#roll a crit kill them all

[misscammiedawn]

Thinking about the time I was running a tabletop campaign and was so stumped by how to finish the plot that we started watching seminars on inspirational writing until we had a complete mental breakdown and took the audio from those talks, some royalty free music we were using for the BGM of the campaign and our own stressed out ramblings and layered them over one another with some aesthetic tweaks to capture our mental/emotional state.

In some ways we never fully recovered from that session. It took something out of us.

[misscammiedawn]

(Current story progress: Stormblood Post-Patch (4.3))

Short version: she was leading a social movement to end slavery in her home realm of Arcadia and made the exact wrong enemy and found herself defeated and fled to post-calamity Eorzea.

Long version, below cut:

Another day, another Title and another expansion of her realm.

Time did not work in Arcadia as it did in the human world. It moved at the pace of the narrative. Wars could last an eternity or an afternoon depending on the weight of their importance to the living breathing land of story that Honoria called home. She had adapted to it over the-- length of her stay.

At the start of her legend she was a mere pawn on Queen Titania's chess board, ripped from the heart of a human shaped prison for her ex-husband, a True Fae she could not kill directly. There she was molded and guided by her queen, used as a piece in her legend. A legend that had come to an abrupt end. One that Honoria and a group of resistance fighters had ushered into being.

That was an old story. One that hurt to think back on. Honoria was no longer the Seelie's prized baker or a piece on a chessboard. She was...

Well, that was a good question, wasn't it? With all the Titles that she had inherited in the war between Titania and The Exiled Fox King, Sionnach she was... more than that.

Her True Name was Honoria Everett. Baker of the Rising Dawn was her core Title. Those were precious and kept close to her chest. Never to be spoken out loud. If she trusted someone enough to give them a name it was either Nori or Dawn. Neither could be used to gain leverage over her.

But now she was the holder of the crown of a united seelie court. A Title which held no power until it could be recognized. A Title she had no desire to embody. She was also The Great Emancipator, the insane Fae who collected Changeling from weaker territories and released them to the Fallen World and as she moved through Arcadia she took more and more titles. White Queen was hers. Technically Fox King was hers, too, but she dared not wield it. Even if the surviving fox cubs looked at her and knew.

Her newest Title was "The High Roller" and it was a curse.

The Red Queen had shaped her court into a speakeasy casino and required those who wished to access it to speak the passcode.

"I vow to indulge in my vices"

A sneaky and cruel Contract to enact upon anyone entering a casino.

Nori went in and she cleaned out the house and gained more Changeling to release or accept into her growing army of twisted human souls looking to save their brethren from the other territories.

The Titles changed her, though. When she was Titania's pet baker with a human souls she was a gentle and bubbly little thing with skin that glimmered with flakes of sugar and the most beautiful golden hair like spun gold. She was naive and scared. A newly created thing that did not understand anything about the world it found itself in.

Now she was a fully formed entity with an air of regal confidence to her, she was frightening, even to other True Fae and she wielded Titania's own axe with a flourish if a battle were to break out. Every day that passed she feared that she would lose the humanity that resided within her as she became the subject of a legend to liberate the Changelings. She was a character in a story. No, worse. She, herself, was a living and breathing story. Subject to changes in the genre and to being bent by the narrative.

The High Roller Title was branded into her heart with that Contract. She was hedonistic by nature now and that was the weakness that destroyed her.

Confidence, arrogance and hedonism are not a good combination. When someone becomes too comfortable in their own victory they become vulnerable. If their star cannot rise any higher then it must fall. That is how stories work.

She didn't even consider the power vacuums her rapid expansion had caused. She refused to defend her territories or take responsibility for the fiemdoms that she overturned. She only cared about liberation. That was her mission, her role in the narrative. She was no empress or warlord.

So it seemed only fit that someone who was interested in expanding territory would.

And that opportunistic Fae slipped in with the sound of a metronome and steel toed shoes, changing the pace of the story, making the players dance to their tune.

They had other Titles before but they were The Times. The Shifting Tide. Modernity. Progression. Erosion. Change.

Nori had given them fertile ground. Nori was the agent of change, forcing the antiquated territories of Arcadia adapt to her modern and human expectations of politics... She created her own downfall.

And the agent that was used against her was her vices. Her love of bakery. Her need to liberate Changeling. Her weakness.

A Contract was drawn up that if Honoria defeated a humble Changeling, Samantha, in a baking contest then all of the territory's servants would be released.

...and Nori arrogantly assumed that she, a True Fae with a human soul, could easily defeat a Changeling who would be incentivized to lose. They would be released if they lost. It was an easy bet.

The High Roller went all in and bet the house, the kingdom, her entire legend on this one battle.

And The High Roller went against a lowly servant. The Baker of Dawn would have made short work of the task. Honoria Everett would have connected with the poor overworked young girl and understood the weight of her heart. But the arrogant and hedonistic High Roller was the one driving and drove the entire liberation effort off of a cliff.

Samantha was a Changeling. Overworked to the point of not even remembering what rest felt like. Abused to the point of agony. A pitiful thing.

But a pitiful thing that was prized by her owner. A pitiful thing that dearly loved what she did. A pitiful thing that had 2 things in the world to hold on to and would grip to with white knuckles should either be taken away and leave her with nothing.

She was her Fae's and she was a baker.

Honoria would have seen it.

She should have seen it.

But she didn't. She assumed this slave wanted to be freed. She was incapable of viewing her as anything other than an obstacle in her legend... and because of that she could never have understood the desperation this abused thing put into the work. To not make the best baked treats in the realm was to not be herself anymore. She would rather die than lose herself.

...and so...

Nori lost it all. Her titles, her power, the liberated charges who stayed by herself... and she fled.

She escaped Arcadia and used the dwindling remnants of her magic to escape to a realm where she could be safe, the remnants of her glamour to disguise herself to be among the people there.

This is how she came to Eorzea. A Realm Reborn.

...and she's been licking her wounds, paying attention to political intrigue and trying to regain her power ever since.

(At some point I should post the High Roller story. The Nori vs Sam thing was a RP with someone else who isn't in our life anymore so we don't feel comfortable sharing that but High Roller was prose 100% by us)

We know our FFXIV backstory/lore is not really FFXIV and thus may not intrigue anyone who doesn't fuck with Changeling: The Lost, but it is fun to keep Nori alive in our hearts. Bringing her through the game has been fun.

2/10/25

What was your wol(oc) doing before ARR?

[theboombutton]

The interesting thing about tmagp episode 9 is that, from one perspective, it's about a pair of dice that kill you if you roll a crit fail. And in TMA that would be very End-coded. Games of chance were End-coded, and death is obviously The End. Open and shut case.

Except it's not, here. The statement giver had never seen anyone roll a 2 before he ran into Gary in that coffee shop, even after thousands of rolls. That's not an End artifact. Those dice are going out of their way not to kill anyone, save those who try to part with them.

The compulsion to roll feels like the Web, but is it? Certainly games of chance can become addicting, but I don't think that's the whole story. The Web is about the fear of the loss of control, yes, but it's also about something else controlling you instead. Here that something else is an embodiment of "random" chance - although again, it's not properly-random, not even pseudorandom. I have thoughts on that but they're best addressed further on.

Weirdly, of all the manifestations of Fear from TMA, this statement seems most akin to Jude Perry's - rolling the dice with other people's lives and fortunes, for the thrill of sometimes devastating them.

Which brings me back to the possibility of AU Fears.

In the Protocolverse, why shouldn't there be a Fear associated with chance and luck and fate and misfortune that happens for no good reason? A fear of lacking control and losing everything, without anyone else necessarily having that control.

This is where the way the dice are rigged becomes possibly meaningful. Their outcomes aren't random - they're what humans expect random to look like. They operate according to the gambler's fallacy, where the longer a chain of bad luck you have the more you're due for a good roll, and vice versa. Snake eyes aren't just a normal outcome of the 1-in-36 chance of rolling 2d6 - they're reserved for when someone is cursed with truly rotten luck. Notably that isn't true of boxcars: those just happen sometimes, without prerequisite.

Logically, a Fear of Misfortune wouldn't operate on the actual rules of probability, would it? It would be shaped by the superstitions of those that feared it.

(Also, I hope this statement puts the "they're not fears they're desires!" theory to bed. This guy didn't want the dice, and didn't especially want to roll them, but seemed compelled to anyway.)

[ratlesshonret]

Lately, I've been making kits for existing Limbus IDs that are bad, trying to make them not just better, but also more interesting.

Here's what I have so far. Keep in mind that my main rules are "No changing Skill affinities", "No changing the main Status archetypes," and "No changing Coin amounts"

For This Episode: A Tale of a terrible Outis, an okay Meursault, and two awful Sinclairs

Blade Lineage Outis really just needed some better numbers. Higher skill rolls, more Poise gen, and a Crit damage buff on the S3 in line with modern BL/Poise IDs.

Main thing I did was, since the S3 is supposed to be a "finisher" skill, I moved the Stagger Threshold raise to the first coin and gave it both a Kill and Crit Kill effect.

I also made her S2 Slash, since she buffs her own Slash Power, and generally made her unique gimmick Slash Power Up. If Meursault can have his S2 Acupuncture be a Slash skill, so can Outis.

Los Mariachis Jefe Sinclair took more work. I made both his Poise viable to maintain and his Sinking more effective. He's generally a Count maintainer through his S2 and generally low Coin count, but his S3 has a whopping 7 Sinking in one infliction.

I also gave him more SP healing to be a fast ramper, and gave him buffs based on his SP relative to the enemy's.

The big fuckery I did was with his Evade and Passive, and how they work together. His Evade can now roll pretty high, and directly raises the target's Stagger Threshold based on the Gloom Res. when he successfully evades. So you can start by ramping him up and popping a bunch of Sinking on the enemy, before Evade-spamming to go for a bunch of Stagger raising.

His rolls are also good now, but dampened a bit by his negative Offense Level and, again, generally low Coin count. Main thing I probably should've done that I didn't is adding Aggro, but I think raising his Speed could also help (but those stats aren't shown here.)

Zwei South Sinclair is an interesting ID. The first thing I did was, of course, raise his rolls to be more modern.

Obviously, as you can see, I also gave him a few Unbreakable Coins, and changed around his Clash Loss conditionals. I also swapped his Protection for Defense Level Up, and made his S3 give it to the highest HP ally, prioritizing other Zwei IDs (for that sweet sweet Ishmael synergy)

Also, I gave him Assist Defense, and made him gain Defense Level Up when hit, doubled if he's hit via Assist Defense. Most of his debuffs remain next turn due to his low Speed, which is also why his ally buffs are Combat Start.

Not much else to say. Made his Tremor infliction better.

Finally for now, W Corp. Meursault.

First thing was, again, rolls and conditionals. Made his Rupture infliction close to, but not on par with, W Yi Sang's. He obviously has no Dimensional Rift. His Count infliction is generally positive after conditionals are active, but at the end of the Skills, so you need to be careful not to eat the Rupture stack before the infliction even goes off.

All of his Skills have Protection now, some of them conditional. His buffs from getting hit, through his Passive, are now a bit better too, but mainly the Clash Lose buff, since I feel it should actually be a worthy consolation prize.

His main goal is to use a high Envy Res. to change his S3 to Envy and get the max Slash Fragility, while also going first, to make W Corp. Don Quixote and W Corp. Ryoshu deal 30% more damage.

In general, I raised both his Charge generation and consumption, just to put him on par with other Charge IDs that like to hit 15/20 Charge Count before doing much. His S2's conditionals are a maze of what Charge amounts activate which conditionals, so I'll leave you to figure it out on your own.

In the end, I feel this ID might be a bit bloated, but it was always trying to do too much in my opinion. My mission statement was "Bulky Charge/Rupture ID with Envy synergy," and I feel I did that well.

[hellfirenacht]

Crit Happens: Session 0

Fic Summary: You are who’s Dustin’s favorite cousin from out of town who is staying with him for the summer. Eddie finds himself jealous as he's suddenly been pushed aside as Dustin’s favorite dungeon master. When Dustin insists that Eddie join the campaign, you and Eddie quickly butt heads about how Dungeons and Dragons should be played.

Master List

2.2k words

May, 1986

Session 0

The air in the drama room was hot and stagnant as the members of Hellfire held their breath. One Erica Sinclair held the D20 between her palms, shaking her cupped hands together, while everyone stared at her in anticipation of the drop that would tell them if the campaign that they had been working through all semester had been for naught. 

Eddie’s eyes narrowed and he found himself standing taller to look over his DM screen as the die fell from her grasp, tumbling and rolling to decide the fate of the party. Two weeks ago, he had damn near thrown a fit over the idea of pushing back the finale of The Cult of Vecna out by a week, but he was no longer regretting that decision after spending his spring break working and reworking his notes until he was ready to kill Vecna himself from the frustration. 

The older Sinclair stood behind his sister, gripping her shoulders tightly, while Dustin and Will held Lucas’s. Actually, if Eddie hadn’t been staring so hard at the die as it clacked along the squares of his map, he would have seen all of Hellfire cleaning to each other, and he would have absolutely made fun of them. 

Not now though. 

The die hit the small podium that Eddie had spent an afternoon putting together to set Vecna on top of. The mini-fig shifted just slightly under Eddie’s hawk-like gaze before toppling over. A fitting end as the die settled on the magic number. 

“Nat 20!” Erica yelled, smiling wide with an excitement for the game that made Eddie nostalgic for his days as a player. Immediately, the room erupted in cheers and jumping as the members of Hellfire celebrated. 

Eddie jumped up, and clapped his hands, hardly able to believe what he was seeing.

Two weeks ago, Lucas begged him to postpone Hellfire. Two weeks ago Lucas had told Eddie that he could guarantee a passing grade for O’Donnels if he would postpone this one time. Lucas swore that he could get Eddie the best math tutor in Hawkins. 

Now, said tutor had just rolled a Nat 20 and was being hailed as a hero amongst the party that Eddie had been guiding for the past school year. 

It could have brought a tear to his eye, knowing that Hellfire had beaten his campaign, and now he was set to walk the stage in a week to graduate. 

“That’s why we play!” Eddie declared, dramatically bowing to Erica, who stood proud as the rest of the group high-fived and jumped around. 

“Erica, you’re joining Hellfire officially when you get to high school, right?” Will asked. 

“We’ll see if I want to join this nerd club in a year.” Erica said, as if that hadn’t been part of the deal with Eddie postponing Hellfire for Lucas’s game. 

The night wound down, as members reluctantly were picked up by their parents. Eddie himself was stalling as he cleaned up the board for the last time. He had always known that this day would come, that there would be a last Hellfire meeting, a final campaign, one last adventure. He knew that, but never really believed that it would happen until he was folding up his DM screen and sliding it into his beat up backpack. 

Eddie already promised himself that he wouldn’t ever enter the grounds of Hawkins High again once that diploma was in his hands. There had been talk amongst his band-mates about setting up a game for just Corroded Coffin, but nothing set in stone yet. 

He watched as most of the group headed up the stairs and towards the door, until it was just the freshmen huddled in a corner and whispering to each other in a hushed and excited tone. 

Curiosity got the better of Eddie, it always did. He walked over to the little sheep and crossed his arms. “And what’s the big secret?” he asked. 

The boys jumped slightly, and they all looked like they were stuffing something in their pockets or subtly trying to hide something, which only made Eddie more curious. 

“We were just deciding who was going to be the dungeon master next semester!” Mike said, a little too fast, but it was a good alibi for now. The older members of the band had never shown too much of an interest in running the game, but Eddie knew that Mike and Will had swapped around being the DM long before joining Hellfire. 

This did interest Eddie though, and he was willing to ignore whatever secret that the children were holding for the moment. He knew this was an important decision for the fate of the club. “And who among you thinks they are worthy of being my successor?” He asked, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Dustin took a step forward. “I do.” he said.

Eddie’s lips stretched into a grin as he looked down at his favorite freshman (though he’d never admit it out loud). Had it been up to Eddie, he would have picked Henderson himself. Maybe Will was a close second, with his passion for the game above all else. 

“So, Dustin the Bard thinks that he is good enough to tell the tale of Hellfire for the future generations?” Eddie asked. 

“I know I’m good enough.” Dustin replied. “I learned from the best.” 

Eddie hadn’t expected such a sentiment from the kid, and for a second his expression softened. For the past year, Dustin had constantly talked about how great and amazing Steve Harrington was, practically worshiped the jock much to Eddie’s confusion. But knowing that Dustin really did think highly of him as well, melted a part of Eddie’ cynical old heart. 

“When is she coming in anyway?” Will asked, looking at Dustin. 

...Who?

Dustin’s head snapped over at Will with a glare, the Byers kid had a shit eating grin. 

“She’ll be coming in next week.” Dustin said through his teeth. “But that’s not important right now.”

Eddie didn’t consider himself a nosy person, but he was. He was about to leave Hawkins High and Hellfire forever, and these children were being cryptic and weirder than usual. 

Dustin turned back to Eddie. “I’ll be running the next campaign.” he tried again. “I already have a lot of ideas.”

“Well, Henderson, you’re in luck.” Eddie said. “I’ll have some free time on my hands this summer, I think if you’re going to live up to my legacy then you should at least get the proper training.” 

Eddie’s mouth was going faster than his brain with the idea. It’s not something that he would have offered to anyone else, and truth be told he didn’t know why he was suddenly feeling the need to hang out with anyone other than his band over the summer.  

It didn’t have anything to do with the fact that after he had that diploma in hand he would be even more lost than he was within the walls of this prison of a school. Nothing to do with Wayne talking about getting him a job at the plant after graduation or the fact that suddenly Grant, Gareth, and Jeff had summer plans with their families which would cut into Corroded Coffin’s rehearsal and stage time. 

No, it had nothing to do with any of that. It was out of the kindness of Eddie’s heart that he was willing to guide his sheep into one last adventure to prepare them for the new year and new challenges that they would have to face without the mean and scary freak of Hawkins High protecting them. This was all only for the future of Hellfire. 

Dustin looked confused, looking to Mike and Lucas for support but they looked like they were holding back laughter. 

Were they laughing at Eddie? After all he’d done for them over the past year? Keeping them relatively safe from bullies, letting them join Hellfire?

Lucas slapped Dustin on the shoulder with a smirk. “See you later. Good luck.” he said before him, Mike, and Will practically bolted up the stairs and out the door. 

This kept getting weirder and weirder. 

“So you want to train me...?” Dustin asked, turning his attention to Eddie after nearly setting the staircase on fire with his glare. 

“Think of it like ‘Dungeon Master Boot Camp’.” Eddie said, though he sounded more confident than he felt after that weird exchange. 

He couldn’t fully blame the freshmen either, it’s not like he had ever asked to hang out with them outside of school or Hellfire. The closest had been Grant’s birthday party, and the two times they had all gone to the arcade together as a club. 

“About that I- uh.” Dustin was holding onto a piece of paper in his hands, fiddling with it. “I’ll actually be living with the person who taught us D&D this summer and they said that they’d help me- but you can help,too!” 

Eddie’s face must have betrayed some form of emotion with how quickly Dustin had added in that last part. He tried to brush off that odd feeling of disappointment, it didn’t matter anyway. This was just something Eddie was offering to kill time during the summer due to boredom. No other reason.

“And who exactly taught you to play?” Eddie asked, crossing his arms. It was no secret that the kids knew how to play before joining Hellfire, but he had always assumed that they had learned the same way he had; by sneaking into bookstores and libraries and writing down as much of the rules as he could until he could finally put together enough money to buy his own copy of the players handbook. It hadn’t occurred to him that someone would have taught anyone in that group. 

“My cousin.” Dustin said. “She doesn’t live here, but she used to come up for summer break before going to college. My cousin was the one to bring me the books and got me into the game and then we just played a campaign every time they visited.” 

There was something about the way Dustin was talking that made Eddie feel like he was trying to hide something from him. 

“And so this cousin of yours is coming back to visit for the summer and will be, what, teaching you how to play again?” Eddie raised an eyebrow. 

“No! No, she’s just gonna run a campaign for us!” Dustin said, incredulously before sighing and showing Eddie the piece of paper that everyone had been poorly trying to hide. He snatched the paper out of Dustin’s hand and looked it over. 

It was about the size of a chocolate bar, with ADMIT ONE TO THE CARNIVAL OF LOST SOULS on the front. When flipped over, it looked like an invitation to some sort of demented carnival, with doodles of ghosts and gross clowns and rancid looking carnival food. Dustin's’ address was scrawled in a drippy red ink across the back as well as a date and time. 

Eddie was both impressed and confused. 

“What is this?” 

“That’s the invitation we all got to be part of the campaign.” Dustin said. “My cousin really gets into theme.” 

Eddie kept looking at the ticket. It glowed just slightly in the dim light of the drama room. Was that glow paint? 

Yes. Yes it was. 

“Carnival of Lost Souls.” Eddie read slowly. Was that a new module? 

“It’s an adventure they made up. I don’t think they even use any module or even Faerune for the campaigns.” 

What kind of blasphemy was this?

“And you want this person to train you to be the dungeon master for Hellfire?” Eddie was unimpressed. 

“Yes- I mean no- I-”

Eddie was finding joy in the way Dustin was floundering. The kid was usually quick on his feet and sharp witted, fitting for a bard, but now he seemed backed into a corner. 

“Join the campaign.” Dustin finally blurted out. “You don’t get to ever play, right? Come join the campaign and then I can learn from both of you!”

That was a tempting offer. Eddie had been trying to get Corroded Coffin to schedule weekly D&D during the summer, but as it stood they’d be lucky to even meet up for rehearsals. 

Eddie looked down again at the ticket. Henderson seemed to really have faith in this person, and when was the last time Eddie got to play outside of the occasional one shot? Very rarely. 

“Keep the ticket.” Dustin said. “Just bring that with you and I’ll make sure you get in.” 

“Is this a secret club, or something?” Eddie shoved the ticket in his lunch box. 

Dustin shrugged “My cousin always likes to go all out.” 

“Dustin, you’re mom’s looking for you!” Will called down the stairs. 

“Shit. Coming!” Dustin called back up. “Eddie, come join us if you want. I can show you what I’m working on for next year and you can actually play for once.”

Eddie wasn’t given a chance to answer as Dustin ran up the stairs, leaving him alone in the drama room. 

He watched the door close and looked around the room that had been a safe-haven for the past few years. It was a bittersweet feeling, Eddie had always hid inside of the game and his band, being given a few precious hours a week to be more than what this school and town thought of him. Here, he could be a hero, a rock star, a somebody. When he finally got that diploma in the next two weeks and ran off that stage, what was Eddie running to? 

---

Welcome to my new series! I'm doing a lot of research on D&D and the satanic panic for this, so I hope you all enjoy <3

[tainbocuailnge]

fgo is backpedalling on a feature for the first time lmao they'd expanded the append skill system to add one that increases crit damage and one that lowers the cooldown of the first use of each skill(!) but they all still cost the same amount of super rare servant exclusive currency so if you want to unlock them all you need to roll 8 copies of your bond 15 5* servant AND also not have used their excess coins on the feature they'd already introduced to turn spare coins (that now retroactively are not spare) into grails

compensation is 120 quartz (lol) and promising they're going to refund all the coins you put into grails (which they tracked apparently?) (why not retroactively hand out coins for amount of storylocked 3* then) and make it possible to swap levels from one append skill to another (bandaid solution to the real problem being that this coin system is bogus gacha bait to begin with) (they'd promised servant-independent coins ages ago)

i do think it's interesting that this is evidently where fgo players are collectively drawing the line and making enough noise that lasengle actually has to backpedal on it. I don't have any hard statistics on player activity but my anecdotal experience is that fgo is bleeding players at this point so I wonder if they'd still have backpedalled (and with such a sizeable sum of quartz) if player retention wasn't as much at risk lately. pulling out so many collaboration characters in an unusually short timespan and an incredibly long anticipated unit like summer ereshkigal with a literal affection meter mechanic and anti-ntr features that make it so you can never use her optimally if you don't roll her yourself feels like a real desperate move on their part to get people to come back. hey you left fgo to play real games like samrem and mahoyo and tsukire right look we have water saber and aoko and ciel please come back!!

fgo has been running into the limits of its fairly basic gameplay engine for years and rolling out various bandaid systems to pretend to add more depth for as many years without addressing the real issues but since there's so many other fate games getting (re)releases lately people have less reason to care about fgo specifically, because they can just pay for one of those other games once and have a complete story experience without having to do time-limited chores about it. I joked about oberon killing fgo earlier but I think realistically it's the combination of lb6 being a story high they haven't been able to reach again + samrem releasing and mahoyosweep picking up around when people were realizing fgo wasn't gonna reach that same high again. there's less and less reason to stick with fgo because there's real complete games coming out that will give you a very similar story experience and won't make you do various time-limited chores about it

ideally this will scare lasengle into making more intensive changes but they've been so stubbornly blind to the actual problems with the game for so long I'm not counting on them actually fixing those

[klysanderelias]

Maybe the thing I hate the most about Critical Role's influence on ttrpg culture is the 'How Do You Want To Do This' shit - I hate it so much.

And like, y'know, there's a conversation to be had about the way it centers grotesque, over the top violence, and how it often produces wildly dissonant moments where a character suddenly goes wildly outside the bounds of who they are simply for a 'cool moment' or where it dramatically changes the tone of a fight and thus how I feel about it (and that's not even mentioning the way that players will do shit like that randomly - I will never not be upset about the way that Dim/ension 20 had the whole 'goblin up the asshole' thing)

And there's also something to be said for like, it's just a fun thing matt mercer wanted to do to let his players feel cool and give them the mic for a second to cut a promo, and it's definitely not the only thing that the show is about, but like...

It's like the GBBO Handshake, y'know? It's something that's Iconic, and gets this sort of following because it feels momentous or special, and suddenly all anyone cares about is getting it. Like, it is annoying to me how people will fall over themselves to get a handshake from paul hollywood but literally no one cared about impressing Mary Berry to the same extent. She didn't have a Thing and so her feedback was always rated lower than Paul's because the Handshake Mattered.

And I don't think it's Matt Mercer's fault the way I think it's Paul Hollywood's fault, exactly, but it is one of those things that I do have to assign blame to him as the originator of a thing that I hate.

Specifically because.

It creates this culture where the biggest moment you can get, the thing everyone wants, is to get the messy kill. It creates this culture where getting to describe an over the top Doom finisher is an ideal, and where it feels like it's the one moment where every GM is willing to share the spotlight a little.

And that sucks. For a lot of reasons, but primarily because it decenters like, any other agency the player can exert.

It sucks so bad when the only time you get creative agency as a player is to say how much you kill a thing. Throw out as many ideas as you want in the rest of the game, and get ignored or shot down, but this one guy? This rando bandit? This is your moment, brother.

And again, I don't think this is necessarily how Critical Role is run, but it's definitely how it's played, and how it models behavior for players, which is why it's so upsetting. I love listening to ACTUAL actual plays, where things are discussed openly at the table, because it gives people a model for how to handle things. Critical Role, all that stuff is discussed off-stream, all the backstory stuff is worked out ahead of time and all the major story beats are pre-planned, even if just in vague terms, and I think that's fine! IF you're doing a stage show, and not an actual play. Yes, players should discuss ahead of time whether they're interested in having their characters pursue a romance, and yes, if a GM is going to introduce a major plot arc based around a PC there should be discussion about it ahead of time, but obfuscating all of that just means that people listening don't understand how to DO it.

And what it means is that the big moment where players get to hold the reins for even a second, on-screen, is the kill.

And all the other stuff? Well, y'know, you don't need to ask the players for input. Just be a good DM, like Matt. Just tell a great story and they'll all sit in raptured silence and be so excited to follow the tracks to the next plot point, and the only time you need to check to see if they want to DO anything is when they roll a crit.

And it's just like, there are basically no 'how do you want to do this' moments in the HUNDREDS of episodes of Friends at the Table, and all of the memorable moments are players taking agency and pitching ideas. Like, there are big kills in Friends at the Table that fucking HIT, and none of them are because they're Doom Finishers. Hadrian in the Hieron holiday special fucking HITS because it's a meaningful, powerful character choice. Mother Glory in the other Hieron holiday special HITS because it's such a tragic, hateful thing to have happen. Hella killing [redacted] isn't cool or exciting, it sucks, and it plays directly into her 'I would rather destroy something than try to understand it' morality, so it fucking HITS.

And like, I could go for hours, and I couldn't tell you ANY of the 'how do you want to do this' moments from the 50-60 episodes of critical role that I watched, because they all suck. They're all just spectacle, just getting keys jingled in your face for a few seconds, and it's so frustrating that it feels like that's the only thing people have taken away from Matt Mercer's GMing (I have a lot of OTHER critiques about his GMing, so I'm not saying that learning from him in other ways is better, but I'm also a hater).

But y'know, they clip well for tiktok or whatever.

It's just one more goddamn thing I hold against 5e culture, but it's also so quintessentially AMERICAN - of COURSE we're going to want to spotlight a grotesque kill, have you watched ANY of our tv shows. Of course the only time that a player's input is needed is so they can narrate their finisher - that's EASY and it's FUN because we have no concept of the humanity of the people we kill. It's fun to climb up a monster's asshole because no one has to consider whether that COUNTS against a nonperson.

And it's just like, y'know, I feel like there's this glorification of violence as long as you can feel justified, and it's easy for us to feel justified, so you end up with people making zombie movies just so that they can sell fantasies of shooting your neighbor in his face for mowing the lawn too often, or you ignore any morality because someone hurting you in the past DEFINITELY justifies waterboarding them with isopropyl.

And like, I don't want to be too high-and-mighty because I do think there's a place for over-the-top violence, and for retributive violence, in storytelling, but I just don't think it should be as a highlight reel, and it shouldn't be a candy-coated reward for rolling good.

It matters, it's noticeable, how you as the GM frame the camera. It's obvious what you care about depending on what details you ask for. And y'know, it's obvious what you're not interested in when you don't ask.

And again, it should not be the only time you ask a player to describe something.

[sprintingowl]

Candela Obscura

I'm very late to the party, but I finally read Candela Obscura. It's a weird TTRPG---but in a lot of soft ways. It's a bad fit for 50% of DnD players, and a really good fit for 25% of DnD players. It's easy to use if you're good at ignoring the rules, and quite difficult if you need rules structure to feel comfortable.

Anyway, here's a quick review.

Candela Obscura is an Edwardian supernatural TTRPG built out of bits from several popular story-forward systems. The dice are d6s. You roll a couple and count the highest one. If you want, you can spend your meter to add more dice. And if you keep a specific fancy die (even if its roll was bad,) you get some of the meter back.

There is damage and combat and equipment and classes, but the system doesn't feel like it actually wants these things at all, and their role is overall kind of minimal. You don't hit level seven and unlock a new power that completely transforms play. You shuffle some points between your stats occasionally---either after a few sessions or when you die.

Dying doesn't kill you in Candela Obscura. You just take some lasting trauma and rejoin the group the next time they rest. This is going to feel like the destruction of reality itself to folks who are very deep into the DnD ruleset, but what this does is prioritize the story in Candela. You're not going to get your character killed off by a stray crit. You don't have to optimize to do board game combat in order to tell a complete story. You play your blorbo as long as you want to.

Simply put, I think this is a game for former theater kids (said as a former theater kid.) The game's mechanics are there if you want to invoke them, but if what you want to actually do is gloom around parlors, poke around dusty curio shops, write gothic poetry for your phantasmal beloved, and lounge louchely out of the back of a stagecoach on the way to the count's manor, this is a pretty good system for that.

When you rely on Candela's mechanics to give it substance, they don't do that at all. So Candela's substance has to come from atmosphere, acting, the fun of performing the game vs the fun of winning it.

In fact, I'd argue that if you downscaled the rules into something you could run as a larp, it'd be a better system (and a decent larp.)

Lore-wise, Candela isn't breaking any new ground, so I'm not going to go into super deep detail here. If you've got some Gail Carriger books on your shelf, you're already in the right ballpark. Magic is dangerous. You're part of a group that investigates it. Other secret societies want different things from magic, and sometimes a big monster comes galumphing through the veil between worlds and everyone has to deal with that.

Candela does take care to establish that its world is one in which prejudice does not exist, and I think this is a well-intentioned fumble. Giving groups tools to remove or downplay prejudice as an element from their game (Lines & Veils, X Card, etc,) that's good. Not everyone wants to confront the miseries of the world during their leisure activity. But saying "there's no prejudice in this empire." I dunno. Sorta misses some key things about empires.

Overall, though, the lore is easy to work with and there's quite a lot of it. You get a very good sense of what the setting is like, even just flipping through, and this is aided by the lovely art and layout. It's a nice looking book.

So, would I recommend Candela Obscura? Kinda™

If you've already played a bunch of indie games and you want something Edwardian supernatural, it's a solid pick. If you've only played DnD but you ignore the rules more than you use them, this is also good for that style of play! If you want a game specifically about combat, that you can strategize and win, this is absolutely not that and you'll have a bad time trying to make it do those things.

I do hope Candela Obscura grows more of an audience, as I'd love to see the kinds of indie games that its hyper-presence in the scene would inspire. It's also something I feel like I could run comfortably, and would be happy to play in---even if it's not a top five system for me.

If you've played it, or if I've gotten anything wrong in my review, please feel free to let me know. And if you haven't played it, but I've inspired you to, heck yeah. It's available at the link below.

[fandom-geek]

post stream

gift of the lotus: orokin reactor and orokin catalyst blueprints

5th march

st patrick’s day – infested darvo deals

7th march

(14:00 EDT/19:00 UTC +0) tennoconcert tickets go live. it doesn’t include access to tennocon, it’s a watch party at the hilton doubletree hotel in london, ontario.

12th anniversary goes live – alerts with all previous anniversary items will go live, with new dex laurus ephemera (login reward)

19th march (techrot encore: most content is locked behind rank 4 for the hex syndicate)

4 new proto-frames (nova, saryn, temple, frost). all have their own arcs to resolve that are “quite personal to them” via KIM – that said, not romanceable but you can get “quite close” to them. frost and saryn (minerva) are married, adoptive parents of major rusalka. hollvania central mall is expanded, with a new area added to it (the round table, a pub!), which will appear (with the protoframes) at rank 4, but some won’t talk to you until rank 5.

kaya velasco (nova) will be in charge of the temporal archimedea, lots of modifiers involved. 3 new arcanes and vorsfor also available from her.

minerva (saryn, momtoxicated) and velimir (frost, papapolar) are located in the pub. velimir sells the new furniture. minerva sells the scaldra weapons. they also share a group chat with the drifter.

minerva is a very capable military woman who is looking for her neci (rusalka) and although rusalka is adopted, they share “assets”.

flare varleon (temple) is on the pub stage, who has a symbiotic relationship with their talking guitar, lizzie, who was born from their infested blood. flare sells temple’s parts and weapons, and these are available from the new game mode, arsenal.

each protoframe will have their own theme song and this will play in the pub. they also all have gemini skins.

you will get malware on your KIM-puter if you progress with the technocyte coda system. the coda system supports tints now, and will show rewards for converting or defeating.

ephemera is a mix of energy and gore-y/monster-themed stuff.

technocyte coda will give you zits that grow and grow, so you must destroy them before your zit gets too big. but it’s purely cosmetic, no stolen resources/credits.

temple warframe: comes with alternate helmet (mohawk physics). their signature weapon, riot-848, was modified by albrecht with an entrati silencer that lets bullets teleport back to the weapon.

temple is more about rhythm and comes with an onscreen metronome (their passive) that boosts abilities by 50% efficiency, so try to time it with that. abilities: flame pillars (correct timing increases damage), create speakers to deafen enemies (makes them vulnerable to crits), 3rd ability buffs you and allies + makes you invulnerable (can chain longer with metronome), and 4th is your exalted weapon, lizzie. she can create a giant flamethrower and you can pick what element is included with her cast attack (viral, magnetic, radiation

new game mode: solstice square. defence with 3-4 twists. 3 waves. flare and lizzie are playing a concert at the end of the world (plays a special song in the background), viktor wants to kill them, and you’ve got to protect them.

twists include: shortened wave, each 3rd wave includes a berserker (the screamer) that will be very dangerous for temple, giant speakers will occasionally unleash attacks to passing enemies, stage evolves after first set of waves (“rock and roll to the centre of the earth”).

rot-heart strings will drop here.

gyre deluxe (vortengeist) coming with alternox deluxe.

olly’s crash course is coming – more developed than the demo version. essentially star course from mario-kart. features weekly leaderboards with rewards, including olly’s bike and olly’s floof.

pseudo-exalted re-work, 4 new warframe augments (wisp, koumei, qorvex, and gyre), and the quality of life updates mentioned in the previous stream. duviri paradox and the hex quests are now replayable. platinum bundles will now be pro-rated.

new player experience – shortened and reworked the path for the star chart, including relevant junctions, up to the second dream, including ceres removed from the core path. loaner necramech provided for the new war. removed high-level crafting materials when crafting an archwing, with launcher segment delivered upon completion of the archwing quest.

27th (?) march

warframe guitar giveaway for Jake Bowen’s signature guitar (Ibanez JBM9999 electric guitar) closes

13th june

community showcase submissions for tennocon close

[suntiger745]

Man, that was such a good fight. Combat can be hit or miss sometimes, espescially at higher levels, but when it hits, it hits good and this fight had it all.

Clutch saves, crits galore from both players and DM, personal growth (congrats Dorian), amazing descriptions of the action, Very Tense dice rolling, funny moments, cool combos and using that one magic item that half the cast forgot.

And they stopped Predathos. Everyone can stop to breathe for a moment.

Although I suspect the Vasselheim alliance is going to be rather nervous.

Still, the most important part is that Predathos wasn't released by Ludinus or another Exaltant of the Ruby Vanguard, or that God Squad didn't just seal it away sgain and kick the can down the road to trip the planet up a milennia later.

I suspect the discussions on what to do now will be messy and I doubt they will find a solution everyone is happy with, but at the same time they can *talk* about it.

It's not gods being devoured or ruidusborn being hunted and killed as the temples and gods try to stop another attempt at freeing Predathos.

Consequences you have some time to prepare for is much better than disasters you are forced to deal with with little to no warning.

While I doubt many of the Vasselheim alliance is going to cheer for Bells Hells, some will likely call them betrayers even, in a larger perspective of gods and mortals I think this was the best (or rather, least bad) outcome for Exandria. Probably for the gods as well in the long run.

Regardless, it will be very interesting to see how all this shakes out. Some juicy discussions lie ahead. :)

[misscammiedawn]

Honoria's appearance is modeled after someone? Care to share who that someone is/was, and why Honoria is attached to them?

Okay, so. In the original campaign that Honoria came from our PC was a loser college kid named Tyler Dawn who ended up have to take on a disguise that became its own fully fledged character named Honoria.

Note the last name used. Not to drive too big a point on it but Tyler has a sister named Camden and that character is where we got our name from. We spoke about that in more detail here.

Some older posts have spoke a bit more about Tyler, his connection to Seelie Fae Queen Titania and how Honoria was plucked out of his heart to create a completely different person/Fae.

The original Honoria looked like this (commissioned as a gift from another player from the tabletop days):

And some "official art" from the GM during the campaign:

The thing is, as mentioned briefly in the both the "Changeling Reveal" post and its companion that tells the IRL off table drama surrounding the campaign "Call Me By My Name(s)" - Tyler was not the character we wished to play during that campaign.

Anyway... that out of the way.

Camden Dawn, the World of Darkness character looked like this (artwork by former GM)

and Nori still possesses the memories of Tyler's childhood, even if she does not associate in with them. Not too dissimilar from dissociated personalities and how we treat our own childhood.

Nori and Camden never met in game but I would like to think they would have been good friends and had a mutual annoyance for Tyler. Alas that never came to be.

When Honoria was exiled from Arcadia she took flight with the meager possessions she had and Titles she could save from the bet she lost. She needed to hide and ended up in Eorzea rather than any of the realms she was familiar with. In FFXIV Fae are able to slip between realms without issue so this is not too big a stretch. We headcanon the Seelie Castle as co-existing in all realms and only being visible in places attuned to the mana/aether as Il Mheg is.

When she selected her disguise she thought of Camden, the only positive female role model in her previous life. Camden took very good care of Tyler and the positive regard bled into Tyler's counterpart.

Plus Camden serves as a model for "what Tyler would look like if he were femme" in Nori's mind and she didn't want to masc up. Probably something about being played by a transgender woman. Who knows?

We actually have an incomplete novella (about 50k words) of her becoming entangled in the supernal World of Darkness plot instead of her brother. In that book she becomes entwined with the Changeling community in Chicago, just to show that in that World of Darkness canon any person bearing the name Dawn would end up tied up in the Fae plot.

Anyway, all of this is to say that "Lady Dawn" is Nori using a glamour charm to disguise herself as a lady version of the human she shares a soul with (with the physical design modeled after her older sister).

Final thing to say before ending the post is that at the table there was a refrain of "god damn it Tyler" (his tag, even) because he was a gullible fool who got taken advantage of. This evolved into a joke of how both Camden and Honoria were "cursed" by the name of Dawn and it made them gullible fools too.

Honoria, no matter what form she takes, cannot shake the Assigned Dawn by Birth damnations.

-

Sidenote. This is the first time we've felt bold enough to share artwork drawn by our former tablemates and we're still not sure how ethical it is, given they are no longer in our life. Will delete on request.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

thinking about the fe games w/ routes (fates and three houses specifically but probably others idfk)

i think there needs to be more tragedy there. or opportunities for it i guess? or that fire emblem has to make unique death quotes for characters in general man

death in fire emblem feels so blah for me. more of an inconvenience than in other media. like when im playing DnD and an npc i love dies it isnt "man that sucks. anyway" but even w characters i love in fire emblem its just "man do i wanna reset the chapter for this that was so lame"

make death and especially betrayal related deaths Hurt More.

lets say youre byleth. youre teaching the black eagles, yay! but you have a b support with claude. you and claude are good buddies, maybe you just like claude as a character or its accidental because of x y z does Not matter. either way you are one of claudes closest friends. then the war starts, and you choose to side with a woman claude sees as a future tyrant (or at the very least a driven warmonger who might crush the alliance underneath her boot). imagine the hurt. the absolute fucking agony for claude.

and for byleth! byleth wakes up and their friend is gone. on another side, unreachable, 5 years of emotional distance *yawning* in front of them.

and then they reunite in the midst of battle, weapons drawn. theyve both come so far and have goals they *have* to achieve.

"I don't want this."

too bad. if you roll over, you get a game over because you fuckin failed the route. or you have to make someone else kill claude because sumn sumn mechanically you have a 0% hit rate bc of that b support. you cant do it.

too bad. claude cant run away, hes the last line of defense for a place hes responsible for. if he leaves what is he? a coward? a turncoat? would he have to believe in edelgard's future? would he have to slay his own allies, friends, the people who relied on him?

he cant. you cant.

he begs you to reconsider. you cant.

as he falls he reaches out a hand. you kneel beside him as he says a few things. calls this whole battle a clever gambit, praises your cunning in using effective weaponry, etc etc. but his voice is weaker. theres no option to spare him, you couldnt spare any *other* unit, could you? couldn't spare hilda. cant spare claude.

he mentions sometimes dreaming of the monastery. the food was good, right? hope the foods good in the future you build with edelgard. hope you name a town after him, thatd be fun. dont get stupid, teach, dont join him too soon. maybe he'll even wait for ya. keep a seat warm.

(fire emblem unit death sound)

then also: units in your own army.

lets say youre playing black eagles. its nearish endgame but not too close so i dont say any spoilers, but regardless bernadetta and yuri have an A support. they might get hitched postgame man, you havent done the A support of anyone else w those two. its a rough battle, your healer is severely low on psychic uses, you sold all your fucking vulneraries because you thought dorothea was more of a beast than she is. its dire.

unexpected sniper crit. yuri is on 0 hp.

bernadetta is within 5 tiles and instead of yuri's canned death quote, bernie interjects with one of the most well voiced anguished screams youve ever fucking heard. on the next turn, bernie gets +50 hit *and* crit on that enemy, and if she kills it the rest of the scene plays.

bernie is holding yuri, one of her few friends in her hellish fucking life. hes not gonna make it, she knows that, but shes still gonna try. shes wailing and begging him to stay like she wished she had all those fucking years ago, shes babbling about all the things he'll miss if he goes, all the things shes planned for them to do now that shes brave enough to leave her bedroom. he cuts her off to laugh. now is when she gets brave and honest with her feelings? when hes dying? oh bernie come on. he wraps an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in for a hug, kissing her temple like an old boyfriend and not a quiet yearning crush. he murmurs that hes glad she left her bedroom. that hes glad she can see the world beyond what abuse happened to her behind closed doors. that she'll find some other person to hold in his stead, one who wont so rudely get his blood on her battle leathers. one who wont leave her time and time again like he has. she wails into his shoulder as she drops the scraps of cloth she had been trying to use to stop his bleeding and just holds her dying friend.

(fire emblem unit death sound)

if death felt like An Event and not An Inconvenience i'd play with permadeath more man. make me sad fire emblem youre so shit at it

.

[auspicioustidings]

Mandatory Dungeons and Dragons

Summary: You have moved to a new town and really miss running D&D, good thing the nearby military base is looking for a DM.

Words: 3.9k

CW: None :)

“So I’m naw going tae go through the portal?”

“Ok so you do know from your arcana check that if you were to try go through this portal while it’s red, that a few things may happen to you and none of them are good.”

“Aye, but how not good we talking?”

“Dragged through hell before being spat back out, let’s hope someone in the party has a diamond and revivify ready not good.”

“Copy. I’ll naw go through it then sweetheart.”

“Don’t be a pussy Johnny.”

“I go through the portal!”

“...why are you all like this?”

–

You wanted to cry on the train home. Your first time at the TTRPG club in the city nearest your new home in a little village and it had been a disaster. It wasn’t like you didn’t know how to play Dungeons and Dragons just because you didn’t know every rule inside and out, but they had made you feel so stupid and as if that was absolutely the case. You missed your group back home and were already a bit insecure knowing they had another person DMing for them now. It was hard not to get in your head and wonder if they would like the new DM better, if their style would be more agreeable than the rules light chaos you brought to a table. And with the derision you had gotten from the DM at the club for daring to call a nat 20 on an attack roll a crit, you were stuck on the train considering just never going near the hobby again.

Maybe you really wouldn’t have if not for the brave little flyer hanging on to the edge of a stall for dear life that caught your eye a few months later when you went to the farmers market. You liked the farmers market in this little town, lots of handmade jams and local produce and baked goods. The stall the flyer was on was the most eccentric stall of the market and one where you had made a friend your first time wandering through, although Nik was not always here.

The Russian man looked every part the stereotypical gangster, but he was funny and kind and didn’t get upset whenever people from outside this community took issue with him on account of his home country. He had little hand carved animals that when you asked he said were made by a friend. Saying he sold them was sort of complicated because he’d give them away for free if asked, they were pay what you want with any money going towards a charity for helping recovering drug addicts. 

All that to say, it was entirely surprising that he would have a flyer looking for someone to run a D&D game at a nearby military base. 

“Do you know this game lapposhychka?”

“I do! I used to run it back home. I’m surprised a military base is looking for someone to run a game though, it’s generally played by… I mean it’s more a nerdy game, I didn’t think soldiers would be all that interested.”

“Ha! Do not listen to these silly tv shows that tell you soldiers are very cool and tough. You are more cool than any of them.”

“Uh huh, should I ask how you would know that or is it a you’d have to kill me situation?”

Nik laughed in that way that you loved, it made you so happy how unstrained he was with his fondness for you. Such an odd man. Given that he sometimes would be away from the market for weeks and always gave vague answers about what he actually did you had suspected he was in some sort of shadowy career, at least if it was with a nearby military base you didn’t have to worry that he actually was a gangster.

“Send email to the address so you can run this silly game for them hm?”

Well, what was the worst that could happen?

–

“They found someone else, sending him tomorrow” Price said with a long, tired sigh to his team. 

You would think that being a task force that was entrusted with saving the world, they would be exempt from the wellness initiatives that some civilians with fancy little degrees in an office somewhere kept forcing onto them. This one had been running for a year now and TF141 had been finding ways around it. 

The base football team had kicked them off when Johnny had bitten one of the players after an argument turned into a scuffle, so HR sent them to do airsoft thinking that it would be more appealing.

The airsoft venue had swiftly asked for them not to return when Simon had made the other team get on their knees and mock executed them one by one, so HR had sent them to a life drawing class.

The life drawing class had declined to continue running for them with Gaz’s insistence that he must be naked in order to feel comfortable drawing someone else naked, and at this point HR seemed intent on declaring an all out war on Price’s team.

Their latest was Dungeons and Dragons. Price had not known what that was when the arrogant little shit of a man had waltzed in with all of his books and dice and props and complex maps and got them to make characters. He rubbed them the wrong way entirely, clearly had some sort of superiority complex knowing that he was able to tell soldiers what to do. That had been the same with every activity they had been sent to and he was getting more and more mad about it. Why did HR think it was a good idea for civilians to be giving them instructions? It always ended with a power trip and his team needing to cut someone down to size.

“Did they aye? Such a shame aboot whit’s his face, wonder why he quit.”

“Strange right? Thought the git was having fun what with Ghost getting so into character!” Gaz added, him and Soap grinning in a way that spelled danger for whoever they were sending next.

Ghost had gotten very into character. It’s not like the knife ever would have hit the little weasel behind the DM screen, it had thunked into the wall behind him just as it had been aimed to do. Price tried to smother his own smug grin thinking back to it, the look of horror when Ghost had launched the knife, walked over, ripped it back out of the wall and said ‘tell me again that it’s lodged so deep that I can’t get it out’. 

HR were changing tactics now, making them stay on the same activity and just switching around the person running it. Well, they’d soon find out that Captain John Price did not negotiate with terrorists.

–

“Just tryin’ to be ready for any last minute missions sir.”

Price had to hand it to Simon, the man was going all out today. Full tac gear, skull mask on, generally being the most terrifying soldier a civilian could ever have nightmares of meeting in a dark alley. No doubt whoever came in would try and feign disinterest, would try and come off as if the whole thing was beneath them. As if that would do anything but encourage his lieutenant. 

“Very good. Soap?”

“Sir?”

“The mask?”

“Aye, like LT said, battle ready.”

Gaz chuckled and Price once again controlled himself so he did not join. Soap hadn’t wore that little red skull mask in a while, but he couldn’t imagine it would go down well. The temptation to go digging through his own belongings and pull the black one he owned was creeping in the back of his head. If they could scare off this DM before they even started it would really save them all a lot of time. 

–

You were jittering with nerves as the soldier checked and rechecked your ID and waved you through. This was seeming more and more like an awful idea as you parked up and were escorted through the grey winding tunnels of the base, clutching the straps of your backpack like a lifeline. 

You were dropped off outside a door and left to try and control your erratic heart as you forced yourself to open it and walk inside what looked like some sort of briefing room. It would work, there was a big table. They were already here.

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck, they were huge. They were terrifying. Two were wearing masks and you thought that maybe this was fine, character masks right? Maybe the setting they played in was more modern-ish and that's why the heavy tac wear as well. The other two were a younger man in a baseball cap and an older one in a fishing hat. They would have been less terrifying if not for the fact that they were also big and good looking. This felt like a fever dream, these people could not exist. Were those knives?

“H-hi!”

The nervous squeak of a greeting coming out of you made you at the very least force a megawatt smile on your face to cover your embarrassment about it as you introduced yourself, stumbling over your own name.

“I ah… I’m here to run a game!” you said, swinging your backpack off of your shoulders and holding it up as if it would suddenly turn see through and show your supplies.

You suddenly felt wildly underequipped. You didn’t have all the fancy terrains or stacks of books or intricate props. You had a PHB and a oneshot, a beaten up DM screen and snacks that would double as battlemaps. The email had said that they already had player sheets and dice and you didn’t see anything on the table. Oh God you hadn’t thought to bring stuff just in case, what had you been thinking? Was the months of going through every background check under the sun not warning enough that you should not be doing this?

“Of course, we’ve been expecting ye! John MacTavish, ye can call me Johnny” said the man in the red mask after a moment of stilled silence, smiling and holding a hand out for you to shake.

You felt like your hand must be clammy and your heart was liable to beat out of your chest with this man being in your space smiling down at you. You tried to relax as the older man took your bag and set it down on the table, leading you by the small of your back to one of the chairs. 

“Captain John Price, have a seat” he said kindly.

“Oh! It’s nice to meet you sir. Captain. Sir? I’m so sorry, I’m not sure which I should be using. I should have looked that up before coming, I’m sorry, I really wasn’t thinking” you rambled.

“Slow down sweetheart, you’re not under my command, you can call me John.”

It was so clear that they were soldiers. Not just the outfits, but how they held themselves. The Captain was so solid and safe feeling, like a hurricane could rip through the door and he would be able to fight it off before it touched you. It was strange the feeling it gave you to be in the space of that kind of person. It was stranger still that all four of them had that same undercurrent to them, even the huge man in the skull mask with a bunch of knives strapped to him. You sat and swallowed thickly, trying to get yourself together as you shakily unzipped your bag and started to pull everything out, trying to at least make brief eye contact with the others as they introduced themselves.

“Kyle Garrick, call me Gaz luv. Hang on, we have our stuff somewhere I think” the man in the cap said sheepishly, sharing a knowing look with the others that you knew meant there was something going on here you were missing. 

“Ghost. We don’t have stuff, sheets are long gone. Left the dice in a bar.”

“That’s ok! I mean we can wing it with a pen and paper, I’m sorry I didn’t bring any extra sheets. And if you have your phone there are free dice apps. And um…” you trailed off, looking between them and slowly figuring out that the thing you could see was a strange mix of pity and guilt. “...do you… actually want to play D&D?”

“No.”

“Jesus LT, way tae let her doon gently.”

“Git! Don’t listen to him luv, of course we want to play.”

You looked at the Captain in question. It was natural to see him as the leader here, so if anyone was going to explain it would be him you thought. He held your gaze and you found you could not look away from those eyes. There was just something so decidedly cosy and warm about those eyes, like being inside bundled up next to a blazing fireplace while being able to see snow out of the window. 

“Soap grab some pens and paper would you?”

“Aye sir!”

–

John MacTavish had been so confident when that door opened that they were about to make HR give up once and for all, that whatever man walked through that door would barely make it ten minutes before running off. That had went out the window when you came spilling through. Not one ounce of posturing or arrogance, just a sweet little thing looking at him all nervous and jittery. 

He knew it wasn’t just him that had been taken off guard, the whole room fell into an uncomfortable silence after you had introduced yourself. He had never been good with an uncomfortable silence, and he was feeling especially inclined to fill it seeing how it made your face fall more and more by the second. 

The urge to immediately tease his Captain was strong seeing that barely perceptible tick of his jaw when you had stumbled over which honorific to address him by. In all of the activities they had done, not one person had afforded Price any of the respect he deserved. It wasn’t like any of them expected civilians to follow their orders or treat them as superior, but there was something almost disdainful about it when people very pointedly refused to acknowledge it at all. When they swung the other way and tried to assert superiority over him as if to prove something. So having this sweet thing immediately try their hardest to give him his place? It was definitely affecting his Captain and it was obvious to the trained eye.

He could have spear tackled Simon for being so blunt with you. He could have kissed Gaz for immediately refuting him. And he could have eaten you right up when instead of immediately showing off all of your knowledge about lore and rules like the last one, you started out with going over all the ways you would all make sure everyone was safe and happy and having fun. 

You got so bashful trying to explain traffic lights with Simon teasing you that he couldn’t really help but put a hand on your leg to stop it from bouncing. Your bright little blush and smile at him just melted him entirely. Ah fuck, he was so screwed.

–

“I don’t know what your last DM used but totally open to whatever makes you most comfortable. I tend to use a traffic light system, have you ever used that before?”

Simon Riley found you wildly amusing, not least because Johnny was like a puppy with how he was trying to get you to like him. He was certain that if you put a hand to that mohawk then he might actually just bundle you in his arms and never let go. Cute. 

“Red means too much, orange means slow down, green means fuck yes baby keep going,” he answered, suggestion dripping off of every word. 

He watched how that made you shiver from your toes to your head, your leg bouncing nervously making it endearingly obvious how it had affected you. He wasn’t really looking to make you uncomfortable, just to tease a little. Gaz gave him a swift kick to the shin under the table and he fought off a laugh. 

“Ok you’re technically not wrong, same principle. That’s just for during the game if anything comes up, but we can decide beforehand what we definitely won’t have in the game. I’ll go through my list, but if there is anything at all anyone wants to add we’ll add it on and I’ll work around that.”

Colour him surprised when after thirty minutes he had indeed contributed to your little list. You explained it so gently that it made sense to mention that he didn’t really want snakes in the game, the same game he hadn’t been intending on playing in the first place. He liked that a lot. He liked that you put him in a place where he could comment on something vulnerable so easily because there was no chance that you’d judge him for it, you just wrote it right down on your list without question. 

He supposed they could do a few hours of this stupid game.

–

If someone had told Kyle Garrick an hour ago that he would be very seriously yelling at a magical gate that kept bloody shooting magic missiles at him, he would have said you were off your head. And yet, here he was. Well, not him. Here Elliot Knight, elvin Paladin was.

When they had played last time it was like pulling teeth. This time? The paper in front of him didn’t have a thousand things on it to keep track of, you had more or less thrown the rule book out and simplified it down to what would be easy and fun. Soap had been encouraged to reskin his sword to instead be a golf club which he was delighted about. Price was doing an outrageous Yorkshire accent that he had done briefly as a joke and then committed to once he saw how it made you grin. Ghost had fully been allowed to macgyver together a molotov in the game. And he was so bloody mad at this gate that here he was yelling at it. 

“Stop shooting at me!”

“The gate simply repeats it again. Security protocols activated, please answer all security questions to deactivate security protocol. What is the gestation period of a milk cow? It fires another missile at you and… yeah that hits. It smacks into your shoulder for 12 points of fire damage.”

“Ow! Next time someone else is playing distraction, if you fail another investigation to find this bloody book I will kill you in real life Soap.”

“I’m trying, I’m trying! Naw ma fault that Neil Ellis is a dumb fuck, I had to put all of ma points intae wisdom so he could be a proper Druid!”

“Ok so you do have a really high wisdom Johnny, and one of the skills under that is animal handling. If you wanted to, you could try to use that to see if Neil knows the gestation period of a milk cow instead of using investigation to look for the right book.”

Gaz nearly killed Soap when he managed to fail that roll as well.

–

This was stupid and fun. John Price found this stupid and fun. He had gotten strangely attached to Barry Sloane, his human fighter who was really just trying his best, although his favourite character had to be Samuel Roukin, absolute little shit of a bard. Simon had made a 4 foot tall dwarf who happily sat and played his stupid lute during all of the fights and yet had managed to land the final hit on every single thing they had fought so far by insulting it to death. 

It had been especially funny when the big monster had transformed into a maiden with flowing hair and a billowy white dress and Samuel had, while Neil and Barry were downed and Elliot was desperately trying to get them up and not die, told her “what’s the difference between you and a salad? The salad knows how to get dressed” and you had just buried your head in your hands when he had landed the hit and told you the damage. Another kill for the bard.

It hardly felt like it had been a full four hours when you wrapped up the session and apologised for over running. When you asked them about why they were playing in the first place and you had agreed to join the fight against HR? Oh, you were part of the 141 now whether you knew it or not.

–

“Wait, so they're forcing you to do an activity between every mission?” you asked, somewhere between disbelief and wild amusement.

The game went really well in the end. You liked this oneshot, it was always a hit and good for beginners, but this group had made it especially chaotic. You didn’t think you had ever been kept on your toes so much or laughed quite so hard at a groups antics. They were so ridiculous, even more so with how scary they looked in their gear. Johnny had taken his mask off during character building and you really thought you must be some sort of psycho because it had sparked your cute aggression and you barely resisted the urge to smoosh his cheeks. Ghost never took off his mask, but you got used to it. He wasn’t anywhere near as severe as he looked and he had such a stupid sense of humour that was so at odds with the spooky skull mask that it made what he came out with even funnier. 

“Yeah, supposed to somehow promote wellness more than actually catching up on sleep” Gaz grinned, clearly delighted that you seemed to find it as ridiculous as they did. 

“So what will they make you do next?”

“This again if you say yes sweetheart. You’d be the first person to not drop us after one session.”

You gave the Captain a wry smile. They had insinuated that they had been pretty badly behaved at every other activity, so you could imagine they had scared everyone else away.

“Well why don’t you just get me to come back then? We don’t have to play D&D, as long as I report that we are right? You guys can just do whatever you want for 3 hours.”

You really wanted to see them again you realised with a thump of your heart. Even if it was just a quick hello once every one or two months so they could get a sign off to say they had done their mandatory activity session. It was difficult to try and process exactly what mix of emotions you felt when Ghost laughed warmly from behind you where he had been tidying away all the drink cans and sweet wrappers you had been using as map pieces, and then dropped his arms over your shoulders in a sort of hug. He leaned down, pressing his cheek to yours so that he was looking at the others still lounging at the table. You could feel his cheek, he must have taken his mask off.

“What do you say Captain? Have her come back and do whatever we want with her for 3 hours?”

There really was only one word going through your mind and you prayed that you hadn't said it out loud.

Green.

[ghoulgeists]

Character Ask #s 10, 19, & 20 for Destreza, please~?

Since you asked sooooooo nicies... I will spill my facts for you... (and also give you a little doodle)

Everything is under the cut!

10. What is their main character arc in the story? Where do they start and how do they develop? Do they get a happy ending or is their story a tragic one?

SO... in brief his story when I made him as a dnd character was that he had been disowned by his fabulously wealthy family for wanting to bring his lover of no renown back from the dead and then pacting with a genie to get his way, and forced to find other ways to get by. After his game fizzled I took the bare bones and put some different meat on em lol!

So in his story as of right now he's still been completely disowned, but it's because he accidentally (on purpose) set into motion the release of an ancient and terrifying genie from her shackles and decided to help her enslave the entire world and then set it on fire, to rebel against his awful parents and potentially save his siblings from the same powerlessness he felt growing up. YES this involves killing his mother and father spectacularly in front of the world, YES that is a part of his good ending. Violence is okay if it is against politicians, for legal reasons I'm just talking about my fantasy oc's parents right now.

I'd like for him to have a happy ending where he bottles up the genie he released and fixes his relationship with what's left of his family, but I also think it would be very fun if he accidentally made everything worse for himself and brought about the downfall of humanity... so I'm of two minds about it! In the meantime though, he's trying not to think about the fact he agreed to let a vengeful elemental spirit destroy the universe and is just figuring out how to love people deeply and honestly.

19. What is your general favourite thing about the character? What is your least favourite?

Tbh I have a love/hate relationship with his design and his unique features lol... I love that I made his horns heart-shaped and I think it's a really fun feature, but drawing it or asking other people to draw it worse than torture sometimes agdhdgd... I guess the answer to what my least favourite thing about him is that I maybe made him a bit too unique lmao

20. Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about

GODDDDD I miss his game so bad. I miss his game SOOO bad. His group was so much fun, I met them all in person in college and then covid hit so I couldn't hang out with them and the game died... it was a huge hit to me personally so I've been really attached to Destreza (and Artemis, who came before him with the same group) ever since and I refuse to reroll them in another game to. Idk. Avoid moving on lmao. I kinda wanna just ramble about the party and what little bits of wdh we got to play 😭

I think probably my favorite bits from the game were the times I'd crit fail any attempt to avoid gaining a point of exhaustion (the party traveled a lot and he would always fail at least ONE exhaustion roll), or any time he was asked to pay for something and immediately broke out the bedroom eyes to get out of it, didn't matter who was asking. He was also in a weird situationship with a funny elf girl who exiled herself in solidarity with him. They had like zero chemistry but I think they would have banged it out anyway to alleviate boredom.

I have so many fond memories of the other party members despite the fact we only played for like, less than 10 sessions. We had a rogue who kept failing his mind checks (wisdom/intelligence) despite arguably being the most level headed member of the party, a monk(?) who was some retired underground pit fighter... I MISS THEM MAN. THE SERVER IS GONE!! I CAN'T SAY HI TO THEM ANYMORE!! CRIES 1000 TIMES AND DIES

[professionalscrublord]

4th Succession War campaign report 2

Game 2 I ran last Friday, a smash & grab mission

Map: "Forward Base" (Grasslands B battlemat) Time limit: 10 turns from base alert. Primary Objective: 300wp Retrieve EWS schematics Secondary: Sabotage facility operations Secrets: Raven plans, Personnel rosters

Intro: Interrogation of the captured Liao pilot from Game 1 revealed the location of a FOB where Ravens are being stored and maintained. Liao officers are operating out of here and often link up with local Emerald Dawn forces for field operations.

Goals: Hack the databases (marked in Red on the scan) and find the plans for the Electronic Warfare equipment in one of them (chosen at random). Download it, and escape back East. Beyond that, the Mercs will be paid for every database destroyed and every building collapsed.

Database contents (revealed on scan) 1: Directory (Instant, identify all DBs to players) 2: Personnel rosters* (Scan again to download) 3: Turret access** (Shutoff: first scan. Reverse IFF: 2nd scan.) 4: Jackpot (Jammer + Raven schematics***, 1 turn DL) 5: Backup database (any of the above but 2x longer to activate)

*Personnel Rosters contain ranks, performance reports, and evaluations of pilots. One of the more skilled pilots has a review marked "lacking patriotic fervor" and is scheduled for reeducation. The rosters can be turned in to the Davions postgame for extra money, or pursued by the mercs to hire a veteran 3/4 pilot at a discount.

**Turrets are Immobile Targets 15CF and 1 Medium Laser. They are untargetable while closed until the players walk into laser range, then they open and fire. Start the turn timer when this happens.

***The Jammer schematics were part of a larger file, the complete Raven-3X schematics. Raven plans are only revealed after the Jammer has finished downloading. The players may be scanning the Jammer under fire already so they will have to weigh whether they want to stand still for the next turn to get this and be shot at with no evasive modifiers.

Once the base is alerted, Ravens of various models (starting with a RVN-3X) will exit the large building in the west every 2-3 turns continually raising the pressure on the mercs.

A player mech within 3 hexes of a EW-equipped Raven cannot scan, though a mech with Improved Communications is only jammed at 2 hexes. You also cannot scan through fortress walls.

Optional Rules: Starting fires, incendiary ballistic ammo (half the damage is turned into heat, and counts as a laser for fire ignition chance), inferno missiles, Anti-TSM gas missiles

House Rule: Do not pay level-change MP when following a ramp.

The players' results:

Op. FOGHORN results: Primary objective: ✅ Jammer plans secured

Secondaries: 3/5 databases destroyed 2/5 buildings destroyed

Secret Tertiary: ✅ Full RVN-3X plans secured

Bonus objectives: -Personnel files acquired -1 pilot captured

-2 mech kills (no payment for kills via current contract but enthusiasm noted on Mercenary board review)

❌ Mission timer exceeded: departing Leopard dropship detected by House Liao reinforcements

The record sheets

How it went down:

The players got really lucky. The Directory came up early so they knew where to look for everything, and the Primary Objective ended up being in the secluded South-East building, where a mech jumped into the tiny corner hex behind it and scanned everything in complete safety. They also popped the first RVN-3X out of the base RIGHT quick with focused fire stripping armor and gas missiles following up, and the #2 Raven after it was taken out by a crazy TAC+Ammo Det on the second hit.

A merc also lucked out after taking two head hits, rolling no head crit, then having ~15 SRMs connect over the next 2 turns without any head hits (any one of which would've killed them).

Despite all the SRMs flying around, the one mech carrying a Lostech AMS only had it trigger one time, which I found funny.

Ravens 3 and 4 survived to the end of the match chasing the mercs out of the base after they'd sacked half of it. Players chose to bring Gas missiles to deal with jammer Ravens, but had no Infernos or Incendiary ammo and did not start that many fires as a result, which hampered base destruction efforts.

3 mercs escaped with various juicy stolen data among them, but the last one was juuuuuust barely 1 hex too slow to escape within the time limit. I would have said they were captured, but it was so close I decided to change plans...

The postgame choices:

-Personnel files used, veteran pilot to pick up from a hiring hall later.

The escaping Mercs have been detected and their Leopard dropship is being tailed! House Davion said they hired you as a deniable asset since they were unwilling to be seen with their fingers in the pie on this particular planet and would not take kindly to being revealed as your employer... But a detour will mean missing the scheduled jump out of system.

Will the Mercs keep the rendezvous with their employer, escaping the system but breaching opsec in the process? Or stay in-system, hide and likely fight on the dark side of the moon, for free since they're still on the same contract?

The players decided to try and lose the tail on the dark side of the moon to maintain their contract's integrity. Tune in next time for episode 3: Lunar Battle!

[envihellbender]

Eddie Munson as a DBD killer, seeing Steve in a trial for the first time

Rating: Mature (gore)

Fandom: Stranger Things, Dead By Daylight

Characters: Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington

Content: gore, horror, character death, abuse

Summary: Eddie is new to this, and seeing a familiar face was the worst thing that could’ve happened.

—

It was Eddie’s third trial, and it had taken a long time for the Entity to get him to this point. He didn’t know how long it had been, but finally here he was in all his glory- the Dungeon Master. In the end the Entity had changed the rules for him, or at least his perspective of them. Each trial had become a ‘Campaign’. The survivors were his ‘Players’, that’s why they kept coming back, it was fun for them, see? To be trapped within this game forever. Deep down, Eddie knew that wasn’t true but it was what he had to think to survive. The Entity was very good at making it seem like a dream, he just had to play along. Eddie was given a pen, a sharp fountain pen and a vial of ink. He could spill puddles of it on the ground and it acted like a tar, whatever his diced rolled depended on the effects. If it was a low number, it slowed them down the player, it it was about ten it caused them to be stuck, above fifteen and they received a random status effect alongside it. If he got a twenty? They were put into the dying state. A one? No effect. When he approached a player, he could slash or stab at them with the pen, and it did a hell of a lot more damage than he thought it would.

The Entity gave him the body he wanted, a flat chest and toned arms, his hair was neater and made him look just like what he told everyone was his “guy-spiration” as well as being his crush Lars Ulrich. When he wasn’t being asked to engage in his Campaigns he had a nice little apartment all to himself. All he had to do to pay the rent was kill- no, he told himself shaking his head. Play the Campaigns. Wasn’t too bad, not like he actually knew the players. He wore a mask usually, a metal skull given to him by the Entity. When he wore it he could become someone else, not that weak bastard that got beaten to death in the woods by assholes who blamed him for Steve’s disappearance. As if he would lay a finger on him, he loved him. He’d been spending every waking minute trying to find him.

The anger always came back up before a Campaign, the anger at being treated like the antichrist, a freak, someone to beat and abuse. Maybe that was apart of it, the anger. Maybe that was what made him accept the Entity. The Campaign he played currently was a blur, the Players always looked like drawings of his of characters he’d created. There was the ranger, a human who was far too hairy. An elven mage. A masked teenage halfling. And finally, a strange one he’d not got a good look at. They seemed to he a changeling - a beautiful, handsome changeling. Whoever or whatever he was, he was the last survivor, and Eddie was chasing him. He giggled as he saw the changeling head straight for his puddle of ink. Eddie rolled a crit 20. His player was on the ground.

He sauntered over to him, delighted at having beaten his players again. However when he was a metre away he paused. In fact, he stopped completely, frozen in his tracks as he looked down at the body before him. That hair. Those clothes. Those trainers. How the hell had Steve ended up here? He almost couldn’t believe it, another trick by the Entity.

“No,” Eddie yelled, his breath become weak and shaking. Steve lifted his head and looked at him with confusion, he wasn’t scared - he’d been through this too many times. Eddie realised he was wearing his mask, the player - no, Steve - didn’t know what he looked like. It all clicked into place, the strange dreams Steve was having, the fog in the forest… The same thing had happened to them both, on different sides. How poetic.

“Steve?” Eddie called out, his stomach writhing and his limbs shaking and almost whimpering. Without thinking Eddie took off his mask, and Steve’s eyes widened.

“Eddie?!” He spluttered. “How- why are you here? What- what happened to you?” Eddie froze as Steve had a look of disgust on his face, but seeing Eddie’s look of fear at his upset took the edge off.

“I- I- why are you- I don’t understand.” Eddie gripped the sides of his head. “Why are you in my campaign? Is this- is this where you disappeared to?”

“Yeah. I guess. Why- how could you-” Steve stammered over his words and curled up a little as he awkwardly sat up. “So you’re a killer now, huh?”

“I- don’t know. No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t want to be but this fucking thing…This creature. It’s in my head. Twisting. Grabbing. Tormenting. Fuck.” Eddie stopped and wrapped his arms around his torso, the image of the player as a changeling had broken, now he was just Steve. The landscape around him wasn’t an alleyway in Waterdeep, it was just a junkyard. “I- when I was looking for you. I died. And. The Entity says I have a lot of anger and pain inside of me… It likes that.”

“Wait- you- you died? How?” Steve felt a pain in his chest, an aching, throbbing grief.

“Erm. Tommy and some other ex-jocks. Blamed me for you disappearing. Thought I did some black magic shit. One day when I was searching the forest for some clues to where you’d gone they found me,” Eddie rambled anxiously. As he relayed the story he felt anger and pain rise up within him again, filling him like it was his own blood. It almost made him want, no need, to kill.

“Fuck. I’m- I’m sorry, Eds,” Steve said, his eyes stinging with tears as his body ached and burned from the ink clinging to him. Apart of him blamed himself, for getting lost, for leaving, for not sticking up for Eddie for the first time Tommy threw his books to the floor. “It’s- it’s okay if you have to kill me-”

“I want to talk to you. I want-” Eddie began, anxiety filling him. He couldn’t hurt Steve. He couldn’t hear him scream as he sacrificed him.

“Babe, we’ll talk, but I’m bleeding out and the game will stop when I do,” Steve interrupted, grounding them both, Eddie looked at Steve’s wounds as if seeing them for the first time.

“Are you gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. Entity cures ‘em. Sees ‘em right up. Don’t worry about me.”

“Tell me what happened before you go.”

“Weird dreams. Really weird dreams. I think something to do with Hawkins Lab? And then… I got lost in the woods whilst I was erm, babysitting, I guess. And ended up getting lost in the fog.” Steve’s voice grew weaker as he spoke and Eddie knew he had to get him out of there. He bent down, picked Steve up with a strength he wouldn’t have had before this, and began wandering around.

“Eds, there’s a hook right there,” Steve pointed out as Eddie carried him.

“I know.”

“What, you taking me to the basement? Entity likes that, right?”

“It does but no, not there,” Eddie replied as he strained his ears hoping to hear it. “I’m getting you out of here. And then… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll figure out how to get to you.”

“You can’t get us out of here, I’ve tried. Everyone’s tried.”

“No, but maybe we can be together. Wait- fuck! It’s there!” Eddie exclaimed, bounding towards the hatch with a speed that hadn’t been possible before. He opened it with his foot and let Steve go.

“Thanks, Eds.”

“I- I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that again. Entity’s gonna kick my ass.”

“I know, don’t worry, okay?”

“Love you, Steve. Always.”

“You too babe, no matter what side we’re on.” Steve crawled into the hatch, Eddie wished he’d kissed him, held him properly, something other than just letting him go.