solidstatehero

[solidstatehero]

Headshot art of my new D&D character - Oquinn the Incidental Ursurper. Once a kobold laborer who was tortured by a group of aspirant liches, Snaphorn Heartthroat - now known as Oquinn - accidentally began a series of assassination attempts when he stumbled upon the home of an aged, dying polymage. When his captors pursued him, he killed them in self-defense using the polymage’s contraptions. Unable to cope with his actions in wake of his instinctual servitude and quiet lifestyle, Snaphorn became mentally unstable. In a fit of delirium, he killed and consumed the body of the bed-ridden wizard, forming the delusion that he had stolen the capabilities of said wizard in the process. Adopting his name for his own, Oquinn would then set out to learn everything he could about magic, becoming a skilled Artificer in the process. One mystery would elude him, however. A small ring was contained within a plain box near the original Oquinn’s bedside. It was magic - both Oquinns were sure of this - but the spell cast upon the ring was unidentifiable. Oquinn, ever the mad scientist, would one day prepare a parchment and ink, ready to document the proceedings as he placed the ring on his finger. He would never be seen on this plane again.

[solidstatehero]

Starting a new campaign with a new group of people and wanted to do character art from scratch for once. Here's Favorable Mleccha, the Kenku Sea-Storm Herald.

Mleccha lost his family at a very young age when they were scattered by the exiles they were trying to rob. Through instinct and a hefty amount of luck, Mleccha was barely able to survive in the wild. He often found himself exchanging sounds with the ocean and sky, and he began to consider them friends.

Later he would be taken in by the same exiles his family had attacked. With them he met Gevi, a forsaken Goliath barbarian turned druid.

Mleccha's family did not preform mimicry out of repentance for their ancestor's crimes (an act Mleccha now finds hypocritical) so the bird child was effectively mute. Kenku can not speak, they can only mimic sounds they've heard.

At first, this annoyed Gevi, who found the young, unnamed Mleccha following her around her land near daily. When she heard him mimic the sounds of the ocean and nature perfectly, however, she began to warm up to him.

She taught Mleccha most of his vocabulary, lending him her breathy, soft tone of voice. Gevi also attempted to teach him of druidry, but Mleccha found it difficult to connect words with images in his head - a lingering effect of his childhood.

Gevi did - however - find that Mleccha was extremely receptive to barbarian training. Instead of anger, Mleccha was able to harness his fear and instinct to mimic the rage that Gevi once knew when she was younger.

Thus Gevi named the child Mleccha and took him in. She began to notice the way the sand danced around his feat during training, as well as the way the sky grumbled and the slight swelling of the ocean as he moved.

Unsure if this was a consequence of untapped sorcerous ability, or the blessing of a diety, Gevi began to call him Favorable Mleccha, due to his uncanny luck and uncanny aura.

Though Gevi would pass from old war injuries a few years later, Mleccha would continue his training in solitary, still speaking to the sea and sky, though sometimes to his passed mother.

(Some quick writing on the spot cause I didn't feel like copying it from my character sheet...)

[solidstatehero]

This is an older one I never posted. At first I didn’t like it, but after a bit of editing (while cleaning out old files) I thought it sounded good enough.

[solidstatehero]

I figured I’d post what I’d been working on, even though I’m not happy with how it came out.

I’m moving to new tools soon. Up until this point, I had been using an old ‘98-era midi editor, then filtering them through a pseudo-famicom plugin and doing some final edits in audacity. This time, however, the editor kept chewing up the output. Also its started crashing as the song gets longer, hence the abrupt ending. You can really hear how bad it got chewed up in the drum parts. SO, I figured I’d just post this without editing, just to get it over with.

[solidstatehero]

So the eventual outcome of this project was to make a quick fantasy character generator for use in tabletop games. It's far from finished, but thus far I've got physical traits down. For example:

(Insert Name)...is a slightly masculine hunter. They would be described as towering with a thin body. They are adorned with hirsute hair, and their hair is naturally white. Their grey eyes are surrounded by a sea of dark skin, and when it comes to facial hair, they are a fan of the balbo style. They are easily picked out from a crowd by their scarred face and body tattoos.

It needs some work on the wording, but there's enough content to get some pretty good results. Eventually I'll add more descriptors, but the next step is setting up the personality and social status generators.

[solidstatehero]

I've been working on a project today, a part of which is a random name generator. The idea was to generate fantasy names using a list of ~15k syllables and patterns of common names. Some of them cane out pretty good, such as:

Peyramsbreath Lyute Rendskite

Some came out pretty generic, but moderately interesting, like:

Teybran Scout Staltotzrin

Most are pretty bad. Try to pronounce this without stumbling:

Stroudsmiksles Sinks Sodmiceroadsgold

And my favorite name of all:

Golfedgaym Bohmd-Tlohng Meshkthrash Whutsmob

Which is pronounced:

Golfed-Game Bombed-Thlong Meesh-Thrash What's-Mob

Expect more soon

[solidstatehero]

The recording crystal spins in its chassis, simultaneously playing back its contents and illuminating the club in a dazzling array of lights. The dancers are reluctant to frolic tonight, as they should be.

Finally figured out why drums didn’t work in my ancient software. I’ve been using the same old-crap programs forever. I’m probably one windows iteration away from having to run a virtual machine just to continue my laziness. Anyways, here’s what happened when I made a test track to try and fix the drums. It’s meant to be looped.

[solidstatehero]

The Herald stood over his army in preparation for his speech. His council advised him that it would be his last.

“Give them something to die for” they said.

He had built their loyalty upon riches, yet even the basest of mercenaries despised this pact. His army of sell-swords turned their eyes to their ruler, and their hearts to their fellow men.

In a few moments, he would order them to mount the final assault on the south keep.

In that same moment, they would no longer be his.

[solidstatehero]

The Luminous Desert. It tempts anyone spirited enough to brave it's cinders and ignorant enough to ignore the warnings. One man, immortal, stands at the jaws of the Luminous Desert. The glassy ashes flick in the wind onto his cheek, which begins to bleed gently. The desert begs for him, cries for him. He advances into the dust in hopes that he will never be seen again, whether he finds something better or perishes.

[solidstatehero]

Here one felt a sense of impending dread and loneliness, but it was strangely comforting. This place, where the white trees shed year-round and the river ran with cider, smothered it’s visitors in a blanket of anxiety. Should one dare to trek the river, they will find the source of the gluttonous liquid, and it simply adores being disturbed.

[solidstatehero]

“And as the sun continues to set, he finally comes to realize the dumb irony in how he'd been waiting for this moment his entire life. This stupid, awkward moment of death, that had invaded and distracted so many days with stress, and wasted time. If only he could travel back and impart some wisdom to his younger self, if only he could at least tell the young people in this room, he lifts an arm as if he's about to speak, but inexplicably says, 'it smells like dust and moonlight'” -- It’s Such a Beautiful Day by Don Hertzfeldt

A song inspired by the same movie.

[solidstatehero]

Papers upon papers littered her desk. Generals and soldiers played war while she was signing papers that would kill thousands, and she hated it. Disgust and anger at herself and her peers led her to do something she had ever only dreamed of. The grenade was lighter than she imagined, and it seemed to float from her hand to the window. Someone else would be signing papers from now on, and very soon they would see her name on the sheet next to the label: Terrorist.

[solidstatehero]

Despite being the biggest man in the city, he kept his guard up at all times. He was different and thought different. They knew it and he knew it but they didn't say it. Instead he was met with disgusted gazes and people moving out of his way on the street. If anyone came his way, he would try to get away out of fear. He could handle a few people, but a whole world that was against him from the beginning?

[solidstatehero]

If someone had caught her eye, there in the fire-lit tavern, they would assume she was content. What could be farther from the truth? Why couldn't everything just be normal again? Was anything ever normal? It became some kind of a sick fetish for her, wanting to be normal. The guilty feeling that spawned from that desire stacked itself upon the mountain of anxiety. Something was horribly wrong, in her, or out there, and it would find her even in here.

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The bite of steel on his bare fur no longer hurt. Since the day they tossed him into the wild and the Plagued ripped the armor from his flesh, pain no longer existed. They would rather lay with their gods than follow their true calling. What is power without action? The dust and sand was gorged thick with the blood of gladiators struck by his axe and claw. One day, he would come back to show them what they could become, and what he had become.

[solidstatehero]

What a strange world! What odd people! Most people thought the Faunan was rude and inconsiderate, but truthfully, he had never seen any of these kinds of magnificent things in his life. He struggled to make polite conversation and had poor social judgement, but he tried his best. These large cities scared him, though. The forests of home had tall trees and little sun, yet here he was, baking in the heat and surrounded by more people than plants.

[solidstatehero]

An ex-knight and her sheltered ally drift the forests and the bluffs, following the billowing smoke. Her heart beats meaninglessly and melancholically. Will she finally find tranquility in death?