irohthesecond

[irohthesecond]

30+ year old women are the backbone of this website

[irohthesecond]

since I finished reading Between Two Fires!!!

I actually drew this when I was still about halfway through the book, and there’s probably some changes I wanna/should make, like. making Delphine’s eyes grayer instead of blue lol.

[irohthesecond]

billionth picture of people just Standing There (tm).

Anyways. The main trio of Between Two Fires! Left to right: Thomas de Givras (a disgraced knight), Delphine (certified Weird Girl who talks to angels), Matthieu Hanicotte (a gay alcoholic priest)

[irohthesecond]

Hello my small but dedicated collection of DND OC owners. I have a very important question for you.

What does your OC bring to the Potluck and what was their logic and reason behind doing so.

[irohthesecond]

fuck it homebrew boop button. reblog this post to boop the person you reblogged from.

[irohthesecond]

light you on fire

blinds you

reverses gravity on you

Pain.

turns your perception into nightmare vision

uncontrollable vomiting

uncontrollable dancing

turns you into a sheep

flips bodily perception [your left hand moves when you try to use your right etc]

reduces intelligence

Game design exercise: You've been tasked with creating a non-trademark-infringing version of the beholder. The design brief specifies that your version should have ten creepy eyestalks with ten distinct magic powers, like the standard beholder, but these powers must not overlap with even one of the standard beholder powers.

For the purpose of this exercise, assume that the forbidden list consists of exactly the ten magic eyeball powers that are present in the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Monster Manual. (i.e., you don't need to research every magic eyeball power that's ever been attributed to a beholder in every iteration of D&D ever published.)

For reference, these ten powers are:

Controls your mind

Paralyses you

Makes you afraid

Slows you down

Makes you weak

General purpose telekinesis

Puts you to sleep

Turns you to stone

Disintegration ray

Just fucking kills you

These are all off limits.

So:

What ten magic eyeball powers do you give your legally-not-a-beholder?

[irohthesecond]

Former President of Poland Lech Walesa wrote the following letter to Trump.

Your Excellency, Mr. President,

We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, with fear and distaste. We find it insulting that you expect Ukraine to show respect and gratitude for the material assistance provided by the United States in its fight against russia. Gratitude is owed to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the front lines for more than 11 years in the name of these values and the independence of their homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that symbolizes the free world cannot recognize this.

Our alarm was also heightened by the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation, which reminded us of the interrogations we endured at the hands of the Security Services and the debates in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges, acting on behalf of the all-powerful communist political police, would explain to us that they held all the power while we held none. They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffered because of us. They stripped us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government or express gratitude for our oppression. We are shocked that President Volodymyr Zelensky was treated in the same manner.

The history of the 20th century shows that whenever the United States sought to distance itself from democratic values and its European allies, it ultimately became a threat to itself. President Woodrow Wilson understood this when he decided in 1917 that the United States must join World War I. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this when, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he resolved that the war to defend America must be fought not only in the Pacific but also in Europe, in alliance with the nations under attack by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and America’s financial commitment, the collapse of the Soviet empire would not have been possible. President Reagan recognized that millions of enslaved people suffered in Soviet russia and the countries it had subjugated, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their defense of democratic values with their freedom. His greatness lay, among other things, in his unwavering decision to call the USSR an “Empire of Evil” and to fight it decisively. We won, and today, the statue of President Ronald Reagan stands in Warsaw, facing the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, material aid—military and financial—can never be equated with the blood shed in the name of Ukraine’s independence and the freedom of Europe and the entire free world. Human life is priceless; its value cannot be measured in money. Gratitude is due to those who sacrifice their blood and their freedom. This is self-evident to us, the people of Solidarity, former political prisoners of the communist regime under Soviet russia.

We call on the United States to uphold the guarantees made alongside Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which established a direct obligation to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons. These guarantees are unconditional—there is no mention of treating such assistance as an economic transaction.

Signed,

Lech Wałęsa, former political prisoner, President of Polandand

[irohthesecond]

Oh no. MAGA is mad that the NYT shared the names of DOGE staffers. Don’t share this! Would be a shame

[irohthesecond]

[irohthesecond]

The people he delegates to / promotes are shown to be a very mixed bag, too.

War Minister Qin is a bit of a mixed bag; the development of tanks, rigid airships, and the drill are enormous technical achievements even accounting for the mechanist's contributions in the design phase, but his army gets routed when they try to storm the Northern Air Temple, and the drill gets destroyed by a couple kids.

Mai's father seemed wholly out of his depth trying to govern Omashu; Bumi was able to retake it in a matter of minutes during the eclipse even after most of his former troops evacuated.

Shinu's garrison failed to hold the avatar against a single infiltrator; he gets promoted from colonel to general in the months after the debacle [in fairness, it's hard to say how much he was getting railroaded by Zhao for that one]. He's at least forthright about the problem of earthbender rebellions, and his recommendation to reinforce the occupation with domestic forces after the invasion is relatively sensible. Still bad that he didn't speak out against the burn it all down plan, along with everyone else in the room.

Azula can be extremely capable, but didn't have the maturity for the jobs he was giving her; her biggest slip up being agreeing to a duel against an outcast [Zuko] she knows can hard-counter her strongest technique, instead of just dog-piling him with Dai Li.

Worst of all is of course Zhao, who rose from captain to admiral during Ozai's reign; his inability to tactfully handle the hunt for the avatar made an enemy of Zuko, and his [objectively deranged] plan to kill the Moon Spirit drove Iroh away too.

The timeline is a little fuzzy, but it seems likely that Piandao also abandoned the Fire Nation in this timeframe [Jeong Jeong deserted during Azulon's reign, according to the now deactivated nick site]; alongside Iroh, these figures are enormously powerful [taking back Ba Sing Se against a bunch of comet-enchanced firebenders, alongside Pakku and Bumi] and likely command some residual respect in the military. Having these figures at his side probably made it a lot easier for the bulk of the military and bureaucracy to support Zuko, who at the time of Ozai's downfall had almost no actual following.

This flashback in ATLA, Azulon becoming enraged with Ozai for disrespecting Iroh and the recently deceased Lu Ten, is usually interpreted as Azulon then ordering Ozai to kill Zuko. I disagree with this for two reasons. 1: We don’t actually hear Azulon say that, it’s only referred to by Azula (who was around seven or eight at the time and might have misunderstood what she heard) and by Ozai, years later, when he is taunting Zuko on the Day of Black Sun. Neither Azula nor Ozai are reliable narrators. 2: Azulon is, at the time of this flashback, the ruler of the Fire Nation who has just lost one of his only two grandsons and heirs. What kind of monarch loses one heir and then turns around and demands the death of another, especially when losing Zuko would hardly bother Ozai? My interpretation of this situation is Azulon ordered Ozai to give Zuko into Iroh’s care, replacing Lu Ten as Iroh’s heir, neatly removing any argument Ozai had about Iroh’s line having ended. Ozai of course would never accept this. He either lied to Ursa, claiming Azulon wished Zuko dead, or outright told his wife he’d kill Zuko before seeing him get ahead of him in the line of succession, thus manipulating Ursa to help him assassinate Azulon. I think this theory makes far more logical sense than ‘Azulon ordered the murder of his nine-year-old grandson’.

[irohthesecond]

spin the wheel 3 times

[irohthesecond]

WHOA!!!!! i love my friends' ocs

[irohthesecond]

lmao players in current campaign are basically dealing with the fallout of this

I swear there's a recurring fantasy RPG analogue to the "supervillain has a legitimate grievance but we have to stop them because Their Methods Are Too Extreme" bit that's like:

King: You have to put down the peasant rebellion.

Player: Why?

King: Its leader is in league with demons.

Player: Okay, but that's just one guy – why is everybody else on board with it?

King: Also demons.

Player: But—

King: Demons.

[irohthesecond]

All soups are good soups! And I only have 11 slots so I apologise in advance if your favourite isn’t here.

[irohthesecond]

also in the earlier editions, wizard/warlock/sorcerer were level titles for the Magic-User class, making them just different stages on the same track

People who treat D&D's classes as like being in any way representative of fiction outside of D&D are my nemesis, I just saw a post that was like "remember the difference between a Sorcerer a Warlock and a Wizard is this" and treating like those words as if their very D&D specific meanings were like universally accepted I'm going to start taking hostages

[irohthesecond]

war never changes