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dungeonsdragonsdemonsdaggers · 6 years

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MYTH AND LIGHT UNDER THE DARK

SESSION 2: I Will Offend You Then Destroy You

Here’s what happened in a nutshell (from my perspective): We avoid a lot of dangerous things, argue a lot, and then eventually we get the fight we’ve been looking for; Drow. I continuously yell Elvish curses at Drow while slipping on slime and mushrooms occasionally failing attacks, occasionally succeeding. HOORAH.

This session was honestly so fun, best fun I’ve had in a game in a long time~~!!

Important to Note: Aravae’s character has officially switched alignment from Chaotic Neutral to Chaotic Good~ That makes 4 of the 7 of us in this adventure all chaotic good!

So~ we are in the underdark, just killed 2 ogres, and the plan now is to rescue Torgga and get out quick before the ogre’s ‘master’ shows up. First part of the plan goes pretty well. Torgga is not conscious- but she ain’t dead! While Ara and Lingkh are helping out with the unconcious dwarf, the rest of us take a look around. Rael the Elf finds a locked door, Mal the Tiefling finds a dying old gnome in another prison like Torgga’s, and Torvin the Dragonborn (I continuously call him Dragonface...) finds a creepy room full of brains.

I follow Torvin into the creepy room and find a set of 3 doors on one end, and another door on the other. I investigate the 3 doors; I jump up (haha) and look out some windows above the doors and see paths into the underdark- a way out! Torvin, however, peeks through cracks into the other door and finds a mind flayer. A MIND FLAYER. He yells at us as quietly loudly as he can about what he’s found, how dangerous it is, and that we need to skedaddle outta there ASAP.

Mal helps me bust open the three doors and we are on our way out! But not before Torgga regains consciousness, busts open the locked door I found earlier, and retrieves her beloved hammer- she even kisses it! Such a dwarf that one~ We travel quickly and quietly and find a place to rest.

Ara: We should go back and save that gnome

Almost everyone else: What gnome?? The gnome in the prison, where the ogres are, where the mind flayer is?? That gnome??

Ara: ~says something about how it’s not right to leave him there, changes her alignment, and in typical Ara fashion- decides to go back and get the old dying gnome~

Torgga: ~although she was just healed and all from nearly being dead, volunteers to go with Ara- something about fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves (bless her heart)~

Everyone else: Okay. Bye then.

Lol! Now, in another D&D life, we (Rael who used to be Lenna, and Mal who used to be Norda) would’ve followed Ara no matter what; we were friends. But right now, we’re not very close knit and so Rael, Torvin, Mal, and Lingkh watch Ara and Torgga run off to do crazy things. We discuss for a short while about how we literally don’t know anything about Ara or eachother. They say she’s a weird elf and then I promptly correct them saying she’s actually a half-elf because I am sometimes snobby about these things. Ha. Honestly should’ve gotten inspiration for that~~~

Mal and Lingkh make bets on whether or not they’ll come back alive, Rael remembers that Ara has things she needs and she would rather not lose them before this journey is over- so she sets off to go and find them and make sure everything goes okay, Torvin comes with. I’m not sure why he decided to come, but we sorta become friends- he speaks 5 languages.

Ara and Torgga successfully save the old gnome. He’s not mentally all there...probably because of the mind flayer~~ Anyways, Torgga’s got him on her back and they make their way safely out of the mind flayers zone. They meet up with Rael and Torvin on the way back and we learn that the gnome is afraid of everyone taller that him, especially the dragonborn (even though he speaks perfectly good gnomish). So he stays with Torgga and mumbles a lot. His name is Renifey. He desperately needs some mental healing, but none of us have the spells/power necessary for that. Sad day.

We trek on towards Mithrum! Guess what we find next?? It’s the best thing you find next in a world underground- SPIDERWEBS. We don’t find any spiders, yet- but we find a humongous tunnel full of spiderwebs. Some of us want to engage the spiders head on (*coughTORVINcough*) and some of want to do anything but that (*coughRAELANDMALANDMOREcough*). We decide to try and sneak through without touching anything, planning to fight the spiders that obviously exist only when we have to! Clever, no??!? Anyways

We get to a room blocked by a wall of web and it seems that the only way out is through. We struggle for a very long time about what the best plan of action is, and then I (Rael) grab Tovin’s torch (he has awful sight down here so he’s always got a torch lit) and I hurl it out into the webs behind us!!! Those webs promptly burst into flame and we all cut furiously through the web wall in front of us hoping that the spiders inspect the burning webs while we escape. Clever, no??!? It works (Go Elf) and we make it out without encountering a single spider. We find a place to rest and Ara and I share our food and water with the gnome and Torgga.

Torvin, knowing the Underdark well and being a rogue, looks for water and food. He reports back about a bad stream and some Duergar with their slaves he found. At the mention of the Duergar both Torgga (the righteous Dwarf who once looked a Duergar in the face at a bar and legit just punched him even though he had friends to back him up and she didn’t- yet) and Lingkh (the righteous paladin who has a dark history with Duergar, who is also just righteous in general obvi because he’s a paladin) lose their crap and storm off toward the Duergar without a thought. I think Lingkh stopped himself and realized it was too dangerous, but Torgga was not going to stop and the rest of us were not going to let her engage with these peeps because who knows how many more of them, besides the 9 Torvin found, were out and about. So we grab her and drag her back. She’s way too sober to be okay about it, but we convince her to hold out for a while and that we would find a way later to free some of the slaves.

You might think that this would be the end of this session- no no no. We never get out without a fight! How else will we level up??

Seven Drow find us as we are walking through a creepy place with mushrooms and slime all over the ground, and spider traps everywhere as well. Apparently the Drow train spiders and put them in holes in the ground with sneaky webs around so that once they’re touched the spider come out and eat you. Creeps. Torvin lets us know that we must must must kill every last one of these Drow or even worse things will happen.

The Drow somehow roll a 20 for initiative...lol and we begin the fight!

BTW: I finally figured out in this moment that I am supposed to add a +5 to all my spell attacks- did not do that last time. It gave me so much hope.

Rael misses her attacks for the first three turns~ boooooooooooo. But I did do a lot of sliding down into the mushrooms and shrubbery stuff, so I didn’t get hurt for a long time. Smooth, eh??

Some noteworthy battle happenings:

-Ara goes invisible and tries to run away but slips haha

-Mal turns to run somewhere and also slips haha

-In my mind I really was yelling all sorts of Elvish curses at these Drow, even when I missed my attacks haha

-Turns out that Drow are more easily taken down that ogres- thank goodness for that

-Lingkh, as always, very courageously throws his trident of glory- but it hit the ground instead of a Drow haha

-Mal kills a Drow, Torvin kills a Drow, I kill 3 (hehe), idk about the others

-Ara, very tired, at one point said “I HAVE PRE-DESTINATION” and we all yelled back at her “IT’S PRESTIDIGITATION”! Bwahahahaha!!!

-Lingkh and Torvin both got poisoned, Torvin almost died- but Ara ‘russian figure-skated’ in the slime over to him to save him

-We win, and some of us level up :D

There were probably so many other great things happening- but this is what I remember :) Aahh, all that slipping and sliding- good times.

And actually...one of Ara’s greatest weaknesses is that she can’t resist a pretty face...I know that Drow are not as pretty as normal Elves, but they are probably still pretty...right??? Hmm...that’s going to keep me up at night.

Haha! We play again tomorrow! I’ll clarify then.

GO TEAM

#dijah plays d&d #dungeons and dragons #d&d #drow #mind flayer #teamwork #adventures in the underdark #elf #dragonborn #tiefling #dwarf #gnome #half-elf #rpg #bard #paladin #MYTH AND LIGHT UNDER THE DARK

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pharaohsparklefists · 7 years

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Episode 100, part 3! Continuing the story of how two emotionally damaged young boys somehow turned into two high-functioning but emotionally damaged teenagers. (While somewhere else, Yami has a really terrible duel.)

While we’ve been diving deep into the Kaiba brother’s traumatic past, you may have forgotten that a suspiciously similar genius boy is watching them on his array of floating screens and making smug genius-boy pronouncements about the illogical nature of emotions

excuse you this is SETO KAIBA we’re talking about, he only lets like maximum THREE emotions control him and no sentiments

(the emotions are disdain, anger, and DUEL)

Nah, like, for real, Kaiba has a LOT of emotions that he doesn’t like talking about and they do, for sure, control his (often outlandish) behaviour (and it’s damaging bullshit to conceptualise emotionality as the “opposite” of logic or intelligence btw) but more to the point...

YOU SURE DO SMILE A LOT FOR SOMEONE OSTENSIBLY EMOTIONLESS, you little bastard

Anyway, back in the apparently-accurate simulacrum of the not-yet-Kaiba brothers’ past, tiny!Seto sees the award ceremony of a chess tournament somehow being broadcast on actual television on the slowest news day imaginable, and not-so-tiny!Mokuba remembers how the next chapter of their lives came to pass, which he blames for...

seriously how is this chess tournament on the news?

... YEN ARE NOT EQUIVALENT TO DOLLARS. That’s ... I mean what even is that? That’s just a strangely-sized piece of paper. It’s smaller than a novelty cheque but much larger than an actual cheque. And it has a rosette on it?? ... IS IT YEN OR DOLLARS CAUSE THAT’S A HUGE DIFFERENCE! In 1995 (which is as far back as xe will go), $100,000 was ¥10,216,277. Which would presumably do a lot more for an orphanage.

ANYWAY.

Seto immediately comes up with a reasonably straightforward plan.

And then specifies...

And I would just like to point out, no, Gozaburo did not turn Seto into a ruthless, ambitious, goal-driven, emotionally-unhealthy person with a desire for power. Seto IS a ruthless, ambitious, goal-driven, emotionally-unhealthy person with a desire for power and that came pre-packaged. If he wasn’t that way when living (presumably happily enough) with his alive parents, he was that way after a short period of time in the orphanage.

Look, Seto knows he’s smarter than most of the adults around him and is supremely confident in his ability to manipulate or force someone into adopting him and his brother. And not just anyone; a powerful person he’s never met before. That means Seto knows he could trivially identify a potential adoptive parent/family and “make” them adopt him and Mokuba. He could have chosen anyone, and he would have been confident in his ability to do this. So firstly, it isn’t a friendly, innocent way to think. He goes straight from “I want this” to “I’ll force someone to give it to me” with no “maybe I’ll ask nicely”. Secondly, his choice of target is the wealthiest, most powerful person he’s had access to while at the orphanage. If Seto had wanted to, he could have had him and Mokuba adopted by their friendliest, sweetest, most emotionally well-balanced teacher by the end of the first week. He sees Gozaburo Kaiba, targets him, researches him, manipulates him into what he wants, and forces his hand. He could have done that to anyone. Seto didn’t want a loving parent, or a stable parent, or a happy parent. He wanted a rich, powerful parent.

Although when we see Gozaburo in the orphanage, it’s briefly believable he might actually be ... nice.

y’know, while he’s doing his best Santa impression

That kid in the greenish hoodie totally got off-brand Duel Monsters cards.

On the way back out, billionaire CEO chess-grandmaster Mr Important is accosted by two orphans who didn’t bother participating in the distribution of (apparently off-brand) toys. They’re after something much more valuable...

“Huh, yeah, that’s what I thought you said. Weird.”

Seto immediately follows it up with...

“If you win, we won’t bother you anymore. But if I win, you have to give me a mouth, I’ve lost mine.”

NATURALLY there has to be conditions? The “condition” is actually a bet or a game: beat me at chess or you have to adopt me. Seto is about to tell us, in a few minutes, that he’s exhaustively studied Gozaburo’s chess strategies. He did so between seeing him win the prize money and him showing up and distributing the gifts bought with the prize money, which is anywhere from a few days to a few months. I’m convinced Seto also spent time in this period studying Gozaburo as a person, and is deliberately framing his demand in business terms, because he’s determined that Gozaburo is most likely to respond to a proposed business deal, as opposed to a bet or a game or a plea.

Gozaburo, on the other hand, has no idea how much research and preparation went into this, crediting Seto’s boldness to ignorance...

BABY SETO SMIRK

... And it doesn’t even make sense. I guess they were all previous winners? Or he’s using “world champion” to mean “world-class chess player”.

Gozaburo considers refusing, but something about Seto impresses or intrigues him...

The orphanage guy, meanwhile, is about to expire from embarrassment, totally out of his depth, not even the first idea of what is proper orphanage etiquette when an orphan brazenly challenges a billionaire visitor to a chess game to determine legal guardianship for himself and his younger brother.

... I don’t even think that’s legal. I don’t think you’re ALLOWED adopt an orphan just because the orphan beat you at chess.

I mean, Duel Monsters, sure, their whole world would probably accept that as legit, but CHESS?

Gozaburo agrees to this legal-minefield of a challenge, but says he won’t go easy on Seto. Seto responds like a stone cold boss...

OOOOOOH boom.

not-so-tiny!Mokuba turns to not-tiny-at-all!Seto at this point and says, essentially, “you had this all figured out, didn’t you?”. At the time, tiny!Mokuba looks worried and unsure, but older!Mokuba knows his brother well enough to know that even tiny!Seto wouldn’t have done this if he hadn’t been absolutely sure of his strategy. And giant!Seto confirms it...

Good thing there was so little on TV that chess matches were apparently televised. He must have caught all the re-runs...

So Seto and Gozaburo sit down for an intense chess match to decide the not-yet-Kaiba brothers’ whole future....

... which would be a lot more dramatic if it wasn’t for the wonky Eevees and giant-headed dog and hot pink elephant drawings as the backdrop.

The game begins and giant!Seto remembers how he won...

... is this how chess works? I don’t know much about chess but I’m SURE this isn’t how chess works. Is it?? Like I know it’d be off-putting to see your own preferred strategy employed as an opener by a 9-year-old you’ve never met, but would that really be enough to beat a world champion chess player? I’m dubious.

Anyway, it’s at this point, about to watch his brother beat his adoptive father at chess and confirm the direction of their very traumatic childhood for a second time, that Mokuba gets upset. He thinks if Seto had just lost this chess game...

And he suddenly, irrationally, grabs the door handle, wishing to intercede, to somehow step into the actual past and prevent this from happening. Seto tries to stop him, pointing out that this is just a virtual illusion, a replica of memories and nothing more, but Mokuba yells back at him...

Which is ... not rational. Mokuba says that this change, from Seto “always smiling” to “losing his smile” happened when Gozaburo adopted them, but we’ve just watched their memories of the time between their parents dying and Gozaburo showing up, and Seto does smile, but certainly not all the time, or even a lot, or with any particular warmth or happiness. In fact, he specifically told Mokuba (apparently multiple times) that he was forcing himself to appear happy to spite the people who’d ruined their lives, and even at that, he’s frowning more than he’s smiling in these memories. Furthermore, post-Gozaburo, Seto DOES smile, and he smiles at Mokuba more than any other time (if you don’t count maniacal DUEL laughter, which I don’t). He smiled at him just a few minutes ago, reassuring him in the forest!

We tend to take Mokuba at his word about their childhood, because of the two brothers, he’s a lot more open about the past, but being willing to talk about something doesn’t mean you’re right about it (as any academic discussion session will teach you...). I think once they were in Gozaburo’s house, and things were worse (emotionally), and the only joy at all they had was in brief moments alone together, Mokuba idealised this time in the orphanage, when they were alone together all the time. He remembered every (anxious, faint) smile of Seto’s and in his (very young, unhappy) mind, those smiles were big and bright and all the time. And he probably doesn’t really remember the time before the orphanage very clearly, because he was so young, so the orphanage seemed better than it was, whereas Seto probably does remember pre-orphanage so remembers the orphanage phase more realistically as not-super-fun. I think Seto maybe did smile more in the orphanage than at Gozaburo’s, because Seto smiles to reassure Mokuba and let Mokuba know he’s in control, and he was desperately clinging to that role in the orphanage.

Which means Mokuba, Seto’s only family in the world, wants Seto to “go back to being” something he never was. Mokuba says he “knew” the brother who was “always smiling”, but that version of Seto is a fiction, someone Mokuba built out of biased memories while unhappy. Mokuba does know that version of Seto, but that version of Seto was never the real Seto. Seto can’t go back to being someone he never was. He never was a smiling, happy person.

He was, however, always always always there to hold Mokuba’s hand.

awwww so sweet WHAT THE FUCK

#if you die in the virtual world do you die in real life #better safe than sorry I suppose!#Yu-Gi-Oh!#sparklefists watches ygo #seto kaiba #Mokuba #Gozaburo Kaiba #episode 100

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