#anyway our new campaign is i think almost to same. the setting and the main 'problem'.

[sw4tch]

made a dnd warlock for our newest campaign and his main design inspirations are Steven Grant, Guillermo de la Cruz, and Ralsei, so you can see how his vibes are completely impeccable in the final product.

Will share the art later but im like in love with him. He's a satyr so he has cute goat legs and im ♡♡♡ so happy with how he looks. Eshuu my beloved ♡

But what i love the most is that our dm asked us to describe one npc relationship our character has

So his ex-best friend is now part of his story and i love it. THE DRAMA I INJECTED INTO HIS LORE GODDDD

basically they live in a setting where gods walk among the people right?

So Eshuu is fascinated with the concept of godhood, and wants to learn how it works. Are gods made? Where do they come from, where does their power come from? He's a bookworm and later a scholar.

And his bestie is an elf warrior named Jakobi who's more than happy to participate in the god trials to prove he's worthy of their blessings.

Then one day, in one of Jakobi's trainings, he's gravely injured and loses his sight, barely makes it out alive, and he CRAWLS to Eshuu's home for help.

Eshuu is horrified and immediately gets him help, but Jakobi says things like "i failed, i failed this time, but next time I'll be worthy, I'll be worthy"

And that makes something inside Eshuu switch.

His beloved best friend almost died for his devotion to gods that are egocentric and capricious, and he still wants to be Worthy of them?

That's just not right!

So from then on Eshuu studies up on everything related to gods, just so he can know How To Make Them. And How To Destroy Them.

This is forbidden knowledge of course. But that's the best kind of knowledge, and he won't stop until he learns all of it.

On his side Jakobi trains even harder to become an invincible elf warrior to take on the god emperor trials. He almost died once, that just won't do. He won't get blessed if he loses the trials he has trained his whole life for.

He's kind of a mercenary now, but that's a side gig while he gets stronger.

Then, the trials come. Jakobi is ready to sign up. He goes to have dinner with Eshuu to share the good news that the time has finally come for him to prove he's worthy.

Dinner goes nicely until he mentions it.

They fight, Eshuu so angry that Jakobi is just going to throw away his life just like that, and the elf is angry because he can't believe his best friend doesn't believe in him, in his life's purpose.

So that day, Jakobi walks out. Makes it clear that he doesn't want to see Eshuu ever again. And leaves.

Eshuu is absolutely devastated, but most of all, he's angry. Almost feels betrayed.

Nonetheless, he channels all that fury into passionate and obsessive research. The God Emperor himself must not be as invincible as they all think.

Then, in his search of knowledge, Eshuu communes with One Of The Old Ones, Caiphon. Or rather, he's found by The Dream Whisperer.

Caiphon promises knowledge, promises his dream of finding the core of godhood, promises him his wildest wishes.

All for the small price of his devotion.

Eshuu accepts immediately.

His eyes are forever darkened now, the clear sign of his pact.

Eshuu doesn't see Caiphon again. It's like it was all a dream.

Life goes on, until one day he has a dream. Caiphon speaks to him again after such a long time, and he encourages him to start adventuring.

It is, after all, the first step he needs to take to fulfill his destiny.

And so the story goes...

Anyway man i love Eshuu and Jakobi. I know it will not play as i have it planned in my head bcus #collective roleplay BUT

Friends to Enemies To Lovers is what I'm going for with Eshuu and Jakobi. Love these gay bitches.

Also they're both trans and they got their top surgery done by the same witch ☆

Cant stop making comics about them too. Theyre shitty and rushed BUT MY GOD THESE SKETCHES ARE GETTING DONE AS FAST AS I CAN

#snaily blabber

[rudesheep]

have i talked to you all about our new campaign???

#k our dm's the same so like we gotta control our eye rolling and side glancing #i love the guy but .................. #ugh i shouldve supported sibel?? why didnt i do that??? #well sibels setting is all desert while dm's is like all arctic/scandinavia??? #guys cant we get #like good ole spring in here #anyway our new campaign is i think almost to same. the setting and the main 'problem'. #but our characters changed bc we got bored i guess? like our whole shit was sooooo stretched and forced #i loved our characters (my icon) especially my baby milena #but dm's so hard to ugh get along w idk man. cant do this and cant do that. and its usually misogynistic. racist. homophobic. etc etc. #anyway now i have a half-orc character and kay has a half-elf and theyre siblings and our whole thing is really funny imo #mine is a merchant cleric and hers is an anthropologist swashbuckler #i just love them sm i got emotional thinking about them adsfg #we have a mule that we named after our german philosophy professor #and i think we wont tell other players at first asdfgh #gonna call him Johann i guess. or Hanne? #rudetalks

[robininthelabyrinth]

Field Medicine - on ao3 or tumblr pt 1, pt 2

Jiang Cheng didn’t really like change.

He thought it was a rather justified opinion, as things went – he’d gone through far too much change in his life, staring from the moment Wei Wuxian appeared in his life through to studying at the Cloud Recesses, the indoctrination camp, the loss of his parents and sect, the Sunshot Campaign, and now, even after it was all supposed to be over, Wei Wuxian’s recent change in behavior and personality…

Subconsciously, Jiang Cheng clung to the few things that seemed to remain the same.

Jiang Yanli, for one. No matter what she’d been through, what they’d all been through, she was still his jiejie, warm and wonderful and caring, a refuge from all troubles, and it was so easy to forget how much had changed for her, too. Her engagement to Jin Zixuan had been broken years ago, ages ago, before everything happened and the world irrevocably changed, and yet somehow whenever he had imagined her married, imagined her wedding day, he had always seen her surrounded by the gold of Lanling Jin.

Maybe that was why he was quite so shocked when it was Lan Xichen – First Jade of Lan, Sect Leader Lan, Zewu-jun, the second of the Venerated Triad – who came to him with Jiang Yanli’s arm tucked in his and asked if it would be possible to arrange a date for their marriage.

“To…each other?” he asked, a little stupidly, and then realized how much of an ass he was making of himself. “Uh, of course! I – uh – that is – when did you even meet?”

Jiang Yanli hid a laugh in her sleeve. Lan Xichen was more polite, but there was amusement in his eyes as he recounted the story of how Jiang Yanli had been assisting with medical care during the Sunshot Campaign, how he had been injured on one of his missions, how she had helped him, how they had taken to each other, how he had asked and she had agreed –

When he finished explaining, he lifted up her hand and pressed his lips to it, and for the first time in Jiang Cheng’s life he saw his sister blush and stutter like a girl in love, delight written in every line of her.

His heart gave a pang, and then melted.

She deserved it. She deserved it more than anyone.

“We decided to wait until after the war had ended to tell you,” Jiang Yanli told him, and Jiang Cheng understood. “But it has, now, and so…”

“It’s what you want?” he asked her, just to be sure. “I’d always thought, you know…but this, this makes you happy?”

“It does,” his sister said, and there was no doubt in her tone.

“In that case, of course we’ll set the date,” Jiang Cheng said, and reached out to grasp Lan Xichen’s hands – his new brother-in-law’s hands. “You’d better take good care of her, you hear me? Or else we’ll skin you.”

Wei Wuxian would have thought of a better threat, he thought. Wei Wuxian ought to be here for this, for something of this magnitude, but he hadn’t shown his face here today, even though he’d promised he’d be there, just as he promised, just as he’d failed to appear for days –

He was probably still healing from the final battle, Jiang Cheng forcefully reminded himself, even though actually Wei Wuxian had been fairly obviously up and about for a while. He certainly seemed to find enough energy to go to the wine shops to guzzle down liquor even if he didn’t find time to help out with anything else.

Still. Jiang Cheng wasn’t the one who’d used demonic cultivation to save the day; he shouldn’t judge.

“When would you like to announce the engagement?” he asked, and then frowned, abruptly remembering some gossip that had drifted past his ears. “There’s a celebration in the Nightless City tonight, but I heard…”

He hesitated.

“What?” Jiang Yanli asked, her brow furrowing. “What’s wrong, A-Cheng?”

“I’ve probably heard wrong,” he said, even though he didn’t think he had. “And anyway it’s just rumors, rumors I discounted at once, because I don’t think Sect Leader Jin would – I mean, certainly not without telling us in advance – well -”

“What did you hear?” Lan Xichen asked. There was no judgement in his voice at Jiang Cheng’s stuttering, merely quiet, steady concern. 

He’d be a good brother-in-law.

“I heard,” Jiang Cheng said reluctantly, “that he…that he was thinking of proposing that we reestablish the old engagement. Jiejie and Jin Zixuan.”

He’d heard that Sect Leader Jin planned to surprise them with the proposal in the middle of dinner. Anyone else and he would have dismissed the entire thing out of hand for sheer shamelessness, but with Sect Leader Jin he really couldn’t say for sure.

“I would say no, of course,” JIang Yanli said, and the quickness and surety of her answer relieved him.

“I don’t doubt that,” he said, flashing a brief smile at them both. “But I don’t know if we have time to announce it to everyone before the celebration, and if we let the Jin sect ask and then reject them, they might…”

“It would not be outside the realm of possibility for Sect Leader Jin to take offense for a perceived slight, such as the notion, however mistaken, that we have played him for a fool,” Lan Xichen said, frowning thoughtfully. “And being as his sect is helping to fund both of our sect’s reconstructions, that could be troublesome…I have an idea, actually, if you don’t mind being the subject of a little gossip.”

“Gossip? For a good purpose?” Jiang Cheng said, his voice dry without even meaning to be. “That’d be a nice change.”

“In that case, I’ll leave the two of you now to go set it up. Leave it in my hands,” Lan Xichen said with a smile, releasing Jiang Yanli’s hand and bowing far deeper than he had to – Jiang Cheng made an immediate sound of protest and tried to catch him, but he carried on – and then he left, striding away purposefully.

“You’re going to get married,” Jiang Cheng said to his older sister, abruptly excited, and pulled her close. “Oh, jiejie…!”

“I’m happy,” she said, and she looked it – she looked radiant. “I’m so happy, A-Cheng!”

“You deserve every happiness in the world,” Jiang Cheng said. “Wei Wuxian and I will plan you the best wedding, jiejie, you’ll see – oh, where is he? He should be here by now! He’ll miss the celebration tonight!”

As always, he wanted to say. Just like he’s missed everything else to do with the reconstruction, with training the new disciples, with – wasn’t he supposed to help me? Didn’t he promise me to be by my side? Was all of it a lie, did he actually want my position the way mother always thought, or did he just at some point stop caring –

“He knows it’s happening,” she assured him. There was no doubt in her voice. “He’ll be there.”

“But then we won’t be able to tell him in advance…!”

“I’ll tell him it’s my fault for waiting so late to tell you, and of course it’s all Sect Leader Jin’s fault for not telling any of us what he was planning,” Jiang Yanli said. “Don’t worry, A-Cheng.”

Wei Wuxian showed up right before the banquet – without his sword, again – and Jiang Cheng wanted to tell him, but couldn’t. They were surrounded by so many people, and if people found out that Wei Wuxian hadn’t known in advance, it might suggest to them that he was distancing himself from the Jiang sect…

Which wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.

“Don’t act surprised,” Jiang Cheng murmured to Wei Wuxian as they walked in to be greeted by Jin Guangyao. “I’ll explain later.”

Wei Wuxian shot him a curious expression, but then they were talking with Jin Guangyao and all the sects were starting to congregate. Jin Guangshan was walking up to the main seat with an avid expression; he was likely going to start the celebration with a speech soon. There wasn’t time to say more.

What was Lan Xichen planning?

Just as Jiang Cheng thought that, Nie Mingjue, looking through the crowd from his excessive height, caught sight of Lan Xichen and strode over to his sworn brother – the entire room parted to let him pass, as usual, he was a hard man to miss – and then he said, in a voice that appeared almost unintentionally loud, “Xichen! What’s this I hear about you finally proposing? I insist you let me help plan the wedding!”

The entire room stopped paying the slightest bit of attention to anything else.

“Da-ge, please,” Lan Xichen said, although he was clearly smiling. Jiang Cheng couldn’t tell at this distance, but he would bet money that his eyes were curved up in suppressed laughter.

Nor could he blame him. Using Nie Mingjue’s horn-blast of a voice to “unintentionally” spread the information was a brilliant move – everyone knew Nie Mingjue was often over-loud, especially when he was being enthusiastic, and what was more natural than a pair of sworn brothers discussing the subject of an upcoming marriage? This way, there would not need to be any public announcement until the formal one, and Jin Guangshan could change his plans without losing face.

“It’s really not necessary,” Lan Xichen continued, pretending to be oblivious to the crowd of onlookers. If Jiang Cheng hadn’t known that he knew, he would have thought he actually was. “We’re only in the most preliminary discussions – we haven’t even set the date. We’re not even ready to announce it!”

Which is why they were going through all of this.

“Nonsense,” Nie Mingjue said. “Spare me your superstitions, Xichen. Not only would no woman in their right mind reject you, there can be no doubt that you and Mistress Jiang will be a wonderful pair, and I have every intention of drinking to your health this very night. Surely you can find someone who can calculate an auspicious date among all the sects gathered here?”

The rest of the room broke out in whispers the second Jiang Yanli was referenced, people starting to turn to stare at Jiang Cheng – Jiang Yanli, out on the balcony with the majority of the female cultivators, was temporarily spared – and at that point, Jin Guangyao materialized by his two sworn brothers’ sides, his smile a little strained (although nowhere near the abrupt scowl appearing on Jin Guangshan’s face), and their conversation dropped down to a more reasonable volume.

Jin Zixuan had something of a constipated expression on his face, too, but Jiang Cheng didn’t give one tiny bit of a damn about that – he’d had his chance. If he learned now, too late, to regret what he had lost, then that was on him. Let him go mourn in private, and leave the rest of them alone.

Jiang Cheng gave the room a mysterious smile, more a smirk really, and stepped on Wei Wuxian’s foot when his shixiong looked like he was going to say something. “You really need to start showing up on time,” he murmured, his voice low. “They agreed on it ages ago, apparently, but only told me today.”

Wei Wuxian nodded dumbly.

They might have managed to actually shock him silent, Jiang Cheng reflected, amused despite himself, and he glanced over at the Venerated Triad again – smiles on all faces, even if he did think Lan Xichen and Nie Mingjue looked a bit more natural with it than poor Jin Guangyao – with the thought that they ought to be venerated for this little stunt as well as all their other strengths, and that’s when he suddenly had a moment of absolute brilliance.

“Wei Wuxian, you’re not doing anything right now, right? How about you go to Gusu as jiejie’s representative to negotiate some of the details that need to be covered with the Lan sect?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Dowries and such, that sort of thing. They’ll send someone to us, but under the circumstances we don’t want to put them to too much trouble in terms of travel right now. As sect leader, I really shouldn’t be leaving the Lotus Pier right now, but it’s not the same for you.”

Wei Wuxian was clearly unhappy with the Jiang sect recently, though Jiang Cheng did not know why; the only reasonable assumption was that the problem was with him, maybe, or may be with Wei Wuxian himself. Moreover, he knew Lan Wangji had been on Wei Wuxian’s case about the demonic cultivation, asking him time and time again to go with him to the Cloud Recesses, as if he thought there was something there that could help him…

If setting up this marriage could help convince Wei Wuxian to stop everything he was doing and take up regular cultivation once more, walk him back from the strange road he’d chosen and back to Jiang Cheng’s side, that would be – fantastic.

That was the only thing left. It would make it all perfect.

Before Wei Wuxian could demur, Jiang Cheng added, “Jiejie deserves only the best.”

Wei Wuxian folded at once, as he’d hoped.

Perfect, he thought, pleased with everything. Finally, everything, from now on, can be perfect.

#mdzs #jiang cheng #lan xichen #jiang yanli #wei wuxian #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #field medicine

[morning-might-arrive]

Here’s the continuation of my last post. Thank you so much to everyone who liked and reblogged! This is becoming a lot longer than I thought, so there will be another part soon. Feedback is appreciated!

A series of misunderstandings involving a limousine and Spectra’s blog lead Jackson to the realization that he has way more friends than he thought.

Wednesday

Jackson sighed as he silenced his blaring alarm clock. 7:00 am. As he walked to the bathroom to get ready, he was suddenly struck by a memory.

“It’s nothing personal, normie. You just look like such a freak.” Manny told him as he shoved him off of the lunch table. Jackson looked towards the other mansters, but they said nothing. So they all agreed. Even Clawd. 

He cringed. He’d had to eat lunch in a bathroom stall that day. He looked at his reflection, desperately wishing he could change it. He sighed and got dressed. He had to leave early since he now had no car and his parents weren't home. He plugged his headphones into his phone. Holt had gotten them into this situation, only fitting that he deal with it.

Holt Hyde cursed under his breath as he walked to school. Although the weather was warming, mornings in March were still frigid. He sighed in relief as he approached Monster High.

“Heya there, sweetpea,” Operetta drawled in greeting as Holt waltzed through the front doors of the school. 

“What’s good, Oppy?” Holt responded, his usual loud and energetic self even at the early hour.

“Just peachy keen like always, hun. Say, you seen the Ghostly Gossip lately?” She asked.

“Nah, we usually stay away from that garbage ever since that story about us and Frankie. Humiliated the poor ghoul and almost tanked our relationship. It really ain’t cool what they're doin’.” He replied nonchalantly. 

“Oh. Okay. Well sugar, you know you can tell me anythang you wanna, right?” She continued.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks Oppy.” That was kinda weird for the rough and tumble ghoul to say, but honestly Holt was just glad their botched attempt at dating didn’t mess up their friendship. Oppy was a cool ghoul. 

“What’s the word, cool cats?” Came a new voice.

“Johnny!”

“Johnny.”

Johnny spirit sauntered casually down the main corridor of Monster High, and students jumped out of his way as if he had the plague. He put his arm around Operetta’s shoulder. “Hey, babe.”

Holt snorted. “I’ll never get why everyone lets you float around like you own the place.”

Johnny shrugged. “Guess they don’t have a choice. Besides, I never see you doing anything about it,” he replied with a bit of challenge in his tone. Holt rolled his eyes.

“You know you don’t scare us, Spirit. Anyway, it seems like Oppy’s got you on a leash without our help.”

Johnny bristled at that “Y’know Hyde, I’m gettin’ real sick of-”

“Why don’t we scamper on down to the catacombs and finish that new song we been workin on, sugarpie?” Operetta cut in. She really didn’t want to deal with a fistfight this early.

The couple walked away and Holt made toward the auditorium. He found the symphony on stage setting up and dashed up to join them, plugging his guitar into its amp. Jennifire was nearby greasing the corks on her clarinet. He huffed and sat down next to her.

“Another run in with the phantom pianist?” She asked, not even looking up.

“That guy is such a jerk!”

She chuckled and shook her head. “You boys are so easily provoked; I may never understand it. My brothers were just the same. He has done not to insight your anger.”

Holt really hated to admit it, but she was right. Johnny really didn't scare Holt, and he knew a little better than to try that tough guy act on Jackson. Plus, it was kinda funny seeing guys like Heath and Manny faint when he walked past them.

“Your emotions run like wildfire, I am very impressed you came to terms so easily with your end.” She continued.

Wait. What. “My what now?”

“Of course, it must be so hard for you to talk about. I am sorry.” A tear fell from her eye and promptly turned to smoke upon hitting her face.

“Jen, are you okay?” Holt asked, facing her.

She smiled. “Yes, I will be okay. So kind of you to think of me.”

“Okay, Okay, enough chit chat. Places people!” The director yelled as he approached the stage. Well. That was weird. Holt took his place in the stool beside the amp and looked up as the director began counting them off.

After an awkward hour of rehearsal, they were dismissed to second period. Holt emerged out into the crowd of students in the hall. Jennifire was nowhere to be found, so he made his way toward the art room. His Spotify playlist suddenly changed to a song by Pierce the Veil. He pulled out his phone to skip it and saw he had a message from Jackson. He scoffed. If D-low had told him what was wrong, would he be asking? JJ could be so oblivious. Maybe it was just a normie thing. 

He took his usual seat in front of his canvas and continued his painting for this week. 

“Psst, Holt.” he heard a whisper. He turned and met the shiny magenta eyes of retired popstar Catty Noir. “We’re turning up at Cleo’s place on Saturday, you in?”

“Yeah totally- oh, nevermind. We can’t make it, we kinda got a...thing that day.”

“Oh,” she said, looking kind of taken aback. “It’s that soon?” 

“What was that?”

“ I said I’ll see you soon!” she hastily corrected herself as she got up and turned in her painting, promptly leaving the art room. Man, everyone's acting off today. He touched up his work and quickly followed suit.

He basically had the rest of the period to himself, so he decided to riff on his guitar for a little bit. He couldn’t do it in the building anymore ever since that one time Headmistress Bloodgood caught him, so he moved to the front steps and set his bag beside him.

“Hey Holt!”

Holt turned towards the front of the school. “Frankie Fine-Stein! Where have you been hiding?” Her skin glowed a light mint green and her eyes sparked in the sun. Just as bootiful as ever. She sat on the step beside him.

“I was actually just in the library. I found this book about the original Jekyll and Hyde. It was way harsh; It said that Edward Hyde trampled a child in the streets of London, is that true?”

“Nuh-uh! Those stuffy normie’s didn’t like that grandpa’s were different so they dragged their reputation through the dirt!” Holt declared passionately. “Some of the people they charged him with killing didn’t even exist in the first place! Then they made Dr. Jekyll out to be a complete basket case and threw them both in jail! That is until they got bailed out by our great-great-grandma, Lucy.”

“Oh, man. I didn’t know any of that!” Frankie replied. She actually knew all about it, she had heard the exact same thing from Jackson before. They were both incredibly salty about the smear campaign launched against their great-great-grandparents that made their family flee to America in the first place, and you could hardly bring it up around them without a passionate rant. Frankie felt a little bad about bringing up something she knew was a sore subjet for them, but she had to make sure Spectra and the other ghouls didn’t get caught. It was for their own good, right?

Her phone buzzed in her lap and she glanced down. “Spectra got something, meet us back in the library.” Clawdeen. Frankie jumped up. “Sorry, Holt, I really gotta go.”

Holt watched her go in curiosity. He checked the time and quickly jumped up himself and dashed back inside the building. The only way to not be late now was to go through Section C, the so-called “vampires only” hallway. It really irked them when other monster’s used it, but he didn’t really care when it was either that or detention. As he made his way through he felt someone glaring at him, and met eyes with a large group of the former prep-school vampires. He braced himself, but instead of giving him grief like they usually did, they just let him pass. They were acting weird, but so was everyone else. Oh well, he didn’t really have time to think about it now.

Holt’s third period was Chemistry 2 with Mr. Hack. No thanks. Science was never his strong suit. Plus, there was seriously something off about this particular teacher. He just took a little too much pleasure in the cutting open of living things for Holt’s liking. He pulled out his phone.

“Keep an eye out. Today’s been weird, Bro.” He typed the message out and then disconnected his phone from his headphones. The world went dark.

Jackson blinked a few times. What was that ringing sound? “Oh, shOOT!” He bolted through the closest door- which just happened to be the right one- and took his seat as the bell finished ringing.

Mr. Hack passed out a hefty amount of worksheets to the class. “Okay class: no whispering, no talking, no looking around, no coughing or sneezing, no you can’t use the bathroom, and if I catch you on your cell phone the whole class gets detention. You have until the end of the class to complete the worksheets or it's a 0 for today.”

Everyone groaned. Good old Mr. Hack. Charming and likeable. Jackson tried to ignore the stares and whispers in his direction as he did his work. He knows he’s different, don’t they ever get tired of reminding him? Were they all paying more attention to him than usual, or was it just his imagination? He blazed through his work in about 20 minutes, it was just some simple thermodynamics equations. He looked up and noticed that Mr. Hack was asleep. Typical. Half the class were on their phones and the other half were talking amongst themselves. He pulled his phone out and saw Holt’s message.

Huh. Maybe it wasn’t just his imagination then, everyone was acting a little odd. Granted, every day at Monster High was pretty weird. Last week they had lost their school crest in a rollerblading contest and the school nearly toppled over, so maybe he could just ignore whatever this was.

The bell finally rang for lunch. He set his work on Mr. Hack’s desk as he jolted awake and practically ran from the room. He shot Clair a text

“Okay, transportation is set and decorations bought. Am I forgetting anything?”

“Measurements, goofy.” She responded almost instantly.

“Oh, right. I can get a tape measure from the woodshop teacher and get them during lunch.”

“Have you told the other monsters about Saturday?”

“No. I just don’t know how they’ll react, y’know?”

“Aren’t they always telling you about how you don’t belong? So why would they care?”

“Yeah you’re probably right. It’s just a difficult situation.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Let me know how it goes.”

Looking down at his phone, he didn’t notice Draculara until he bumped her as he passed.

“So sorry!” He exclaimed. 

“It’s alright.” She reassured him as she walked away. She made her way to the library where her friends were already gathered around in a circle. Spectra floated in the center.

“What’s this all about?” Draculara asked.

“While Frankie had Holt distracted, Spectra looked in his locker.”

“Well what did she find?” Cleo demanded.

“Just this. It appears to be a receipt for some kind of car rental.”

Clawd glanced at his phone. “Heath says Jackson is in the boys locker room right now taking measurements of himself and writing them down.” He told the group.

“Then what Spectra said is true.” Fraknie finally admitted. The room fell into extended silence.

“Well we can at least show Jackson he means something to us.” Draculara spoke up.

“Yeah,” Frankie agreed, “we can do something nice for him and Holt.”

“What are we going to do? Hijack the gym and throw a huge party during lunch?” Cleo asked sardonically.

“You’re on a roll Cleo! It’ll be closed tomorrow, but we can do it Friday!” Clawdeen agreed.

Cleo smiled. Very well then. Friday would be a day for the monster history books.

#jackson jekyll #holt hyde #frankie #draculara #clawdeen #spectra vondergeist #operetta #johnny spirit #monster high #mh

[shouldntcryoverit]

the art of discordance

a captain rex x jedi fic during clone wars era :))

no warnings i think uh yeah hope you enjoy let me know ig...

next chapter

CHAPTER ONE -

A new general. That’s what the rookies had heard, though Rex was reluctant to believe the Jedi Council had the guts to replace Skywalker. After a good few months, the captain had learnt of his general’s unique ‘disposition’, and getting a new general to step in was what he least expected.

That was until the ship landed just outside their camp and she walked out. Even from his position sitting further back on some crates, Rex could make out the figure, identifying her as one of the jedi knights, though which one escaping him. Perhaps the rumours were true.

He watched as she walked closer, hands placed purposefully and eyes wandering over the other two jedi in front of her. The commander crossed her arms defensively, though her master seemed unbothered by her arrival, excited even.

“master?” Ahsoka coughed

“oh snips!” Skywalker bleated with the same enthusiasm he had wagered throughout the interaction “this is Jaida Reyes”

“the one from your padwan stories?” Ahsoka said with smug conviction

“my reputation precedes me” her accent was crisp and calm, though her tone radiated a coolness that Ahsoka couldn’t help but feel distanced by “though i’d rather be known for my skills with a lightsaber than helping Akin steal from Obi-wan”

Ahsoka held back a snicker as Rex walked up to the three, absent minded as he double checked his comm.

“General Skywalker, we have the new coordinates” His attention tried hard to divert to the new face.

“ah thank you” Anakin turned to his friend “this is my captain, Rex”

Rex nodded at his introduction.

“i’m the new co-general, General Reyes” her face settled into the beginnings of a smile, but faultered and remained her neutral, placid gaze.

The young jedi watched with focused eyes as they walked the short distance towards the briefing tent. Already her presence seemed to spark rumours among the men, and she watched as the younger looking troopers sent her inspecting looks. It was to be expected, honestly she never wanted a big formal introduction, but she didn’t know that her arrival would breach the news so quickly.

When they arrived, the tent was half full. An open and decorated holo map was in the centre, with at least two clones at each marked entrance point.

“Boys” Skywalker called “we have a visitor”

She rolled her eyes slightly at the flamboyant gesture, but stepped forward anyway. “I’m General Reyes, apparently Skywalker wasn’t trusted enough to run his own battalion, so i got called in” Her hands rested behind her back, but a small grin encroached her face as the snipe made a few troopers smirk.

“excuse my fellow jedi, she’s never been good at taking second place” Anakin fired back, earning another set of grins.

Reyes crossed her arms as her smiling face resumed the same placcid one she’d kept previously. “i have heard nothing but good things, and i look forward to serving with you.”

The Captain moved forward from the side of the room and clicked to change the holo map, it made a small beep as he did.

“The 212th met a settlement of droids over this side of the ridge. Last report was that they were able to move forward at the threat subsided.”

“so what does that mean for us?” Jaida’s brows furrowed as Rex layed the plans out for her. Already her mind was scoping escape routes and vantage points, but she remained seemingly unbothered by the conflict describes. Rex couldn’t help but feel unmotivated by her apparent lack of interest.

“our initial plan was to take out the last forces left on the planet after the seppie defeat, but intelligence believed the 212th accidentally did it for us”

She scoffed “so we’re here for a clean up?”

“hope you brought something fun to do” Ahsoka scorned.

The efforts were limited within the first hour. Already the men were tired of the same scenery and nothing but expansive flats. The sun stood high in the sky, illuminating the landscape in a orange hue. It wasn’t hot nor cold, everything about the mission mediocre, something Reyes particularly hated. It wasn’t just her with an annoyance, she could sense the captain’s distrust. She understood it, only hoped it wouldn’t comprimise her efficiency.

As if nothing interesting was ever going to happen, a yell from a trooper a little further ahead broke the methodical thump of the machinery.

Soon followed was the sound of gun fire. Each shot was slow, until finally the enemy was visible.

“Find cover!”

“you did say you wanted action” Anakin quipped, earning an actual chuckle from her usual pursed lips. It almost caught Rex off guard.

It was unavoidable, the lack of cover meant the men were almost completely exposed, accept for the three jedi that stepped forward, sabers ignited.

Reyes was a new sight, though she didn’t look out of place on the battle field. Her lighsaber was different, instead of the usual one blade, hers had two, both green and glowing as she tactically spun it round and round, catching blasts as if it were sport. Even her fighting style seemed new, she fought with elegance and structure, each blow purposeful and strong.

Her focus was planted entirely on the enemy ahead, so much so that she failed to notice the trooper settling down beside her.

“karking droids, never seem to die” she muttered, deflecting a few more blasts.

A muffled laugh came from beside her and the familiar blue and white etched her vision.

“I’d get used to it general” a trooper grinned

Jaida turned and grimaced, an offering of acceptance. As she refocused her mind to the task at hand, a thought slipped through.

“trooper, get those three and come with me”

Her request caught the clone beside her off guard, but he complied none the least.

The five of them rounded behind the line of defence, all the way to their republic.

“uh, sir, what are we doing?” a soldier with a hand print on his chest asked, gingerly as the new, seemingly scary, general climbed onto the side.

“if i can prime the ignition gear and jinx the starter cable, I can force it into their ranks and it’ll, with any luck,” she popped her head up with a half devilish grin “turn them all into scrap parts”

It was the trooper with the cog on his helment that relaxed first “heh, they teach you that at the temple?” he quipped

“nope” she gestured for them to cover her as she popped open the side “they taught me it on florrum” she said with a smirk, before diving back into the mess of wires and sparks.

Jaida’s plan worked, and effectively too. After a very short battle, the men finished their sweep and prepared to bid the timeless campaign fairwell.

Once back on the ship, most clones settled down for the trip back to Coruscant, and Reyes followed suit, though only subtly checking that everyone was well and okay, before continuing her sweep on the ration packs. After she deemed her check satisfactory, she retreated to the command rooms. The door slid open and revealed Rex standing over a report, absent minded to say the least. His shoulders tensed momentarily as the door swooshed, and she noticed the sour taste that seemed to flood his tongue when he met her eyes.

Jaida cleared her throat, and planted fists against the table, propping herself up.

“i’m sorry, we lost men” Jaida spoke calmly, slightly softer than her usual tone.

“with all due respect sir, you don’t seem all that bothered.” Rex mentioned.

“captain” “it’s not something i’ve grown accustomed too yet” Jaida countered, though her argument didn’t cause Rex’s stance to loosen. She cleared her throat

“i’ve lost people before, and I know what it’s like to loose someone in battle, though i don’t know what it’s like to loose your brothers. i did not want this” her tone was instructive, but it softened all the same and her true compassion fell through.

Rex paused for a moment and met her eyes again “i shouldn’t have blamed you, my apologies, general”

“relax, captain”

“it’s uh, Rex, sir” he corrected. It was when he lifted his hands to the side of his helmet that Jaida realised she had never actually seen his face. It came off, and revealed a strong jaw and cheek bones, all toned perfectly set. His eyebrows arched above his eyes, a slightly different shade of golden brown than his brothers. Of course the main difference was his hair colour, short and stark blonde.

“Jaida” her response made Rex frown ”if i have to call you by your name you have to call me by mine. Jaida” she explained

“sounds fair”

“good” she smiled for the first time, and Rex liked it.

————————————

The night after an assignment was always filled with either anecdotes or silence, a relief or devastating. Jaida watched as the men loitered around crates of rations and equipment, all with distant smiles; tired.

She had previously been stuck at the medbay after the medics caught sight of her, a few gashes on her cheeks the real cause - nothing bacta wouldn’t heal, but she learnt quickly of their head medic, Kix, and his ability to scare even Jedi into looking after themselves. After making peace with the captain, a warmth had begun to spread about her.

Now, she stood against the cold duraplast walls of the Resolute, picking aimlessly at the scarce red dirt left on her hands.

“You okay Jay?” the question broke her mindless thought.

“yeah, i am” she looked up to her friend knowingly, Anakin grinning as he always did.

“Generals!” a trooper with geometric tattoos called out “come sit with us”

She turned her head sharply and gazed over the haphazard array of lounging clones

“I ought to check the ration packs” she tried to excuse.

“you should take one sir” Another clone encourage lazily “deserve it after that rescue”

She blinked for a second, unsure if it would make more sense to agree or deny. Before she said yes or no, Anakin had already collected her on his way to his own seat in the game.

Jaida sauntered over and handed each clone a bar before taking one herself, sitting down cross leggedly just as graceful as she did anything.

“sir, i don’t like it” she spoke between chews “name’s Jaida”

“well, Jaida, general’s told us a little about your career together, got any stories?”

“many” Jaida gave the first ghost of a smile any of them had seen from her yet, however small it may have been, and lent backwards against another log “Anakin ever told you about the time we climbed to the very top of the temple walls?”

#captain rex #captain rex x reader #clone wars #501stlegion #anakin skywalker #the clone wars #rex x reader #commander rex

[warfesgts]

He might just have been wrong

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[liam-93-productions]

Pushing a trolley stacked high with cans of Baked Beans along a narrow corridor, it's hard at first to recognise the masked young man despite his face being on billboards around the world.

His hair, too, is longer thanks to lockdown, while his hands are covered by an unflattering pair of latex gloves.

Up close there's no mistaking who the mystery man is....but quite why Liam Payne finds himself stacking shelves in a London foodbank is another matter.

In an exclusive interview with the Mirror, the down-to-earth 26-year old singer has spoken for the first time about how he felt compelled to act in the wake of the global pandemic.

Like many, he was left deeply upset by reports of families struggling to eat under the crippling financial pressure caused by the nation going into lockdown.

And in an extraordinary act of generosity, the star has donated cash worth 360,000 food parcels to the Trussell Trust, who support a nationwide network of food banks.

But he wanted to get his hands dirty too....so headed down to a foodbank in London's Euston to volunteer and also find out first hand about the scale of the problem.

“I was told that in terms of people turning up to that specific foodbank, it was almost double, if not more. It's terrible people need food banks anyway but now, it's getting worse and worse,” he says.

Liam spent the day packaging up food parcels for the homeless with a team of four other charity volunteers

“My job for the day also entailed packaging up specific items for homeless people that were stuck on the street,” he says. “They need very specific types of food because a lot of them can't cook things, they can't prepare stuff, they can't get boiling water.”

Last week The Trussell Trust said it was enduring its busiest ever period, with 81% more emergency food parcels being given out across the UK compared to the same period in 2019. This included 122% more parcels going to children.

“The numbers are crazy,” he admits. “And it's just disturbing to know how many people are without food in these circumstances. I hope enough people out there know about these food banks and can get down to them.”

He paid special tribute to the “inspiring” foodbank volunteers he met including Carla, Dorothea and Helena.

“These people are putting themselves on the line every single day going out and doing this, putting themselves at risk,” he says

“I want to urge anyone reading this to donate to The Trussell Trust if you’re able to. I know lots of people are in a really difficult financial position right now so can’t … but if you can please do donate.”

Growing up in Wolverhampton, money was tight in the Payne household, with dad Geoff a fitter and mum Karen a nursery nurse.

But while he admits that “money definitely put stress on the family in certain circumstances”, he says that it was a world away from the current predicament many families are now finding themselves in.

“This is a really unprecedented situation that we find ourselves in right now,” he says. “It's very distressing seeing the number of people out there losing their jobs. I'm hoping that the Government does what it can and makes those right decisions so that we can all improve this and get back on our feet as quickly as possible.”

(...)

Liam says he was also left worried about new reports of a potentially lethal inflammatory syndrome in children that appears to be linked to coronavirus infections.

“To think of kids struggling, it really, really pulls on the heart strings, and I just can't imagine how people feel in that position.”

Liam reserves special praise for the army of NHS workers up and down the country and says how he has been joining in the Clap for our Heroes every Thursday.

And like so many other people he has been left horrified by the rising death toll among their ranks – not least as he recognises the important role the NHS played in his own life.

The star has previously said how he was born “effectively dead” with doctors having to bring him round. He was then in and out of hospital with kidney problems as a toddler.

Asked if he owed a personal debt to the NHS, he said: “I think so, definitely. Living in the country and having the NHS service, I think we have taken it for granted. It's unfortunate that it's only in times like these that we all suddenly realize that. I mean these guys literally put themselves at risk every day. It's wonderful to hear the clapping throughout the streets, and people really, really going for it.”

Work-wise, the lockdown has meant that Liam has had to put on hold a series of international dates over the summer including a gig in Russia.

“I hadn't been there before, even with One Direction, so I was quite miffed about,” he says. “But you have to do what you have to do in this circumstance. And I was actually meant to go to America at the time of this, and luckily I'd stayed put for the moment, I didn't want to be stuck away from all my family and everything, which would have been even harder.”

Instead he has taken on the rather unique challenge of putting on gigs from the confines of his London flat. As well as performing the One World Together at Home gig put on by Lady Gaga, he performed his new single Midnight with Alesso on James Corden's chatshow from both his frontroom and rooftop.

“I mean it's challenging to make things look interesting from home.... we were flying a drone around in here, what we’ll do next I don’t know..!” he laughs.

For someone who has been so open before about his mental health while in One Direction, I wonder how he is doing holed up away from his friends and family?

Liam has previously spoken about suffering chronic loneliness in the band and having to seek therapy because he was in such a “bad place”.

He says: “The thing that I'm trying to remember in my head is there are going to be bad days. There are going to be some days where you feel a bit down. But as long as you know that, you can kind of battle your way through it a little bit.

“But I think the main thing for me is just making sure I have a routine and setting mini goals and little victories like writing a song or making sure that I've been in touch with a family member that day.

“But I think one of the things we can all do to help each other is just by staying in touch. If you know somebody who's a little bit lonely or is struggling, reach out to them.”

Liam is supporting the Trussell Trust, an anti-poverty charity that supports a network of food banks and campaigns for a future where everyone can afford their own food. You can support their work by donating here – www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/

#liam payne #liam's interviews #irish mirror #trussell trust #03.05.2020

[jonthethinker]

I’ve been thinking about what I would find to be the perfect ending for Critical Role Campaign 2, and I realize how far my ideal ending may be from where we will probably end up, and why that is.

This isn’t to denigrate our fine storytellers, but there’s some strong ideological differences between what I would find most beautiful and interesting and where they are likely to end up.

To the cast, I sense it seems this is a story of recovery and discovery of identity. Seven broken people find each other, perhaps by chance or, as Matt’s opening lines of the campaign suggest, Destiny. Regardless, they come together, and in that coming together, they help each other heal. This takes time, and comes with many conflicts and false starts and set backs, but slowly, they do indeed begin the process of healing.

As they heal, these lost souls begin to explore their identities safely in each others’ company. Each member of the Mighty Nein gets a chance to feel out who it is they are and want to be, all the while knowing that if they stumble and trip along the way, they have their dear friends to catch them. Eventually, they will have a firmer grasp on who it is they really are, deep down, and with that, be able to tackle the rest of what life has to throw at them head on. So far, if I am right and this is indeed what the cast believes, I completely agree with them. But things do begin to diverge on where they seem to want to take it, and where I wish it would be.

This divergence begins in the fallout of this healing and recovery. What happens next? Place and Purpose, of course. Once they know who they are, they are ready to find their homes; ready to find where they really belong. For now, that place is the Mighty Nein, but for some reason, this type of story never seems to be satisfied with that answer. There must be a new chapter, one in which the Mighty Nein, while remaining loyal and committed to one another as friends, each go their own way. They will have done what they set out to do with the group, and now they must build something new on their own.

You see this clearly in the two characters most aware of what kind of story they stumbled into, unsurprisingly played into by the two players least bothered by the fourth wall; Sam Riegel’s Nott The Brave/Veth Brenatto and Marisha Ray’s Beauregard Lionett. Both of these characters have been dreading the eventual closing of this chapter on healing and recovery, because of how comfortable they’ve become in their place within it, and how unprepared they feel for what surely must follow.

Nott was afraid of getting her body back because it would mean she may have to leave behind the first thing she’s ever felt good at, and grappled with how that must make her a terrible wife and mother to have those sorts of feelings. Once she does regain her body, Veth still grapples with these very feelings, even when she could have everything she thought she was fighting for all along, because the adventures of the Mighty Nein have so filled her with excitement and purpose and meaning like she’s never had before. She’s still waiting for that other shoe to drop, and the day her travels must end, because that’s the only way she feels she can satisfy the contradictions.

Beauregard was in her mind a loner, and only with the Mighty Nein has she ever started to question that self-diagnosis. In the Nein, for the very first time, she’s found a place for herself, and a group of people who can actually dull all her sharp edges. She has clear meaning and purpose in working with the Mighty Nein to overcome their personal obstacles, and maybe in doing so, leaving the world a little better than she found it. Before the Nein, those sorts of things weren’t even possibilities. She even felt she was assured a young death and thus no future to begin with. But when she realizes she could have a future, she wants it to be with the Nein... But as her ability to empathize begins to bloom, she realizes this may not be what everyone else has in mind. That some day, the rest of the Nein hope to put the Adventuring life behind them, and in that moment, Beau will have a future to decide for herself and herself alone, and that is terrifying. Because the main thing the Nein has taught Beau is how desperately she doesn’t want to be alone anymore.

As I said, I agree that this is a story about recovery and identity, but it is also much more that. For me, as just a humble member of the audience, the story of the Mighty Nein, above all, is a story about the consequences and possible solutions to isolation, loneliness, powerlessness, and above all, alienation. All seven of our great heroes have been forced through their particular backstories and their mutual adventures to battle with these very feelings over and over, and to me at least the solution to these problems is, well, the community, solidarity, and comfort of each other.

For me, it’s not so obvious that the Mighty Nein has to, well, end.

Sometimes it feels like the cast agrees with me, but usually only in their moments of greatest spontaneity, dealing with the struggles and heartbreaks right in front of them as they happen. I think of Fjord casting his falchion into the lava only to be pulled in closer by his friends. I think of Beau facing her parents, and then later with the fallout of her potential bargain with the Hag. I think of Jester preparing to confront her father, and the subsequent results of his apparent rejection. I think of Caduceus saving his family and his home, and deciding to stay with the Nein anyway. I think of Caleb confronted by Trent in Castle Ungebroch as a shield of his friends form around him. I think of all the Nein reassuring Veth they would accept and love her no matter if she was staying with them or not, but how much they’d miss her if she went. I think of how easily they accepted Yasha into the fold whenever she came back from her wanderings, and how hard they fought to get her back when she was taken from them.

The reason I come to the conclusion that the cast see’s the Nein as eventually having to end is the end for Vox Machina. You had seven people who helped each other heal and grow in ways they never thought they were destined for, experiencing a sense of belonging and purpose the world had never afforded them before the merry band formed. But as a would-be-God was locked away and a dear friend, lover, and brother faded from their grasps, they all drifted in their own directions. They all had a place to fill in the grand scheme of things, and it was time for them to grow up.

And its this notion of growing up that grates me. That these moments of camaraderie and companionship must be as ephemeral as our adolescence. The adventuring days and the bonds we form within them are only meant for our youth, and the meaning and purpose and place we find inside of them is only meant to help us through the confusing days of young adulthood, before we begin our real days as adults, which may only be tackled alone or with a lover. I simply don’t see it this way.

Adulthood should not be this singularly alienating experience that it has become. For most of the existence of humanity, it has not been. We are not meant for self-sufficiency and independence to the degree our society insists upon. Societies would not have formed in the first place without faith that a person can depend on others to provide for them. If the blacksmith also had to sow and patch their own clothes, she would never have time to blacksmith, just as a tailor can’t focus on sowing when she has to build and maintain her own tools. Poverty and deprivation can lead us to have to be more independent than we ought to, but in a world with equitably managed resources, we can afford to have faith the farmer will provide our food, the treatment plant will make our water safe to drink, and the carpenter will keep the rain off our head.

Think of how miserable most adults are today, and then think about how alone and alienated they all are. They are either spending each day working themselves numb only to go home and distract themselves with various entertainments, or if they have “community,” it’s so narrowly defined and judgmental that the gains made from your place within it are completely offset by how much you must cut yourself into shape to fit in. The greatest moments of our lives are often within our youth, because while you’re young you get to grow and stretch and stumble in the company of other people doing the same, and there is no expectation in doing anything else. But we’ve decided on some arbitrary point in which this time of personal exploration and safe company must end. If you’re old and want to expand your horizons, I hope you’re rich, because if not, it ain’t happening.

So for me, to imagine a world in which the members of the Mighty Nein might go a week, nonetheless months without seeing each other is beyond cruel. Think of the feeling of security and belonging the Nein have provided for one another, and tell me there has to be some arbitrary cut off date for their continued company. Think about Fjord breaking the habit of filing down his tusks because of the support of Jester and the Nein, a habit he performed into his early thirties, and tell me that one day, he needs to go out on his own because of reasons. They can take the lessons they’ve learned from the Nein, and still have the Nein, and not be unprepared to take whatever challenges life has to offer them, and in fact, may be better at tackling them all together with their family at their side every step of the way.

People prosper most when they decide they are better off working together than they are alone. To me, it’s abundantly clear this is true for the Mighty Nein. And I hope and pray when the time comes the cast will see it the same way. And I’ll accept and almost certainly enjoy whatever ending they end up having, in this strange form of improvised entertainment. None of this is to hate on the cast or me trying to tell them how to run their game or tell their story, I just have a lot of feelings on the matter. I am almost certainly overthinking something that may very well be a long way off from even happening. but after spending literally hundreds of hours with these fictional characters, I can’t help but want the best for them. And so far, the best for them is... well, each other. And no possible future they could have will be as good as one in which even in their golden years, they can look over and know, no matter what, they have the Mighty Nein.

#Critical Role #Long Post #The Mighty Nein #Beauregard Lionett #Nott The Brave #Veth Brenatto #Fjord #Jester Lavorre #Caleb Widogast #Yasha Nydoorin #Caduceus Clay #Good Lord have these thoughts been floating around my head for a while now #I just hope it makes sense

[capricornus-rex]

A Legacy Begun (5)

gif not mine. found and saved in pinterest

Chapter 5: The Child | Cal Kestis x Reader

Summary: After a long time of running and fighting, you and Cal decided to finally settle down after all these years to raise a family. However, it was never a life of peace whilst the shadow of the Empire looms over your heads.

Other prompt/s in play: Anon 1′s prompt, Anon 2‘s baby prompt + their follow-up prompt & fic idea

A/N: Don’t worry, no one died of sadness after giving birth.

Also posted in AO3

Tags: Scruffy! Cal Kestis, Daddy! Cal Kestis, Adult! Cal Kestis, Jedi Family, Jedi Offspring, Force-Sensitive Offspring, Settling Down, Rebel Alliance

Chapters: 1 – 2 – 3 | Previous: Part 4 | Next: Part 6 | Masterlist

5 of ?

The months flew by, it only felt like yesterday when you told the news and now you’re currently in the ninth month. Any day now, the baby would be due. But you haven’t felt the signs yet.

The feeling of not holding a lightsaber and seeing action for a while was perhaps the biggest adjustment you’ve ever made; recalling the years where you’ve kept yourself low from the Imperials’ radar and having to limit the times you held your saber, this was far different than that.

To pass the time, you and Cal often strolled together just to keep yourself active. The Mantis continued its travels from time to time, but it would always find itself home in Cerinda and would occasionally return to Bogano for old time’s sake. The two of you stopped by the stream that branched out of the lake, something about that part of the forest became like a magnet to the both of you. Even in your expectant state, you were still the same sprightly girl who would dip her toes into the cold water at any given chance.

“I’ve been thinking,” you began. Beaming brightly and excitedly as you spoke, “I want to have our baby in this one planet that my master and I used to go to for a campaign.”

“Oh?” Cal propped his cheek against his fist, dreamily gazing at you while you pluck flowers by the shoreline and set them floating into the gentle current.

“The planet, Ilaro,” you craned your head to him. “It’s a neutral planet by the Outer Rim, but it’s very peaceful there. No Imperials, no fighting,”

He heard you sigh as you daydream about the planet in your mind. He kept smiling as he listened.

“If only you’ve seen it, Cal—oceans clear and bright blue like the sky that they almost conjoin, the city that Master and I went to was so extravagant yet quaint, much like Reema here but a bit bigger,” you trail off, and then smiled as the last, finishing thought entered your mind and turned to your husband. “And oh, I know the perfect place for us: by the hillside north of the city. There’s another town there, it’s small but I think it’ll do for us,”

He hummed in reply, enamored by your idea but mostly at your radiance. You couldn’t stay mad at him for only half-listening. You’re endeared by his droopy, dreamy eyes and the smile that still stood out even through his stubble that he personally kept to a certain thinness of his liking.

“What is it?” you giggled.

“You’re just so beautiful,” he cooed. “I just can’t help but stare even while you talk, I’m sorry.”

You caress his scruffy jaw, he willingly inches to you as he comes in for a kiss. You secretly chuckled when his stubble tickled you and you liked it when he did.

“I can’t stay mad, darling,”

That afternoon, you tended to the plants in the terrarium, shearing the weeds and other overgrowth that crowded the soil bed. It sooner became half a flower garden and a half a medicinal herb garden, you and Merrin shared sides of the terrarium respectively; Greez was cooking up some lunch while Cere continued her favorite pastime of splicing and hacking Imperial communications, but also found out about how to trace long-range frequencies as far as two to three parsecs.

“Have you ever thought if they’re a boy or a girl, [y/n]?”

“I have, but my mind changes every now and then—one day I’ll think it’s a boy, and then the next it’s a girl,” you chuckled. “Cal and I have been debating the same thing.”

“You’re at your ninth month, anyway. I’m sure it’ll come soon,”

“Yes, soon,” you trailed off echoing the Nightsister’s words.

Later, Cal came back with game that he had hunted in the forest’s inner meadows. One of Cerinda’s fauna that you’ve found a taste for was the Chorcap—a medium-sized, horned quadrupedal animal, it was slightly shorter than a Nerf in height and less hairy too, but it was stocky in build, making it prized for their meat. Merchants in Reema would buy for the horns, butchers would get portioned cuts, and Cal would haggle with those butchers for the portions.

“I’m back,” Cal chirped as he entered the ship. “Got some extra Chorcap on the road.”

“Oh finally! I thought this stew would never be done if it weren’t for you,” Greez grunted.

“Relax, Greez, here—the seasonings you asked for,”

Cal tossed a pouch to Greez to which the captain expertly caught with his bottom right arm and continued to stir the pot. He greeted you with a kiss on the cheek as you tended the little indoor garden and seated himself by the dining table.

“That smells good!” your husband exclaimed.

“Without these spices, my stew would be as bland as unfermented Merenzane Gold!”

From time to time, you’d conceal your expressions whenever your belly contracted. You’ve pretty much anticipated the baby’s due, but it was the pain that you tried to hide—not wanting to disturb everyone at your expense.

Minutes later, Greez called everybody for lunch, you helped in setting the table and serving out the helpings for each plate. The aroma of the stew wafted around the Mantis, making all the stomachs rumble, and come running towards the table. Lunch became more animated as conversations and topics volleyed here and there. You turned to BD-1 perched over the rim of the table between the lounge.

“Say, BD, do you still have the scan of the Binog?”

“What for?”

“Oh, you’ll see, hon,” you ended it with a smile.

After lunch and helping with the dishes, you retreated to the bedroom with BD-1 perched over your shoulder. You seated yourself by the workbench, producing spools of thread, buttons, filler cotton, and fabrics of different colors—all coming from the business district in Reema. You produced a holodisk and held it close to the droid

“Can you transfer the Binog’s hologram scan here, BD?”

“Wooo!” the little droid whirred out its splicer and connected itself to the holodisk’s port. Seconds later, the hologram of the great creature of Bogano flickered above the holodisk’s projector.

“Thank you, BD,” you rewarded the droid with head pats before starting with your work.

You drew patterns for each part of the animal and then sheared them piece by piece. Holding them together with pins, you started sewing the main body first—leaving an opening for the stuffing later—and then moved on to the legs and tail. Your slender fingers gracefully twisted, curled, and threaded with the stitches as you went on—pushing the needle and then pulling the thread—until it was starting to take shape. Glancing at the projection every once in a while to check if you’re getting the likeness correctly.

“Booo!”

“That’s right, BD, I’m making the Binog—though a smaller version, for the small one,” you cooed.

When the limbs and tail have joined the body and head, the next step was to sew in the fins that lined its spine all the way to the tail and its ears. You had the patterned fabrics at the ready, you just needed to stitch them. Cal walked in to the bedroom, finding you sitting back relaxed while sewing together a toy Binog.

“That’s actually pretty cute,” he beamed.

“Thank you, but it’s not finished yet,”

The finishing touches were the button eyes. A pair of solid black buttons were secured in an X-like stitch on its head. Two tiny white triangles were sewn along the mouth for its fangs that peeked out even with the actual creature’s mouth closed. Finally, BD-1 helped you stuff the toy with the cotton since his little claws could fit the openings you left for each body part.

“Thanks for your help, BD,” you sealed the filler openings and held it in your hand. “There we go!”

“That’s adorable,” your husband commented.

Even if it was never your intention to worry everybody—your husband, especially—you just couldn’t control the instance where your knees buckle and your muscles felt like tightening with a great force. As you struggled to stand up, everybody in the ship was alarmed by your cry of pain. All of a sudden, the swirling in your stomach started to tense up.

“The baby’s coming…!” you struggled to calmly breathe.

“Cere! Merrin!” Cal cried, scooping you up from your seat at the workbench and carefully settling you down on the bed.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s happening!?” Greez was infected with the same panic and alarm as the two ladies. The captain definitely heard your cries, he just didn’t think the baby was coming now.

Your ankles jerked as your toes curled tightly, your hand gripped the sheets as you tried to fight off the contraction pains. Cal ignored the hard grip that’s crumpling his sleeve as you broke down sobbing in pain.

“I know a place!” Cere exclaimed. “Captain, set a course to Polis Massa! Grid coordinates K-20, NOW!”

“It’s two parsecs away via jump to hyperspace!” Greez argued.

“Captain, just do it!” the woman snapped back.

“You’re gonna be okay, [y/n], do you hear me?” Cal’s voice cracked while squeezing back your free hand.

“[y/n], breathe,” Merrin calmly chanted, it became her mantra to you as the minutes went on.

The jump to lightspeed felt like an eternity as you battled the excruciating pain. Your body tossed and turned, finding a position where the cramping hurt less. Your legs thrashed, your vision blackened around the edges as you struggled to breathe in a slow pace—it only lessened the cramping to an extent but you don’t know for how long you could hold it.

Cere came barging in the bedroom.

“We’re near our destination. How is she holding up?”

“She’s trying to breathe calmly, I strongly object in using my magick on her,” the Nightsister reported.

“My head is burning!”

Cal pressed the back of his hand against your forehead, “She’s having a fever! How much farther until we reach Polis Massa?”

Before Cere could reply, the feedback of Greez’s microphone crackled through the speakers.

“Hold on, folks! It’s gonna be a bumpy ride!” the Lateron announced.

Cere sprang back to the cockpit, swerving and catching her balance as the ship rumbled. The turbulence didn’t help much, but you kept holding onto Cal’s hand.

“Cere, you didn’t tell me that we’re running into an asteroid field!”

“Because Polis Massa is on the asteroid field!”

“And this is a medical station we’re talking about!”

Greez steered closer to the largest asteroid until he found a cluster of silver infrastructures sticking out on the largest rock in the field. Cere had no further qualms about that, she turned and tapped the buttons and knobs on her communication station in the ship to send the urgent transmission.

“This is Jedi Cere Junda, we are in need of urgent medical assistance! A crew member has gone into labor and is about to give birth, please!”

“Transmission verified, you are allowed to dock. We’ll have a ward and medical droids ready for her,”

The medical droids stationed there were on full alert, a couple of the wardens came out of the building with a gurney prepared for you as they anticipated your arrival. The ship maneuvered and hovered carefully by the landing pad.

“We’re here,” Cal whispered to you, hoping to console you.

“Where are we?” you murmured.

“Polis Massa,” he scooped you up from the bed, carried you all the way out of the Mantis and then laying you down on the gurney waiting for you.

The female wardens briskly pushed your gurney towards the medical bay and then to the available ward that was ready for you. The human nurses cooed and whispered to you in comforting, melodic voices; coaxing you and telling you everything down to the littlest detail.

“We’re going to carry you to the next bed, alright?”

“Okay…” you replied, your eyes were too heavy to direct your vision to whichever nurse was speaking to you.

The nurses traded diagnoses with one another and then relayed them to the medical droids, reflecting your vital signs onto their computers and holographs.

“Vitals are fine, no remarkable findings,”

“Blood pressure is stable,”

The nurses helped you lift up your knees as a midwife droid hovered slowly towards you. The entire crew watched through the glass wall of your room, they all leaned against the opposite wall but it was your husband who eagerly stayed behind the glass.

“Is she going to be alright?” he asked the one nurse who exited your room.

“Yes, it’s good that you’ve brought her here on such short notice,”

“We were only two parsecs away from here,” Cere added.

The nurse had allowed Cal to enter the ward—for only one non-patient was permitted to accompany the patient—he sat by your side, close to your head. He stroked your hair as you take deep breaths before pushing.

Cal watched the red fill your cheeks as you tried to push, following the pace of the midwife droid that’s coaxing you. He ignored your screeching cries, he wiped away the tears that rolled away from your eyes as you breathed through clenched teeth, preparing for the next.

An infant cry filled the room, Cal’s head instantly turned to the end of the bed where the midwife droid held your newborn—he watched the droid clean the infant on the spot and swaddle it in a soft, white sheet. He stood up and held the tiniest human being he’s ever seen in his entire life. A tinge of orange strands adorned the little one’s head.

“It’s a girl,” he gasped.

He approached you with your daughter in his arms, he held her close to you so you may look at her crumpled, crying little face.

“Cassidy,” you whispered.

Cal heard you utter the name. You traded glances and he smiled. A teardrop glimmered at the edge of his eye.

“Cassidy.” He echoed. The baby’s tiny hand hooked around his finger and he could’ve sworn he felt his heart burst out of his ribs, “My little Cassidy.”

He held his baby daughter right in front of him. Dark, round, shining eyes blinked back at him as Cassidy’s stubby arms squirmed, lightly hitting his cheeks and jaw with smooth, soft hands.

“She has your eyes,” Cal choked.

“She has your hair,” you manage a chuckle.

“You did great, darling,” he sat down, level to you and planted a kiss on your forehead while the Mantis crew watched the little family have their greatest moment yet.

#cal kestis #cal kestis fic #cal kestis x reader #cal kestis x reader fic #scruffy! cal kestis #daddy! cal kestis #adult! cal kestis #jedi family #jedi offspring #force-sensitive offspring #settling down #rebel alliance #anons #anon #anon prompt #anon prompts #prompts #for anons #requested #fic #fluff #fluff fic #fic request #requested by anons #star wars #sw #star wars fic #sw fic #star wars jedi fallen order #star wars jedi fallen order fic

[dndaddyissues]

im new to DMing, and while i seem to have gotten the hang of most things well, im super confused when it comes to running battles (especially when theyre my own monsters) how do i balance a battle? how do i tell how many enemies/how much health per enemy = fair for certain amounts of players? is there a chart or resource somewhere you know of, or is it all intuition? (bonus question: how long should normal and boss encounters last irl time wise?) thanks so much!

thanks for sending me this question! this answer is particularly huge… you have been warned. 

as usual, here’s the tl;dr:

- for an easy to moderate challenge, have the same (or fewer) number of enemies as there are players;

- for an advanced challenge, outnumber the players;

- lower your enemies’ AC to something that your players can hit 60-70% of the time;

- in exchange, buff your enemies’ HP;

- feel free to fudge hit points whenever you want;

- utilize the “minions” mechanic from 4th edition;

- for boss battles, introduce special bonus actions, reactions, and villain actions;

- combat usually lasts 3-4 rounds: plan accordingly;

- ask yourself: why is this combat happening? what narrative/dramatic and character stakes can i introduce?;

- and have fun!

i want to preface my answer by saying that i don’t enjoy easy combat – unless played for laughs/comedy, or used to foreshadow something plotwise (like a goblin scout’s death alerting the goblin horde at large), i hardly ever throw an easy combat encounter at my party.

so, the following advice is given with challenging the players in mind – either moderately, immensely, or impossibly. i guess i’m just a big sucker for jim murphy/matt colville-style DO OR DIE challenges. otherwise, what’s the point?

another preface: this answer is given in the spirit of avoiding the “slog” – the combat encounter where it feels like baddies and PCs are just stepping up to the plate, whacking at each other, and stepping back down. that’s boring. and boring combat is the worst. sometimes it’s unavoidable – we all have our off days, nothing wrong about that – but the less that it happens, the more fun that everyone has! right?

now, on to the answer itself!

first of all, i’ve already written an answer to an ask a little while back about combat that might be useful to you. click here to read about how to make more action-oriented monsters, especially for boss battles and random encounters that you want to feel significant and deadly.

second of all, here’s the 5e CR encounter calculator i used to use all the time. it’s extremely intuitive and has toggles for number of players, level of players, monster CR/EXP, and how difficult encounters would be rated (easy, medium, hard, deadly). 

third of all, i never use that calculator anymore.

over the course of the 2.5 years i’ve spent DMing 5th edition, there are three main things i’ve learned that can drastically increase, or decrease, the difficulty of a combat encounter. they are: # of baddies, armor class, and # of hit points.

regarding # of baddies. due to how the action economy in 5e plays out, the more creatures there are on either side of a combat, the bigger the advantage that side has. it’s just kind of how it works. so, an easy way to bump up the difficulty: throw more monsters at the players than there are players.

the one soft exception is boss battles. personally, i fucking LOVE having just ONE, super badass, super hard to kill, hardcore boss that the party gets to face down during crucial turning points in the campaign. it makes me feel like i’m running fucking Dracula in Netflix’s Castlevania against some lovable and deadly dumbasses. it’s great. it’s fun. it’s thrilling. to make bosses as challenging (and therefore rewarding) as possible, i highly recommend reading the ask i linked earlier in this reply. (click here for the link again.)

now, i say it’s a soft exception because i like giving my bosses minions. i basically utilize the 4th edition (i think?) “minion” mechanic where the AC, bonus to hit, and damage of all minion creatures are the same as regular versions of the creature. the only difference is, they have 1 HP. 

this can give the PCs the awesome feeling of wading through waves and waves of minions – say, dozens of zombies, as an evil lich cackles upon their raised stone dais 80 feet away. i don’t utilize this too often because then it can feel tiring to the party. but done sparingly, and with narrative stakes, it can be quite thrilling! (that maxim is also true for basically any kind of combat encounter in D&D.)

regarding armor class. obviously, the higher the armor class, the harder the challenge. if you can’t hit the damn thing obviously you can’t kill it. i personally like to pitch the AC of my enemies a liiittle bit lower, to increase my PCs’ probability of hitting. the exact number of the armor class will depend on your players’ level.

as a super general guide for players at level 3, 10-13 is easy, 14-15 is moderate, 16-17 is challenging (heavily favoring 17), and 18+ is very challenging/almost impossible. 

just so you know, i generally set my enemies’ ACs for a level 3 party to be 13 for less important creatures, and 14 for more important creatures. i’d probably set the AC to be 15 or 16 for a mini-boss, and 16 or 17 (if i’m feeling cruel lol) for a boss.

obviously, this scales as your party levels up, finds magical items, and gains special features and boons. i would scale the difficulty by 1 when they hit level 4 and get an ability score improvement, and then by 1 every 2 levels or so.

in other words, at level 4, i’d consider an AC of 11-14 to be easy, 15-16 as moderate, 17-18 as challenging (heavily favoring 18), and 19+ as very challenging/almost impossible. and by the time your party is levels 12-16, AC can often feel like it doesn’t freaking matter anymore because they’ll be able to hit, like, fucking everything. anyway.

there’s some nitty gritty mathematics about this if you like to get granular. this is a good video about dice math, armor class, and calculating advantage mathematically if that sort of thing interests you.

regarding # of hit points. honestly, i fudge this most times. because i like to scale my AC on the lower end, in exchange, i make my creatures fucking FAT. like, i’ll look at their stat block in the monster manual, and add 30-50% to what they already have. sometimes i’ll straight up double or even triple it.

for example, the spectator normally has 39 hit points, but i gave my spectator ~100, because it was a miniboss. i did, however, keep its armor class at 14 because that meant my players, at 3rd level, would be able to hit it 60-70% of the time. this strategy of mine tends to work out, because my players are usually able to dish out a LOT of damage per round. (we have a barb, a fighter, and a warlock in the party lol.)

something i did in the spectator fight, that i wish i didn’t do, was stay faithful to the number of hit points it had. the barbarian ended up killing it with a rather anticlimactic attack. i know for certain that my warlock, which was next in the initiative order, had this SUPER cool and character-relevant attack planned. what i would do differently, is keep the spectator alive just long enough for my warlock to do their cool fucking move, and have that move kill the monster.

and now for the big takeaway. combat, for me, is all about giving my players a chance to shine, be badass, utilize their class abilities, and be creative. just like any other aspect of d&d, such as roleplaying and exploration, combat is an exercise in collaborative storytelling (for me, at least).

i rarely introduce combat that doesn’t tie into an A plot, a B plot, or a side quest that the PCs are chasing. i don’t have anything against random encounters – in fact, i ran some RE’s in the second-most recent session – but what makes combat fun for me as a DM is the fact that it advances story, and potentially deepens the players’ understanding of their character.

so, before you throw your players into a combat situation, ask yourself: why? how can i make this narratively dramatic – and not just a slogfest?

bonus answer: most combat encounters will struggle to last beyond three, maybe four, rounds. especially if there are an equal or fewer baddies to the player characters. however, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. in fact, if combat went on for five, six, seven rounds, it can begin to feel like… well.. a slog.

so make the most out of your three, four rounds, and make each combat encounter unique! how about an environmental challenge? slippery ground, swinging axes, pools of lava, a sudden earthquake, a portcullis dividing the party, water filling the room.

or roleplay/plot-related challenges? maybe there’s a circle of mages attempting to summon a demon that are protected by enchanted suits of armor that the PCs need to hack through. maybe there are hostages. maybe there’s a powerful magical artifact that the baddies and PCs both want, and the challenge in the combat lies in who can most deftly and efficiently maneuver through the clockwork maze protecting the raised dais the item resides upon.

#ask #reply #dnd ideas #dm tips #combat ideas

[farmerlan]

Farmer Lan’s Rewatch Guide to The Untamed - Episode 4

CAUTION: SPOILER SPOILER SPOILERS

[We open to the opening/gift-giving ceremony, and we are introduced to fellow rabble rouser Nie Huaisang, as well as Jin Guangyao (then known as Meng Yao). He seems aware of the gossip surrounding him but Lan Xichen treats him kindly anyway.

The Wen posse interrupts the ceremony, stopping at the entrance to disfigure a disciple on the way. Lan Wangji almost interferes but holds back; Wei Wuxian does not care about consequences (what else is new) and the Jiang and Wen sects soon draw arms. Lan Xichen disarms them all with his melodious xiao playing and tells Wen Chao to watch himself, with Wen Qing stepping in to diffuse the situation.]

Differences from the novel:

You probably know what I’m about to say and I’m afraid it doesn’t get any less repetitive from here on out…but yep, this scene is not in the novel. There’s no ceremony. The flashback pretty much goes directly to lessons/the meeting of Wuxian and Wangji. With that said, I thought it was a really clever way to introduce some more of our main characters.

In the novel, Meng Yao does not show up as part of the Nie sect’s retinue at the Cloud Recesses. In fact, I am not sure where he would be in this part of the story timeline. In the novel timeline of events, Meng Yao joined the Nie sect’s cultivators during the Sunshot campaign, but prior to that had tried to visit his father at Carp Tower after the passing of his mother, only to be rejected and kicked down the stairs. However, I believe this would be even before that , so at this point he is probably still living with his mother.

As discussed in the previous episode, the Wens do not go to Cloud Recesses at all so any scenes from here on out with Wen Qing and Wen Ning are not part of the novel. Wen Chao in the novel still does most of the awful things he does in the drama, but he is not established as a villain this early on in the timeline. For Wen Qing and Wen Ning, they are only introduced after Jiang Cheng had been captured by the Wens.

[Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang arrange to go visit the back hill for shenanigans. The three of them run into Lan Wangji, Wei Wuxian recounts how he fought Lan Wangji last night.

Cut to Lan Xichen, who thinks the Wen sect is up to no good and voices concerns about their involvement with the puppetry issue. Lan Qiren hesitates to jump to conclusions but note that they have been getting out of control. Meng Yao is then shown being ignored by most people except Lan Xichen, who treats him kindly and wow I didn’t really pay attention to their dynamics the first time round but I can totally see why some people ship them ha.]

Differences from the novel:

Something that the drama, especially in this episode, conveys is the lack of respect afforded to Meng Yao as illegitimate son of Jin Guangshan and a prostitute. In the novel, he grew up being bullied and even after he took the name of Jin Guangyao, he was looked down upon. Lan Xichen was one of the only people who consistently stood by his side. In Chapter 48, there is a scene where other cultivators did not want to drink the tea offered by Jin Guangyao as they believed that he was ‘unclean’ since he is the son of the prostitute. The only person who thanked him and drank the tea without hesitation was Lan Xichen.

[Wen Qing tests the wards around the back hill, Wei Wuxian and Nie Huaisang are shown catching fish in the stream. Wei Wuxian hears a noise and investigates, only to see Wen Qing. We learn that she’s a doctor by trade.

There’s a scene of the Jiang gang sharing dinner and we once again have a scene between Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli. The former wonders when Wei Wuxian will grow up and start thinking of the sect and Jiang Yanli once again bring up Wuxian is living up to the values of the sect, and we get our first conversation around how Jiang Fengmian favors Wei Wuxian.]

Differences from the novel:

Sorry, nope again. No such scenes in the novel since neither Wen Qing nor Jiang Yanli were at Gusu! In fact, there is not a whole lot of dialogue between Jiang Yanli and Jiang Cheng about favoritism – Jiang Cheng really only talks about it with Wei Wuxian directly.

Don’t worry, Wen Qing is a doctor in the novel.

[Lan Qiren is reciting the values of the Gusu sect and Wuxian and Huaisang are passing peanuts, notes, dozing off and generally being up to no good. I love how improperly Wei Wuxian is sitting right as Lan Qiren talks about having proper posture. Lan Wangji looks like he is about to have an aneurysm. Wei Wuxian gets picked on by Lan Qiren for his lack of respect. Lan Qiren asks him to get lost and as punishment, to transcribe a volume of the Gusu Lan rules 1000 times, and then asks Lan Wangji to supervise him.

Wei Wuxian goes wandering in the back hill and runs into Wen Ning, who is shown here at being good at archery but gets a few pointers from Wei Wuxian. They run into Wen Qing and Wei Wuxian guesses she’s up to something, before Lan Wangji shows up to drag him back to the Cloud Recesses for his punishment.]

Differences from the novel:

Wei Wuxian does run into Wen Ning practicing archery in the novel, but the setting in the novel was that of a flashback. In Chapter 59, As Wei Wuxian sneaks back to Yunmeng to try and find Jiang Cheng (who had been captured), he encounters Wen Ning. Wei Wuxian doesn’t quite remember him at first, but Wen Ning remembers him and was grateful that Wei Wuxian spoke up for him during an archery competition held at the Nightless City two years ago.  Essentially, Wei Wuxian had spied him practicing and given him encouragement, even after Wen Ning performed poorly in front of the audience because he was nervous. Wen Ning helps Wei Wuxian recover Jiang Cheng from the clutches of his sect.

The lesson scene with Lan Qiren is in the book, although it is somewhat modified. In the book, Wei Wuxian actually receives punishment four times in both the novel and drama, but for different reasons:

After Lan Qiren tries to test him and he mentions demonic cultivation in the classroom (this scene), Lan Qiren tells him to get lost (and Wei Wuxian being who he is, just takes this as an opportunity to straight up leaves the class, pissing Lan Qiren off even more lol). Afterwards, Jiang Cheng finds him and tells him Lan Qiren has ordered him to copy two volumes of the Gusu sect rules three times (when we’re talking volumes, we’re talking TOMES given how dense the material is). Nie Huaisang actually volunteers to do this for him as long as he helps Nie Huaisang cheat by passing notes during the next test in return. This does not happen in the drama – it was replaced by the scene where he gets punished after he gets caught by Lan Wangji while trying to sneak in to the Cloud Recesses.

Lan Wangji catches them cheating during the test and tells Lan Qiren. The subsequent hilarious interactions between Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian during his punishment happens in Chapter 15 and is covered in Episode 5.

Wei Wuxian later on attempts to smuggle alcohol in AGAIN in Chapter 18 and ends up getting both himself and Lan Wangji punished – although there is a difference in terms of how this happens between the novel and the drama (Episode 6).

Finally, our boy also gets punished for his fight with Jin Zixuan, which DOES closely follow the novel according to my memory (although I have to check Episode 7 against Chapter 18 to confirm).

Overall Thoughts

As of right now, we’re still around Chapter 13/14 of the novel and it’s definitely been interesting seeing how the drama writers had to adapt the flashback-heavy plot to something more palatable for a drama. It’s actually really cool seeing how our feelings towards characters develop the same way as they do in the novel, just through a different series of events than what was portrayed.

For example, the show had to cut out a fair amount of dialogue for Nie Huaisang compared to what was in the novel, which cuts down on his character development. However, the writers were still able to show his character as that of a mischievous,(adorable) bumbling idiot, only, they effectively did this through the back hill scene while simultaneously building on the exposition for Wen Qing as well through her interaction with Wei Wuxian in that same scene. The novel has the luxury of breaking these interactions with side characters out into more prolonged scenes, but the writers do an incredible job of condensing everything while still having the plot make sense.

#mdzs #mo dao zu shi #cql #the untamed #wei wuxian #lan wangji #episode 4 #recap #魔道祖师

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT IDEAS

Object-oriented programming in the 1980s. If it can work to start a startup. Instead of building stuff to throw away, you tend to want every line of code to go toward that final goal of showing you did a lot of startups grow out of them. Already spreading to pros I know you're skeptical they'll ever get hotels, but there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such topic, when people with degrees in the subject have already written many thick books about it. Those are both good things to be. I don't mean that as some kind of answer for, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting. When someone's working on a problem that seems too big, I always ask: is there some way to give the startups the money, though. What would it even mean to make theorems a commodity? There seem to be an artist, which is even shorter than the Perl form.1 However, a city could select good startups.2

Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a complete system for supporting server-based applications, where you can throw together an unbelievably inefficient version 1 of a program very quickly. Or at least discard any code you wrote while still employed and start over. But a hacker can learn quickly enough that car means the first element of a list and cdr means the rest. If an increasing number of startups founded by people who know the subject from experience, but for doing things other people want. It could be the reason they don't have any.3 An interactive language, with a small core of well understood and highly orthogonal operators, just like the core language, that would be better for programming. The more of a language as a set of axioms, surely it's gross to have additional axioms that add no expressive power, simply for the sake of efficiency.

One of the MROSD trails runs right along the fault. When you're young you're more mobile—not just because you don't have to be downloaded. The fact is, most startups end up doing something different than they planned. The three old guys didn't get it. PL/1: Fortran doesn't have enough data types. What programmers in a hundred years? Just wait till all the 10-room pensiones in Rome discover this site.4 Common Lisp I have often wanted to iterate through the fields of a struct—to push performance data to the programmer instead of waiting for him to come asking for it. It would be too much of a political liability just to give the startups the money, though. And they are a classic example of this approach. For one thing, real problems are rare and valuable skill, and the de facto censorship imposed by publishers is a useful if imperfect filter.

I'm just not sure how big it's going to seem hard. Often, indeed, it is not dense enough. If the hundred year language were available today, would we want to program in today. Of course, the most recent true counterexample is probably 1960. A friend of mine rarely does anything the first time someone asks him. As a young founder by present standards, so you have to spend years working to learn this stuff. The market doesn't give a shit how hard you worked.

You can write programs to solve, but I never have. One advantage of this approach is that it gives you fewer options for the future. Otherwise Robert would have been too late. Look at how much any popular language has changed during its life.5 Java also play a role—but I think it is the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, and I felt it had to be prepared to explain how it's recession-proof is to do what hackers enjoy doing anyway. The real question is, how far up the ladder of abstraction will parallelism go? Anything that can be implicit, should be. New York Times, which I still occasionally buy on weekends. So I think it might be better to follow the model of Tcl, and supply the Lisp together with a lot of them weren't initially supposed to be startups. It's because staying close to the main branches of the evolutionary tree pass through the languages that have the smallest, cleanest cores. The way to learn about startups is by watching them in action, preferably by working at one. At the very least it will teach you how to write software with users.

Few if any colleges have classes about startups. All they saw were carefully scripted campaign spots. It might help if they were expressed that way. It's enormously spread out, and feels surprisingly empty much of the reason is that faster hardware has allowed programmers to make different tradeoffs between speed and convenience, depending on the application.6 At the top schools, I'd guess as many as a quarter of the CS majors could make it as startup founders if they wanted is an important qualification—so important that it's almost cheating to append it like that—because once you get over a certain threshold of intelligence, which most CS majors at top schools are past, the deciding factor in whether you succeed as a founder is how much you want to say and ad lib the individual sentences. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. Preposterous as this plan sounds, it's probably the most efficient way a city could select good startups. Most will say that any ideas you think of new ideas is practically virgin territory. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Whatever computers are made of, and conversations with friends are the kitchen they're cooked in.7 That was exactly what the world needed in 1975, but if there was any VC who'd get you guys, it would at least make a great pseudocode.

If this is a special case of my more general prediction that most of them grew organically. Writing software as multiple layers is a powerful technique even within applications. The more of your software will be reusable. Using first and rest instead of car and cdr often are, in successive lines. Of course, I'm making a big assumption in even asking what programming languages will be like in a hundred years? It must be terse, simple, and hackable. It becomes: let's try making a web-based app they'd seen, it seemed like there was nothing to it. Both customers and investors will be feeling pinched.8

The main complaint of the more articulate critics was that Arc seemed so flimsy. That's how programmers read code anyway: when indentation says one thing and delimiters say another, we go by the indentation. You need that resistance, just as low notes travel through walls better than high ones. Maybe this would have been a junior professor at that age, and he wouldn't have had time to work on things that maximize your future options. How much would that take? It's important to realize that there's no market for startup ideas suggests there's no demand.9 You'll certainly like meeting them. It's not the sort of town you have before you try this. This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School. I'm not a very good sign to me that ideas just pop into my head.

Notes

Dan wrote a prototype in Basic in a series A rounds from top VC funds whether it was 10.

With the good groups, just harder. Which in turn the most successful founders still get rich from a startup could grow big by transforming consulting into a great one.

There are two simplifying assumptions: that the only way to create events and institutions that bring ambitious people together. A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that's not as facile a trick as it was putting local grocery stores out of their portfolio companies. If the next one will be familiar to anyone who had worked for a really long time? One new thing the company they're buying.

If I paint someone's house, the growth in wealth in a bar. I didn't need to warn readers about, just as much the better, but they start to be about 50%. Together these were the impressive ones. Other investors might assume that P spam and P nonspam are both.

All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads. The point where things start with consumer electronics.

If they're on boards of directors they're probably a cause them to keep them from the VCs' point of a press hit, but that we wouldn't have understood why: If you have two choices and one or two, and so on. But if so, or in one where life was tougher, the same reason parents don't tell the whole story. Incidentally, the switch in mid-twenties the people they want.

Trevor Blackwell points out, First Round Capital is closer to a clueless audience like that, except in the median VC loses money. Unless of course reflects a willful misunderstanding of what you care about, just those you should seek outside advice, and this trick, and so don't deserve to keep them from leaving to start or join startups. There is not much to seem big that they only even consider great people.

You also have to do it right. In every other respect they're constantly being told that they are bleeding cash really fast. Probably more dangerous to Microsoft than Netscape was.

In theory you could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities. If you have the concept of the reason for the coincidence that Greg Mcadoo, our contact at Sequoia, was no great risk in doing a small proportion of the subject of language power in Succinctness is Power. As I was there was near zero crossover. Some urban renewal experts took a shot at destroying Boston's in the evolution of the next year they worked.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #Lisp #answer #assumptions #cores #language #fact #Netscape #today #Java #types #Power #Succinctness #computers #prediction #Microsoft #anyone #indentation #B

[prorevenge]

My friend's ex-wife gets his family's business shut down and burns their lives to the ground (not what you may think)

Sorry for the somewhat misleading title, but I couldn't resist.

This story isn't about me but two people I'm friends with. We'll call one Rae and one Justin. I'm posting this with Justin's permission, and he'll probably be reading the thread.

Pretty quickly after they moved, they decided to get amicably divorced, since they never wanted to be married anyway. They still lived together for a while, and basically became something between platonic roommates and each other's only family. Over time, they started dating other people. Some partners were scared off by the weird relationship between them, but most got it, and understood that Justin and Rae had basically bonded though mutual trauma. I also met both of them during this time, and we became close friends.

This whole time, both their families and other members of their community were relentlessly harassing them. People were showing up at their house at all hours, and they had reason to believe people were trying to steal their identities over the years, though they'd fortunately both put a freeze on their credit, so nothing ever came of it.

Then Justin had a bad accident. A really bad accident. He was on his bike and a car blew through a stop sign without slowing down and plowed right into him. He had to be rushed to the hospital and landed in the ICU. Rae was his emergency contact, and I was with her and some other friends when she got the call. I immediately drove her to the hospital with a couple of other people, and she was melting down (understandably). The hospital staff wouldn't let us all in when we got there, but they let Rae in. She came out periodically to let us know what was going on. Justin wasn't unconscious, but he was totally out of it and didn't seem to know she was there, probably from the painkillers, but she was convinced he had permanent dehabilitating brain damage and basically the group of us were just soothing her and reassuring her it would be fine. A friend of ours who worked at the hospital as an MRI tech was also stopping by when she could on her breaks and calming down Rae. We'd been there all night and part of the day at this point, and the medical staff was giving us reason to be hopeful.

But things got worse. To this day, no one knows how they found out, but 14 hours after Justin's accident, his parents, uncles, and grandfather showed up. They immediately had all of us removed from the ICU, Rae included. Unfortunately, as his ex-wife, she was no longer his legal next-of-kin and had no rights against his blood family.

At this point, she was absolutely hysterical and inconsolable. She was convinced Justin's family would hurt him. I'm ashamed to say all three of us that were there with her thought she was overreacting. We all knew Rae and Justin had left a fucked-up situation, but it wasn't like his own family would do anything to impede his recovery. She was getting angry with us for trying to calm her down, and tried to explain that according to their religion, she and Justin deserved punishment from God, and only the greatest suffering could prompt repenting and redemption. She said their families embraced this thinking and wanted them to suffer, because it would prove that they did the wrong thing by leaving, and suffering would drive them back to the fold. She said as long as Justin was with his family, he wouldn't be safe.

Our friend who worked for the hospital came and found Rae at that point. She made Rae swear up and down she wouldn't tell anyone she told her this, because she could get in deep trouble for releasing privileged information to someone unauthorized, but she'd caught wind that Justin's parents were aggressively demanding the hospital release him into their care, and they were involving lawyers. The hospital was currently refusing, because Justin wasn't stable enough to leave, but our friend warned Rae that as soon as Justin got to be stable, or the lawyers scared the hospital enough, it's possible the parents would be able to take Justin.

This shocked the rest of us. Realizing his parents were not only willing to remove Justin from the hospital that had saved his life in the condition he was still in, but were actively trying to do it made us really "get" for the first time why Rae was going out of her head with fear.

At this point, Rae snapped into do-or-die mode. Convinced that Justin was about to literally die if she didn't act, she decided she would do everything in her power to start a fire at home so that Justin's family would want to run back to put it out. And this wasn't too hard, because she had a lot of dirt on the whole community she came from. Like a madwoman, she started blowing the whistle all over Justin's family. She called the IRS's fraud hotline and detailed all the ways that the family business was committing tax fraud. She submitted an ATF tip about how that same family business was illegally selling firearms without a license and without following any of the proper protocols, and was knowingly selling guns to convicted felons. She reported one of Justin's uncles for owning several guns as a convicted felon. She also reported Justin's mom's unlicensed day care "business," which was apparently extremely shady, including having over 30 children packed into one house, with Justin's mom as the only adult and many of the childcare duties being farmed out to Justin's 12- and 14-year-old sisters. She called CPS on Justin's uncles and his parents for keeping their children out of school, and for physical abuse in one uncle's case. In all of these reports, she provided extensive details.

She finished her calls and emails, and then she waited. We all waited for several hours, and nothing happened. Then, miraculously, Justin become lucid enough to understand what was going on and make his own decisions, and he kicked his family out again. From there began a slow but steady path to recovery.

In all the relief and excitement to see Justin on the mend, we'd almost forgotten about Rae's campaign of desperation, until a couple of weeks later, when the screaming voicemails started pouring in to both of them. First, the business was being investigated by the IRS, then it was being investigated for illegal firearms dealing. Then the daycare was getting investigated. At first, Rae felt a little guilty, but then she was like, "You know what? No regrets. They would have killed Justin."

From what they've been able piece together in the year and a half since this happened, the business has gone under, and the daycare is shuttered. The uncle is six months into a new five-year prison sentence for firearm possession. CPS investigated, which scared the shit out of the family, but nothing really came of it, which is especially sad in the case of the cousins being physically abused. That said, the parents are now too scared to keep the kids home from school, and with the unlicensed daycare shut down, the mom's not exploiting her daughters' labor anyway, so she has no incentive to keep them home. So Justin's little siblings are at least getting their education.

Justin and Rae are both happy and thriving. Justin unfortunately will never fully recover from the accident. He has some permanent neurological damage that results in tremors. But he's pumped to be alive, he can work a full-time job, he can still be pretty physically active, and as far as I'm concerned, he wins.

TL;DR: Kooky abusive family tries to remove my friend from critical medical care because reasons (??), and his ex-wife hits the panic button that burns their lives to the ground.

(source) story by (/u/Throwawayallaway4)

#prorevenge #by /u/Throwawayallaway4 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

[vulpinmusings]

Letters from Buxcord 2 - Razorback

After much delay, my RPG group returned to our Monster of the Week campaign for our second mystery.  This time, Ash and his new companions look into strange happenings surrounding a rich family and an old slaughterhouse.

Samantha,

Any doubts I had about sticking around Buxcord are well and truly squashed now.  It’s only been about a week since the Santa-squatch incident and I’ve already squared off with something much bigger and purely magical.

It started just a couple days after Christmas.  I was trawling about town for more details on local legends in the hopes of finding some common sources or threads to follow, and wound up at Bayou Boating, the main tourist attraction in this small town.  They had a list of “local cryptids” posted on the wall, but it included several creatures that, unless the names apply to different mythics than they do in Taryn, do not tend to live in or around wetlands.  The one person on staff at the time – it is the off-season for boat tours – proved to be less than well-informed about the one local legend I asked him about.  People occasionally go missing in the bayou after foolishly going out there on their own at night.

Well, I can’t really put all the blame for my not getting a lot of info on the clerk.  I‘d only asked a few questions before I experienced a major pulse in the magic fields.  It was almost a textbook example of the ripples caused by an inexperienced Mage casting spells beyond their ability.  The pulse carried some lingering effects of the original spell, as I had a brief vision of a grinning shadow floating over the bayou.  I set off in search of the source, but as messy as the spell had been it was also far enough away that the magic settled and the trail grew cold before I got more than a block.

Nothing else happened for a few days, until I crossed paths with Nollthep and Lea again.  I hadn’t really seen either of them since the Santa-sqautch, and the simple fact that Nollthep was not in his shop and was asking after somebody should have tipped me off.  Whatever that fellow is, he seems to work for some higher being and has little to no personal needs outside of running errands for his “Boss.” Lea is normal other than her instinctual persuasion magic, but her paths and mine just hadn’t crossed in the last week.

At any rate, we three happened to meet up at the local park where Lea was performing with some small-time Punk Rock band that sings in Spanish.  That’s… I think the language matches best to Iberrian.  Anyway, Lea’s singing was infused with a mesmeric effect that had everyone (except yours truly, naturally) in love with the whole performance despite her not knowing the language or the words very well. Nollthep wandered up to us after the show was over, asking everyone he came across if they knew of any Wiccans or anybody named Clemonte.  When he got to Lea and I, his questions turned to the topic of whether or not humans need blood and hearts to live.

I don’t think I need to say how concerning that was, but I didn’t get a chance to press for details before our attention was stolen by a group of local law enforcement suddenly taking off in response to a call from a “Clemonte mansion.”  That got Nollthep’s full focus, of course, and Lea finally recalled that the Clemontes were a wealthy but reclusive and disliked family in Buxcord.  She alluded to some previous encounters with them that had left her particularly soured, but she agreed to lead us to the house.

The Clemontes live on a hill on the southern outskirts of town, with their driveway reaching all the way to the base of the hill.  As mansions go, it wasn’t all that large, but the fountain in front had the ostentation of true Old Money.  The butler who answered our knock at the door sealed the impression, and he would have turned us away on principle if Lea’s magic hadn’t kicked in and scrambled his senses enough to make him tolerant of three random gawkers intruding on his employer’s private business.

I don’t want to become to reliant on that kind of manipulation, but without the reputation I’ve got back home I might not have much choice for a while…

The police – a sheriff and two deputies to be precise – were in the living room questioning a young woman and paid us little mind as we peeked in for a look.  The reason for the call was glaringly obvious: a disemboweled corpse had been hung on the wall over the fireplace with a graffiti-style pig’s head and the words “I’m back” scrawled in blood below it.  A most disturbing sight, although only Lea showed any physical reaction.  I, of course, am too experienced to let my revulsion get in the way of solving a problem, and Nollthep is too inhuman to even have a visceral reaction to such sights.

The sheriff and pair of deputies who were on-site were surprisingly fine with the three of us stepping in and asking our own questions.  I’m hoping that it was just them thinking that we must be welcome since the we’d gotten past the butler, but it’s too early to rule out general incompetence yet. The girl was Sophia Clemonte and the corpse had been a security guard at the Clemonte slaughterhouse and had no reason to be in the family mansion.  Sophia was shook up by the corpse, but she was more concerned about her younger brother, Cyril, who was missing.  The police told us that the rest of the family were upstairs, so we decided to go up and interrogate them while the police were still busy getting Sophia’s story.

The Clemonte parents are named Archie and Penelope.  Archie’s a bit of a boor and seems to hate magic on principle, while Penelope had the aura of someone with the talent for magic, albeit one she hasn’t used in many years thanks to her husband’s influence.  From Archie, we got an explanation for what the message painted on the wall could have meant.  About twenty years ago, an employee at the slaughterhouse had suffered a psychotic break after being fired and killed several people before committing suicide.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t get more than that out of Archie before Lea insulted him and he told us to get out.

On our way out, we decided to check in on the last Clemonte, the eldest son Zachary.  I didn’t get any sense that he’d inherited any of his mother’s ability, and he was callously unconcerned about the whole scenario and intent on heading out for a little walk despite all common sense.

Penelope caught up to us at the top of the stairs and, now out from under Archie’s gaze, opened up a little more about her history with magic as we headed back to the crime scene.  She used to practice the Wiccan traditions, but gave them up years ago and hid her books away. Young Cyril had shown an interest in those books, and Penelope had given him one of the less dangerous tomes to look through.  I convinced Penelope to show me where she’d hidden the rest of her books, and she took us to a surprisingly large room hidden behind a secret door in the kitchen.  The room was full of not just books but all kinds of the stuff you typically find in the collection of those who follow ritual-based magic traditions. There was a book missing from the shelves, but it wasn’t the book Penelope had loaned to Cyril.  Penelope said the missing book was primarily about summoning and controlling spirits.

(Be sure to clarify that I’m not talking about Spiriter Warlock stuff here when you relay this to the M’Dales.  They’ll probably have a conniption otherwise.)

The sheriff had already had the corpse body-bagged when we returned to the sitting room, but I took a crack at searching the spot where it had been hanging, in case there was any lingering magic I could trace.  I got more than I bargained for; somehow, I managed to briefly link myself to the mind of an otherworldly entity (other than Nollthep) for a few seconds.  Demonic seems like an adequate adjective.  I had to sit down and catch my breath, and Lea charmed the butler into bringing us some coffee while Nollthep went to search Cyril’s room and one of the deputies was sent out to bring Zachary back. Nollthep came back with the missing tome, and we discussed whether or not to let Penelope know about it. We opted to keep her in the dark until I’d had a chance to look through it.

After much too much time had passed without either Zach or the deputy returning, I felt a ripple of powerful magic underlaid with that same sense of the demonic and led the group outside to see what was up. Standing by the fountain, holding Zachary up like a stuck pig and with the deputy lying broken at its feet, was an 8-foot tall humanoid figure dressed like a butcher and wearing a leather pig mask that was bleeding from the seams.  Reacting quickly, I wrapped the figure up in a Tangler while Nollthep produced a stack of playing cards and flung them one by one at the figure, as expertly as myself but without any spells attached.  The thing barely reacted.

Lea ran over to try and save the deputy, but her magic betrayed her, draining life out of the man rather than putting more in.

I tried to engage the creature in conversation, just to establish that it wasn’t sentient, and then tried to see how it liked a bullet in the head.

Did I mention I acquired a revolver shortly after the Santa-squatch incident?  It’s not my style, but without Carmilla around to handle the non-magical aspects of combat I have to make do.

Not that the bullet did any good in this event.

Nollthep tossed the spellbook to me and told me to try to find a counter-spell to whatever had summoned pig-head while he kept it busy.  I quickly found a likely looking spell and started Weaving it together to the best of my ability.  I hadn’t gotten far, though, before pig-head sensed the gathering magic and fled via dematerlization.

So, I learned that in this universe, evil spirits can sense when you’re trying to counteract the spell that summoned them to the mortal plan and can just get out of range before you’re done.  That’s an unwelcome complication.

Once the dust had settled, an ambulance was called in.  By some miracle, the deputy was still alive.  Zachary, on the other hand, was missing all his internal organs as well as having bled out.

In the course of informing the Clemontes and the sheriff about what had happened in the driveway and some of our suspicions, Nollthep and the Sheriff got into a bit of an argument about whether or not magic is real.  I could have gotten involved, but I was occupied with more important matters such as studying the spellbook and only rejoined the conversation when Nollthep left the room for a private conversation with Penelope and I overheard the Sheriff mention to Archie that there were reports of strange noises at the old slaughterhouse.  Over Archie’s protests, the sheriff insisted that everyone stay put until the morning and left his remaining deputy to keep an eye on us.

Once the Sheriff was gone, I made it clear that I did not intend to wait around or leave the case in the hands of people who didn’t even believe in the existence of magic.  I tried to conjure a basic mage-light to convince the deputy that I knew what I was talking about, but wound up with a tiny fireball instead.  It was sufficient to convince the deputy, at least.  Nollthep came back from his business with Penny and, naturally, agreed to accompany me.  To my surprise, Lea also wanted to come along, because she figured that since I’d chased pig-face off once, the safest place to be was at my side.

It was a long walk to the slaughterhouse.  It must have been abandoned shortly after the incident twenty years ago, because the place was empty and full of rusted equipment.  I felt the presence of pig-face as soon as we entered the building.  We decided that since pig-face had a… particular theme to him, we should start our search in the pork slaughtering section.  The plan was to locate pig-face and figure out how to restrain him so he couldn’t escape while I cast the banishing spell on him.

In the pig area, we heard the sounds of actual pigs in the preparation pens and went to look.  The things we found were mostly identical to normal pigs, but their eyes and teeth were more human than porcine, and they were munching on offal that included at least one intact human hand.  Nollthep, working on the assumption that the pigs were sapient, attempted to cast a translation spell on himself and wound up just speaking gibberish and apparently losing his ability to comprehend Lea or me for several minutes.

Then we saw pig-face up in the rafters, holding a blood-soaked mallet. Nollthep produced his throwing cards and put some actual magic into them that briefly set fire to pig-face’s sleeve.  The beast dropped down on us and walloped Nollthep.  As I Wove a lightning bolt, Lea ran for cover behind me.  She grabbed onto me briefly and, in that brief moment, the magic fell into place with my normal natural grace. The lighting struck pig-face, then arced off him and unlocked one of the pig pens.  The pig-thing inside charged at Nollthep, but he swatted it up and into another pen with ease.

Pig-face came after me next, and I threw up a barrier to try and stop his mallet.  I must have miscalculated, because the blow shattered the shield and knocked me back a bit.  Could have been worse, I guess, but still…

Nollthep pulled out a chain of tied-up handkerchiefs and tried to tie pig-face up with them.  It held for a few seconds, but not nearly enough time for me to even start the banishment.  Lea suddenly ran off into the heart of the slaughtering area, and pig-face chased her once he broke loose.  I got him in a Tangler, but it barely held him long enough for Nollthep to club him once.  I heard Lea say something about finding the meat grinder that pig-face had first died in as I ran to keep up with the fight.  I pushed past Nollthep and, in a bit of foolish desperation, tried to tackle pig-face and flip him off the walkway and into the machinery. You can probably guess how well that went.  Pig-face had me by the neck and dangling over the suddenly active grinder before I could regain my balance.  Nollthep whipped his hankie-chain around the specter’s arm to try and haul me out of danger, but pig-face resisted the pull and tossed a knife at Nollthep with his free hand. Then Lea found a meathook and chucked it at pig-face, and I was falling toward a mass of whirling blades and serrated rollers.

Reflex kicked in and I cast my Transport spell without thinking about how it would need to be adjusted.  By pure luck, the spell not only worked but deposited me safely on the walkway away from the fight.  As I made my way back to the action, I saw that my companions were in a bit of a panic thinking I’d just died (Nollthep apparently thought meat grinders just magically transmute flesh into meat or something and Lea didn’t see what happened).  Lea’s grief was so great she actually summoned a big root up through the walkway and into pig-face’s arm just as the creature made a move to throw Nollthep into the grinder after me.

As for myself, I was starting to get annoyed.  I’d cheated death by pure luck and pig-face was proving to very, very bothersome.  Simply restraining him was no longer an option for me.  He had to suffer a bit.

So I set him on fire.  It didn’t do much on its own, but Nollthep threw on some sort of powder that exploded and knocked pig-face off the walkway.  The creature threw the hooked chain from its belt and caught Nollthep by the shoulder, but I broke through the rusted chain with a simple Breaking before Nolly got pulled in after pig-face.

For reasons I don’t quite understand yet, being subjected to the same form of death a second time proved to be enough to end pig-face’s return to the physical world.  Once he’d been thoroughly ground up, that persistent, buzzing sense of his presence vanished along with the human-toothed pigs.  The gore they’d been feasting on remained, however.  I took the hand I’d seen earlier for the police to check, in case it happened to have belonged to Cyril Clemonte.  Nollthep went into a panic when I mentioned that theory and he swiftly dug through the viscera looking for anything that could be a heart.  Once he found something, he vanished in a blink, presumably to deliver the goods to his Boss.

Lea and I returned to the mansion just long enough to tell the deputy what to expect when the cops went to the slaughterhouse and to hand over the hand.  I then made sure Lea got home safely before returning to my hotel room.

When I arrived, I found a card on the bed.  It invited me to visit a Madam Weaver, who apparently knows something that would be of use to me.

How useful it will actually be remains to be seen, but you may be seeing me or these letters sooner than I hoped.

With guarded hope,

Ash

#MOTW #Vulpin plays

[ireddeadredemption2pc-blog]

Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Red Dead Redemption2 PC

The old west feels brand new again.

Oh Jesus Christ, what have you done? “Thomaschen 978 wants to know why a dozen carcasses and a couple of horse corpses are placed on rail tracks bordering the early industrial city and are the New Orleans stand-in St. Denis.” You killed half. village.” PC Games For Free

We are on round two of the recurring corpse pile. My poses got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lose Your Friends and Toss Them in the Sea in the Couple Friendly Strangers. Like GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 has its own bowling minima, we explain to Chen in a roundabout way that provokes his fear. Die in the shared open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and you’ll react fast enough to move your corpse around. Best RPGs games pc

The boy is in line with us. We should make it bigger. As the train comes around again, another pose tries to take us out. The chain defends us but does not bring it back to the tracks. He goes away screaming. Death of a true warrior.

Red Dead Redemption 2 could be the biggest, most humble videogame ball pit for an annoying story about impulsive children, the forced disintegration of the community, or simply a quiet and reflective hiking simulator. It’s just about what you need it to be, and it’s good at it.

Just hours before the corpse-bowling, I was alone through the icy forests, stepping into the long shadow cast across the snow by the rising moon. I heard a gunshot from a distance. The tracks of some wolves marked snow in the same direction. I saw them who won. Anytime I pay attention and look closely, RDR2 is the result of my curiosity. Best Racing games on pc

The mind-numbing expanse that makes up the vast world of RDR2 speaks to the creative force of a development team with an intense, obsessive dedication to realism (and all the money and time needed to do so). Like how my friends’ characters flare up when I fire a gun at them, how animal carcasses disintegrate over time, how NPCs react according to a sloppy or bloody outfit, how to stir through a doorway. Scares everyone everywhere.

It is hard to believe that RDR2 is so deep and wide and is also a harmonious, playable thing. I was already playing it for days worth the console version. This is why I am particularly disappointed that it ended up on the PC to some extent.

For every non-taught multiplayer adventure, disconnect or crash on the desktop, desktop. The rock star’s best storyline and character so far has been filmed through Frame Hutches’ slideshow and addressed over the launch weekend.

RDR2, one of the best Western games and one of the best open-world games I have ever released with enough stability issues, is recommended for the hard way until everything is completely smooth.

Morgan trail

EVERY PRETTY VISTA IS SOMETHING TO LOSE THROUGH ARTHUR’S EYES.

The story genre of Red Dead Redemption 2 follows the dying days of the Wild West. The sprawling industrial world faced the bandits and social downtrodden of Arthur Morgan’s small band, an imperfect but loyal, loving and self-reliant community.

Capitalism is reducing its value as resources to humans. Indigenous USA America is driven from the plains to make way for ‘civilization’ and commerce. The forests are brought down for timber, the hills are cut down for coal, and Morgan’s chosen family is caught in the middle, forced to flee, assimilate, or respond with violent protests is done. They do all three.

This is Rockstar’s most serious drama, and it’s really, really long. If you are running, the story ends after 40 to 50 hours and then continues for 10 to 15. The main story missions of Red Dead 2 feature distinctly rockstar fare: ride to a destination that is talking to everyone, tightly scripting though, entertaining things, riding, and chatting to the final destination.

Missions are often thrilling action sequences or artificially mundane pictures of wrench labor and trade, full of long-winded Bespoke animations, and outstanding performances. They are only hopelessly harsh, to the point where it feels like I am following the stage directions rather than playing the role of a vagabond in the Old West.

Step out of line in these campaigns and this is a failed situation. As opposed to Red Dead Online, there are very few of them that encourage players to think for themselves, each designed to advance the story. The RDR2 show is at least a spectacle of the slow pace of life in the Old West.

This is not the death and theatricality of a lifetime; My favorite missions include shoveling, drinking wine with a friend, proposing an old romance and riding a hot air balloon. Working through a greater rut, stricter tasks are considered meaningful in the end anyway, inspired by extraordinary, ambient world-building and characterization.

Side missions, minigames, small activities, and random world events — whether they hunt great guns, capture a play, or stumble upon a woman trapped under a horse — all set Arthur’s character and setting in subtle, rich ways. Please inform.

Nested in the third act of a fully animated and voice theatrical performance, something like 10 minutes, it is possible that the response button is pressed after an artist has included a telephone. Arthur would shout, “Hell with the telephone!” It is an optional activity, a long one, and an option is to react in that short window. I think most players will remember this, but this is Canad Response 1 through 3 because this is something Arthur would say, a rageless goofy set his way in the right way.

He would write complete, real diary entries about the 50-hour campaign, sketching memorable scenes and depicting the state of affairs of his chosen family, which people once knew changed their fortunes between hope and despair. It is meant to be a completely alternative reading, but a refreshingly intimate take on a masculine figure that unsettles many doubts and hopes as to the next person.

He sings himself on a lonely ride and lowers his old body in the mirror. He will have an exciting conversation with the horseshoe woman as he gives her a ride into town, both commenting on the troubles of working for wealthy, ungrateful men as a growing necessity. I feel it all. Best horror games on pc free

Hillbillies can capture him after making the camp, a couple may try to rob him after inviting him to dinner, a man with snakebite can come out of the forest by stumbling and tell him to suck venom is. These haphazard encounters portray brutal life on the fading frontier, as nature pushes back against inner poppers who want to change it. Arthur is the perfect vessel to see it

This is because Arthur Morgan is one of the darkest human characters I have played during a great turning point in American history, playing a playful, cruel and compassionate role according to differing theories.

The game world, beautiful as it is, is made more beautiful and tragic by how it is ready to play it on every occasion. Every beautiful vista has something to lose through Arthur’s eyes, power lines and train tracks, cut through the skies, and the rest of his life is slowly filling with factory smoke. Just about everyone sees a sad end in RDR2, too. This is a story that I might not sustain every moment, but I will not forget its brutal arc or the man in the middle of it all. God damn is it sad? An apocalypse that led to this.

Ren Der Reflection

Assuming that you are able to run it at high settings, the biggest strength of RDR2 is how it exquisitely renders the Old West setting on PC, drawing more attention to the nuanced details that make it. This is one of the best looking games I’ve seen and a rare experience that justifies a new GPU or CPU.

Better draw distance and a greater range of vegetation detail were added, making some vistas look photographic. Long shadows vary from walking or roaming between places to rides, to cute nature tours. Due to animal attacks, bullet holes, rain, mud, or rapid flow of blood, the markings on the clothes are caused by very high-resolution textures, which tell a very little story about your friends.

A new photo mode makes it easy to share those moments of amazement. The way the player rides on RDR2 for just sightseeing and sounds is an important feature. I am desperately trying to get an artistic portrait of my horse’s silhouette to sit against the moon, yet another self-proclaimed goal was tolerated by this ridiculously large complex game.

With 2080, i9-9900K and 32GB of RAM, I can run RDR2 mostly on ultra settings with some resource-intensive settings completely off or switched off. But some hardware combinations are proving troublesome for RDR2, leading to random crashes in some APIs and, more recently, to a hotfix, leading to hitching problems for some 4-core CPUs.

During the first weekend, I couldn’t spend more than an hour without crashing on the desktop, though Vulcan switched from DX12 (which gives me better framerates) back to static stuff. Sometimes the UI malfunctions and I cannot select a select or purchase option, the map fails to appear, or I get paged unexpectedly from game servers.

The graphics settings are almost too much as well, and probably confusing. In our test, only a handful of settings affected performance by more than 1-2 percent. Large residuals, the mapping between MSAA, volumetric lighting, and parallax occlusion, affect performance by 5 to 25 percent. Most of them don’t make a big visual difference anyway and are best left out.

The way the settings are presented is made to feel underdeveloped: a huge list with unclear presets that require tinkering to make RDR2 run in a satisfactory framerate. It is hard. The PC should be the best place to play, not the best place to play, after all, after a few patches. It’s a shame for a game to look good. upcoming pc games

Cowboy poetry Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Like in singleplayer mode, in Red Dead Online I can make my goals reasonable and watch them. The problem is, it is basically hamstrung by a frustrating multiplayer leveling system that locks basic equipment and cosmetics behind long XP requirements that can meet hours, perhaps days,

The option is spending gold, premium currency, items and clothing to unlock them immediately. A fishing pole is not available until level 14. A damn fishing pole in an outdoor recreation game. This is not spectacular and is a terrible way to invest players.

out a basic suite of tools (fishing rod, bow, varmint rifle, nice hat, etc.), Red Dead Online opened up widely. I have largely ignored traditional matchmaking modes such as gunfights and horse races, cheap thrills, I will play much better versions in different games, to have fun. It led to the most inventive, serene, real, and sometimes buzzing echo I’ve ever had.

I once walked into the middle of a fire in Blackwater and took the player corpses one by one to the church cemetery. Some were captured and participated in the ‘burial’ of their friends. A corpse thanked me for the gesture. Later, in an extended streak of criminal activity, my pose and I caught another player and instead of killing them on the spot, we rode into the swamp and threw them into the garter infected waters. I got the idea to act like a friend. Best pc games 2017

On a less absurd note, I set myself a constant goal of earning strictly enough money from hunting to buy cool-weather gear and a fine rifle. I am going to hike in the mountains and find the best way to hide there, a wild mountain man adorned with animal skins, which almost touches the floor.

In the meantime, I’m stopping gunmen across the city by running through the streets and calling for a parley. I am participating in an eight-player ballroom. I am living the life of a normal cowboy in the best shepherd game. I hope it clears up soon.

RDR2 PC System Requirements

OS : Windows 7 SP1 64bit

Graphics   Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280

Processor:   Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300

Memory:    8 GB RAM

DirectX:   Version 11 Or 12 Support

Storage: 150 GB

[annakie]

-----------

We're back for part two!  Remember the last time how I said....

And after that game... I parted ways with my friends once again.  Because I had tickets... to Critical Role.

Well... not only that, but I was finally meeting @thievinghippo​ IRL to see it!

CRITICAL ROLE (aka Friday Night)

I took off right after the previous game had ended and headed for the show.  My one big frustration was that it took 30 minutes for my Lyft driver to arrive from AROUND THE BLOCK (ok, about a quarter of a mile, but still).  In retrospect, I think he was hoping I'd cancel so he could get a bigger fare or something.  I think he just fucked himself over because he could have done that route twice in the time it took him to come get me.  So I got there with just a few minutes to spare and no time to get in the merch line.  But hey, I found Hippo and met a few other people from Tumblr whose names I recognized!  

It was so great to finally meet her, but we had almost no time to talk beforehand (but when we did, it was all about how mad we still are about Jaime / Brienne and also I tried to catch her up to what's happening in CR since she's pretty far behind.)

The show was AWESOME.  It was so fun to see live!  It was particularly awesome when the entire audience sang along with the theme song (See this video if you haven't yet for those of you not there: https://twitter.com/PhoenixHeart815/status/1157446225223962624 ).  It reminded me a lot of singing along with the Sparks Nevada theme the last few TAH shows, I got a little misty-eyed.

The bad?  It was really really hot in the theater.  At intermission I bolted out to the bathroom and buy cold waters.  I was about to get in the merch line but the lights already started flashing.  SIGH.  I gave Hippo a water and before we could settle in much, the show started again.  I told her my plan for the end of the show, though.

I will admit, my lack of sleep from the previous two nights was starting to catch up with me, and I had no caffeine available to combat it with.  I almost ducked out of the show early because I felt myself nodding off with the heat in the theater masked with the dark of the theater and that the second half of the show was less exciting (but still fun!) than the first.  Seeing the show live was amazing!

Just as Matt said they were ending the show there, I hopped out of my chair (I was in an aisle) and went into the lobby.  I was dying to get a set of the metal dice... and they were sold out of EVERYTHING except the big blue d20 and some pins.  ARGHGHGHGHGH.  So I got the d20, and watched the rest of the show including Liam's very surprising win, on the monitors.  (I'd voted for Liam because I assumed Sam would win.  I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. :)  Though I love Sam to bits.)

Hippo joined me outside in the lobby early, and we left the theater just ahead of everyone else and she waited and we chatted while I called a Lyft.  She wanted to get out before traffic got too crazy, too, so she took off.  I am VERY MAD I didn't get a pic with the two of us at all.  Next year?!  

Then of course my Lyft driver didn't come to where I was exactly (literally at the Lyft pickup/dropoff designated location) and I had to walk around and look for him and by the time I found him, he'd gotten boxed in so we had to wait in traffic anyway.  Ah well.

At least the freeway was re-opened that night heading back to the airport, and thus, my hotel, for a shorter ride.  I ended up not falling asleep til close to 2.

I loved my evening and would do it all again but that Jeremy and Marcus told me that the Starfinder game they played in that night was AH-FUCKING-MAZING and was literally one of their favorite games of their entire lives, both of them.  It was a multi-table megagame that had a pass-fail condition and would shape the next season of the Society, and I'm sad I missed it while being really glad I did what I did.  Sometimes it's feast or feast, and you gotta pick which awesome meal you want.

I didn’t take many pics, just one as they were settling in after Sam came out in his costume, and one during intermission.  It’s all on Twitch, anyway!

SATURDAY

Oh man, for some really dumb reason we'd scheduled our Saturday morning for 8AM... but it was Starfinder!!  Uh, I will say I consumed more caffeine on that Saturday than maybe any other day of my life.  But it was needed.

What also helped keep me awake that it was FUCKING FREEZING IN THE ROOM.  The game itself was an absolute blast, though.  It was a brutal slog through a dead planet with hostile aliens everywhere and we had to stealth through, collect information and get out.  This was the game I felt the closest to death in all weekend, I'll say that for sure.  But we did it!

The very kind Felice(sp?) who was at the table decided she didn't want to carry her hoodie through the dealer hall, where she was going next, and her husband was working the main table at the Pathfinder room, so she told me to leave it there with him when I was done with it.  Since our next game was also in the Paizo room, I took her up on this offer and was warm and comfy the next few hours.

Our DM, an Operative, and Felice, plus the Hoodie of Warmth +2.

A very rare picture of me, on the internet, along with the guys.

And our next game was our first Pathfinder 2 game!  We were very excited to try out the system, and were put at a table with a father and son duo.  Jeremy and Marcus were excited because the DM was the same guy who'd DM'd their Starfinder game while I was at Critical Role.  

The only bad thing that happened here was that the El Paso Cielo Vista shooting news broke.  I grew up in El Paso, from when I was 12 to 22... it's Middle School through college for me.  Even though I've now lived in Dallas twice as long as I lived in El Paso and I haven't been there in like ten years, it's still... a little bit home.  So I left the table for a little bit to get on Facebook and make sure my friends there were all okay (they are), and text with my mom to make sure a family member who still lives there is okay (she is, though she took awhile to answer mom so we were worried.)  I have a lot of thoughts though, which belong in another post, and I'm still angry and upset about the shooting, even though it didn't affect me personally.  But for now, that's the end of talk of that terribleness.

At our table were a father and ~10 y/o son, who I'm cutting out of the pics because posting pics of minors without getting permission is not OK.  Also, the game was SHORT.  It turns out it was designed as an intro to Pathfinder 2 or maybe even RPGs in general so we knocked it out pretty quick, like 2.5 hours.

One very cool thing that Pazio was doing was that when you played in a game, you got a wooden token that you took up to the prize table, and rolled a d20 + d10.  No matter what you rolled, you got a prize, though most of them were cool little boons for your official characters.  However, if you critted, you got to pick a physical prize from the table.  Well, we played so much that Jeremy and Marcus both critted twice.  They ended up getting ALL THREE Token boxes (like cardboard minis, very nice quality) for Starfinder, plus the Starfinder Beginner's Box.  Pretty sure those four things together retailed for over $100.  Score!

So after the short game, with time to spare before our next game, the gang decided it was Dealer Hall time, literally the first time Jeremy or Marcus had time to go AT ALL.  I volunteered to be the stuff-holder.  After dropping off Felice's hoodie, I found a comfy seat near an outlet that was near the dealer hall and let everyone dump the stuff they didn't want to carry with me.  They came back and left stuff with me, and then after a couple of hours, also brought me dinner from the food trucks.  It was a fair trade.

I also asked Jeremy to stop by one particular booth and pick me up a set of dice I'd decided on, Blue Turquiose stone dice from Metallic Dice Games.  I took some pics of the dice below, though the next day I did have Jeremy swap out the d20 at the booth because I didn't like how some of the faces looked (by far the angle in the pic is the best side, there was too much solid color on the other sides of the die.)  These are going to be my official dice for my 4e character, who is a storm sorcerer reskinned as a druid.

LOVE THESE DICE, can’t wait to roll ‘em.

DM, Dad and blurred-out son.

A blurred-out boy and my guys.

Our final game of the day was the Cypher system, which is made by Monte Cook (one of the original D&D designers).  Cypher is a fairly simple system which mostly just uses a d20 and d6, and the DM never rolls dice.  The original system was made for a game called Numenera, which we'd played the beginner's box adventure for a few years ago but didn't feel like we got a good feel for the system, so we wanted to give it a go with a DM who knew the system well.

Overall, we enjoyed the game, it definitely wasn't "bad"!  But the problem was, we all agreed later, that the module that was being run was the kickoff module for a much longer campaign, there was a huge lore dump near the end and we also didn't really "get" everything that was going on.  

It also had the most memorable ending, though.  We ended the game by trying to escape from a base while being chased by some guys who greatly outmatched us.  My character was a pilot, and we needed to leave via a shuttlecraft.  One of the players who we didn't know was on the "get the door open and provide covering fire so everyone else can get to the shuttle" team.  And then he needed to make a roll in order to also GTFO and get to the shuttle.

He rolled.  Got a 5.  There's a mechanic where you can spend a card that you've collected in order to re-roll.  So he did that, got a 2.  Someone else gave him a card to re-roll.  He rolled a 3.  Someone else did.  He rolled a 5.  I was the last one with a card on the table, so I slapped it down.  He rolled a 4.

It was amazing.  Amazingly terrible rolling.

My pilot already had the craft powered up and was waiting for only him to get on.  I sighed, looked the player in the eye and said...

"I'm so sorry, but my character sheet says that I have a personality flaw.  I'm impulsive and impatient and have a setback to anything that requires patience, concentration or willpower.  I'm not waiting for you."  I looked at the DM and said "I decide that he's sacrificing himself to save us, and take off."

So I left him behind.  

The player was 100% cool with it, we had a laugh about it, and he agreed it was what my character would have done.  So it was kind of a tragic and funny way to end the game.  Also Brian needed to get some sleep that night so he hadn't come to that game, and Marcus left a little early to tend to the family, so just Jeremy and I closed out the night.

DM on the left, players I didn’t know in the center, and one on the right.  The guy in the bright blue shirt in the center?  I killed his character.  Sorry not sorry.

SUNDAY

The next morning, sadly, was the last day of GenCon.  We only had one game scheduled that morning, our second Pathfinder 2 game.  And EVERYONE was gonna be at the game!  

I hadn't even SEEN Gwen or Laura the entire con, and when they arrived at just about the same time Jeremy and I did, we joked that we hadn't believed the others were at the convention.  

We'd hoped that they'd let us put all 7 people at the table (Kirstyn had left late Saturday night to fly home and be at a concert she was playing in.)  They did not.  So we split up "Kids" and "Adults".

Sadly, this didn't work out super well for either table.  Gwen/Brian/Ally's table had a DM they did not enjoy and also a married couple who actually fought with each other uncomfortably at the table(!!).  

We had a good DM, but also an old guy who... I did not like.  At all.  He talked over the DM, even when the DM was explicitly trying to answer a question we'd asked him, things like rules questions on how game mechanics in PF2 had changed from PF1, since, you know, it was a system that had released THREE DAYS AGO.  Also, he was very... helpful... in telling me how skill checks worked and also questioning my decisions on how I was playing my character.  (YES, thanks I did consider carefully before casting Sanctuary on myself, and yes, it WAS THE RIGHT CALL.  I was the only healer in the party and had gargoyles flanking me, THANKS.)

I literally told the guy (as nicely as possible) "Sir, I've been playing RPGs for over twenty years, I'm well aware of how RPGs work, thank you" the second time he told me how skill checks worked as I was adding up my die roll with my skill modifier and took two seconds to do the math. And sure he'd probably been playing for thirty or more but um... I know how to roll a skill check.

After a short break, I told my friends I might need to leave the table.  Instead, Marcus and I switched seats so I wasn't sitting next to him anymore and the DM tried to refocus the game a bit.  It helped me at least.  I just did my best to ignore the guy.  I'm pretty sure he just didn't have the greatest social skills in the world but sometimes my tolerance for people like this can be... low.  His brother was also at the table and seemed okay, at least.  

The game itself was pretty good, ignoring everything having to do with that guy.  After the game the DM thanked me for sticking around and basically empathized that he was getting pretty annoyed, too.  

Not the greatest way to end gaming at the con, but hey, it also could have been worse.  I took pics of that game but decided not to put pics of someone I didn’t like on the internet.

Gwen, Brian and Ally's game ended like 45 minutes before ours (sadly, much to their relief) and they'd left to do one more run through the vendor hall and then left the con to start their drive home.  I had Gwen pick me up a set of dice that... I haven't even seen yet... and they were hella expensive.  I'm kinda feeling buyer's remorse about them right now, I didn't need to spend that much on dice this con but... well, we'll see how I feel when I see them in person.  If I hate 'em, I'll resell 'em.

All weekend long I'd been texting with my BFF from High School's husband, who is also my friend.  He was at the Con as well but doing his own thing and we'd been trying to arrange a meetup.  Well, we finally did it!  He came and saw me, and we hung out for about 45 minutes, just talking about the con, and old times and what we're doing now and the family etc. etc.  So that was great!  I was really glad to see him and catch up.

It’s Richard!

After he left because he had to go help tear down the booth he'd been working at, like the day before, I set up "basecamp" in the same place as before.  I had thought about going back to the vendor hall where Jeremy, Marcus and Laura were, but I'd already sent Jeremy off to ask him to pick me up the one last thing I wanted (the official GenCon dice tray.  I have a Wyrmwood Lacewood dice tray for home use, but wanted a nice travel dice tray.  I had a leather one for Kraken, but I'm real unhappy with Kraken Dice now and wanted something else.  I don’t plan on buying from them ever again in the future.  The official 2019 Gencon tray is very nice, and Jeremy had gotten one the day before, so he picked me up one as well.)

POST-CON

I only had to wait about an hour for the end of the con, and by that time the only ones from our group left were "the adults."  So once we were all gathered back up, the four of us headed out and walked a couple of blocks to a restaurant, which we couldn't get into, so we went to the restaurant next door, the Yard House.  

Wherein we had comically bad service, but they were very nice about it, and also WE were really nice about it, and ended up getting about half our meal comped.  Like our waiter had put in all the drink orders for all his tables to our table, so we had the wrong drinks delivered about five times.  We never got water refills.  Marcus had half a beer spilled on his leg (not even his beer, just another wrongly brought to our table), Laura's Appetizer-as-entree came out as an appetizer.  We asked for more chips for the chips and guac and queso we'd gotten as an app and never got it, etc.  Also while the manager was there assuring us we wouldn't have any more drinks brought to our table we didn't ask for... drinks were brought to our table we didn't ask for.  It was actually hilarious by that point.  

The waiter was brand new (his second day) so we got it.  It was just one of those things.  But they took care of us, we tipped well, it was all OK.

So that was the end of Gencon.  Back at my hotel, which Jeremy and I had long decided we wouldn't stay at again, I'd taken a shower very early Saturday morning after Critical Role.  Sunday morning when I showered again, the water still hadn't drained from the tub(!!) but I was in a hurry and just showered in gross cold water at my feet.  Then told the front desk.

They hadn't even been in my room all day to even clean up the room at all, much less do anything about the bathtub when I got back to my room Sunday night, so I switched rooms.  And then the room next to me had left the alarm clock on, and it went off at 9pm.  And my phone in that room didn't work, so I had to go downstairs a second time to get someone to go shut it off.  Also the AC in that room never turned off, the controls seemed to do nothing, so it was like 60 degrees in there the entire night.  It was actually a relief to leave the hotel the next day.  Next year... we'll pay a little more for a bit nicer hotel.

Annnd.. the next morning Jeremy and I got to the airport early enough, flight was full but not delayed, and had no problems getting home.  Spent most of the day from getting on the plane to going to sleep that night with a massive migraine so I spent the afternoon at home sleeping and drinking lots of water.. but yay... no con crud!

I miss the con, but being back in my own bed with my kitties is all worth it.  Still, I can't wait for Gencon again next year. :D

#gencon #gencon 2019 #critical role #critical role live #starfinder #pathfinder 2 #gaming #tabletop games #annakie's misc stuff