#artifice

[dailyadventureprompts]

Villain: The Gleebringer Battalions

Gallard Gleebringer only ever wanted to make people happy. By using his skills as a toymaker and inventor he sought to fill the world with devices that would bring wonder, and save people from the drugery of labor to give them more time for play.

Seeking to save his neighbours from the horrors of war, and under the patronage of the battlehungry local margrave, Gallard has a constructed an autonomous army of toy soldiers that in some weeks time will go berserk and begin rampaging across the land, playing out an inexplicable war-game that will leave villages sacked and the entire region destabilized.

It’s up to the party to notice the looming crisis and do something about it before the toys begin their march, As the powers that be are not only blind to the looming crisis but actively dismissive of any

Adventure Hooks:

Scraping together enough coin to fund a construct army has left the margrave’s treasury more than a little tight pursed, leading them to skimp on things like repairing infrastructure, public festivals, and resupplying their garrisons. There’s plenty of opportunities for adventurers as bandits and monsters propagate through the wilderness, and the lesser nobles rely on mercenaries to guard their holdings. Its only so long before the cracks begin to show however, as roads wash out and the realms defenders turn to brigandry. 

The party end up in a tavern drinking with an old military officer previously employed by the margrave. She’s iresome and illtempered, but she’ll crawl out of her cups long enough to tell the tale of how after twenty years of loyal service she was let go for protesting when some of the troops under her command were killed in a training exercise.  If the party press a little she might just let it slip that it wasn’t training so much as a field test of Gleebringer’s machines, which her boss insisted be against real troops. Later on, they’ll find an official bounty posted for the woman, who’s rallied some of her fellow discontented soldiers and started on a campaign of sabotage. 

For his part Gleebringer is quite blind to the looming threat, having been carried by his ever shifting attention to yet another new project once the design and manufacture of the armies were complete. The party might get a chance to talk to him however if they manage to sneak into the excursive exposition he's hosting in the province's capital, either by riding in on the coattails of a wealthy patron, or by sneaking in among the serving staff. Actually getting an audience with the toymaker will be even more difficult as the margrave has set his agents to watch and protect Gleebringer, and it's only so long before they notice the uninvited guest have crashed the private function.

Setup: While many gnomes dabble in artifice, it was early in his apprenticeship with the village toymaker that a young Gallard discovered both his love and prodigious talent for the technical arts. It wasn't just a magical knack, it was an eye for detail that had people saying that the gnome's creations seemed to be alive long before he figured out how to make them move on their own.

Soon Gleebringer toys were in demand across kingdoms, and Gallard found himself not only patronized by innumerable wealthy merchants and nobles but sought out by engineers and craftsfolk of all kinds who realized the genius packed away in his creations.

Gallard didn't let the fame or the fortune go to his head, instead using his growing connections and commission budget to experiment with even more complex designs. For example: scaling up from music boxes to clockwork bands, and eventually an automated opera house.

As a man who dreamed all his life of building a flying town, it was safe to assume that Gallard had his head in the clouds. He hated to see people suffer but seldom thought through the implications of his inventions, Such as when an automated lumber mill intended to supply materials for his projects put an entire town of foresters out of work. This penchant for distraction was only encouraged by the margrave, who saw the military applications of Gleebringer's gifts from the moment a clockwork dragon bought for one of his children ended up badly maiming one of the servants who saught to tidy up the toyblock castle it had been charged with guarding.

Over the past ten years, the Margrave has become Gallard's most generous patron, supplying him with workshops ( staffed by apprentaces who's loyalty can be counted on) and an endless series of new projects ( which always end up increasing the margrave's power and standing at the cost of the common good).

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#villain #villain noble #villain artificer #artifice #construct #bounty #city encounter #tavern encounter #town encounter #gnome

[thirdity]

Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

Susan Sontag, "Notes on “Camp”"

#aesthetics #values #beauty #artifice #style #quotes #Sontag #Susan Sontag #Notes on “Camp”

[jichulichu]

another one of my doodle dumps, featuring eden nineheart from @/fuwaketsuu (come back demonieee) and enigma from @freshbaked-bread

#mirror canvas #jlocs #ratatan #rain world #death's recital and lucky charms #wandering #artifice #towering fragment #jericho marie #oktavia #babylon dante #wednesday #muse hope #therefore #eden nineheart #arc #enigma

[mumblelard]

this morning i saw eleven turtles in five miles and stood inside a van sized pyramid of frozen, woven, knotted light, wondering what happens next

#you throw a rotten pear under the hanging tree for the squirrels to fight over #sublime donuts #skull girls #mutant turtles #treadmills #everything bagels #battery acid #boarders #artifice #quantum animism #the fourth sensation #anthology of american folk music #ice cream factory #i was there for some of the beginning most of the middle and all of the end #pandemic era #fourth summer

[meridian59]

#artifice #riija 5 #riija5 #level5 #riija #firesand #uncut serapgym #spells #spell #eye #witchcraft #mystery #fantasy #freetoplay #f2p #steam #mmorpg #rpg #mmo

[nihils-trolls]

The Artifice, Aralin Resham

#art by nihil #artifice #aralin resham #long deceased but. I think she's pretty.

[ghostlytidalwavephantom]

Sufficiently pure void energy purifies energy-other-kind when it pools.

#artifice

[dandeliondee]

lotsa kirby doodles, from rtdldx playthrough doodles to death's recital and a smidge of sonic

#jlocs #ravio art #kirby #kirby oc #death’s recital and lucky charms #death’s recital and lucky charms: post mortem #magolor #shell knight #crescent #orca #arc #artifice #grape #fountain #slayer #gold the tenrec #silver the hedgehog

[jaubaius]

Villa Saracen ,Sicily, Italy.

#photos #heaven #villa saracen sicily #artifice #landscape

[ghoulscoutcookies]

Drew Barrymore is an Angel of Destruction.

#ghoul scout cookies #ai generated #ai artwork #artifice #artificial impediments #stable diffusion #drew barrymore #angel #bikini #bad attitude #pin up

[theluckybard]

Ah, no new drawings for now. Lots of work to do but, quite honestly, I'm lacking motivation to draw stuff for fun. So I'm sharing a cute OC stuff (layout made by iguanentapioca on Twitter) I made some years ago.

This is Ziggy, Ozreus' grandson (my other tiefling I'm playing now on the Curse of Strahd campaign). I've been missing this idiot so much these days.

Here's the template if anyone is interested

#original character #tiefling #artifice #dnd #dnd art #ttrpg #ttrpg art #renie draws #the lucky bard draws

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: On the Chopping Block

Haste makes waste, the slow and merciless trod of industry makes something else entirely

For centuries the people of the Towerpine woods kept to the old rites and offerings which allowed them to make their living from the forest while staying on the good side of the local fey. That was before the margrave came and built his damnable mill, which takes and takes without first asking and stains the sky with its fumes. Now not only has the ancient pact with the fey been transgressed but the people of the Towerpine have lost their living, unable to compete with the mill and its labouring constructs, which produce in a day what it took the whole region a week to cut and carve.

Things are reaching a breaking point, and if the heroes don't act quickly there be no telling just how far the devastation will reach.

Adventure Hooks:

A good way to get the party into the Towerpine woods (especially if you're using this as an intro adventure) is to have them as caravan guards escorting much needed supplies to the frontier region. After fending off some wildlife that's grown increasingly erratic thanks to the mill's disruption of their habitat, they sit down in a village's public house for an overdue rest only to be approached by a gang of malcontents intent on going up the hill and doing something about the mill. These people are absolutely correct in their grievance, but their righteous and somewhat drunken attempt at sabotage is going to end badly when the constructs that work supply the mill activate and look to deal with them as intruders. The party can witness this disater first hand, ending up captured or escaping into the woods, alternatively they might hear about it the next morning, when the villagers beseech them to intervene and rescue the surviving saboteurs from where they're being held at the mill.

Garvan Vimley is the sort of odious little man who gives progress a bad name. Placed in charge of the mill's operation, Mr. Vimley and his Towerpine Lumber Company ( ironically shortened to TLC on their branding ) care only about squeezing more profits from the region regardless of how much harm occurs in the process. He might just be willing to release the captured vandals, if the party agrees to find one of his oh-so-expensive logging constructs that's vanished in the past week after being sent with a team of surveyors (who are also missing, but not as valuable) into one of the forest's more wild regions. As it turns out, the construct has been hijacked by a group of the local fey, who are now bickering between destroying the thing for good, playing with their new toy, or winding it up and send it rampaging back towards the mill. Negotiating with the fey will be difficult, especially because they hold a few of the surviving surveyors in thrall and are more than willing to use them as bargining chips.

Future Adventures:

Regardless of what the party decides to do Vimley intends to use this latest attempt at sabotage as a means of convincing his noble patron to institute draconian measures, pettitioning the crown to enclose the commonly held Towerpine woods and thus making it illegal for anyone save the TLC to harvest wood in the region, which would not only force the locals out of business but force them to buy even their kindling from the profitmongering Vimley or else be branded thieves. This scheme is subtle, and if one of the now sympathetic surveyors doesn't tip them off it's going to require the party to do some independant snooping to even notice what's going on. Once things are in motion the report of the sabotage has to be intercepted before it reaches the Margrave, potentially in a daring chase through the forest. Even then it's only but even that's going to be only a temporary fix, they'll need to make a petition at the Margrave's court with evidence of Vimley's mismanagement, or perhaps even oust the Margrave himself before he gets the crown involved.

It's more than corruption and greed at work in the Towerpines, as the forest's ancient guardians are making their displeasure known in all manner of ways. Rampaging beasts, dangerous pranks, nightmares, and bad omens all beset the people at the edge of the forest. Even this is not enough for Illyurn, the youngest of a circle of dryads who have long held court in the shadow of the ancient pines. The elders of the circle are convinced that their mortal neighbours will heed their warnings, return to the old ways, but Illyurn has fewer memories of good will to hold her back, and her anger burns ever hotter. Fire sears away the rot and ushers in the new growth after all, and as the days pass and Illyurn more and more embodies this destructive aspect of nature the more her incendiary words will catch in the mind of her fellow fey and those most discontent of the villagers, transforming them into a blazing mob that will rage and rage and rage until the landscape is rendered into ash.

When the party intercede and end up having to put Illyurn down, she will choke out one final smoke-bitter curse: A doom for the party, for the mill, it's maker, and it's masters, may all they hold precious end in embers.

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#press start #forest #low level #fey #artifice #steampunk

[ireadyabooks]

Artifice: Read an Excerpt!

A dramatic story of duplicity and resistance, betrayal and loyalty, set against the backdrop of World War II, by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Light in Hidden Places.

Isa de Smit was raised in the vibrant, glittering world of her parents’ small art gallery in Amsterdam, a hub of beauty, creativity, and expression, until the Nazi occupation wiped the color from her city’s palette. The “degenerate” art of the Gallery de Smit is confiscated, the artists in hiding or deported, her best friend, Truus, fled to join the shadowy Dutch resistance. And masterpiece by masterpiece, the Nazis are buying and stealing her country’s heritage, feeding the Third Reich’s ravenous appetite for culture and art.

So when the unpaid taxes threaten her beloved but empty gallery, Isa decides to make the Nazis pay. She sells them a fake—a Rembrandt copy drawn by her talented father—a sale that sets Isa perilously close to the second most hated class of people in Amsterdam: the collaborators. Isa sells her beautiful forgery to none other than Hitler himself, and on the way to the auction, discovers that Truus is part of a resistance ring to smuggle Jewish babies out of Amsterdam.

But Truus cannot save more children without money. A lot of money. And Isa thinks she knows how to get it. One more forgery, a copy of an exquisite Vermeer, and the Nazis will pay for the rescue of the very children they are trying annihilate. To make the sale, though, Isa will need to learn the art of a master forger, before the children can be deported, and before she can be outed as a collaborator. And she finds an unlikely source to help her do it: the young Nazi soldier, a blackmailer and thief of Dutch art, who now says he wants to desert the German army.

Yet, worth is not always seen from the surface, and a fake can be difficult to spot. Both in art, and in people. Based on the true stories of Han Van Meegeren, a master art forger who sold fakes to Hermann Goering, and Johann van Hulst, credited with saving 600 Jewish children from death in Amsterdam, Sharon Cameron weaves a gorgeously evocative thriller, simmering with twists, that looks for the forgotten color of beauty, even in an ugly world.

READ AN EXCERPT

Artifice Excerpt by I Read YA

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#ireadya #bookstagram #yabooks #artifice #sharoncameron #readanexcerpt #holocaust #artheist

[jichulichu]

yeaa, there's probably gonna be lotsa doodle dumps in the queue, anyways! oc focused, with a appearance from @opal-owl-flight's magolor

#mirror canvas #jlocs #muse hope #wandering #faux facade #artifice #juno #death's recital and lucky charms #magolor #imortica falsehoods #neo metal sonic #< in the wedding doodle #eclair #AS-R13L #jericho marie

[flawsandroses]

“Is anyone anywhere happy? No, not unless they are living in a dream or in an artifice that they or someone else has made.”

-Sylvia Plath

#plath #sylvia plath #theunbridgedjournals #unbridgedjournals #literate #lit #quotations #quotes #journal #happy #artifice #dream #sivvy #rosenbergs #america #1950s

[driftlessarearev]

Critic’s Notebook: Random Thoughts on the Barbie movie

Via “Why should you be the one to give in, you ask? The answer is simple: As the greater and more dedicated Muppets fan, by all rights the CD is mine. Plainly and obviously, I appreciate the Muppets on a much deeper level than you do.” — “I Appreciate the Muppets on a Much More Deeper Level than You” from The Onion (2003) “If you love Barbie, come see this movie. If you hate Barbie, come see…

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#artifice #Barbie #Barbie movie #Brecht #Camp #capitalism #communism #culture #damien hirst #dolls #economics #epic theater #farce #feminism #fiction #Greta Gerwig #Margot Robbie #Mattel #movie #politics #pop culture #rollerblades #Ruth Handler #toxic masculinity #toy #toys #Will Ferrell