who pouts adorably at her. “Shut up Alex. I’m not avoiding him exactly. It’s just,” she pauses and looks down at her hands, which are playing with the many bracelets tied around her wrists. 

“I know Jules. I’m sorry.” Alex pulls away from Julie and pulls her into a hug. “If you get sick of being home, we’re staying here this New Year’s since Willie’s parents are out of the country. Remember our apartment is always open to you.” 

“Actually I’m begging you to be here on New Years, Alex always fall asleep at ten thirty,” Willie speaks up and Alex throws whatever his hand grabs first which happens to be a pencil. Willie quickly crouches down and throws an incredulous look at his husband. Alex shrugs and Julie laughs loudly, throwing an arm around her friend’s waist and leaning into him.

. . .

Luke definitely got over it. Sure he was convinced that Julie was the love of his life and he would never find anyone as great as her but who needs love, right? He sure doesn’t, not when he has a bunch of six-year-old children crowding around him as he strums his guitar before nap time. 

Luke loves his job more than life itself so it is a little bittersweet saying goodbye to them the day winter break is set to begin. 

“Have a nice Christmas Mr. Patterson!” A cheery girl covered in a coat that is way too big on her called from her mother’s side. 

“You too Chrissy, see you in January,” he answers before closing the door and letting out a sigh. That was the last of them. He walks back to his desk and collapses on his chair, a small sigh leaving his lips as he closes his eyes. 

The sound of the door opening makes him sit up and he wonders if anyone left something behind. He relaxes once he sees it’s Reggie, who is balancing two cups of what is presumably hot chocolate in his hands as he pushes the door closed with his hip. 

“And the kiddies are gone,” Reggie says, handing Luke one of the cups and sitting on the edge of the desk. 

“That they are. I’m going to miss them.” Luke takes a sip and hisses when the drink burns his tongue. 

Reggie chuckles and pats his knee. “You say that every year man. They’ll be back to annoy us faster than you’ll realize.” 

Luke smiles, knowing he’s right. He and Reggie started working the same year and became fast friends with ‘Mr. Peters’ being the first grade teacher two doors down. 

“Any plans this year Reg?” 

“Nothing big. My sister’s coming over in a few days and will stay the rest of the break.” Reggie takes a sip of his drink and smiles a little. 

“That’s great. I know how much you miss her.” 

“How about you?” Reggie asks, wanting the attention off of him for a while. “What are doing this Christmas? Wallowing in self pity and loneliness like you do every year?” 

“Ha ha. If you must know, I’m going home. My mom’s been bothering me about it ever since I graduated but I always found an excuse not to. This year however, she said that if I didn’t visit her for Christmas she would come here and drag me by the ear so…I figured it was best to comply.” 

Reggie snorts. “Bad memories back home?” He asks, wondering why Luke always refused to go home for the holidays. 

Luke shrugs. “Something like that.” If you count getting dumped on Christmas Eve as bad, then definitely. 

They sit in silence a few seconds, neither knowing what else to say and eventually they bid each other goodbye. Luke packs up his stuff and shoves everything into his back pack, looking around the room one last time before turning the light off and locking the door. 

. . . 

“Okay now next up is Luke Patterson and Julie Molina.”

It really wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Luke and Julie haven’t seen each other in over eight years and the first time they do should not be this way. 

Julie thought it would be fun to participate in the scavenger hunt again this year. Her parents encouraged her to do so, telling her she couldn’t let a past relationship ruin one of her favorite holiday traditions. 

Luke was forced into it by his parents. They reminded him that Christmas was not complete without the scavenger hunt and that he needed to participate. 

They both regretted being such good son and daughter and listening to their parents. 

It sort of felt like time was frozen. They both knew there was no backing out, rules were rules. You keep your partner, no switches. 

Julie makes her way to the stage and once she starts going up the steps she looks up. She meets Luke’s eyes from across the stage and she resists the urge to run away. They meet at the podium and avoid looking at each other the whole time. The host gives them the list of items they need to find and a knowing smile. 

They stand next to each other awkwardly until the end of the pairing ceremony and stay frozen for a few seconds even after the host yelled, “GO!” 

Julie clears her throat. “Sooo-”

“We don’t have to do this,” Luke interjects. “Really we can just pretend we did.” 

“It’s tradition,” Julie says, surprising even herself. “We don’t break tradition. We’re both adults come on hand me that thing and let’s get going.” 

Luke stares at her, completely flabbergasted, as she takes the paper from his hands and starts scanning the list. He quickly snaps out of it and begins to read over her shoulder, slightly breathing down her neck. Julie shivers unconsciously and tries to ignore him as best as she can. 

“Okay we can get the Christmas decorations at my place, we have extras in the garage. The gingerbread cookie house ingredients at the convenience store,” Julie keeps listing off where they should get each item and Luke makes a mental note of everything, listening intently to her. He never realized how much he missed the sound of her voice. 

Once Julie’s done speaking she is slightly out of breath and her eyes are unfocused from staring at the paper for so long. When she starts to walk in the general direction of her house, she stumbles and is fully prepared to hit the floor. She squeezes her eyes shut and awaits the impact but it never comes. Luke is gripping her elbow tightly, but not enough to hurt, and his other arm is snaked around her waist. Julie opens her eyes and looks up at him, her breath hitching once she meets his gaze. They are frozen for a second, neither knowing how to react, being this close feeling both foreign and like coming home. 

Luke clears his throat, a blush covering his cold cheeks as he takes a step back and away from her. Julie snaps back into motion almost immediately, speed walking the familiar path to her childhood home. Luke follows a step behind her, keeping his distance in an attempt to ease the tension he had created. Once they reach the house Julie turns back to Luke with a determined look in her eyes. 

“Okay I’m pretty sure I have some paper snowflakes in a box up in my room. You go to the garage and get the Christmas lights and the old reindeer with the broken leg alright? You know where they are.” Julie immediately turns back around and starts jogging up the stairs and Luke is sure that if she were slightly taller she would be taking two at a time. 

With a small shake of his head, Luke starts navigating around the house, his feet recognizing the correct way to the garage door before he even has time to think about it. He swiftly grabs the small step ladder leaning against the wall by the door as he makes his way to the shelving unit containing the left over decorations. Climbing up to the second step he reaches up and grabs two small boxes of lights, one multi-colored and one plain white, and the box containing the broken reindeer. He steps down and opens the box, a slight pain pulling at his heartstrings when he looks at the dust covered fictional animal with a bright red nose that no longer lights up. 

. . .

“Luke just pass me the ball already!” Julie tries to sound annoyed but the laughter bubbling up in the back of her throat is spilling out into her words. 

“Jules it’s not really that hard, just try to take the ball away from me,” Luke teases, a wide grin spread across his face, his foot resting above the soccer ball. 

“I’m going to kick you in the shin, that’s what I’m going to do,” his girlfriend threatens, a playful glare sent his way. 

Luke raises his arms in defense. “Hey, you’re the one that wants to try out for soccer. Just come here.” Julie reluctantly walks up to him and he pulls her into a hug, pressing a kiss to the top or her head. Julie uses this to her advantage and kicks the ball hard from under his foot. She whoops in triumph but is inevitably silenced by the loud crash of something breaking. 

Both their heads turn to the direction of the sound, groaning when they see the exact decoration they broke. It was Mr. Molina’s favorite, he had bought it when he was in his early twenties and insisted to put out each year even though it was old and fragile and no longer seemed very ’spirity.’ 

“What was that?” Was called from inside the house. 

Julie and Luke turn to each other and yell in perfect sync, “Run!”

. . . 

Luke is snapped out of his memory by Julie’s voice calling from further inside the house. 

“Did you find them?” 

He clears his throat and blinks the tears he hadn’t even noticed were building behind his eyes away. “Yeah, coming.” He picks everything up and meets Julie in the hallway. She’s holding a ziplox bag filled with paper snowflakes and another filled with different colored tinsel. 

Luke follows her out of the house and to where Julie’s car is parked in front of the street and he assumes that, that is where they will be storing their items. 

Julie does not know what she was thinking when she agreed to do this. Just being in Luke’s presence brings back memories that she would rather forget. She walks faster than him, hoping that the distance serves as a sort of buffer from his intense gaze. 

After stuffing all of the items in the car she takes out the list from her pocket. They’re missing a good amount of items, most of which they can find at their local convenience store so she decides that will be their next location. 

She tells Luke as such and doesn’t bother to see if he’s following before she starts speed walking away from her house. Julie’s having trouble wrapping her head around being home. It’s been years since she’s been here, yet everything feels the same. She knows these streets like the back of her hand and she’s sure that she could go walk with her eyes closed. She’s doing the same silly activity with the same person she actually remembers doing it with. She feels like she’s in high school again and she’s not sure what to make of it. 

Lost in her thoughts, Julie doesn’t realize that they have arrived until Luke places a hand on her shoulder to stop her. She looks up over her shoulder to meet his eyes and just like in high school, she is absolutely captivated by them. Always a different color, Luke’s eyes always made her want to kiss him and she’s about to do so but the sound of a cart crashing against the store wall pulls her back to reality. 

Julie pulls away from him quickly with a shake of her head. Luke pushes his hands into his pockets and holds open the door for Julie, who mumbles out a thanks. 

With the thoughts of the scavenger hunt back in her mind, Julie shoos Luke off to find the ginger bread cookie box and three Santa hats each with a different design/color as she goes to find the blue candy canes and a gift bag with Santa and two elves on it. Once they have gathered their assigned items, they meet in the cake isle where they will try to find the dreaded peppermint frosting. 

Always on the list, this particular cylinder of frosting is always out of stock by the time they get there, only managing to get it once before which was the first time they were paired together. 

Their eyes scan the shelves in a haste, scared that another team will show up any second. When they’re about to give up, Julie sees it. Far up in the tallest shelf is the last container. She shoves everything in her arms into Luke’s.

Refusing to accept Luke’s help, Julie climbs up the shelves, her feet struggling to find stability as her arm reaches up. A small smile pulls at her lips as she is finally able to touch the container of peppermint frosting. 

And in that moment, Luke remembers why he fell in love with her. As he sees the determination in her eyes, loose strands of hair falling out of her ponytail and framing her face, arm stretched as far as it will go and fingers tapping the plastic cylinder of holiday sweetness in an attempt to get it within grasping distance, and a small grunt leaving her lips, he falls in love all over again. 

If he’s being honest with himself, he never stopped loving her. Some nights, right before he went to sleep, he could picture her smiling up at him after he said some stupid joke. He could hear her laugh after he hit the ground during roller skating. He could see her walking down the stairs in her prom dress, hair and makeup done to perfection, when Luke thought she could never look more beautiful. 

But some nights, those he struggled to fall asleep, restlessness filling his whole being trying to escape, he saw the tears streaming down her face as she looked down at her shoes to avoid eye contact. He could hear the sobs leave her lips and the way her voice sounded horse after a screaming match over the phone. He could see her standing by her door as he looks over his shoulder before walking away away from her one last time. 

He never stopped loving her and, as a result, his heart never healed. And he will be damned if he has to walk away from her again. 

Julie jumps down, a big smile on her face that Luke can’t help but return. 

They run back to Julie’s car a few blocks away, laughter escaping them from deep in their chests like giddy school children on the first snow day of the year. They throw everything in and Julie expects the atmosphere to change back to their awkward exchanges, as it had all night. But it didn’t. 

Luke throws an arm around her shoulders and she leans into the embrace, fitting into his arm like a lost piece of a puzzle. She allows herself to feel this comfort, this unadulterated happiness for at least a few seconds. 

“What’s next?” Luke’s voice is a whisper, and if Julie hadn’t been so close his question would have been lost with the wind. 

“Umm,” Julie has to pull away in order to retrieve the list form her pocket and she does so reluctantly. “Two oddly shaped pinecones, five tree branches, and a picture of our names spelled out in snow.” 

Luke nods and gestures in the general direction of the park. “Let’s go.” He holds out his hand and Julie takes it with no hesitation. Their fingers intertwine and Julie swears she feels a shock go up her arm and straight to her heart. 

“Do you still play music?” Julie asks, not wanting to walk in awkward silence anymore.

“Yeah, I mean I play the guitar and sing to my kindergarten class everyday and I still write sometimes. Mostly though I’m just focused on teaching.” He smiles at the thought because even though he had dreams of being a rock star, he really cannot imagine himself as anything other than a teacher. “What about you?” 

“Well I’m the music teacher at a high school as well as the choir director so yeah. I basically live music.” Julie looks up at Luke to see him already looking down at her. She knows what he’s thinking, she always does, it’s the same thing she wants to tell him. I’m so glad that you’re still playing, because music has always been their happiness. She sends him a smile, a way to tell him I know and he squeezes her hand in return. 

They don’t let go of each other even as they arrive to the snow covered park. They do let go however when they go in their search for pinecones, Luke saying he’ll get the branches as well. 

Julie looks up after picking up a pinecone she categorizes as ‘odd’ to see Luke with his arms raised, breaking a branch from a tree and her heart speeds up. 

. . .

It’s summer and Luke thought it would be the best idea to drive them up to the Orchard a few hours away. 

When Julie told him that she had never been apple picking, he proclaimed it as the greatest tragedy to ever exist. Julie had rolled her eyes but readily agreed to his suggestion. 

The long car ride is spent jamming out to Luke’s “greatest road trip playlist to ever grace this earth” and when they arrive Julie cannot suppress the smile that fills her face at Luke’s excitement. 

“Come on Molina, I’m going to show you how it’s done.” With a basket in hand, Luke reaches up and pulls out the first apple of their trip. Julie follows after him, laughter bubbling up in her throat as she raises her arm high above her head. 

Unable to reach her desired apple, she turns to Luke with a pout gracing her lips. Luke shakes his head and snakes his bare arms around her waist. Lifting her swiftly off the ground, he is able to help Julie pulls the apple out. He gently starts to lower her, stopping when they are face to face and Julie’s feet are dangling a few inches above the ground. 

“What-“ Luke cuts her off and closes the short distance between them, smiling against his girlfriend’s lips. Julie pulls away with a giggle, wiggling until her feet hit the ground. She pulls Luke to another, smaller, tree where she hopes to actually be able to reach by herself.

. . .

A snowball to the face brings her back to reality. Her head snaps up and she is met with Luke bent over in laughter. Julie drops the pinecone in her hands and starts to maneuver her very own snow ball. Positioning her arm back, she throws with as much force as her body can muster and a proud yell escapes her lips when it hits Luke straight in the face. 

“Oh it’s on Molina!” Luke yells before crouching down and piling snow up in his hands. 

“Bring it Patterson!” Julie follows his lead, and that is how they find themselves, scavenger hunt forgotten. Just two young adults in love, finally finding their way back to each other. 

They throw large amounts of snow at each other, by the end not even shaped into balls. Laughter fills the air and for the first time in a long time, it feels like Christmas. They collapse next each other on the snow, out of breath and with smiles on their faces. 

They both turn to look at each other and time stops. It’s just the two of the them, forever in this moment, each trying to tell the other how they feel. 

“Jules-“ Luke is cut off. 

The bell. The hunt is over. Someone else won. This isn’t their happily ever after. They didn’t win. 

Julie scrambles up, dusting off her jeans with her gloved hands. She hears Luke call out her name again, but she ignores him, her thoughts to keep walking louder than her heart telling her to turn around. 

“Julie!” Luke is in front of her now, his hands are on her shoulders, halting her movements. She looks up at him and immediately wishes she didn’t. His eyes are pleading for her to give him a chance and Julie has always been a sucker for his eyes. 

“What?” She hopes that her harsh tone is enough to defer him, but Luke is anything if not stubborn. 

“Please Julie I-“ Luke realizes that he has no idea what he wants to say, he just knows what he feels and he has never been good at expressing his feelings. Not unless he has a guitar in his hands and his journal in front of him. 

Julie is looking at him expectantly and Luke does the only thing he can think to do at the moment. He kisses her. He kisses her like it’s both the first and last time. He kisses her like he has wanted to do all day long. He conveys everything he’s feeling, every ounce of exasperation, frustration, happiness, sadness, and love. He puts all the love he feels for her into the kiss and hopes it’s enough. 

Julie is shocked at first but quickly melts into him. Her minds is yelling at her to stop, but for once she deicides to listen to her heart, who is telling her that she meant to do nothing more than kiss Luke at this very moment. She is overcome with emotion at the feeling of his lips pressed against hers, that just yesterday were only a distant memory. 

They inevitably break the kiss and Luke is scared to open his eyes, scared that this is all fake, and when he opens them he’ll be back in his classroom, about to dismiss his students. 

Julie opens her eyes first and places her hands on Luke’s cheeks, prompting him to open his. 

“Luke we can’t,” Julie whispers, no matter how much it hurts her to speak those words. 

“Why?” Luke’s heart breaks but he refuses to let her go. Not again, not ever. “Julie if there is one thing I am sure of in this world is that I am meant to be with you.” 

“But we live completely different lives now! You can’t just expect me to drop everything I have worked for,” Julie exclaims, completely exasperated. 

“Then I’ll move,” Luke reasons. 

Julie shakes her head. “No I can’t ask that of you.” 

Luke takes her hands, which have fallen to her sides. He kisses the inside of each wrist and Julie releases a content hum. “You’re not asking anything Jules. I don’t care where I am. Anywhere not with you will never be home.” 

Julie doesn’t know when she started crying and only realizes it when Luke reaches froward to wipe away her tears. “I-“ 

“Stop thinking about the technicalities for just one second. Do you want to be with me?” Luke is more scared of the answer than he should be. Everything is riding on her response to his question. 

Julies breathes in deep through her nose and releases it through her mouth, the cold weather making her able to see her breath form before her. “More than anything.” 

Luke grins and Julie can’t help but grin back at him. Standing on her tiptoes, Julie pulls Luke’s face to hers, relishing in the feeling of his lips that she will never have to worry about forgetting again. 

“I love you,” Julie mumbles against his lips, not wanting to wait for him to pull away completely. 

With a grin, Luke replies, “I love you too.” 

#julie molina #luke patterson #Julie and Luke #luke and julie #julie x luke #luke x julie #juke #jukebox #jukebox fic #julie and the phantoms #julie and the phantoms fanfic #julie and the phantoms fanfiction #jatp #jatp fanfic #jatp fanfiction #julie and the himbos #julie and the fat ones

[utilitycaster]

hello!! i just went thru your history of exandria post and im confused by the dates of the even of crimson midnight and the moleasmyr accident- in De'Leth's bio it says that he is one of those escaped elves and was also the founder of the assembly (ergo, was there for the Eve) so I think something is amiss... I also checked the dates, and Ludinus is an original member of the assembly. So how could he have fled Moleasmyr AFTER he'd already established the Assembly in Rexxentrum?

Hi!

Short, Doylist answer: Matthew Mercer is not superhuman and made a very understandable mistake.

Extremely long answer: Matthew Mercer is still not superhuman and still made a very understandable mistake (my guess is either he meant to put in 565 instead of 585 for the fall of Molaesmyr, or “not a half-century” for the date of the Eve of Crimson Midnight), but this, one of the the two biggest discrepancies in the history of Exandria* can both be handwaved (Watsonianed, if you will permit me turning that into a verb, and if you don’t I fully understand and probably deserve it) with a little bit of headcanon. Here is my headcanon which you are welcome to adopt, with dates, citations, and reasoning, below the jump.

Reasoning for the Date for the Eve of Crimson Midnight

So: the exact phrasing (Matthew Mercer, The Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount (Renton, WA: Wizards of the Coast, 2020), 16) for the Eve of Crimson Midnight is “Not a quarter century after the Marrow War ended....” blah blah, wizards fought, got captured and brought to the king, “After days of deliberation, an agreement was drawn up that would absolve those involved of the usual punishment in exchange for direct subservience to the Crown and the goals of the empire. Establishing themselves as the Cerberus Assembly, this council of mages became an powerful tool for the empire to maintain its position as the dominant force of Wildemount.”

“Not a quarter century” is something I’d personally interpret as “slightly less than 25 years later”; this is also the typical interpretation of that phrasing for most native English speakers, certainly native speakers of American English, which both I and the author of the book are, so we’re going with that.

The Marrow War has an explicit date given; the Admonition (execution of rebellious priests who were in turn spurred on by Julous Dominion interests) was in 544 PD (Mercer, p. 15) and later that year Emperor Manfried (the title of King rather than Emperor comes later) attacked the Julous Dominion, starting the Marrow War. It lasted “over sixteen months” which again I’d interpret as “more than 16 months, but probably not more than 17 otherwise you’d say that”, so depending on when the Admonition was, it ended in either late 545 PD, or early 546 PD. Not quite 25 years later would therefore put us in roughly 570 PD for the Eve of Crimson Midnight.

Reasoning for the Date of the Fall of Molaesmyr

This is much simpler! Per Mercer, p. 42: “What is known is that in the year 585 PD, suddenly and without warning, a wave of purple-gray shadow rapidly crept from the center of Molaesmyr to engulf the entire city.” It then goes on to describe that the elves fled, some “eventually” to settle Bysaes Tyl, some to Uthodurn.

Ludinus Da’leth’s personal history

Mercer, p. 42: “Ludinus is the oldest and only original member of the assembly...He was one of the mages who survived the destruction of Molaesmyr and fled to Bysaes Tyl, but he saw the opportunity to achieve greatness within the empire and left his culture behind to continue his arcane pursuits.”

A note on Bysaes Tyl

Per Mercer, p. 96, it took several years to build up the city, but for the sake of argument I am treating the region to which the elves of Molaesmyr originally fled as also Bysaes Tyl, thus indicating Ludinus may have only been there very briefly.

Here’s How Ludinus Can Still Be A Founding Member Of The Assembly

While the Eve of Crimson Midnight occurred circa 570 PD, as did the initial agreement that those involved would be directly subservient to the crown, it doesn’t actually indicate how long it took for those people to establish themselves as the Cerberus Assembly.

I would absolutely believe that a bunch of wizard academics who all tried to kill each other so hard they created collateral damage in the streets of Rexxentrum would absolutely take 15 years or more to consolidate a formal council and give it a cool name. In fact, can’t you just imagine it? Ludinus Da’leth, a promising young elven mage living in “the height of reborn civilization on Wildemount” (Mercer, p. 18) sees his home, his laboratories, everything he’s worked on, all destroyed. Perhaps it’s by his hand; perhaps by that of a colleague. He flees to a bitter cold forest with absolutely nothing. To the south, Rexxentrum stands as now the major site of arcane talent. Perhaps there’s been communication between the wizards of the Empire and those of Molaesmyr. Perhaps he’s heard that they are sworn in service to the king, but have been in disarray because they can’t elect a leader-after all, they’re in this position because “A number of noble houses with a strong history of studying arcane pursuits began to compete with other high-born magic practitioners from the Julous Dominion”. They can’t openly fight anymore, but the political games continue and neither those from within the pre-Marrow War boundaries of the Empire nor those from the recently-incorporated Julous Dominion can agree on council representation, and they’ve been deadlocked for over a decade. They have been serving the king, but he is becoming displeased.

Enter a neutral** third party: Ludinus Da’leth, formerly of Molaesmyr. A suitable compromise who just happened to make his way south - a gifted mage, eager to prove his allegiance to the Dwendalian crown and share what he knows. And so: the founding of the Cerberus Assembly, 15-20 years after the Eve of Crimson Midnight and shortly after the fall of Molaesmyr, following an uneasy interim period of mages in slightly disorganized service to the crown. And scene.

*the other big discrepancy is that the Chroma Conclave was stated to be in the year 815 PD on page 20 of the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, but in Campaign 1 episode 103 a minor NPC when asked for the date says the year is 812, which would instead put the Chroma Conclave in the last few days 810 PD per the dates given. However, since the month and day that NPC gives also don’t line up internally even with the other stated events of Campaign 1, and since using a date of late 810 for the Chroma Conclave would make Allura pretty young when she sealed away Thordak and conflicts with a bunch of dates mentioned since, including Delilah Briarwood’s expulsion from the Cerberus Assembly, Vilya’s time on Rumblecusp, and The Darrington Brigade’s stand against Quackthulu, I’m personally inclined to say “Matt probably didn’t have the date written down when asked, because it was episode 103 and the exact year had not been relevant so far, and/or misread 817 for 812 when looking down at his notes.” The headcanon to fix this is of course that the NPC got the date wrong and Vox Machina either didn’t realize due to *gestures vaguely at the events of episode 102* or was like wait are we in the past? seems fake and then asked someone else offscreen and got the right date, which is way less fun but much easier.

**technically, lawful, although who knows what his alignment was then. If you also buy into theories that Ludinus was in some way responsible for the fall of Molaesmyr you get some fascinating parallels to one similarly opportunistic and ambitious Hot Boi, and yes I did make a really stupid alignment joke just to make this point.

#critical role #ludinus da'leth #herein lies my application to the cobalt soul #betaadmin

[plutojones]

Chapter Eleven: Trinity Restored

Riften. It felt like it had been ages since she’d been home. Heh. Home. It’d only been a couple months since she’d come to Skryim. The cold air of winter was beginning to set in, and she could feel the chill deep in her bones as she made her way down to the Ratway. Opening the door to the Ragged Flagon she felt a mixture of emotions. Comfort, Peace, Anxiety, Fear. Keeping her hood up she made her way past the merchants towards the tavern. Karliah was sitting at one of the tables, looking towards Andie as she approached. She stands up and walks over, keeping her voice low so only Andie can hear.

“I'm glad you're here. I think some of these people are beginning to suspect who I am. Are you ready to face the Guild?”

“Ha. No. What if Mercer is there?” “Then we show them Gallus's journal and hope for the best. Remember, we have proof and all he's got is his word.” She pulls out the journal and shows it to Andie. “Let’s go.”

The two make their way into the back, through the false wardrobe, past the two guards on duty, and into the Ragged Flagon’s cistern.

Immediately standing between them and the rest of the cistern is Brynjolf, Delvin, and Vex.

“You better have a damn good reason to be here with that murderer.” There’s a quiver to Brynjolf’s voice. An expression Andie was all too familiar with. The need to take care of his family torn with his desire to help her.

“Bryn-”

“Please, lower your weapons so we can speak. I have proof that you've all been misled!”

“No tricks, Karliah or I'll cut you down where you stand. Now what's this so-called proof you speak of?”

Karliah holds out the journal to Brynjolf. “I have Gallus' journal. I think you'll find its contents disturbing.”

“Let me see. No, it... it can't be. This can't be true. I've known Mercer too long…”

“It's true, Brynjolf. Every word. Mercer's been stealing from the Guild for years, right under your noses.” Andie looks between Brynjolf, Delvin, and Vex, hesitantly waiting to say something.

“There's only one way to find out if what the lass says is true. Delvin, I'll need you to open the Vault.” Brynjolf turns to begin walking across the bridge to the vault on the opposite side.

“Wait just a blessed moment, Bryn. What's in that book? What did it say?” Delvin and Vex turn after Brynjolf, following him. Staying behind a good bit, Andie and Karliah follow as well.

“It says Mercer's been stealing from our vault for years. Gallus was looking into it before he was murdered.” Brynjolf holds out the journal before taking it back and skimming through it again.

Delvin crosses his arms.  “How can Mercer open up a vault that needs two keys? It's impossible. Could he pick his way in?”

Vex stands next to Delvin. “No way. That door has the best puzzle locks money can buy. There's no way it can be picked open.”

“He didn't need to pick the lock.” Karliah pipes up from behind Andie.

“What's she on about?” Delvin turns to look at Karliah.

“Use your key on the vault, Delvin. We'll open it up and find out the truth.” Brynjolf motions for him to step forward towards the pair of double doors. While he does, Andie’s mind races back to the ruins, to the impossible doors that Mercer seemed to pick effortlessly. What did Karliah know? If he didn’t pick the lock, how did he do it?

“I've used my key, but the vault's still locked up tighter than a drum. Now use yours.”

Brynjolf approached the door, inserted his key, and together the two men pushed the doors open to reveal a chamber filled with empty chests, shelves, crates, everything.

“By the Eight! It's gone, everything's gone! Get in here, all of you!” Brynjolf runs inside.

“The gold, the jewels... it's all gone.”

Vex slams her hand against one of the doors. “That son-of-a-bitch! I'll kill him!”

“Vex! Put it away... right now. We can't afford to lose our heads... we need to calm down and focus.” Brynjolf turns to look at her, Andie, and Karliah.

“Do what he says, Vex. This isn't helpin' right now.” Delvin moves to calm her down.

“Fine. We do it your way. For now.”

“Delvin, Vex... watch the Flagon. If you see Mercer, come tell me right away.”

The pair nod and begin to head out. Karliah follows after them shortly, leaving Andie and Brynjolf alone in the vault. The ginger is currently running both hands through his hair, looking around in disbelief. His eyes eventually fall to Andie and his hands fall to his sides. “I swear to the gods, Andie, I didn’t know. He-he told us Karliah killed you.”

“Hey, it’s okay.” She moves forward to put a hand on his arm. “I’m here, I’m alive. It’s okay.”

“Fuck.” He looks down at her, his stone cold demeanour from before cracking. “And when he heard reports of you in Markarth, Mercer told us you had betrayed us and were working with Karliah. I didn’t want to believe him… I’m so sorry, lass.”

She gives him an understanding nod. “I forgive you. You were protecting your family-” “You’re my family, Andie. You were looking out for a group of people you just met, whereas Mercer has been stealing from us for years. I should have seen it, I should have…” His gaze falls to the ground between them. “I should have come lookin’ for you. Spoke to you.”

Andie nods again and then offers a solemn smile. “I can only forgive you so many times. Eventually you’re going to need to accept it.”

He offers a half-hearted chuckle. “Smart lass. That’s what I like about you.” He looks back up at her. “I want to help you track Mercer down, but before that I need to know everything you do.”

Andie lets out a large, long puff of air. “Woof. That’s a tall order.”

“Start where you can.”

“Mercer killed Gallus, not Karliah.”

“Aye. I feared that was the case. From that last entry in Gallus' diary, it looks like he was getting close to exposing Mercer to the Guild. Anything else?”

“Gallus, Karliah and Mercer were Nightingales.”

“What? Nightingales? But, I always assumed they were just a tale... a way to keep the young footpads in line. Was there anything else she told you?”

“Karliah was behind Goldenglow and Honningbrew.”

“Trying to make Mercer look bad in front of Maven, eh? Clever lass. Was there anything else?”

“No, that’s it really. Everything else is just speculation on my end.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“I-I’ve heard of Nightingales before. From my Grandfather. I think maybe he used to be one.”

“Huh, well, maybe we’ll find out as we delve deeper. First though, I have an important task for you. I need you to break into Mercer's home and search for anything that could tell us where he's gone.”

“He has a house here?” “Aye. A gift from the Black-Briars after they kicked the previous family out... place called Riftweald Manor. He never stays there, just pays for the upkeep on it. Hired some lout by the name of Vald to guard the place.”

“I’ll handle it.”

“Be careful, lass. This is the last place in Skyrim I'd ever want to send you. Just find a way in, get the information and leave. And you have permission to kill anyone that stands in your way.”

“Understood. What’s my best way in?”

“Good question. I've only set foot inside a few times myself and that was in Mercer's company. If you can get past his trained watchdog, I think your best bet might be the ramp to the second floor balcony in his backyard.”

Andie crosses her arms. “I don't suppose the ramp is easy to access.”

“No. It's some sort of crazy contraption Mercer commissioned for quick escapes. I'd wager a well-placed shot at the ramp's mechanism would lower it in a hurry.”

“And the watchdog?”

“That'd be Vald. A real piece of work, that one. Mercer's holding something over his head, keeping him loyal. Talk to Vex. She used to know him very well... if you catch my meaning.”

Andie nods and begins looking around the vault. “Is there anything left?”

“Mercer took everything. Even all of our plans are gone.”

“Plans?”

“Before Mercer took over, Gallus started collecting every bit of material he could on locations the Guild could heist. Museums, keeps, estates... you name it. By the time Mercer took over the Guild we must have had a few dozen.”

“Do you know how he could have gotten in?”

“I don't have a clue. That door is impenetrable. Without two keys, it's impossible to open. I have a key, Delvin has a key, and Mercer has a key. That's it. There are no other copies. I get the feeling Karliah knows something though.”

Andie gives one final nod before turning to go. “Right. I’ll be back.”

“Wait, lass.” Brynjolf reaches out and grabs her arm. “Careful at Mercer’s place. I don’t want to lose anyone else to that madman.”

She gives him a soft smile and a nod. “I’m not planning on dying anytime soon.”

She slips out of his now loosened grip and makes her way to the surface.

Entering the Ragged Flagon, Andie makes her way over to Vex before leaving.

“Hey-”

“If I see Frey, I’ll pluck his eyes from his skull with my bare hands!”

Andie blinks twice before speaking again. “Anyway, I need to know about Vald.”

“That pig? Oh, I have info on him. More than you care to know.”

“Oh?” “The only thing Vald understands is gold. A man after my own heart.”

“So, I should buy him off?”

“Sure, but he'll ask for a whole lot. I mean, you are asking him to betray Mercer Frey. Your best bet would be to erase his debt with Maven Black-Briar. If you talk to her, she might be able to give you the details. Of course, you could just run him through and take what you need off of his corpse... I could care less.”

Andie nods slowly. “Yeah, I’ll just talk to Maven first real quick.”

“While you’re there help yourself to anything in Frey’s manor. I would.”

Andie goes to the Black-Briar Manor and asks to speak with Maven. Annoyed as usual, she agrees to speak with her anyway. On the subject of Vald, she speaks in an incredibly frustrated tone. Apparently he messed up a job for her recently and was paying it off by working for Mercer on her orders. If Andie can retrieve the enchanted pen he lost in the lake, she’d be willing to let his debt go. The things she’s willing to do to avoid killing someone…

Meanwhile while Mercer is who knows where, Andie spends the entirety of her afternoon and evening searching for this strongbox at the bottom of the lake. Once she finds it there’s a loud, underwater “fucking finally” before she picks the lock, grabs the pen, and swims to the shore. Upon returning to Maven, she presents the pen.

“I found the Quill of Gemen-Gemin-I found the fucking pen.”

“Really? I wrote that off a long time ago. Well, I suppose I need to fulfill my end of the bargain. Give this document to Vald. It frees him from the debt, but I never want to see him in Riften again.” She pulls a document from out of her desk and hands it to Andie. “Thanks. See you around.”

She rushes out of the manor and makes her way to the alley behind all the houses. Finding the gate to Mercer’s house she shouts to the man pacing in the backyard.

“Hey. Hey you. Fuckface. Get over here.”

“This is Mercer Frey's place and he don't like visitors. Now go away.” “I paid off your debt with Maven. Let me in, bitch.” She holds out the paper Maven had given her to prove his freedom. “I can't believe it! How did ya' talk her into this? Never mind, I don't care. I'm just glad I don't gotta' work for Maven anymore. Here, ya' did me a favor, I guess I owe you one.” He hands her a key and then steps away to stare at the paper. “Wh-you could just, fine.” She uses the key on the gate, swiftly pulls out her bow, shoots at the ramp’s mechanism, and then makes her way to the upper floor of Mercer’s home.

Once inside, she could hear voices. Mercenaries. Great. Pulling her bow back out, she slinks down to the floor, keeping to the shadows and dimly lit areas. One by one she strikes them in the head, making her way through his house. Eventually she spots a strange looking wardrobe that sits slightly above the floor - barely noticeable to the naked eye. She opens it up and pushes out the false backing, finding the secret passage down. Despite that however, she triggers every trap he had set down there. Unsure how she was still alive, she eventually finds his secret planning room and steals Everything. His gems, the Chillrend sword that was locked away, even a random pair of boots in one corner. Of most interest, however, is a map on the desk, and a bust of the Grey Fox. Another gift for Delvin. Boy was getting spoiled.

Bag and arms full, she continued down the tunnel, only to find it connected to the Ratway catacombs. Quickly finding the door to the Ragged Flagon, she moves to regroup with the guild.

She finds Brynjolf, Delvin, Vex, and Karliah all seated at a table. She interrupts their conversation by setting the bust on the table and then pulling out the cube she stole from the wizard. “Happy Birthday, Delvin.”

The man’s face lights up. “Well I’ll be. These will go nicely in our little collection - the one thing Mercer decided to leave. Probably because we don’t keep it in the vault.” He was, of course, referring to the shelves behind Mercer’s desk. Every time she got something interesting for him, he’d put it up on the shelves to display to the whole guild.

“You find anything, lass?” Brynjolf interrupts. “We've scoured the town and I've spoken to every contact we have left. No sign of Mercer.”

“He wasn’t there, but I did find this.” She pulls out the map and plans she found. Brynjolf takes it and immediately begins looking over it.

“Shor's beard! He's going after the Eyes of the Falmer? That was Gallus's pet project. If he gets his hands on them, you can be certain he'll be gone for good and set up for life.”

“Then we need to stop him.”

“Agreed. He's taken everything the Guild has left, and to go after one of the last greatest heists is just an insult. I've spoken to Karliah, and made amends for how the Guild's treated her. Now she wishes to speak with both of us.” Andie looks over at the Dunmer.

“Somewhere more private.” Karliah stands up and walks over to one of the corners of the tavern. The pair follow, both crossing their arms as they approach.

“Brynjolf, the time has come to decide Mercer's fate. Until a new Guild Master is chosen, the decision falls to you.”

“Aye, lass... and I've come to a decision. Mercer Frey tried to kill both of you, he betrayed the Guild, murdered Gallus and made us question our future. He needs to die.”

“We have to be very careful, Brynjolf. Mercer is a Nightingale, an Agent of Nocturnal.”

“Then it's all true... everything I heard in the stories. The Nightingales, their allegiance to Nocturnal and the Twilight Sepulcher.”

“Yes. That's why we need to prepare ourselves and meet Mercer on equal footing. Just outside of Riften, beyond the Southeast Gate is a small path cut up the mountainside. At the end of that path is a clearing and an old standing stone. I'd ask you both meet me there.” Andie and Brynjolf look at each other and then at Karliah, giving her a nod. “Good. I’ll see you there.”

As she leaves, Andie watches her but speaks to Brynjolf. “Since when do you speak Falmer?”

He looks down at her with a raised eyebrow.

“You read his journal with no issue.”

He gives her a smirk and looks away. “I have my secrets.”

She looks up at him and squints. “Uh huh. Well, we should get going.”

“Aye. I’ll be there shortly. Just need to talk to the others briefly.”

Arriving at the standing stone outside of Riften, Andie gives Karliah a wave as she approaches.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

A few moments later, Brynjolf arrives and takes his place next to Andie. Exchanging a glance, with him first, Andie then looks to Karliah. “What's the significance of this place?”

“This is the headquarters of the Nightingales, cut into the mountainside by the first of our kind. We've come to seek the edge we need to defeat Mercer Frey.”

“What kind of edge?” Brynjolf raises an eyebrow.

“If you'll follow me, I'll try to explain on the way” She motions to a set of doors behind the stone that Andie swears wasn’t there a moment ago. Following Karliah in, Andie thinks for a moment before speaking again.

“Tell me about the Nightingales.”

Karliah speaks as they head down a dirt tunnel. “Gallus, Mercer Frey and I were once members of what's known as the Nightingale Trinity. The Trinity disbanded twenty-five years ago when Mercer Frey betrayed us by slaying Gallus and dumping his body in the ruins of Snow Veil Sanctum.”

“Were they always a part of the Thieves Guild?”

“Indirectly. The Trinity is usually selected from the ranks of the Guild although its existence is a closely-guarded secret.”

“What is their purpose? Sorry, I just… I have a lot of questions.”

“It’s alright. The Nightingales protect the temple of Nocturnal, a place known as the Twilight Sepulcher.” “Who exactly is Nocturnal? I’ve heard the name before, but never with context.”

“She's the mistress of night and darkness and the patron of every thief in Tamriel. She isn't one for worship and reverence. There are no priests and no sermons, no services and no alms. She influences our luck and in return demands payment.”

“Like a guild contract?”

“You're closer to understanding than you realize. The only difference is she doesn't demand payment in the traditional sense and sometimes the cost can be quite high. Whether you know it or not, Nocturnal dictates how well we perform as rogues.”

“But I have my own skills.”

“Again, you have to think differently. Haven't you ever noticed how our luck behaves? Like a novice picking an impossible lock or a blind man suddenly turning to face you as you reach for his pocket? It's through these subtle means that Nocturnal influences us.” Andie is silent, contemplating the words, thinking of all the times she’s survived traps or blows when she shouldn’t have.

“Nocturnal's whim is the greatest mystery to everyone. There have been volumes written on the subject. Does she expect payment when we die? When we suffer does she revel in our misery? No one knows. The return certainly seems worth the risk though.”

After a few moments she speaks again. “What happened to wanting Mercer alive?”

“From the moment you were struck with my poisoned arrow at Snow Veil Sanctum, my path changed its course. Perhaps I couldn't bring Mercer back alive, but together, we were able to clear my name and to put Gallus's memory to rest. I'd always intended Mercer's fate to ultimately be decided by the Guild, and it seems they've spoken.”

“Karliah-” Andie stops her by grabbing her arm. “-Am I to become a Nightingale?”

“It’s my hope that you will.”

As they reach the end of the tunnel into an open space, Brynjolf lets out a low whistle.

“So, this is Nightingale Hall. I heard about this place when I joined the Guild, but I never believed it existed.”

“The assumption that the Nightingales were just a myth was seeded within the Guild on purpose. It helped avert attention from our true nature. What's wrong, Brynjolf? I can almost hear your brow furrowing.”

“I'm trying to understand why I'm here, lass. I'm no priest, and I'm certainly not religious. Why pick me?”

“This isn't about religion, Brynjolf... This is nothing more than a business transaction between yourself and Nocturnal. Consider this an extremely risky job but with a massive potential for profit, and you'll do fine. Now, this is Nightingale Hall. You're the first of the uninitiated to set foot inside in over a century. Now, if you'll both proceed to the armory to don your Nightingale Armor, we can begin the Oath.”

She motions ahead to a platform with three pedestals, each with the symbol of Nocturnal. Andie goes first, standing in front of one of the pedestals. In a flash of smoke, her clothes change to one of grey, tightly fit leather. In a similar flash, both Karliah and Brynjolf’s clothes change as well. Andie gives a slow nod, though her expression is hidden behind the mask

“Damn. We look good.”

“Okay, lass. We've got these getups on... now what?��

“Beyond this gate is the first step in becoming a Nightingale.” She motions to a gate on the other end of the armory.

“Woah there, lass. I appreciate the armor, but becoming a Nightingale? That was never discussed.”

“To hold any hope of defeating Mercer, we must have Nocturnal at our backs. If she's to accept you as one of her own, an arrangement must be struck.”

“What sort of arrangement? I need to know the terms.”

“The terms are quite simple, Brynjolf. Nocturnal will allow you to become a Nightingale and use your abilities for whatever you wish. And in return, both in life and in death, you must serve as a guardian of the Twilight Sepulcher.”

“Aye, there's always a catch. But at this point, I suppose there isn't much to lose. If it means the end of Mercer Frey, you can count me in.”

“What about you? Are you ready to transact the Oath with Nocturnal?” She turns to Andie. “I'm not sure I understand the terms.”

“By transacting the Oath with Nocturnal, you're entering into a business deal. You'll be provided all of the power and knowledge befitting a Nightingale. You're free to use those powers as you see fit to further your own goals or the goals of the Thieves Guild.”

“And in return?”

“In return, you'll be required to defend the Twilight Sepulcher and everything within when the need arises. More importantly, upon your death, your spirit will be bound to the Twilight Sepulcher as one of its guardians.”

“And there’s no going back either, is there?”

“Once the Oath has been struck, the terms are binding. Knowing this, are you ready to undergo the ceremony?”

Andie takes a deep breath, looking down at the armor and then to Brynjolf, and finally back to Karliah. “I’m ready.”

“Then let’s continue.” She leads them to the gate which she opens by the pulling of a chain and then leads them into an inner sanctum with three platforms. “Stand on one of the platforms.”

Andie moves to the left-most one, while Karliah takes the middle, and Brynjolf the right.

With a deep breath, Karliah raises her arms in the air and begins to speak to the platform all three of theirs was connected to.

“I call upon you, Lady Nocturnal. Queen of Murk and Empress of Shadow… hear my voice!”

A swirl of energy filled the space in the chamber before them as an unfamiliar voice speaks out.

“Ah, Karliah. I was wondering when I’d hear from you again. Lose something did we?”

“My Lady, I’ve come to throw myself upon your mercy and accept responsibility for my failure.”

“You’re already mine, Karliah. Your terms were struck long ago. What could you possibly offer me now?” The voice was cold, like a scolding mother.

“I have two others that wish to transact the Oath; to serve you both in life and in death.”

“You surprise me, Karliah. This offer is definitely weighted in my favor.”

“My appetite for Mercer’s demise exceeds my craving for wealth, Your Grace.”

“Revenge, how interesting…Very well, the conditions are acceptable. Continue.”

“Lady Nocturnal, we accept your terms. We dedicate ourselves to you as both your avengers and your sentinels. We will honor our agreement in this life and the next until your conditions have been met.”

“Very well. I name your initiates Nightingale and restore your status to the same, Karliah. And in the future, I’d suggest you frain from disappointing me again.” With that the energy dissipates and Karliah begins to step off her platform towards the center of the chamber where the voice came from.

“Now that you've transacted the Oath, it's time to reveal the final piece of the puzzle to you; Mercer's true crime.”

Andie stands there dazed for a moment before snapping out of it and walking down from her platform. “There’s more?”

“Mercer was able to unlock the Guild's vault without two keys because of what he stole from the Twilight Sepulcher... the Skeleton Key. By doing this, he's compromised our ties to Nocturnal and in essence, caused our luck to run dry.”

“So the Key unlocks any door? That explains…” “Well, yes. But the Key isn't only restricted to physical barriers. All of us possess untapped abilities; the potential to wield great power, securely sealed within our minds. Once you realize the Key can access these traits, the potential becomes limitless.”

Andie is quiet for a moment, looking at Brynjolf, but unable to read his face in their new uniforms. She looks back to Karliah. “Sounds like no one should possess it.”

“Good, then you understand why this is about more than just Mercer's lust for power."

"If the Key isn't returned to its lock in the Twilight Sepulcher, things will never be the same for the Guild. As time passed, our luck would diminish to the point of non-existence. And whether you know it or not, our uncanny luck defines our trade.”

“Let’s go then. It’s time to teach Mercer a lesson.”

“Before we depart, Brynjolf has some business to discuss. I suggest you listen to him. I’ll be waiting out front.” Karliah continues on ahead as Andie turns to face Brynjolf.

“What’s up?”

“There's one last piece of business we need to settle before we go after Mercer... the leadership of the Guild.”

“Okay…?”

“Karliah and I had a long discussion while you were at Mercer’s house. Thanks to your efforts, Mercer's treachery has been exposed. After we deal with him, all that remains is restoring the Guild to its full strength. As a result, we both feel that you have the potential of replacing Mercer as leader of the Thieves Guild.”

“Me? What about you?”

He gives a long, tired sigh. “I've been at this game a long time, my friend. A long time. I've stolen trinkets from nobles and framed priests for murder. I'm good at what I do, maybe even one of the best. But it's all I know. I've never been one to lead. Never desired it, never cared for it. Don't want it.”

Andie is quiet for a moment. “But...I don’t…”

“Look. Everyone in the Guild admires what you've done. Maybe they won't come out and simply tell you, but I promise you it's true. And now they know Mercer never genuinely cared about the Guild. He lacked the loyalty you obviously possess. I can't think of anyone better.” He placed a hand on his shoulder, and while she can’t see it, she knows he’s smiling beneath the mask.

“Alright. I accept.”

“Then it's decided. When this is all over and Delvin's contacts assure me that we've regained our footing in Skyrim, we'll handle the details. Until then, we have quite the task ahead.”

“Indeed we do. We should get going.”

“I've been pouring over the plans you brought us, and I'm convinced the Eyes of the Falmer are in the dwarven ruins at Irkngthand. Karliah and I will meet you there. Prepare yourself, lass. This will be a fight to remember.” He lowers his hand from her shoulder and motions for her to continue after Karliah.

Andie is quiet for most of the way out of the Hall, but as they reach the end she stops and turns to look at him once more. “So...Nightingales.” “Aye, and some of what Karliah said is starting to make sense. Mercer may have damaged our reputation and raided our coffers, but this goes well beyond even his twisted form of larceny. Old Delvin kept calling it a curse and we all laughed at him. Looks like the joke's on us.”

“Do you think we stand a chance against Mercer?”

“If you would've asked me that yesterday, I'd have said no. But now I think our chances have improved. Look, call me crazy if you like, but I trust Karliah. I don't think she'd lead us down a suicidal path. Besides, I'd rather die with some of Mercer's blood on my blade than spend the rest of my life regretting that I ran the other way.” And with that the pair exit the Hall.

Outside Karliah waits for them, her mask currently pulled down. “Shall we get going then?”

“Sure...but…”

“Yes?”

Andie shrugs. “I don’t feel stronger.”

“With the Skeleton Key missing from the Twilight Sepulcher, I'm afraid Mercer's seen to it that none of us can benefit from Nocturnal's gifts.”

“But she spoke to us.”

“You merely transacted the Oath; signed the unwritten contract with Nocturnal. In order for us to receive our abilities... our end of the bargain, I'm afraid the Key must be returned.”

“Then Nocturnal's angry at us?”

“If Nocturnal was truly displeased with me... with any of us, she wouldn't have answered my call. I have no doubt that we still hold her favor and I believe it gives us enough of an edge to defeat Mercer Frey.”

“I see… and… May I ever come back here?”

“Yes. Now that you're a Nightingale, you may consider this your home. You'll find that this place offers many things that will help you in your endeavors as well as a wealth of information for you to learn. Once the Skeleton Key has been restored to the Twilight Sepulcher, I'll make this place my home as well.” She offers Andie a short smile before turning to walk back to Riften.

Andie looks once more to Brynjolf before sighing and taking a step forward. Neither of them really planned for all of this to happen, yet here they were. Who would have thought that their first real mission together would involve killing their former Guild Master...

#company in shadows #skyrim fanfic #Andie Blackthorn #brynjolf #nightingale #Karliah #i love this armor so much you guys #its so good

[blacklister214]

Illusions: (Chapter 5) The Offer

L.A. 1983

Caleb stood in the stage wing, listening to the applause thundering from the ballroom. Usually this was the best part of the night for Caleb. Soaking in adulation. Being praised to the skies. At the moment though he couldn’t muster the slightest bit of enthusiasm. He knew very well the source of his ennui.

Performing in the park, even for a minute, had been a high Caleb hadn’t felt in quite some time. There were over a hundred ghosts here tonight, and yet somehow it didn’t come close to the two dozen lifers he’d mesmerized that afternoon. The energy just wasn’t the same.

Caleb marched up the stairs. He knew he shouldn’t. He knew that to keep drawing more ghosts to the hotel he needed to work the room. Convince tonight’s guests to bring friends to the next performance. That was how they’d grown their audience from five spirits to the crowd they’d pulled in this evening. Unfortunately his heart just wasn’t in it tonight. The others would have to carry on without him. Delilah would be irate, but then what else was new?

Caleb stopped in his tracks when he reached the green room. A large man with a thick black beard was sitting on the couch, flipping through what appeared to be an old magazine. Caleb was taken aback to see himself posed dramatically on the cover.

“Who are you and what are you doing back here?” Was this rather imposing individual a fan? Caleb had the vaguish sense of recognition, but he couldn’t quite place the face.

“To answer your first question: I am the man who now owns this hotel. As to your second question: I was waiting for you. I confess I presumed I would have to wait longer. You seem like a man who enjoys a good party.” Caleb felt sure he’d misheard. Probably staring into the man’s intense dark eyes had momentary confused him. Or maybe the slight Russian accent had thrown him.

“You own this hotel?” That was impossible. This man was clearly a ghost. Not only could he see Caleb, but he’d gotten to the green room without being noticed. A man this size could not have snuck past anyone.

“Yes, the legal documents are right there if you do not believe me.” Caleb grabbed the papers off the table. They certainly looked official, not that he would have known if they weren’t. In life Caleb’s lawyer had handled these sorts of things.

“Ghosts can’t own hotels.” Buying buildings took money and bank accounts, even Caleb knew that much. Both things were hard to come by without a pulse. The man, however, shrugged as if it were of little matter.

“They can if they have lifers in their employ and the savvy to make the most out of the gifts death has granted us. It is remarkable the fortune one can amass, merely by spying on certain bankers, wall street day traders, and CEOs. But I did not come here to bore you with drawn out stories of my business empire. I am here to offer you the opportunity to become part of it.”

Caleb blinked. That was a surprising offer. He wasn’t sure who this man was, but if he thought Caleb would be caught dead in a business office, he had another think coming.

“I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. I couldn’t imagine a more boring fate than spying on hedge fund managers for eternity.”  The man didn’t seem at all perturbed by Caleb’s denial. In fact he cracked a small smile.

“You misunderstand me. I would never dream of asking a man of your talents to waste his time skulking around boardrooms. What I had in mind was you becoming my partner in running this club.” If Caleb had had a beating heart, he was certain that offer would have made it stop.

“Club?” The giant’s smile grew another half an inch. Caleb silently cursed himself. He was being too obvious with his interest.

“Yes. The Hollywood Ghost Club. We will close this section off from the main hotel, leaving only one clandestine entrance for the VIP lifers.” Caleb’s head was spinning. It was every fantasy he’d had since returning to the land of the living. But that was impossible.

“Lifers? I thought you said it was going to be a Ghost Club.” A ghost club Caleb could understand. A more polished version of what Caleb was running now.

“Only in that it will be run and staffed by ghosts. The audience, though, will be lifers of the highest caliber who will pay handsomely for the privilege of watching you perform.” Caleb’s stomach dropped in disappointment. He should have known it was too good to be true.

“Except they won’t be able to see me or the band. You do recall the little issue of us being invisible to them?” Caleb was probably being more sarcastic than was wise, but he didn’t care. He didn’t like being teased with his dream and then having it yanked away.

“You did not seem to have any trouble being seen this afternoon.” For a long moment Caleb had no words. How did this man know about the park? Caleb hadn’t even told Delilah yet. He suddenly felt uneasy. Had this stranger been spying on him?

“That was a fluke. I don’t know how it happened.” There was no way he was mentioning Alex. He had no idea who this man was or if his stated intentions were genuine. Caleb was dead, and thus relatively safe from harm, but the boy wasn’t.

The man cocked his head to the side and Caleb had the strangest sensation he had just been tested. Whether he’d passed or failed in the stranger’s estimation was anyone’s guess.

“Mr. Covington, do not be coy. We both are aware it had to do with the child. Alex, is it not? A fine name for a boy, I think.” Caleb didn’t have blood, but he could swear he felt it drain from his face. Was that a threat? If the behemoth even considered harming Alex, Caleb would find a way to destroy him.

“What exactly are you suggesting? That I kidnap a four-year old from his bed every night so he can play with me at the club?” Caleb scrutinized the man closely, watching for any hint of ill intent. He saw none. The giant stayed in his seat, posture relaxed as he shook his large head.

“No. The opposite, in fact. One of the conditions of you accepting this deal would be your ending your association with the child.” The gears turning in Caleb’s mind ground to a halt. Whatever direction he’d assume the conversation would take, it hadn’t been that.

“Excuse me?” End his association with Alex? That was...unthinkable. He felt like hitting the stranger for even suggesting it. Odd because he wasn’t generally a man given to violent impulses. Well...except where Greg Mercer was concerned, but given enough time with the man most everyone would feel that way.

“Do not worry, you do not need the child to be seen. Your connection allowed you to reveal a power that was already within you. The ability is rare, but the energy required to use it can be acquired in other ways.” Caleb was simultaneously intrigued and offended. Yes, he was desperate to learn how to be visible to lifers, but the statement seemed to imply that’s all Alex was to him.

“That’s not the only reason I spend time with Alex.” Caleb would never be so dishonest as to claim the abilities that came with the relationship weren’t a draw, but there was so much more to it than that. Alex filled a hole Caleb had never realized he’d had in him.

Once again he felt the man appraising him. Staring into his eyes as if to discover the secrets of Caleb’s soul. After a moment the giant nodded.

“You are genuinely fond of the boy. I can empathize. It is natural in circumstances like yours, but for your sake, as well as his, you must sever that connection as soon as possible.” That gave Caleb pause. The man’s tone seemed sympathetic, though Caleb was quite aware of how easy that was to fake.

“Why?” What harm could possibly be done to either of them? Alex strengthened Caleb, he was sure of it. He brought him peace and joy. And hadn’t Caleb improved the child’s life as well? Hadn’t he prevented Alex’s father from grinding his son down? Hadn’t he arranged for the boy to pursue his own passions? Hadn’t he taught Alex about music and more importantly about self-confidence?

“What do you know about ‘unfinished business’?” Caleb frowned, unsure where this was heading.

“I’m told the reason ghosts don’t ‘cross over’ when they die is that there is something they left undone in their lifetimes. If they complete whatever task they need to, then they vanish, to whatever awaits them on the other side.” Caleb suppressed a shudder. Crossing over was something he had absolutely no interest in. Even if his parents had been wrong and hellfire wasn’t waiting for him, what was the best he could hope for? It wasn’t like he had anyone potentially waiting for him. Anyone he missed and wanted to be reunited with. What else could heaven hold for him? Wings? A harp? An eternity of serenity? Caleb would pass on that fate, thank you very much.

“Precisely. I do not know what your unfinished business may be, but I can tell you with certainty it is connected to your Alex. The more time you spend with him, the more you risk your existence. Even if that weren’t a concern, you do understand the boy is a lifer. He will eventually die and at present you have no way of ensuring he will return as a ghost.”

Caleb felt his throat close up. The man was right. Alex would die. That shouldn’t be news to Caleb. Intellectually he must have known it, and yet he had never considered it. Alex was so young and Caleb hadn’t really spent much time pondering his own immortality.

Ghosts were uncommon. The small number he’d found in LA told him that. He could be grieving Alex for millennia. Suddenly Caleb remembered something the man said and latched onto it like a drowning man to a buoy.

“At present?” What did that mean? Was it possible to ensure Alex would return as a ghost when he died?

“I can teach you how to bind his soul to yours so that when he does pass on, he will be tethered to you, here in this plane. In the end you’ll have everything you want.”

Caleb thought he’d been tempted before, but now he understood the expression ‘I’d give my right arm for _________.’ A club of his own. A live audience. Alex with him forever.

But he would have to leave him. Leave Alex. He’d miss everything. Watching Alex grow from boy to man. Caleb would be unable to celebrate his successes with him. He  would be barred from consoling Alex through his hardships. He’d have to look in Alex’s tearful face and tell him he wasn’t ever coming back.

“I can’t. I can’t just abandon him. It would break his heart.” No. He couldn’t do that. Nothing was worth that.

“What if I told you I could take that pain from him? Lock the memories of you away in his mind. Let him live a normal life. He would not have to grieve you, and when the time is right you could open that box and be joyfully reunited.”

Caleb tried to think rationally, but it was difficult with the pain emanating from his chest. Alex forgetting Caleb would hurt Caleb deeply, but would it hurt Alex? You can’t miss what you’d don’t remember. And loath as Caleb was to admit it, the man wasn’t wrong about a ‘normal life.’

Typically Caleb scoffed at the term ‘normal’, but he was aware it was what most people wanted. By staying in Alex’s life, Caleb would be denying the boy any hope of that. If the incident at the park was any indication it was already creating tension between Alex and his peers. It would only get worse as the boy got older. Forcing Alex to keep a secret of this magnitude would eat at him. The cookie incident was proof of that fact.

He couldn’t decide. He needed time to think. Time to determine if the offer was even genuine.

“Why me? I’m sure there have been other performers over the years who would have leapt at this offer.” How many people had they asked before him? Why had they turned it down? What had happened to them after they did?

“Los Angeles has seen many talented ghosts, but you have more than just talent. You also have intelligence, ambition, and power. It is a rare combination. We have been looking to establish a club here in Hollywood for some time, but we needed someone special to run it.”

Caleb pondered that ringing endorsement for a moment. How much was true and how much was the man blowing smoke up his ass? Intelligence and ambition? In less than a year Caleb had managed to lay the foundation for a ghost business. His was the only such place in town. Objectively he had to admit that spoke to his drive. Power? He’d discovered for himself his abilities were unusual, especially for a ghost as young as he was. The club only worked if lifers were able to watch the performances. If the man was to be believed Caleb had the ability to make that happen. Perhaps the man was being sincere after all.  

“Are there other Ghost Clubs?” The way the man spoke suggested he’d struck this arrangement at least once before. Los Angeles was relatively young in comparison to other cities around the world. Surely some of them had to have established clubs already in place.

“Rome. Paris. London, Madrid. Moscow. Berlin. Buenos Aires. Tokyo. Hong Kong. Cairo. Athens. The list goes on. Ghost Club performers routinely swap venues. You can travel the world. Be worshipped by fans from every major country.” It was funny he hadn’t even considered travelling since rematerializing in LA. Now that it was offered to him though, it was an extremely tempting prospect. There had to be a catch. Things that were too good to be true usually were.

“You said there was more than one condition. What were the others?” The big man motioned Caleb to sit opposite him. He’d never stood when Caleb had entered and had let Caleb have the physical high ground up until this moment. Was that deliberate? Allowing Caleb to feel more secure? In control of the situation? This though, suggested they had entered a new phase. The business deal.

“The second is very simple. If you come across any exceptionally powerful spirits, you contact us. We are always on the lookout for new talent.” Caleb nodded once. The request made sense. It wasn’t like there were ghost Help Wanted ads. Some kind of headhunting model would be the only way a ghost organization could find suitable personnel. Caleb himself must have reported by someone, and now he was being offered the opportunity of an afterlife.  

“What else?” There had to be more to it than simply picking up the phone from time to time.

“The third condition is that you will take responsibility for the ghosts of Los Angeles.” Caleb was not thrilled with the sound of that.

“In what respect?” Was he supposed to be some kind of undead mayor? Hear grievances. Mitigate petty squabbles? Where was he supposed to find the time, not to mention the patience, if he was running the club?

The man steepled his fingered and fixed Caleb with a penetrating stare. He tried not to be intimidated, but it was unsettling.

“It is crucial to the survival of all ghosts that we remain urban legends. Myths. Stories the world at large scoffs at. We can not afford to become a widely acknowledged reality.” Caleb raised his eyebrows. That didn’t jibe with what he’d already been told.

“You said the guests of the club would be lifers.” If they didn’t know the performers were ghosts, then why would they pay such extravagant fees?

“Select lifers, yes, but we have ways of ensuring their silence. The public at large can not gain proof that we are as real as they are. It would be a disaster. History has proven time and time again that whenever two groups come into contact with one another it only ends one way. War. Sometimes even extinction of one of the sides.” Caleb couldn’t argue with that thinking. Hating the other was something humanity always seemed to excel at.

“What would I be expected to do?” Hopefully the man had the means to enforce this code, because nothing in Caleb’s current repertoire would be much good subduing another ghost.

“Deal with any ghosts who threatens to expose us. How will be up to your discretion as long as the issue is contained. There are skills I will teach you to bring recalcitrant spirits to heel. No one minds a little innocent haunting. A light switch flickering. The car horn beeping. But things on a larger scale, for insistence on your little performance today, would need to be curtailed.”  

That gave Caleb pause. It hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d already broken the man’s policy. Twice actually if you counted his possession of Greg Mercer. He pondered mentioning that incident, then decided against. If the man didn’t know, Caleb wasn’t going to risk the deal by telling him.

“Anything else?” The third condition would be a hassle, but considering what he would be getting in return, it was worth the price.

“One last thing. We would need to establish a soul link.” That sounded very new age, but Caleb suspected it was not.

“What is that?” The giant leaned forward, somehow sensing Caleb’s reluctance despite his poker face. Perhaps this was the least attractive condition for the other potential club owners as well. Undoubtedly it was why he saved it for last.

“It is an energy channel. I put my mark on you and I have the ability to tap into your energy reserves if necessary. You, in turn, will establish your own links with less powerful spirits and be able to siphon some of their energy.” Caleb suddenly had an image of the symbol that had appeared on Alex’s head when Caleb had kissed him. Had he already forged one of these ‘soul links’? His stamina had increased since that day. Was that as a result of his constant practicing, or had he been unintentionally stealing energy from Alex?

“Do they hurt?” Alex hadn’t experienced any pain, if anything he’d seemed comforted by it.

“They can be uncomfortable when they are first laid. Beyond that, it is about intention. The kind I will establish with you and that you will make with your fellow performers will be unnoticeable most of the time. It’s only when you draw on an extreme amount of energy that those with your mark will feel any effects. This is why it is important to have as many soul links as possible. The more ghosts, the less power each has to contribute.”

That made sense. Alex usually became sleepy after Caleb performed tricks for him, but Caleb had just assumed it was because he was a young growing boy who needed naps.

“But there are other kinds of links?” The ‘intention’ comment hadn’t escaped Caleb. Caleb’s intention had been benevolent when he’d kissed Alex, ergo his mark shouldn’t harm the boy. That was comforting. What wasn’t comforting was the implication that marks could hurt ghosts.

“It is possible to lay marks that will drain a spirit’s energy completely.” Completely? What did that mean?

“What happens to those spirits?” What happened when a ghost’s energy reached zero?

“They are completely absorbed by the mark-layer.” Dead. That’s what the man was saying. Ghosts could kill each other. Perfect. So much for his earthly cares being over.

“Sounds a bit like ghost cannibalism.” The giant nodded, as if conceding the point.

“I suppose it does. However, there are dangerous spirits in the world and sometimes extreme measures are necessary to deal with them.” Caleb finally understood. Not only was he potentially going to one day face spirits that could end his existence, he was expected to be ready and willing to do the same to them.

“I see.” Caleb couldn’t help but feel doubt. Before this had been a hard decision, but now it was an impossible one. Caleb had no idea if he could hold up his end of the deal if he accepted. He was many things, but a killer? He just didn’t know.

“I’m sure this is very overwhelming, but think about what you’ll be getting out of this bargain. Your own club, designed exactly to your specifications. A suite in this hotel all to yourself where no lifer or ghost will ever trespass. The opportunity to perform before packs houses around the globe. The chance to one day spend an eternity with your Alex. Not to mention the opportunity to learn tricks like this.”

The man waved his hand and suddenly Caleb’s wardrobe had completely changed. Gone was his magician’s garb, which after wearing it for most of the year, even Caleb was a bit tired of. Instead he found himself in a very familiar looking black suit. It wasn’t contemporary, but from Caleb’s time. There was even a pocket watch. He looked down at the magazine on the table. Of course. He’d worn this suit in the photo shoot.

The giant wasn’t done. Another wave of his hand and two brandy glasses appear on the table. Caleb blinked. That was new. Moving an existing object was one thing but conjuring drinks and, dare he hope, food was quite another.

“May I?” Caleb nodded at the glasses. He’d eaten and drunk nothing since his death. The need wasn’t there anymore, but the longing was.

“Of course.” The man picked his own glass and raised it. Caleb followed suit. “Do smerti!”

They clicked their drinks and Caleb sipped. It was exactly as he remembered. The taste. The warm feeling spreading through his limbs. Incredible.

“What did that toast mean?” He was fairly certain it was Russian, but beyond that he had no clue.

“‘To death.’ Typically my people toasted to heath, but in our cases, ‘death’ seemed more appropriate. What do you say Mr. Covington? Will you accept my deal?”

It was a lot, everything he’d learned in the last few minutes. Everything he’d been offered. He appreciated how the man had answered all his questions. He’d been as upfront about the drawbacks as he had the incentives.

“I’d say it’s an offer I can’t refuse.”  Perhaps if he were another type of man he’d walk away from this opportunity. Be satisfied with what he had, and accept its limitations. Caleb, however, was not that type of man and never had been. He’d risk anything if it meant he could have everything.

“Excellent.” The man extended his hand to Caleb and after only a moment’s pause Caleb took it. The moment his hand made contact, he felt a brief burning sensation on his wrist. When he pulled back to look, he saw a dark red circle and within the circle what seemed to be an upside down capital L followed by an uppercase P. Odd. After a few seconds it sunk into his wrist and disappeared. Caleb rubbed the spot, the pain fading as quickly as it had come.

“It just occurred to me. We’ve just established this ‘soul link’ and I don’t even know your name.” The man grinned wider than he had at any other point in the conversation. Caleb suddenly had the unnerving impression that it was less of a smile, and more of a wolf baring its teeth.

“Grigori. Gregori Yefimovich Rasputin.”

#caleb covington #jatp fanfiction #julie and the phantoms fanfiction #julie and the phantoms #jatp #jatp netflix #alex mercer #jatp fanfic

[eponymous-rose]

Return of the Revenge of the Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E108-109 (September 15, 2020)

It’s been six months since the last Speech Machine Upper Luminosity (is that right?), so let’s jump right back in like nothing ever happened!

Tonight’s guests are Laura Bailey and Matt Mercer!

Announcements: Talks will now be biweekly, discussing two episodes at a time! Unfortunately, this means fan question submissions aren’t doable yet, since they’ll often be filming Talks for episodes that haven’t aired yet; questions will come from crew, but fanart and cosplay from earlier episodes will still get awards. Dani Carr’s new official title in the company is Lorekeeper!

Episodes 108-109

Brian asks Matt about the tug-of-war with the Moonweaver’s influence: “how much of that did the Traveler and Jester’s interactions influence him not going back to the Feywild?” Matt: “Okay, well, the Moonweaver isn’t necessarily happy about taking on the images and icons and co-opting elements of her worship, but also isn’t a vindictive deity necessarily.” She has a similar fey history to Artagan, “so I knew this encounter, there would be a punishment involved, at the very least to take Artagan down a few pegs.” He wasn’t going to be actually banished; the Moonweaver just wanted to “scare the shit out of him: You think you’re a trickery god? Welcome to the original trickery god, bitch.” There was a possibility of him just vanishing for a while, if there was no sign of humility; but based on their interactions, it was just enough to show the planetar that maybe this isn’t the same “troll of an Archfey” that the Moonweaver had known. “Maybe this is enough of a lesson.”

Laura thought Artagan was going to be “gone-gone, and Jester was going to be left alone”. She thought there was going to be a Feywild rescue, and Jester would have to try to find a new deity.

Laura’s wi-fi conks out. So does mine. Ah, 2020.

Jester would probably have followed the Moonweaver in an attempt to make amends. Laura mentions that every time she sat down to prep something for Traveler-Con, she realized Jester wouldn’t sit still long enough to plan it.

Laura: “If that cult hadn’t been there and she hadn’t seen what a false god could do to people, I don’t think she would have come to the realization that what her and the Traveler were doing was detrimental: oh, we’re fucking over people’s lives, hardcore.” If Artagan hadn’t been on board with picking a different deity, Jester would have stepped down at Traveler Con and she would have exposed the lie.

Matt’s “super happy” because he was purposely making sure he didn’t know what was going to happen at Traveler Con. “Okay, everything around it’s going to be interesting and fleshed out, but as to the actual convention, I have no idea what’s going to happen.” He wanted to balance a complete train wreck with character beats and mini-arcs, and he was satisfied with how that worked out.

Brian asks if Jester ever considered walking away from the Traveler. Laura: “Yeah. It could have progressed to that point. Jester always gave him the benefit of the doubt, and loves him with her entire heart, so if he would have not seen that what they were doing was not acceptable, in his own way, then Jester would have probably walked away. I don’t know if she would have walked away from him, but it would have been a big issue for her. I have no idea what that would have meant for her... my entire character arc.”

How does Jester feel about the Traveler now? “She loves him, but at the same time, she doesn’t adore him without boundaries. She sees a little bit more of who he is, and the worshiping aspect isn’t there anymore. She sees him more like another friend. That’s a complicated relationship for a cleric to have.”

Matt talks about what a fan he is of his players. “I’ve just been enjoying the hell out of this.”

Has Artagan learned his lesson? He’s been living for a long time, and old habits are hard to break. Matt points out that Artagan “is free in a place that he doesn’t have complete domain over, and he’s been humbled a few times. I think he’s definitely learned a series of lessons to some degree. We’ll see how far it sticks and where their relationship goes.”

Brian asks Laura how it’s been to have the spotlight on Jester for a long time. Laura: “It was nerve-wracking. I feel very relieved that it’s on to something else now, but it was so much fun, too. I feel like I kept getting so emotional as her through all this. Having to come to terms with all the things she was going through was crazy. But it felt good.”

Cosplay of the Week: An amazing Yasha by @shiieldmaiden on Twitter, photo by @asheneyed.

Matt: “I took a bath for this.”

Brian notes that Jester found herself caught between her god and the M9. Who would she have chosen if Artagan hadn’t kicked her off? Laura: “Here’s the thing. If Fjord hadn’t jumped on my back, Jester would have gone. But him doing that, I mean, that’s why I froze like I did. I really didn’t know where it was going to go. Thankfully Artie made that choice for me.”

The Vilya reveal’s been waiting since Marisha made Keyleth’s backstory. Brian recalls that the question of what happened to Vilya came up in the campaign 1 recap, and Matt was cagey about it. “When I got the original backstory from Marisha, in my head, I was like, her mother’s probably still alive, just lost to the chaos for reasons that I’ll get to, but I like the idea of an eventual reunion when it made sense.” As they got later in the campaign, Keyleth’s story became about taking on this leadership and stepping into her mother’s footsteps: “I didn’t want to rob her of her journey by bringing her mother into it before it was complete. There wasn’t a beat that felt right for it in the first campaign unless the players actively wanted to go and seek it out.” He knew she was on an island somewhere, and that there was an issue with her memory, but the details were still hazy, and it never came up in the first campaign. “As soon as we got to Rumblecusp as a possible visiting location, I was like, this would probably be the island that Vilya’s at.” He knew the community would pick up on it quickly, but the players would likely be too engrossed in their own story. “Getting to send her home was wonderful, both for an idea of closure, but as a long-waiting gift to Marisha and Keyleth. It’s something that I’ve been looking forward to giving to her.”

On building Vilya’s character: “I wanted to make sure she wasn’t too similar to Keyleth. She couldn’t remember her family, but when she did, it meant everything.”

Brian asks what inspires Jester’s thought process to try and befriend every creature they come across. “Everyone is interesting. Except for Celia, she’s a bitch. If you piss her off, she might just hate you forever, but everybody else she thinks is pretty great. Jester can hold a good grudge.”

Brian asks Matt about the inspiration for Vokodo. “It is a heavily customized version of a Morkoth. I was just intrigued by how they had created this creature that creates this island around it. It has ways of affecting the minds of creatures around it. I didn’t enjoy that the creature was only Medium in size, and I wanted it to be something that was a little bit more changed by its experiences.” He also tied it in with the Astral Sea lore and suggested that it had been changed by its proximity to this volcano, similarly to how Thordak did in the first campaign.

Fan Art of the Week: An amazing Traveler Con Jester and Artagan by @callanthee on Twitter

How about the visions of the living city? Laura: “I don’t know what the fuck is going on with that thing. If it true that there’s a Molly connection, the Eyes of Nine, I don’t know. It’s just too much. We have to look into it.” Matt, blandly: “Weird mysteries.”

Who would the Disintegrate spell have hit if it had ricocheted? “Initially, I would have wanted to choose Caleb, like back at himself, because the immediate threat of that ray towards Vokodo, it would have been just right back at him.” But the runner-up would have been Jester because of the threat of the banishment back to the Astral Sea, the one place he didn’t want to go.

Laura could tell from Liam’s gameplay that he hadn’t realized someone was going to perma-die from that. “I thought it was going to be me, because I had been the one to banish him.”

Dani points out that the group would probably have gone after Artagan if Jester had died right before Traveler Con.

Matt highlights Cad’s Divine Intervention as pretty much the only way they could have learned the important information they used to prepare for the fight with Vokodo. He was torn between frustration at not being able to use this boss to its fullest potential... and pride in his players.

Laura is amused at listening to the characters talking about Jester when she’s not there. “It’s fun to hear but not be able to use that at all in your interactions with them.” Laura points out that even her sister who watches the show doesn’t trust the Traveler. Matt mentions that he’s always being very careful with the relationship between the Traveler and Jester, because it could get into rough territory. “There are unhealthy elements of their relationship, very much so. A lot of her story has been about disillusionment.” Laura: “Yeah. Eyes open.” They’ve set up bumpers to make sure they don’t veer into territory the players find uncomfortable. 

“Artagan at the end of campaign one versus Artagan at campaign two are different. He came into this world a purely selfish being of id and impulse. He still has those dark tendencies and can lean down those dark paths. But he went from a purely chaotic, selfish creature to unintentionally beginning to care for people that aren’t him.” Traveler Con definitely left a mark on him. “Aw shit, I let them in.”

Sam starts Facetiming Brian. “How does he know when we’re filming this?! No. I’m not going to do it.”

Matt and Laura are "super excited” for the new landscape of the next part of the journey.

Laura notes that Jester is getting past the point of “needing to put on the mask”, including around her mom. And as that’s happened at Traveler Con, the small breakdowns have been piling up. “That’s what therapy’s like, right?”

On the new goliath shopkeeper (even with the mispronunciations as clues, I got nothing on that spelling), Matt points out that purchasing magical items is tricky because most things were pulled into the war effort. He was trying to figure out how a shopkeeper could build a business in that environment: “with a bunch of really small, shitty enchantments”. As a kid, he loved novelty shops, and took a lot of inspiration from those memories.

So glad everything’s back in business! “As always, don’t forget to love each other. And don’t worry, it’s almost Thursday.”

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long text post

[dollyreblogs]

35 for the Mercer Triplets? -Ioanna

How easily does your oc get attached to things? Does everything have a sentimental value to them, or do they see nothing as more valuable than its practical use? What about with people/animals?

Willow isn't all that attached to things other than her boomerangs but that's about it. She also has a hard time getting attached to people outside of her brothers but she gets there eventually.

Ashton gets more or less attached to people than he does to objects, especially if they give him a sort of special attention and everything compared to his siblings.

As for Boomer, he can go both ways. The people in his life are super important and the things that they give him, like the boomerang necklace his mom gave him. He gets easily attached and is more or less the most emotional out of his siblings and both Will and Ash worry it's going to hurt him in the future.

#The Mercer Triplets

[characterclasses]

Classing the Umbrella Academy

Keep in mind that I’m going based only on the show here, as some of the characters in the comics have wildly different personalities and motivations. That being said, let’s get started!

1. Luther Hargreeves 

Luther is one of those characters who seem like a simple class build on the surface, but end up surprising you. Looking at this hulking, emotionally repressed man, one might immediately think that barbarian would be a good fit, but in my opinion you have to go deeper. Barbarians are defined by their rage after all, and Luther only really loses control once he gets high. Otherwise he’s generally very aware, even seemingly frightened, of his raw power (and the form that goes with it). The next obvious choice then, is fighter, as Luther is obviously well-versed in combat. While Luther does have the raw physicality of the Champion subclass, this isn’t quite right either. Unlike Diego, Luther relies solely on his physical strength and the mastery he has over it to get through fights, preferring not to use weapons other than his fists. 

It is for that reason that I finally settled on Luther as a monk, specifically the Way of the Open Hand subclass. These monks are the masters of unarmed combat, and literally pack quite a punch in a way that no other class does. Luther fits other aspects of the monk, too. Way of the open hand monks have abilities relating to meditation and tranquility. Luther spent years in isolation on the moon - just look at the shot of him from the very first scene in episode one, sitting on the moon watching the planet, and tell me that wasn’t the epitome of a meditative state. 

2. Diego Hargreeves 

In contrast to Luther, Diego is pretty easy to class. Everything about him, from the knives to the wardrobe, seem to scream rogue. And Diego is a rogue, no doubt about that. He’s most comfortable with his knives in hand, operating under the cover of darkness. His subclass is an easy one, too. Unlike rogues such as Patch, who is an Inquisitive archetype, Diego was trained to use his abilities in order to take out targets as efficiently as possible. Diego was trained as an Assassin, and despite his hero/antihero framing, has been using those deadly skills ever since. 

3. Allison Hargreeves 

Based on Allison’s powerset, it seems a little reductive to class her as a bard, but here we are. Allison’s not just a bard because of her rumors though. More than any other character, Allison inspires her siblings, from drawing Vanya out of her shell, to rallying the others to work together and take action to stop the apocalypse. More than even Luther, Allison knows what it is to be a team player. 

Which isn’t to say that she doesn’t love the spotlight! As a bard from the College of Glamour, Allison is all about giving enthralling, enchanting performances both on screen and in the field. Her rumors let her take center stage and ensure that everyone is paying attention. 

4. Klaus Hargreeves 

Okay, it’s obvious that Klaus is some sort of necromancer, let’s get that out of the way. I don’t think that he’s a wizard though; wizards study and work for every scrap of knowledge they have, but Klaus actively tries to drown out his ability with any sort of drug he can find. Klaus is a character intimately acquainted with life, death, and higher powers, and makes for a wonderfully reluctant cleric. Hell, the guy’s even spoken directly to God (though she didn’t really like him). As a Grave cleric, Klaus has a special relationship with the boundaries of life and death, including seemingly having the ability to manipulate souls. 

5. Five Hargreeves 

Five is...a complicated class build, which makes sense as he probably has the most complex character arc in the show. Five is a relatively new class build, one that debuted in Matt Mercer’s Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount. To put it simply, Five is a wizard, specifically a chronurgist. This is a type of mage that specializes in the probability of time magic, focusing in small moments in time and letting the consequences of the changes ripple out into the wider world. Sound familiar? Five certainly has the intellect for a wizard, and the single-minded focus needed to learn new spells (or in his case, figure out the equations needed to stop the apocalypse). Plus, that guy sure loves to cast Blink. 

But Five isn’t just a wizard, not after living the life that he did. Five spent decades surviving alone in the apocalypse, giving him the skills needed to multiclass into ranger. These skills are honed and eventually put into use as a Horizon Walker, a subclass of ranger that guards the world from threats coming from outside the plane - or outside of time. 

6. Ben Hargreeves 

For poor, doomed Ben I will be kind of reductive, just because at this point we really know so little about him. Ben is a warlock, in control of forces beyond understanding - or are they in control of him? In any case, the Horror that used Ben’s chest as a portal into our plane of existence definitely seems to resemble a Great Old One. I’ll also say that Ben has/had a Pact of the Tome, as why else would a ghost be casually reading a book? I know this class build is based entirely on stereotypes and first impressions, but now that Ben’s officially a main character as of season 2 I may revisit his class later as he develops. 

7. Vanya Hargreeves 

Vanya is a character with a mysterious, untameable, raw power - in other words, she’s definitely a sorcerer. As a Wild Magic sorcerer, Vanya’s power is explosive and unpredictable, and even she doesn’t yet know its limits or how to control it. Her unconscious surges of power can do anything from shatter glass, to make people enjoy her music, to blowing up the moon and ending life on Earth. Like many sorcerers, Vanya’s power is found to be threatening by those around her, and attempts by outside parties to suppress or control it tend to go very badly. 

#dnd #dnd 5e #umbrella acedmy #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #dnd classes