#I still feel bad for the orc and bugbear

[themadlu]

Do Not Open That Door

Astarion is sure his leader's unflinching morals will lead him to another unwanted grave. He is also sure she is putting on an act because people like her do not exist, clearly. He decides to test his assumptions.

TW: None I think

WC: ~3000 words

Tagging: @spacebarbarianweird for the encouragement!

Astarion is livid. Well, maybe livid was an overstatement—he is annoyed. Annoyed and confused. Such feelings are still a vast improvement over the fear and shame he's been accustomed to, but they make him restless nonetheless. 

Especially because their cause is walking steadily next to him without a care in the world for his inner turmoil. 

Zélie, their oh so great leader, has managed to spoil what could have been a perfectly enjoyable afternoon on multiple fronts. First, she decides to talk to the goblins ambushing them instead of treating them like the savages they are.

(“We don’t know how many of them are in this village Astarion. What if there’s a little army and we’re outnumbered?”)

After confirmation that there were, in fact, quite a few goblins (and a couple orcs to boot), she managed to get free passage through the village by leveraging their wriggly alien parasite. He isn’t happy about it. Not at all. 

He has to begrudgingly admit hers was a wise call after witnessing just how large and hungry those orcs were. And of course they even agree to help a fellow true soul in need. Just what he needs to undermine what little influence he has on her.

(Her blood is in his body after all.)

In the last tendays she had made it her mission to remind him how despicable murder is, under most circumstances, aside from self-defence. This beautifully idiotic mindset of hers almost got her killed twice in front of his very eyes.

(She doesn’t know he has taken to finish off the enemies she leaves unconscious while she isn’t watching.)

When he had pointed out the suicidal flaw in her morals, she had given him her signature scolding look, crossed her arms, and started breathing in that funny way of hers. 

In, hold, out. 

(She says she is not trained as a monk, but he’ll be even more damned than he already is if that is true. The way she fights and holds herself—and those sickening ideals she has—tell a different story.) 

“Honestly, darling,” he hisses at her as they walk through the village, squinty eyes trained on their every move. “I thought we agreed that benevolence and honour,” he spits the words out like a curse, “get you nowhere but to an early grave.”

“Astarion,” she always says his name when she speaks to him—even in annoyance— and he hates his constant surprise at hearing it. His elven name had been replaced with other titles over time, more befitting of his status—boy, spawn, whore, slut, beautiful, toy, love…

Truly, it’s a small miracle he managed to hold on to his name. It’s one of the few things left that are truly his, yet hearing it spoken from that solemn woman's lips makes something in his chest preen. 

“I thought we agreed to disagree on that front. No, don’t give me that look. Killing someone is never justifiable. No matter what we tell ourselves, we are taking away something that wasn’t ours to begin with. Something irreplaceable. Even—” she held up her hand as he started to complain, “in self-defence, even then, I will make sure to exhaust all alternatives, and even then, it will be a failure on my part.”

You moron. 

“Too bad the rest of the world doesn’t think like you, darling,” he snapped. Hers was an act. There was no way in the hells anyone could survive to their…whatever age she was, he was never good with human lifespans, with that mindset. It was ridiculous, because if she actually was like that—if two–hundred years of shit didn’t teach him better—she should either be dead in a ditch or have ascended to godhood on her saintly behaviour alone. The only explanation he has for her standing close to him is that the mask she wears is as fake as his own. That, or she is a child of Ilmater. He bets on the former, given her complete ignorance of any deity on Toril.

“But you lied,” he counters, snapping his fingers. “You said we are here on Absolute business. Doesn’t that go against your precious code of honour?” he singsongs in her ear. 

“I didn’t lie. My tadpole reacted to theirs, and they drew their own conclusions. Technically, we are going to their camp on Absolute business too, if you count removing these,” she tapped her index to her temple. 

He smirks, victorious. “Circumstantial. One day, the tadpole won’t do the work for us and you’ll break your own code or doom us to death. For one, I’d rather not repeat the experience,” he says in a quiet voice, pointing at his chest. 

Their companions are still unaware of his condition—another occasion his holy leader conveniently withheld information. 

(“It’s your secret, it’s your decision.” Hypocrite.)

“Astarion, I know you take me for a fool, and I would normally pay more respect to a man—elf—my senior by centuries, but really. I can be practical and have a moral compass, and that means that when the choice is between lying and killing, I will pick lying any day, even if I don’t like it.” 

Enough. 

Her words incense him, annoyance suddenly turns into rage and something else—what’s that, envy?—he pivots on his left heel and closes the distance between them so fast she has no time to react. Zélie is left pinned to the wall, their bodies a breath away from touching, and he internally celebrates the surprised look on her face. 

He stares at her down his nose, ducking his head and planting a slender hand on the wall beside her head. 

Astarion has to make her stop before he tears her self-righteousness out of her throat. Before she realises how useless it all is—how useless and tainted he is—and either stakes him or banishes him. Because even her sickly, do-gooding self, fake or real it be, must have limits. If he pushes hard enough, they’ll crumble, and then he’ll be proven right. She is not what she says she is because creatures like that aren’t real.  

“Let’s make one thing clear, darling,” he growls, nostrils flaring, “you may be our great leader, but you should get off your high horse before someone shoots you off it. I don’t know what perfect little corner of the universe you grew up in, but you know nothing of this world and its dangers.” 

He flashes his fangs at her to drive his point across. The others are out of sight, looking for supplies in some ruin or cellar. Gods, he misses the city. 

Zélie is staring back at him, bristling, but lets him continue. She never interrupts any of them, not even him.

“I thought humans were all about developing and living fast, but you, my dear, are as ignorant as a babe. I am trying to make sure we keep our collective hides safe and do not get sidetracked by other pitiful creatures on our path.” 

He realises just how close he is to her when she straightens up again and their noses almost touch. 

Pale eyes go darker with a flash of anger. 

There. Come at me. Prove me right. 

“Spoken like a true man of the law, lord magistrate.” 

Why the hells is her tone so collected when she has a literal vampire at her throat?!

“You seem forgetful, so I’ll remind you that it was my ignorance that stopped Shadowheart from connecting her mace with your head. And it was my stupidity that convinced her you could join us, and that we should give you a chance at trust.” 

She makes no move to get closer, but he recoils as if scorched by fire. 

“And it is the same trust I placed in you yesterday when I let you bite me, even though it’s not how I envisioned a night of rest to go. I trusted you to stop, I trusted you to keep your word and not leave me a corpse.”

There it is. Reminding him of what he owes her. Of his debts. They say the quiet ones are the most depraved, and she is the strong and silent type. But he is nothing if not an expert in the art of subservience at this point, and if it gets her to keep giving him blood and protection—

“I trust you.” 

Then you’re doomed.

She says it as if it were a challenge. Her gaze is unwavering and he is left speechless yet again. Cazador would admire this quality of hers.

“I hope you can trust me in return.”

Impossible woman. 

“Well, I suppose you’re not wholly incompetent,” he manages to croak out. His nonchalant mask is harder to slip on this time. 

She huffs a breath of a laugh, a tiny thing, but it’s enough to transform her whole face. The weight she carries on her deceivingly flimsy shoulders seems to lift, leaving behind a young woman smiling softly at a…well, a monster. Talk about inexperience. 

Happiness suits you, little leader. 

The fact it’s his prattling that caused this marvel of a transformation stokes something in chest and in the pit of his stomach that he promptly pushes down. 

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Zélie says. She moves away and he is left staring at the crusty wall. Her body never touched his own during their exchange. 

Wait. That’s wrong. He was meant to make her see the reason in his ways, not the other way around. So why is he at her heels like a lost puppy the minute she walks away? 

(“You are nothing by yourself boy. You owe everything to me.”)

He is weak. So weak he has leashed himself to a human who can barely read common, fuck's sake. 

His temper rises again once he catches up with Zélie. He doesn’t need her condescension, nor her chiding (she doesn’t even know his full story yet, nor she ever will unless absolutely necessary, so pity isn’t there yet). He’ll show the wretched woman how wrong she is. 

Karlach and Lae’zel jog behind them as they reach a barn with a door locked shut. Zélie thinks nothing of it at first, but Astarion can smell what’s inside.

(His senses born anew from her blood.)

He smells the ogre and bugbear and their horrid affair before the rest of his companions hear the grunts and noises.

“Oh God, someone’s fighting!” exclaims Zélie.

Fighting, you say?

An idea strikes him. 

See what your misplaced goodness gets you when you try to help an ogre.

“I don’t know soldier, they don’t sound like fight noises to me,” says Karlach leaning towards the barn, but even she seems unsure. Astarion’s talents may be limited to a specific area, but in this case it works in his favour. He is very familiar with what those sounds mean. The half-ogres that fucked him into the bed so hard he bled were not so different.

(He still remembers how much it hurt, how he was left in a puddle of mixed releases, sweat, and what little blood he had).

“Well, even if they are fighting, it is clearly not our problem. I say we leave them to it and focus on what’s really important,” he says, using his annoyance as a hook. Zélie may be the most restrained person he’s come across, but he knows how to read people, and he knows she will do the opposite of whatever he says when it concerns morals. 

She falls for it. His smile is harder to suppress.

“Astarion! We’ve just talked about this!” 

Her voice raises a bit, but it’s almost eclipsed by another loud grunt from inside the barn. 

“So long as my blade can be sharpened on my enemies’ bones, I am ready.” Lae’zel is almost as ignorant as Zélie when it comes to their world, which is usually a hindrance, but now it’s the push their little leader needs to run to the rescue. 

Zélie tries to open the barn door (after cutting another withering look at the vampire lazily strolling at her back), finding it jammed.

The crescendo of grunts and bangs coming from inside is extremely loud now. 

Gods, they must be disgusting. 

“Hello?! Help is on the way, hang on!” the little human shouts as she frantically tries to get the door unstuck. 

“Oh hells, let me do it, darling, before we turn into tentacled freaks,” Astarion says in mock-annoyance. She eyes him suspiciously and he shoots her a winning smile. His nimble hands make quick work of the lock, and he pushes the door open. 

He needs just a peek to know his assumption about what was happening in the barn is correct, and turns to face his now horror-stricken companion. 

“Gods, they are disgusting,” he comments with his lips crooked in a satisfied smile. 

Zélie scrambles to compose herself and turns her back from the scene (the prudish) as she fails to find words to explain herself. “I—I am, I apologise, we thought—”

Oh, she’s in a state. Her cheeks flush redder than rubies (he can practically hear her delicious blood pooling there), whilst the rest of her is paler than after Astarion’s feeding. She opens and shuts her eyes as if trying to physically erase what she just witnessed.

The bugbear slides his now soft cock out of the ogre, and looks at them in rage.

“W–what the hells are you doing?!”

Oh, Astarion is thrilled. He doesn’t remember when last had such fun. He hears Lae’zel’s tsk’ and Karlach’s gags behind him, and he closely watches Zélie fumbling as he didn’t think was possible. 

“Apologies! I, you—you were making a lot of noise and I, we, thought you needed help,” she holds her hands in front of her in a peace offering. “I apologise for the intrusion! We’ll leave now—”

“Ruined! SMASH. I’ll smash you!” 

Oh. Astarion didn’t expect that. He just wanted to show Zélie how ungrateful the world is to idiots like her, not have her turn into orc food. 

Before he can think, he is tackling the woman to the ground, the orc’s club crashing a few spaces to his left. Karlach and Lae’zel’s throw themselves at the aggressor, and the fight starts in earnest. Astarion is more a stalker than a fighter, but he had his first fill of human blood only hours before, and his senses have never been that sharp, so he doesn’t miss the bugbear rushing towards their prone form. 

Daggers at hand, he braces to parry the onslaught (this may hurt) when his worldview shifts, his back in on the ground, and chilly afternoon air replaces the heat of his leader on his chest. 

What just happened?

He turns his head to see the bugbear crashing to the ground, Zélie crouched on one leg and tripping him with her other. “Go help the others! I’ve got this!” she shouts, as she wraps her limbs around the assailant in a tight bind. “Wait! It was an honest mistake—”

He doesn’t want to hear her voice now. Doesn’t want to think how the little moron literally threw him away from danger. Even worse, he will refute the idea he protected her from an angry orc till his last breath. He only got his body back recently. That’s it. He still is unsure of how to use it. 

And she's dinner.

He doesn’t want to dwell on what happened, so he nods and throws himself at the female orc while she is distracted by his companions. 

The fight doesn’t last too long after that, and something takes a hold of his insides when he looks at Zélie. She is silent, staring at the large corpse on the ground, bugbear knocked out at her feet. 

“Darling?” He moves towards her and the sadness in her eyes almost makes him apologise. Gods, what has he done? He didn’t think this was going to happen. And why does he care?! This was his intent, this and seeing the real her behind the strong, polite facade. 

“I just wanted to help.”

“I know, darling. I—”

See now, how impossible it is to keep your ideals in this world?

“You knew,” she says, and while he words his excuses (the only real one being he didn’t think they were going to be attacked) her shoulders drop and a defeated huff leaves her mouth. A far cry from her happy smile earlier. 

Astarion can’t wrap his head around how he caused both reactions in such a short span of time. But this look on her, this, he knows. He has seen far worse in the eyes and screams of those fools he lured back to his master, once they had his way with him and realised a bit too late they were as trapped as he was. 

He expects her to shout, to berate him, kick him, punch him, stab him, banish him—but none of that comes. Zélie studies him intently, and something in her demeanour lights up, an internal judgement made.

“I still trust you.” 

No. No no no, he’s not going to let her fool him into believing this—no!

Her face is suddenly level with Astarion’s knees, the now-awake bugbear readying a strike. 

Astarion doesn’t need to think—he falls forward and sinks his dagger into the wretch’s neck. Blood spurts out, but after tasting Zélie’s Astarion has no interest in it; mud compared to a clear sky.

“Soldier!” shouts Karlach, ever the helpful friend. Zélie pants as the dead attacker slides off of her, eye to eye with Astarion again. He can feel her light breath on his face. Karlach pulls her up; he is cleaning his dagger on the bugbear’s clothes when an outstretched hand enters his vision. Hers.

“Come on,” she says, tired but steady again. “Let’s get back to camp.”

Astarion flinches from the hand as if it were a trap (it is always a trap), but Zélie is new territory for him, that much he begrudgingly accepts. She is apparently above the rules of their miserable world because she chooses to trust him, a vampire, a lying one, again. 

He takes her hand, bracing for what may come his way, but she just helps him up. 

“Thank you, by the way. For saving my life before.”

It’s a trick. It’s a trick. Don’t fall for—

She wraps her hand around his so delicately he thinks he may break, and shakes it. His thoughts and words are silenced yet again. 

“Thank you.” 

Fuck. 

[leam1983]

Placing D&D's Failures In-Context

TL;DR: it isn't because Tolkien and Lewis followed in the footsteps of Chaucer and Snorri Sturlesson that you also need to play out stories involving clean-cut Good and Evil forces.

Y'ain't writing a Narnia redux, so go nuts and do workshop that trusting, gentlemanly and wise Beholder with a wee little top hat. It's your game, and yours alone.

I might be a Marketing-related writer by trade, I still primarily identify as a world-builder. As such, I have to credit Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and other similar roleplaying avenues for helping me come up with my interest in specificity.

I've noticed a few people making note of the inconstant delivery of lore in D&D as of the 5th Edition, and especially of certain bad stereotypes that are being bandied about. I'm not looking to excuse them, so much as to make sure any other theory or lore-crafters understand why some concepts are so deliberately slapdash or offensive.

As with a lot of other things, it all goes back to Tolkien and Lewis, and to the myths and legends they themselves drew from.

You have to remember that The Lord of the Rings and Narnia are both serving as in-fiction national epics of a sort, the storied tale of the Good Guys thwarting the Bad Guys in your usual bout of identity-forging on a national level. You're effectively looking at Middle-Earth justifying its own existence, and at Narnia effectively setting up its main antagonist as someone who's not so much as deserving of nuance.

Nuance isn't foundational, after all. It isn't Biblical. It doesn't inform an etiological project for a greater Society. For the same reason, reading old Natural Science encyclopedias dating back to the late seventeen-hundreds would show us an outdated view of what constitutes an optimal ecosystem. Poke around for old news briefs dating back to the werewolf panic in France (yes, this is a thing) and you'll find no mention whatsoever of what primarily caused said panic, which was a combination of superstition, ergotism and excessive hunting of the local deer population. Wolves won't naturally attack humans, but a starving wolf who's had nothing to eat for days on end might be desperate enough to think otherwise.

Once Gygax realized there'd be more potential in his pen-and-paper jousting model if he freed it from the constraints of History, he felt the need to evoke that specific feel of classic Fantasy. The need to classify distaff character classes as protagonists likely initially edged them towards the Good side of the prototypical Alignment system, while fishing for antagonists obviously called for the opposite approach.

The rest sort of followed. If you're going after a Tolkien-esque propagandistic take on heroic deeds, then you don't need to give much nuance to orc, gnolls, trolls, goblins or what have you; you're entirely free to go as cartoonishly evil as you want. The apex of that approach was probably reached once the concept for Mind Flayers was pitched in 1977: when you're walking in H.P. Lovecraft's footsteps - as the man made it easy to misconstrue unknowable as being a synonym for evil - it's not exactly hard to start pitching the concept that some races are always Evil-aligned, no holds barred. That sort of talk unsurprisingly gives rise to purists.

Enter our contemporary era, wherein what isn't dissected or cancelled is revised for the good of Progressive gamers everywhere. You're a DM, you know the later editions pack resources for players wanting to play monsters, but D&D is so rigid in its presentation it might seem difficult to reason out of certain established canons.

What I do for my own campaigns is as follows.

I start by acting as if the Alignment system didn't exist. Githzerai, Aboleth, Bugbear, Illithid, whatever it is you're looking to play, it's just a stat block and a pretty picture. Then, I revisit the background info for your selected species and voluntarily ignore everything that involves agency-stripping "evil forces" shaping your character's native culture. Instead, you're born of a culture that is, as any decent Sociology teacher would tell you, the product of its environment.

Let's pick the Illithids. Canon-wise, they're extra-planar invaders long-since established in your setting of choice, to the point of usually forming a good chunk of your Underdark-esque setting's sociopolitical tensions. Having supposedly escaped annihilation, they're looking to rebuild at any cost and see all outsiders as tools to be put to use. This utilitarian concept goes so far as to inform how they reproduce, and also exposes a society where terminal sociopathy is the norm.

Okay. Let's break that down and keep only what I need to build upon or what I find interesting:

Extra-planar invaders? That's on-the-nose to the point of parody. Seeing as there's an element of survival involved, extra-planar refugees seems like a more cogent starting point. That angle gives me interesting societal hooks to play with, starting with various forms of PTSD, trauma, survivor's guilt, isolationism - or even more positive aspects, like the survivors seeing themselves as messengers warning the natives of a greater incoming threat, and deciding to arm both themselves and their new neighbours - at any cost. That gives the culture a large enough moral range to allow for both Good and Evil-aligned characters.

It doesn't make sense for shell-shocked survivors to effectively take over their new home. You're not looking at a civilization's worth of warriors, especially not with the Illithid - they're effectively betentacled bookworms that might be lucky if they had a few hardened soldiers left. Considering, they could either survive by ingratiating themselves with the local Drow or Dark Dwarf populations - as advisors, strategists, court scientists or sponsored researchers. Warriors in their ranks could make for an interesting spin on the concept of the wandering mercenary...

Ceremorphosis as a concept inspires no possibility for mutual exchange. Purists could argue that Flayers don't need to exchange what they can assimilate, but we're trying to avoid pejorative notions, here. Let's imagine, instead, that ceremorphosis is something they reserve for mutants derived out of the animal kingdom as a point of absolute bare necessity, and that they generally copulate in ways that are either closer to an actual cephalopod's or that follow the usual bipedal body plan. That implies some degree of sexual dimorphism that might go against the visual canons for Flayers, but the Internet's more than amply proved how much the community doesn't really mind that concept. If ceremorphosis has to be used, an easy workaround is to accept that the victim's original consciousness remains, but finds itself altered at the identitarian level. You'd die Bert the Barbarian and wake up still as Bert the Barbarian, except you'd feel a sense of distance from your former comrades and countrymen and would find it difficult not to imprint with your new "parents" or keepers.

Eating brains is an obvious issue. Let's stick with the Mother Nature-approved status of opportunistic carnivores, and leave the usefulness of learning through osmosis as a concept to the DM. If you really need to play up their intellectual capabilities, you can infer that Flayers have species-based total recall, which should make them fearsome or versatile enough in any context.

The end-result is a basic framework that's compatible with the notion of a "good" Illithid, without the need for some hackneyed messianic framework like the Adversary being involved - and that allows the idea of Mind Flayers being individuals in their own right to take shape. If the Elder Brain matters that much, you can retool it to be less a gestalt than a pool of shared knowledge, accessible depending on the subject's proximity to it - sort of like your Illithid colony's own flesh-based Intranet.

Remember that D&D is only a massive collection of suggestions. You're the creator of your own stories, so if you're looking to follow the trials and tribulations of a Gnoll Bard from a setting where the hyenafolk coexist with your distaff Rangers across forests and fields, go for it!

More importantly, if purists tell you the Monster Manual says X or that Mordenkainen's says Y, tell them you're running your own campaign.

It's all that matters.

[hellishhin]

Hello, hello! Day 18: what is the potential apocalypse that stands to happen? Actually, who's the greatest villain they have to face? Have they known from the beginning whom they faced? If not, what would have they thought if they had learned about the villain early on?

Hi! I'm definitely going to give plenty of information and only leave out some details that might be fun to reveal later. I think this will be a great way to see if people will be interested in continuing to follow my story! I'll put a cut in case someone doesn't want any hint at all as to what happens but I don't feel like this is very spoilery.

I will start with the main, true apocalypse scenario. There are other bad things I will mention here but aren't threats to the entire world, just Sadie's entire world.

Our huge baddie that shows up a ways into the story is called Malgartesh the Depraved. He was released into the world in a secret way because that reveal is killer. He is basically the gods' first attempt at humans. They created these beings who looked similar but very quickly turned on the gods to make a bid for higher power. The gods decided to start over and wiped out this race of beings but not before Malgartesh made his own move.

In D&D lore there is something called the Book of Vile Darkness. It is an almost sentient book containing the multiverse's absolute worst deeds and spells and instructions to do things as heinous as killing gods. Leaving some details out, Malgartesh got himself locked inside this book by mistake while trying to learn how to destroy the gods. Thus, he escaped the divine genocide.

Fast forward to redacted event, Malgartesh escapes and he is hellbent on getting revenge on the gods. His plan is to kill every single god and rule all the planes with a few trusted allies. These allies definitely think turning the material plane (and all planes) into hellscapes sounds like a fantastic idea. Naturally, all of the gods dying would gravely upset the entire world. The gods actually control their domains so if a god is not there to maintain it, that domain will nearly cease to exist. Not completely, because life could still exist, but most good things would crumble and Malgartesh would see to that. He wants to destroy everything the gods made so they would know what it feels like.

Obviously it is up to our daring adventurers to save the lives of the gods and prevent the multiverse crumbling around them. Now hopefully you have the question 'if the gods are so powerful why can't they just band together and murder this jerk like they did his friends'. Great question. Because Malgartesh did in fact learn the method by which he can kill the gods and all those years trapped within the Book of Vile Darkness allowed him to learn all the tricks needed to remove the power of the gods on sight and thus kill them. He absolutely manages to succeed in this a few times as soon as he is let out.

The gods are absolute weenies when they realize there is an actual threat to them and most of them refuse to try to meet him head on because of the greater-than-zero chance they could die. Mortal adventurers, however, can sure try their best while the gods watch from afar and hope for the best.

I hope this gives you a little peak into the future apocalyptic scenario!

Another huge thing that happens, I won't go into too much detail though, is Stawold is besieged by an army of goblinoids. Normally you might think oh a few bands of orcs, what could they do to a town with a wall. Yeah no, some horrid orog (basically bigger badder orc) named Ulaug managed to get all of the goblinoids in the Wilderlands to work together. This doesn't usually happen. Orc tribes will just as readily fight with each other as anyone else, hence why they aren't usually a huge threat. But now this entire army of orcs, goblins, bugbears, worgs, and even some other creatures become a huge threat to Stawold. It is a very very intense chapter so there will be a lot of gore warnings as I try to get across just how damaging this is for Sadie to see all of this done to her home. Hopefully I can do it some sort of justice!

[jelloopy]

Here There be Gerblins Notes

Previous: Character Creation

Ep 1

The boys got the job to transport good from Neverwinter to Phandalin from Merles cousin, Gundren Rockseeker, over drinks at a bar one night. He said it was the “Last job you’ll ever need.” 

Gundren Hired Barry Bluejeans (Originally Sildar Hallwinter, but that’s a whole nother post that I already posted you should go look at it tbh) as a fighter (I also will discuss this in a post later on as I’m going through the series again) escort to Phandalin. 

The boys actually were travelling with Gundrens mutt of a dog, Ruby!  (I feel like no one mentions this or talks about it)

Merle doesn’t trust Gundren a lot

Taako got the first kill babyyyyyyy

Ep 2

Barry looks like Tom Arnold with a very built Dad bod and is described to be in late 40’s early 50’s (So you’re telling me that my baby Barry. Is almost built similar to Magnus technically? Just smaller? This opens up so many things for another post later on omfg)

Magnus “The Hammer” Burnsides (omg do you think that this could be that Magnus was “The Hammer” and maybe Julia or her father was “Tongs” from the shop he lived’/ worked at in Ravens Roost???!!! Like idk if Travis had the name “Hammer and Tongs” in his backstory and i’m pretty sure he just made up the name on the spot for funsies but like that is so fricking sad and cute omfg)

Taako casts “Charm Person” on Klarg. The spell only lasts 1 hour (This will come up later for me to delv on because currently I don't understand how the stuff later on occurs)

”Let’s turn this Bugbear, into a Hugbear” ~Magnus (I wanna make a shirt with this rlly bad)

When chastising Barry for his name he snaps back saying “Why do you think they call me that?!” (I like to analyze things a bit deeper than they need to go so I’ve already posted another thing on Barry’s name)

Ep 3

As they get back to the cart of cargo to go to find Gundren Merle messes with Ruby for a minute and Griffin jokes around saying that Ruby bites Merles hand off.  (Oh if they (Clint) only knew)

”I’ve partied pretty hard before I know I’m gonna have to sleep this one off” ~Barry (What the hell has Barry been up to? Like from a perspective of knowing how the story goes like. Is he just. Going to bars and letting him self go? I mean like same but shit dude)

“Well it’s not my first time at the whole body guard rodeo” ~Barry  (So Barry has been able to stay in this body for a while then? And has also taken other jobs as well to get some money while also searching for the Gauntlet.)

Ep 4

When they meet Killian Merle begins to try and preach the word of Pan  (Not actually Pan at the time in the podcast but for continuity's sake it was Pan damnit.) she replies with “I’m already spoken for” (So I don’t think that Killian is religious in a way that we know of so when she says this I assume shes talking about the BoB? Makes sense) 

Magic Briannnnnn!!!!!  (Love that spunky lil german man!)

Taako is from New Elfington (I believe this is just a joke overall but if you do deep dive into it just a lil then it suggests that Lucretia placed him in New Elfington after the Wipe to give him a starting place then from there he went on the road with Sizzle it up with Taako)

Magic Brian knows about the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet.  (Ima go deeper into that later on tbh)

Ch 5

“Barry loves his chicken waaaaangs” ~ Gundren Rockseeker (How long have Barry and Gundren been hanging out?)

The skeleton only has a crimson red robe on. Nothing underneath. It is also looking towards the exit/entrance to the tunnel. (Did... her clothes go with her in the lich form?)

The Umbrastaff exudes all schools of magic. (I wonder why... DUH) 

Merle is horribly rejected by the Staff and flung across the room (Lup said “FUCK U MERLE IM NOT HERE FOR YOUR OLD ASS”)

When Taako grabs the Umbra staff from the skeleton (*COUGHCOUGH*LUP*COUGHCOUGH*) it looks up at him and then it and the robe it’s wearing disintegrate away  (Leaving no bones or anything that was Lup’s... There will be a bigger post on this later on I promise)

Cyrus was head of security for the Wave Echo Cave. When the Orc Marauders came he managed to lock away all the magical and precious treasures. However to do so he had to lock himself in the vault too. This happened about 10 Years ago. (Are you kidding me? Its not like the Orc Marauders are still in Phandalin. Why didnt anyone come to find him any earlier. Like come on Gundren. If you loved and missed your dad that much then why not?)

The Phoenix Fire Gauntlet is Silverish!  (I always see it portrayed as being gold so I was v v surprised to hear this! tbh I don’t care what color it is I was just surprised to hear it described at all)

Magnus upon sight of the Gauntlet runs and highfives it  (Someone made a post i saw a while back explaining how this is hilarious because you can see Magnus’ and Lup’s relationship within that simple action. Its very cute) 

They fight some ruffians/bandits on the way back to Phandalin and they free a young Orc boy.

Ch 6

Merle calms Gundren down when they find him in Phandalin (Yo Merle and Gundren are a lot closer than they let on a the beginning. I wanna meet Aunt Blarg)

The young Orc boy (Kurtze) that they freed shot Gundren (Whoops...)

Gundren crushes Barry into the ground out of pure anger from Kurtze’s attack (Does Barry die from this? or does he just get super injured and die from the Gauntlet at the end?)

They fall into the well and knock Killian out

The entire town of Phandalin is gone and all that’s left is a circle of black glass. Only the hole for the well is open.

“Can we heal her? Its kinda what I do.” ~Merle (Oh honey... no it’s not)

Taako grabs the Gauntlet and puts it in his bag (of course he is the one to grab the relic that Lup made)

Killians Crossbow is named Billups (This is rlly frickin cute ngl)

They do be back on the way to the BoB

Next: Moonlighting, MotRPL, Lunar Interlude I,

[tea-cake-and-melancholy]

Skull and Shackles-part one

Hello everyone! Stuck here in quarantine after finishing college (graduation, woot!) and decided to practice my heavily rusting fictional writing skills. Skull and Shackles is an Adventure Path from Pathfinder Roleplaying Game® owned by Paizo. The only thing I own is the original characters. Any writing advice would be welcomed. Hope you enjoy.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This adventure does not start with the busy chatter of a tavern, no heroic call to arms against some great evil, not even with being arrested by a government that didn’t appreciate this group for sticking their noses where they don’t belong. This adventure starts with a dark room. The sensation of swaying and an incredible headache that may have either been accompanied by the taste that numbs the tongue or a whack. Impressment wasn’t just restricted to the Cheliax Navy, it extended to pirates as well. It’s been known that Press Gangs are known to skulk about inns, taverns, the streets at night and even pluck unsuspecting men and women from their very beds after a short chat concerning their sailing ability. That was the situation for this group of adventurers. 

The first to awaken was a catfolk thief named Gumqu, a lanky feline looking humanoid creature with the head, paws, and tail of a cat. With grey peach fuzz and mismatched blue and gold eyes, she looked about to try and remember how she had gotten there. Ah, yes. She had just returned from her latest voyage on the “Old Renegade”, a ship that she had served for 5 years working on the rigging. Coming across a rather fat merchant ship, she decided rather foolishly to spend her earnings alone at the Formidably Maid a rather popular pirate tavern. Gumqu absent-mindedly rasped her tongue against her sleeve to take away the numbing and bitter taste off her tongue, feeling rather embarrassed to having fallen for such an old press-gang tactic. At least she can feel the outline of her thieves’ tools in her hidden pocket. Another from the pile stirred with a curse and a spit, human looking and irate to boot.

Anne Salis angrily looked about with dark eyes, cursing her luck and possibly fate for not being careful. Her husband always did warn her against drinking at the Formidably Maid with all those wayward pirates. Being the resident shaman for the Besmara, there was a priest though he took a 12-year fishing trip and had not returned yet, it wasn’t uncommon to getting free drinks from old salts who appreciated fair weather charms. She shook her headful of honey curls and clutched her unprotected scalp when the throbbing headache was aggravated by her swift movements. They took her hat but not her dagger in her belt, typical. She gnashed her sharp teeth and tried to stand but was prevented by the moving room and tangled bodied. Nevertheless, with that she inadvertently kicked a rather large half-orc in the ribs, shocking him to consciousness.

Ausk Oddfellow never failed to live up to his name. A shocking giant that can easily take up the length of the room. He slowly sat up while rubbing his now smarting side, looking like a picture out of those risqué nobles’ romance novels. Tall and muscular with a tiny waist, the symbol of Cayden Cailean (a flagon) hung around his neck and slightly messy black hair caused by the welt in the back of the head. He was tavern hopping, singing about various pirates and legends with his bestest best mate in all the world, Skender, who always works in his dark little alchemy shop. So, as any best friend would do, he dragged with away for a good time and maybe show him the meaning of fun. Well, on the way from Suffering Tiger Pub, The Boot and Helm, The Forest and Shield, Hovering Drake and The Clam and Whale Tavern, and the Formidably Maid, there was a scuffle in a dark alley between 2 blokes and a lady. Being the dashing bard that he is, of course he rushed to the rescue. Right before being knocked on the back of the head. Hard. He quickly looked around in panic! Where’s Skender?! As he is reaching over, his hulking green mass squished the figure next to him, causing an indignant shout.

Now Mordren Paella was typical for a pit-born tiefling; some had one or two minor imperfections that can be easily hidden or explained away, some are more…drastic. The only normal features she possessed was her height, black hair usually tied back and olive skin. Unfortunately, her abnormalities were drastic enough to detract from those features. From golden cat eyes, exposed fang-like teeth that frame her entire jaw, a left arm that resembled a blue dragon’s claw, bird’s legs to the barbed snake’s tail. Many had expressed that she was most likely the product of a god after a very heavy night of drinking. She was a witch that worked on various pirate ships as a cook. Never had a bad reference and no complaints with her small book of recipes that she can feel she still had on her person. She had left her hometown of Ilizmagorti, due to the heightened Red Mantis activity, to Port Peril. To celebrate, she went for a small meal and drink for the smooth trip. Seeing some sketchy characters at the corner of the tavern she and decided to leave, until the world started spinning and the floor was incoming fast. Nearby her was a rather angry “Must you be such a bumbling bugbear? Move over, you green lummox” a thwack barely missing her head and swatting the half-orc’s back.

The person in question was Skender Korzha; a half elf with mocha skin and high contrasting white tattoos on his arms that appeared arcane in origin. His black hair was halfway taken out of his ponytail and he feels a crick in his lower back after hours in an odd position. He knew that he should not have gone out with Ausk. Nothing ever goes well when he goes out with him. Granted, he is a flamboyant, needlessly boisterous, optimistic glass ¾’s full kind of bard but really he’s not a bad friend. However, based on the pounding headache and possible concussion, he’s gotten them into trouble again. He needed that brain, damn it. He checks himself to find what he had left, only to find a health kit. Wonderful. Trying to pull himself to sit up, he felt his sleeping leg being weighed down by someone who may just have beaten his friend in height.

The last in this room was a peculiar species of troll called the Va’al, hailing from the islands closer to Freeport. Though not nearly as muscular as Ausk, Hau'ri’s musculature was overshadowed by the sheer height. This was hidden by him being currently curled on the floor of this room. He slowly sits up and rubs his sore jaw, luckily his tusks were still intact for they were a pain to regrow, almost as bad as a leg or the inconvenience of a missing finger when you only have a max of 3 to start with. The only hair was the short light blue fur covering him from head to toe, bat like ears ringing from the beating he received just the other…time? Honestly, he doesn’t know what time it, not that it matters. His amber eyes scanning the room, satisfied that there’s more than him in this situation. He clenches his fist and quickly hides the brass knuckles that he always kept on him, chuckling at his luck.

 It was at that time; a series of heavy footsteps came from above to then slam the door open violently. Bright light pouring from the handheld lantern blinds everyone inside, causing some to curse and some to hiss in discomfort.

             ““Still abed with the sun over the yardarm? On your feet, ye filthy swabs! Get up on deck and report for duty before Cap’n Harrigan flays your flesh into sausage skins and has Fishguts fry ye up for breakfast!” roared the stranger. He stands tall in typical pirate garb, this human male had probably has seen salt water more often than clear water used for more than cooking or drinking. Skin cracked from long days in the sun and gold teeth gleaming in a cruel smile as he used his whip to motivate everyone onto their feet. This took a bit of time before the group proceeded to follow him up the stairs of the ship.

 As they were walking, Anne spat on the ground to her right, finally deciphering the taste in her mouth as taggit oil. A favorite of press gangs if they think they can get away with it. Put it in spicy food or particularly strong grog and you have between 1 to 3 hours with a dead to the world body. Cheap, easy to obtain and hard to overcome when ingested. Both Hau’ri and Ausk must bend down to clear their heads from hitting the beams above.

Once they’ve reached the top they were once again blinded, this time by the tropical sun hanging high in the sky. Looking about, they find themselves surrounded, 10 pirates not including the one that guided them there and ocean as far as the eye can see. Some were up in the rigging while others were scattered about on deck, all stopped to gawk at the new arrivals. Skender looks at the ship and can tell that it’s a three-masted sailing ship, 100 feet long from stem to stern, and 30 feet wide amidships. Decent but just one person short of manning it effectively without hardship. At the ship’s mainmast, on a high platform than the confused party in question, there stood two individuals. One was a broad, muscular human man with Garundi descent; a shaven head, long beard bound with braids and gold rings, and an eye patch. Based on his standing and finery, this was the captain in charge. The other to his right was a younger, balding man with a long black ponytail, wearing a long coat and carrying a well-used cat-o’-nine-tails.

The group was corralled towards the middle with 4 other recruits, a red headed human woman with a lovely tricornered hat, a muscular halfling brunette that could possibly bench-press Ausk, a human male with a blue varisian scarf wrapped around his head to protect his scalp and a rather fabulous male gnome bedecked in dandy purple attire. While the group was placed in a row, the captain smirked and finally addressed them.

           “Glad you could join us at last!” his rasping voice bellowed over the crashing waves “Welcome to the Wormwood! My thanks for ‘volunteering’ to join my crew. I’m Barnabas Harrigan. That’s Captain Barnabas Harrigan to you, not that you’ll ever need to address me. I have only one rule—don’t speak to me. I like talk, but I don’t like your talk. Follow that rule and we’ll all get along fine.” He made his way to walk away, paused and spoke over his shoulder, “Oh, and one more thing. Even with you new recruits, we’re still short-handed, and I aim to keep what crew I have. There’ll be a keelhaulin’ for anyone caught killin’ anyone. Mr. Plugg!” addressing the man with the ponytail “If you’d be so kind as to make pirates out of these landlubbers, it’ll save me having to put them in the sweatbox for a year and a day before I make pies out of ’em.” Before walking away from sight. The new overseer, Mr. Plugg, descends to the Amidships where they stood.

           “Now” he unhooked the cat-o’-nine-tails from his belt as he surveys the crew-to-be. “Time to see where you lot belong.”

Next

[iamalivenow]

Everything hurts.

She's not surprised so much as disappointed in herself. The sun beats down on her so hard, and the light is practically blinding, so she closes her eyes. Easy enough, one of them is already swelled shut, dry blood crusting along her cheek. She doesn't know how long she lays there, waiting for the pain to either pass or finally overtake her. She's angry, she's sad, there are tears slowly pooling, and in the heat, she's surprised they're not just streaming off of her face. And then the sun is blotted out.

“Oban.” He says, after he takes care of her, cleans her up and fixes her wounds and sits her down in front of a fire. His skin is red, and his eyes are yellow, and his wings are flesh where hers are bone. He sits close to her, but for once, she doesn't feel threatened or horrified or irritated by the infiltration of space. Or maybe she's just too tired too. “Orphanmaker.” She says, tries to say, all that comes out is a hoarse whisper followed by a cough, and he pulls off his own water skin and places it to her lips. “Do fiends need water?” Maybe she should have repeated her name again instead. “I travel around a lot. Meet so very many strangers in need of rescuing. If you like, you can hold on to that. I have another one, though it is filled with wine at the moment and something tells me we will both not be in need of it for quite some time.” Yasha drinks more water. He could kill her, he could do it so easily because she sees his blade at his side inches from a clawed hand. She had her weapons taken from her, she had nothing to defend herself with. But he doesn't. Instead, he pats her shoulder and tells her he'll be back.   There's not a lot to stare at around the small camp, so she sits against the mountain wall and soaks in the warmth of the fire, and the temperature drops lower and lower. Oban comes back with meat, still dripping and offers to cook it for her but she all but tears it out of his hands. When more than half of it is gone, she swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before offering it to Oban. “Oh, I'm more than alright. After all, I caught it for you, Orphanmaker. I would feel guilty if I were to take it away from you.” So he had caught her name after all. “Alright.” She mumbles, and eats the rest slowly. Well, slower.

.x.

“And you go into town like this?” She asks, leaning against the trunk of an overturned tree. “Of course not.” He laughs. His eyes twinkle and then with a curl of his hand, a thin drow stands in front of her, long hair tucked between long ears, no horns, no wings. “Dapper, no? Those who live here are so accepting if you show them a little coin they don't even bother looking closer.” He places one elegant, dainty finger under his left eye and lowers the skin there, waiting. She humors him and walks over to get a closer look, and sure enough, yellow blinks back at her. His same soft eyes. “Huh.” She says. “I'll buy you a new sword, yes? What kind do you prefer- bigger ones, I suppose. Yes, certainly, bigger ones for someone like you. I'll see if I can find something lovely and special for you.” She'd ask, but if he's stupid enough to buy a weapon for her, there's really no need to waste the breath. The Wastes make everyone a little unhinged. Oban leaves, demure and playful, and comes back with a greatsword broader than his- his current chest. There's good heft to it, and she can grasp the pommel with both hands and Swing, and the blade sings through the air and the vision of it carving through the flesh of those who took Zuala from her come so easily. She can practically smell the iron, taste it on her tongue, when Oban coughs, and she finally notices the other man with him. An orc, almost as tall as she is. He has a measuring tape. Oban rattles off instructions, and the Orc nods along, breathing heavily while he measures her for her new armor. They don't sleep in the town. They sit around a fire Oban makes for them, drow gone and replaced by that warm red again. He tells her about the Angel of Irons and about the Calamity and about the King That Crawls, and she finds it shockingly easy to fall asleep to his voice.

.x.

“You're very nice.” She says, on the back of a moorbounder Oban borrowed from a raiding party they cut through. “For a Fiend.” “And you're very quiet for a Celestial.” She shrugs, and Oban laughs. She doesn't bother asking how he knows she's Aasimar. What else could she be, looking the way she does in the Wastes. His back is warm, and as the moorbounder leaps and lands and they rock against each other, she closes her eyes, rests her head on his shoulder and loops her hands around his waist. “Where are we going?” “To meet more friends, allays, those who know the true calling and want nothing more then to help us free what has been locked away.” His wings twitch under her weight. Big leathery things that she's gotten used to sleeping under with the weather gets particularly awful. They meet with another fiend, this one blue and with a tail that can't stop swishing as they chitter back and forth in abyssal. She only picks up on a word or two. She thinks they talk about battle strategy. Or some kind of strategy. The blue one keeps nervously glancing at her, at her sword where it's seethed over her back. Yasha makes a face, and it actually takes a step back, tail long and nervous, almost ramrod straight. Oban switches to common at some point, and she almost doesn't notice. “Orphanmaker.” He says, and she takes a step forward, lifting her hand up to grasp the hilt. It's been long since she's had a real fight. “Oban-” And then the rest is hissed in Abyssal, sharp and nervous and scared and good, so good, so exactly what makes her blood boil. She unsheathes her sword, and the thing actually takes a step back. She sees so many familiar faces on its body that she can hardly be blamed for lunging. Oban doesn't stop her until there's nothing but mush at her feet. Doesn't stop her even then. “Isn't that better?” He asks, hovering in the air with his beautiful wings so that the filth doesn't get on his boots. “Yeah.” She whispers. It is. It's finally easier to breathe.

.x.

They have a proper camp now, with tents. And others, a small raiding party all her own. Two more fiends, a dragonborn, and a bugbear, all so eager. They listen to Oban preach about their Lady of Irons while she sits beside him and polishes her blade. When she bothers to look up, she sees they believe him, they want her free just as bad as Oban does. They want the Calamity again. They want what's been taken to be returned. She's firmly of the same opinion. She has her own tent. It's lonely. She supposes she should be grateful, when Oban slips into her tent and lays beside her. For a moment she thinks he's going to proposition her, but- no. They just lay side by side, staring at each other. On a whim, she tells him about Zuala. He tells her the Angel could give her back. Somehow, she believes him.

.x.

There are years of traveling together. Her and Oban and their party. Ruthless and bloodthirsty and always searching for answers. They fall into bed together once, after a raid that results in a map so fragile she's scared to even look at it for more than a few seconds at a time. She's almost blind drunk, and even Oban tilts after every step. They're both so giddy with the looming promise of finally, finally, finally, that it seems almost second nature. It's not great. Or good, even. It's barely fine. Yasha's only slept with women in the past, and Oban's never slept with anyone at all, and it's only the alcohol that brings them together, but afterward, when her back hurts a little, and her head is already starting to pound, they lay in her tent together, bodies flushed against each other, and he whispers gospels in abyssal into her ear, that's fine. And good. And very exceptionally great. She likes to imagine that Zuala would have liked him, just as much as she does. Not enough to take him to bed, gods, no one should ever take him to bed, but when he talks, it's music and flowers and the skies parting  to a brighter future. She likes to imagine their home together, the three of them, close and careful, with a garden of so many different flowers. Stalks so tall Yasha couldn't even see above them. She likes to imagine Zuala with them now, in her uncomfortable tent, hunting for their Lady of Irons together, hunting for retribution together. She could protect them both. So much better then she had before.

.x.

There's a giant between them and the tunnels. Under any other circumstance, Oban would have insisted on a different route, around or deceit or something else, but they can feel how close they are. She thinks she hears singing at nights, and when she asks Oban, he nods too. The first time Oban sees her wings, there's half dead giant between them and answers. And it's raining. Because it almost always rains when she cries. Everything hurts, the exhaustion is heavy, and the tears come unbidden. She screams through them, deep from her chest, in Abyssal like the others do, and when her sword becomes too heavy, too tiring to heft, her wings rip out of her back, and the giant actually staggers back. Afterwards, before they retract into their nest of blood and muscle, Oban runs his fingers over them. “Stronger than mine, Orphanmaker, but of course they are, they're attached to you.” “They don't work.” She bites out as she wipes the smeared ash off of her cheeks where it ran down her face. “Oh, they do.” He says and presses a tiny kiss into her shoulder. “Just because you don't fly doesn't mean they don't work. They make my blood run cold, and my skin stand on edge , and they bring you closer to the Angel. So many wondrous gifts.” “It would be cooler if I could fly.” Oban laughs, and it's so warm that she almost doesn't feel her wings scrape against her spine when they retreat inside of her.

.x.

She remembers it so vividly, so quickly and so brutally that it almost knocks her off of her feet. She's a monster- a monster for leaving him and a monster for betraying her friends on top of that- she drives her blade through Nott- Nott of all people- and grits her teeth harder. More and more memories, more and more of her friends look at her horrified, more and more footsteps that run further and further away from her. Oban's body is mush at her feet, nothing left of him, just like there's nothing left of her friends. She remembers Jester's scream just as much as she remembers Oban's laughter now. She helps the Hand beat down gate after gate after gate, body moving through the motions, and so many faces keep freezing themselves in front of her, frowning, crying. She's lost people she still can't remember. She wasn't even there when- Monster.

[softshelltaakos]

what’s up everybody! it’s time for part 2 of my taz graphic novel review.

part one covered (most of) my beef with the writing and storytelling choices. this part is gonna cover character designs!!! you should know going into this that my opinions are not positive. this post is also a lot less analytical in tone than part 1, because art is not my forte.

disclaimer: i love the mcelroys. i truly do. taz has gotten me through some very difficult stuff and i have a tattoo. all this to say i’m not doing this because i hate them or because i like hating things. if you feel the need to message me about how i am overreacting, specifically to green taako, or about how i should just calm down and ignore it, or about how it’s sad that i’m getting so worked up instead of just enjoying the show, i’ve heard it and i don’t care. you will not be taken seriously. save yourself the energy.

there are spoilers for the graphic novel under the cut.

alright. i’m getting the elephant in the room out of the way first because it’s the most important thing to address, and once it’s out of my system i’ll feel better goofing on the rest of the designs. as i mentioned in the disclaimer: Green Taako Is Bad.

[ID: a panel focusing on taako. he’s skinny and minty green with chin-length light blonde hair and a big, pointy nose.]

now, a lot of people have made posts about this before, and i’m not saying anything new about it by any means. i’m also not the most equipped person to talk about why green taako is bad, because i’m a white gentile (i’ve heard conflicting opinions on whether or not green taako is antisemitic, but it feels remiss not to mention that there’s been discussion) and therefore not part of any groups affected by this whole debacle, but in short: when pressed for more diversity, specifically in taako’s case as a pretty large chunk of his arc involves literally inventing a mexican cultural food (fun note: that’s never mentioned in this book,) carey pietsch decided he should be green and the mcelroys were down with it. this is not an issue that cropped up when this design was released; it was something that there was already a ton of discourse surrounding, and it should never have gotten concepts drawn, let alone made it to publish.

this article by natt cuesta has been linked before on the subject, and i think it’s a good, concise explanation of why green taako is bad as well as why aracial characters in general are bad. this is a racist design.

now that we’ve gotten those ethical ramifications out of the way... i’m sorry, but it’s an ugly design, lmao. he looks like a palette-swapped version of pearl from steven universe with less character. the ONLY thing about this design that i like is the prominent lower lashes, if only because they’re the only thing that keeps him from looking entirely generic. because, like, y’all, when has anything about taako been generic?

[ID: a panel focusing on magnus. he’s a muscular fair-skinned man with auburn hair, a bushy beard, and a scar over his left eye.]

generic is a word that’s going to come up a lot over the course of this review, because i genuinely can’t think of a more apt descriptor for pietsch’s designs. it feels like she went with the lowest common denominator of every character’s design, a synthesis of all of the most popular (and most boring) ones, except in instances where that would lend any personality to a character’s design. magnus fits what brief description we’re given in the podcast: auburn hair. beard. big. and i guess that’s all you need?

i understand that by appealing to the most common and basic designs for these characters you’re inviting a lot less ire than you might by going with something more individual, so i get the motivation behind it -- or i would, if her designs hadn’t always been about this dull. but it’s bizarre to me that in a story as unique as the balance campaign, we ended up with the most basic ass Fantasy Hero lookin’ dude in the world as one of our protagonists.

i just really don’t have a lot to say about this. i’m just bored by it.

[ID: a panel of merle. he has medium-dark skin with a smooth white bun and beard.]

merle is simultaneously the design i like most out of the boys and the one that throws me the most, because i feel like he’s the most out on a limb one. which... oof. most merle designs i see give him a floral motif (i guess he has a few petals in his hair, maybe?) and big coke-bottle glasses, and i miss those things with this design, but at least it doesn’t totally feel like pietsch threw every merle she could get her hands on into a blender and poured it out on a page, although honestly, that might have been more satisfying. people do some really fun shit with their merle designs, but again, he’s. generic.

as the cuesta article mentions, with how much of an issue it was to get any of the boys to be poc in the first place and in conjunction with minty up there, this design also feels like tokenism -- an appeasement rather than an honest attempt at diversity or god forbid because the artist actually headcanons merle as a person of color. personally, i wish that she’d gone a step beyond re-coloring his skin and idk given him a natural hairstyle or something. he still feels very much like a recolor to me rather than a character who was designed as a person of color from the beginning.

i feel like he looks more like a cleric than he looks like a merle, which i feel like is pretty contradictory to who merle is.

[ID: a cutaway showing griffin, a white man with brown hair and glasses wearing a collared shirt.]

i’ve said before that it feels a little odd to talk about her design of a real person, so i’ll keep this brief, but... you know how every drawing of a basic white dude looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how that one arthur character looks a little bit like griffin mcelroy? you know how everyone is constantly messaging mysillycomics about how her avatar looks like griffin mcelroy?

how did carey pietsch manage to actively attempt to draw griffin mcelroy and miss the mark? it boggles the mind. he doesn’t not look like griffin, i guess, but he doesn’t look like griffin, either. i don’t know, man

[ID: a generic gerblin. he has yellowy-green skin, slight tusks or fangs, and weird, nubby little horn-type things.]

i hate these gerblins. they are ugly. next

[ID: two images of klaarg/g’nash. he’s a bugbear with brown fur and yellow eyes as well as a mouth full of pointy teeth. in the first image he looks pissed off; in the second he’s starry-eyed and delighted.]

klaarg is probably my favorite design in the book, and that’s just because he looks like a cute dog for most of the time he’s on the page. he’s fluffy and i love klaarg anyway, so like. did not take a lot to reach this mark. especially considering how i feel about most of the other designs lmfao

i do definitely think he keeps up the trend of looking generic, though.

[ID: an image of barry bluejeans. he looks like tom arnold, kind of; he’s square-jawed and white with thick-rimmed glasses. he also has a light brown mullet.]

i hate this. i hate the mullet. i’m sorry, y’all, i really, truly, cannot stand the mullet. i don’t feel like barry has mullet energy. i feel like it’s too powerful a move for him. it wouldn’t be a good move, mind you, but it would be a big one. i don’t know y’all it’s just bad

[ID: an image of killian. she’s a green-skinned orc woman with prominent eyelashes, eyebrows, and tusks, and straight brown hair.]

i can’t have been the only one who was hoping for a badass, visibly muscular, maybe even butch killian design, right? that wasn’t just me being a big old lesbian, that’s a pretty common theme of killian designs? i guess kudos for going out on a limb again, but then, like, take the kudos back for going out on the most boring limb possible again. i could hang with the face if her hair wasn’t so boring, but it’s... it’s so boring

[ID: an image of magic brian. he’s a drow with long white hair and an oblong face and oddly shaped nose.]

for how many of her designs are syntheses of popular ones, i..... don’t understand how this happened. i don’t understand how whimiscal and flamboyant magic brian who’s often drawn as taako-but-a-goth-dark-elf ended up looking like this. he looks like he used to play football and got his nose busted up and peaked in fantasy high school. he looks like the first quarter of a monster factory video where the thing’s just ugly but doesn’t have a personality or any endearing traits yet. he didn’t have to be the goth twink we all know he is but what.......... is this

[ID: an image of gundren rockseeker/bogard. he’s a light-skinned dwarf with dark long hair and a matching beard.]

..........listen i know they’re cousins and distant cousins at that but all of merle’s cousins are light-skinned and, like, not to say that that can’t happen but having them be anywhere near merle’s skin tone would’ve been such an easy way to help bolster the obviously inaccurate idea that this is a work concerned with diverse character designs, or rather to help ppl claim it was being bolstered, and yet

[ID: avi, a fair-skinned man with long dark hair kept up in a ponytail and slight scruff on his face.]

i feel like maybe avi is intended to be east asian so i think at this point that brings the count up to a whole two characters of color. we’re almost done with the book. cool. he’s cute, i guess, but guess what word i’m about to say again (it’s generic)

[ID: a panel of several unnamed cameo characters. from right to left: carey fangbattle, a light blue dragonborn; brad bradson, a green orc man with a long brown ponytail; and presumably lucas miller, a tan human with glasses and dark hair.]

ok. deep breaths.

first off, there’s another panel w these three as well as boyland, who looks fine, but i didn’t grab that one bc it’s harder to make out detail. carey is cute. brad is fine.

i assume the third guy is lucas miller because i’m not entirely sure who else he would be, and... oof! as you may know i can’t stand lucas miller, which has nothing to do with his necromancy or nerdiness and everything to do with the various human rights violations he commits in the small time he’s got focus as well as the fact that he’s got a theoretical redemption arc that’s not actually an arc so much as us being told he’s better now. lucas is an entitled jackass who repeatedly uses other people’s bodies and minds without their consent, from the obvious offense of using the bugbears as brainwashed chore-doers (read: slaves) to the less-oft discussed dragging of noelle and others out of the astral plane into robot bodies, again to do his chores for him. because of this, it has always sat very uncomfortably with me when people make lucas a poc, because everything about him screams Shitty White Nerd Boy to me. it sits extra uncomfortably coming from carey pietsch, given how white all of her other designs are.

it’s a little hard to tell because i took all these pics with my phone camera in my room’s lighting so they’re not super high fidelity or anything, but pietsch’s lucas is noticeably darker than any other character we’ve seen so far save merle. maybe he’s just a white guy with a tan, but all the same, it strikes me as incredibly skeevy to have one of so few characters of color be this fucking guy.

[ID: johann, a black man with an oblong face and textured dark hair.]

johann’s design is fine, although this is a similar face shape to that brian from earlier and i just. i don’t. understand it. it’s not especially interesting, but hey, at least he’s not another generic white guy.

that being said, as i mentioned in part 1 of this review, johann’s role is severely cut in this -- he’s reduced to three panels, when in the show itself he’s the one who escorts the boys to the voidfish’s chamber and inoculates them. as i mentioned in that post i understand that they shifted it some to give lucretia a more prominent entrance, but as i also mentioned in that post, they should have compensated for that. three panels.

johann is not a character with a great deal of screentime as it is, but he’s a character with a major impact. he is the reason story and song happens. his song serves as a direct foil to john’s nihilistic conversion of his own home plane into the hunger. the fact that he’s been reduced to three panels with little to no characterization at this point, especially in conjunction with the fact that he’s one of very few poc, makes me really, really uncomfortable. avi is in more panels in this book than johann is, and while i love avi and as i said i am parsing him as an asian dude, he’s also still light-skinned enough and the style is nondescript enough that there are definitely people who will parse him as white, and also, avi’s role in the story is not as big as johann’s.

it doesn’t sit right with me.

[ID: an image of davenport, a fair-skinned man with a big red mustache and slicked back red hair.]

ginger davenport with a big mustache. groundbreaking.

[ID: an image of lucretia, a slender black woman with short white hair dressed in blue layers.]

and finally, lucretia. now, i’m biased, and it’s hard for me to see a lucretia design i don’t like. i also think that this is, compared to a lot of the others at least, one of the more interesting designs in the book, at least as far as her clothes go. it’s not a long robe that would be hard to move in, and i appreciate that -- it strikes me as a pretty practical outfit while also being ornamental and wizard-y. and she’s pretty, and she’s not whitewashed, and that’s all great. i like her earrings.

all that being said, i feel like it’s not enough. luc’s hair continues a theme with merle’s and johann’s (as well as the preview we’ve seen of angus,) which is that it strikes me as very low-effort on pietsch’s part. it’s short and it’s definitely not straight, but it doesn’t feel to me like it had as much thought put into it as, say, minty green taako’s hair. we could’ve had a lucretia with a big beautiful afro, or long box braids, or so many other natural hairstyles; we got this. it’s not bad, but i do think it’s disappointing. without going looking for it and without being a person who reads a great deal about character design, i’ve seen a fair amount of discussion from black women (artists, writers, and none of the above) about the portrayal of black women as it pertains to their hair. they’re never designed to be as feminine as their white counterparts. their hair is never treated with the same amount of detail or respect as their white counterparts. it’s short, maybe curly if you’re lucky.

i’m gonna circle back quickly to killian’s hair. it’s long and smooth and kept down, despite the fact that killian is an action-oriented women and might not want it to be in her face all the time -- it could have at least been braided or in a bun. it could’ve been short! and that would’ve made sense. and i don’t mean to say that lucretia couldn’t have short hair, but she’s a very elegant woman whose dress is described as intricate. she wears business regalia. she could have any number of hairstyles, from something elaborate to something simple but more out-of-the-box than this, but she doesn’t. i found this on a quick hunt through my ref tag -- it’s a tutorial for drawing black folks with just a small selection of interesting things you can do with afrotextured hair. these resources aren’t hard to find! and i’m doing this for fun -- carey pietsch is a professional artist who was paid for these designs. if she’d put in more than the bare minimum effort, we could’ve had some really interesting shit going on, but she didn’t.

and that’s the core of the issue here. i truly do not feel like pietsch put the same amount of care into the designs for the few characters of color we see as she did into the white ones, and that’s upsetting and emblematic of a larger problem in the work: neither pietsch nor the mcelroys put in very much care at all for the fans of color who spoke up and asked for representation.i know i said i was getting taako out of the way first so the majority of the post could be goof-heavy, but goddamn, y’all, it’s hard to goof about when it’s so blatantly shitty. pietsch’s designs are boring at best and racist at worst, not to mention conspicuously lacking in anyone who is not skinny, muscular, or a dwarf. people have praised this thing so uncritically, including people whose opinions i generally really respect, as if the fact that the mcelroys signing off on green taako made it above reproach.

it didn’t, by the way. there’s no such thing as an unproblematic fav, because everybody fucks something up now and then, but even then, this is a pretty egregious fuck-up! and it was willful!

i’m not saying y’all need to burn your copies of the gn or stop listening to the mcelroys entirely or anything of the sort -- you may remember the disclaimer at the top of the post where i say i really, really love them, and more specifically, i really love taz: balance. but i am BEGGING YOU to think critically about their work. good, good boys can do bad, bad things. white people can produce work that’s racist even if they’re gay women. it’s not mean to critique the boys and it’s not homophobic (or god forbid reverse racist, which is still not a real thing) to critique carey.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the real kicker of this whole thing for me is that there’s a small fanart gallery in the back of the book. most of them aren’t labeled with the artist’s handles, just their names, but there are some truly beautiful pieces featuring diverse designs -- galacticjonah and milkychai both have beautiful latino taakos featured! galacticjonah’s is fat, too! but even after the backlash against green taako, even aside from that being the design that people are going to accept as canonical, there are pieces in the gallery of green taako, as if doubling down on it was the right move.

and by the way, yeah, i’ve read griffin’s apology. but i thought we all learned in kindergarten that an apology doesn’t count if you don’t act on it.

[adventures-of-the-creeping-bam]

NEVER SPLIT THE PARTY: THE ADVENTURES OF THE CREEPING BAM,  BOOK TWO: ONE COLD TRAIL - CHAPTER 14

If you’re new to the story, please go check out Book 1 first …

Book 2 Chapter 1 is here …

IMPORTANT:  Please note this story includes content that may be considered mature, such as moderate battle violence, some strong language and occasional mild sexual scenes.

If you want to support my writing, feel free to swing by my Patreon or Ko-fi.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:  SHAY

Sonagh’s alive, but from what I can tell that alone is a bloody miracle, clearly one of Krakka’s Moon goddess’ making.  He was able to heal the wounds, but the poison’s done a hell of a number on him, it’s nasty, exotic stuff, and no matter what the tengu cleric tried he couldn’t bring him out of the torpor he’s become locked in.  The consensus is that he’s essentially shut down while his body recovers from the poison’s debilitating effects, Krakka’s blessing countering further effects but unable to fully dispel such a powerful dose. This was certainly agreed with by the cleric of Brigid, the Midwife, one of the powerful healers from the nearest temple, that one of Sonagh’s regulars raced off to fetch as soon as the situation had been defused.  She tried everything she had too, experiencing no better luck with a considerably larger array of healing spells than Krakka has.

All the attackers are dead.  Apparently most were either directly killed by Yeslee and Art or by dint of falling off the rooftops, although it seems more than one of those seems to have ultimately succumbed to something similar to what killed our intended prisoners.  When we returned to the square we found that one of the ones who’d tumbled off that first rooftop in the fight had been one of these, so once we were all together again I pointed Gael to the body and they spent what felt like a very long time inspecting it.  When they finally returned to our nervous cluster they looked more troubled than the rest of us felt all put together.

It's magic, apparently, but not something that she’s ever actually seen directly used.  It’s a curse, a really nasty one, the result of a rather complicated sigil tattooed on each of the people who fired on us, it seems.  Kesla suspects it’s an insurance policy of whoever it is that ordered the attack, meant to ensure that should any of them be taken alive, they won’t stay that way long enough to answer any questions.  It’s a truly horrible idea, one that makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it, and I’m not alone.

Seeing that man die … I’ve seen bad things in my time, especially in recent months through my brief, unpleasant association with Erjeon Ashsong, but that was still a new order of monstrous to witness.  Whoever we’re up against, they’re real sick puppies.

By the time we returned from our failed attempt to capture a lead, the situation was largely resolved, but it had still come worrying close to escalating into something a good deal worse.  When Sonagh’s bugbear friend, Dow, made it upstairs to investigate the chaos, seeing Sonagh sprawled out and bleeding with a group who were still essentially strangers around him looked very bad.  Thankfully the orc’s children were able to set him straight, but there was clearly some tension and suspicion from the various shady locals forming Sonagh’s regular customer-base in the tavern below.

So Gael sent one of her strange projected messages to Mistress Daste, informing her of what had just happened and requesting she do whatever needed to be done to take care of things in the Rare Lady.  After that it was clear we’d run into another solid wall in our investigation, at least until Sonagh’s in a fit state to talk to us again, so we have nothing to go on.

Or maybe not … we never got that last piece of information we were promised just before the attack, but even so Sonagh’s at least pointed us in the right direction to try another avenue.  It was Art who came up with the solution in the first place, and I’ll admit I’m a little dumbfounded none of the others thought about it sooner.

Those children have kept up with us the whole time we’ve been making our way through these tight, winding streets and back-alleys.  Some simply wait around corners to follow us with their cool, watchful eyes as we pass, but others are actively following us now, and not making any effort to hide it either.  As we move I can tell Kesla’s getting as uncomfortable about it as I am, but every time we bring it up Art says to just ignore it.  I know I should defer to his knowledge on this, these are his streets, but it makes me nervous all the same.

The day’s getting on a bit now, although it’s still bright out, which is taking a little for me to get used to.  Even during our travel south from the Reaches to Bavat, I found the lengthening days a little hard to deal with, but this second day here is starting to work on me something fierce.  I’m so used to the sunset at this time of the afternoon, but without it I think I’m starting to understand the unseasonable warmth too, even if it’s supposed to be the end of the harvest months when winter’s chill should be starting to make itself felt.  Instead this place still feels like it’s holding onto the summer, and I’m starting to get uncomfortable in leather now.  Honestly, I don’t know how Art does it.

The road ahead opens out a bit, a conjunction with three other streets leading off in various directions, but instead as he leads us around the corner we seem to be heading down a rather tight looking stair leading down to the basement entrance of a long, thin building.  It’s an unusually tall structure in this neighbourhood, usually three storeys seems to be the limit but this one must climb to eight, shaped like a long wedge that starts narrow here but spreads into a gradual taper further down.  It’s particularly dark, too – many of the buildings in this section of the city seem almost gloomy, the blackening of their stone clearly the results of decades, or probably centuries of dirt, neglect and smoke.  This building, on the other hand, simple and monolithic as it seems, is specifically built from the darkest granite I’ve ever seen.  There are windows in the structure, but only in the upper levels, and they seem to be long and thin, clearly intended to dissuade anyone attempting to climb in, if anyone even could scale these smooth walls.  Just looking at it, I know where we are without needing to ask.

“Art?”  Kesla stops him before he’s more than a few steps down.  He turns back, and while he simply cocks his brow in that curious way I’m beginning to find endearing, it seems there’s something a little more complex behind them now.

“Yeah, boss?”

“This is the place?”

“What’d you expect, some supersecret entrance?”

Kesla’s frowning now as she takes the place in.  “Well no, but … it’s a bit obvious, ain’t it?  I thought you lot didn’t like to advertise yourselves.”

“Maybe, but that’s why the other entrances are hidden.  The whole point of this place is so folk know not to fuck with us.”  He starts climbing down again, but Kesla just keeps frowning as she looks up at Driver 8 as he emerges from the alley we’ve just left.  

Finally she sighs, not quite rolling her eyes but still short as she calls out:  “Art!”

This time he doesn’t respond at first, taking another step down before finally stopping to turn back, and the cockiness seems to be gone now.  He looks … gods, is he worried?  He’s been so chill since we came here, and this was his idea.  What they hell’s he so concerned about now?  Whatever it is, he just looks at her, expectant, doesn’t answer back.  Making a point, I think.

Ignoring that look, Kesla simply cocks her head.  “What about Big Man?”

Art frowns too now, looking around for a moment as he takes in his immediate surroundings.  The stairs are tight, and pretty steep, and the steps aren’t particularly deep. He can make it down there with ease, but the golem’s going to find this very difficult.  “Shit.”

“There another way in, maybe?”

“Not right now, not if we wanna be discreet, an’ I figured we did right now. Y’know, after what just happened.”

Shit …  “He’s got a point.”  I weight in.

“Yeah, well …”  Kesla looks up at Driver 8 again, looming over us as we cluster around the top of the stair.  Casting quite a shadow in the lengthening day, in fact.  “I don’t like it.  Big Man won’t make it down this, and leaving him out here right now seems like a bad idea too.”  She turns back to Art, giving him a pointed look.  “In light of what just happened.  Don’t you think?”

Hissing through his teeth, Art starts climbing back up with a particularly dark look, now.  “No, reckon you’re right.  Might be a batter way, after all.”

I turn to Kesla as he reaches the top, but she just shakes her head.  Clearly she’s picking up on his general discomfort same as me.  There’s clearly something going on with him right now, and she doesn’t like it any more than I do.

Even so, we still fall in behind him as he leads us down the next street along, which is a good deal wider than some of the one’s we’ve had to take lately, rolling on a gentle slope down towards the docks.  It looks like an interesting mix, residences rubbing shoulders with various stores, although we’re not far down before he stops us, pausing in front of a large gate leading into an enclosed courtyard.  There are no signs or posters on the flaking stucco of the wall, but the gate’s certainly wide enough for wagons, which makes me think of a livery stable.

Taking a step up to the gate, Art hesitates in reaching out, faltering as he seems to tense up.  “Um … yeah, maybe this ain’t such a good idea –”

“Art, it was your idea.”  Kesla steps to his side, laying her hand on his shoulder.  Her voice is low, cool and soothing.  “You’re our way in here, we can’t do this without you.”

For a long moment he just looks up at her, and it’s almost like there’s a battle of emotions going on behind his eyes.  Finally he looks at the rest of us, and his eyes linger on Gael for a moment, who’s just smiling at him, gentle but reassuring as Kesla now.  They seemed unusually cold towards him this morning, but seems to have mellowed since the incident in the Drumhalt.

“Okay.  Just be careful, yeah?  Keep quiet, don’t make any sudden moves.”  He looks up at Driver 8, frowns for a moment.  “Um … yeah, Big Man?  You just be yourself.”

“I believe I understand, Art.”  the golem rumbles at his lower conversational level.

This simply makes Art frown a little deeper, but he nods all the same, pushing both the doors open and letting them swing wide as he strolls right in.  Kesla follows without a pause, but I find myself hesitating now, turning to look at Gael while the others seem to share my apprehension. The half-elf must get the message, hefting their staff and starting after Kesla, and I take a deep breath as I lay my hand on the hilt of my sword, uncomfortably self-conscious now as I step through the gate.

The courtyard’s essentially empty, just a few scattered boxes lying around on the hard-packed but worn earth, broken and lonely and more than a little sad. The building beyond looks incredibly rundown, worse than many of the disused places we’ve seen passing through these neighbourhoods, but there’s something a little different about this one, something I can’t immediately put a finger on.  The windows are mostly devoid of glass, boarded up but only sporadically, and now I’m looking I think that’s less to dissuade intruders than to cover anyone who might want to watch from inside.  The main doors look to be in surprisingly good condition given the rest of the place, the wood worn and the paint peeling but otherwise still very solid, and very closed.

Art stops again a good six feet short of the entrance, looking up at the building now, and after a moment he slips his hood back off his head.  Then, just as I’m sure Kesla’s about to offer some more encouragement for him to carry on after all, he spreads his arms out and raises his hands in clear surrender.  Kesla pauses now herself, looking round, then takes a little step back before following his example.  After a thoughtful moment I stop where I am and do the same, Gael taking a moment to stick their staff a little into the dirt to let it stand before they raise their own empty hands.  Through the corners of my eyes I see the implied message spread through the rest as they all follow suit.

It's probably purely because I’m looking up that I catch it at all, but I see movement in one of the first floor windows, through a gap in the boards, and I realise there’s a bowman up there, drawn and aiming.  Right at me, I realise.  Okay … yeah, this seems like a good idea, then.  Undoubtedly there’s more I can’t see, maybe every single window has one.

Then there’s the sound of locks turning and bolts shooting from behind the doors before they slowly split and swing outwards, and while they’re still moving two more archers come out fast, each moving diagonally to either side. They both stop several feet short of us and draw the rest of the way, not aiming at anyone in particular but making the threat all the same.  A beat later two more appear inside the doorway, but don’t come out, instead drawing where they stand.

“Like I said,”  Art mutters under his breath  “Just be cool.”

A man walks out now, moving between the two archers with a casual swagger and cool air of authority that might as well be writ large across his face.  He’s a half-elf, tall and lean and very pretty, and he clearly knows it too, I can almost feel his arrogance as he looks us all over with just the slightest hint of a cocked smile on his full lips.  He’s dressed head-to-foot in black leather just like the rest, but his clothes are a good deal richer and more well-appointed, certainly out of place in this locale. His hair, jet black but streaked with silvery white, is worn down to his shoulders, clearly arranged with an artful hand rather than just naturally tousled.  His pale grey eyes, however, are his most striking feature, sharper than a hawk’s and already sparking with amusement.  Especially when he takes in Art.

“Bloody hell, it’s you.  I thought you wanted to see the world.”

“I did, least enough to know you ain’t anything special after all, Glyn.” Art really seems to be pouring on the sarcasm, and I wonder if he really had any intention at all to heed his own advice before this self-absorbed dandy started speaking.

“So what the hell you doing back so soon, then?  Didn’t reckon we’d see you again for years, if we saw you at all.”

Letting go a deep sigh, Art just drops both his hands, so casual it’s like he just can’t be bothered with this anymore.  There’s a little bit of that strain back in his face now, but I think he’s reining it in a bit now, or at least trying to.  “Gotta talk to Cobb.  Figure he can help us out a tough spot.”

The smile seems to fade from the half-elf’s face now, the slightest touch of a frown replacing it.  The crease that forms between his brows seems entirely alien on that perfect face. “You brought trouble here, Art?”

“No, least I don’t reckon so.  We just come up against a wall, we need some help seeing past it.  Cobb might be able to help us.”

“Help you, you mean.”  He looks over us all again, more critical now, and his gaze lingers long indeed on Driver 8.  “Bloody weird company you’re keeping these days.  That thing’s a threat all on its own.”

“He is with me, just like the rest.  I’d rather they were shown proper respect while they’re here.”

Thoughtful for a few moments, he looks Art over again, finally smiling again, seeming amused now.  “Yeah, what the fuck?  Might be worth it just to see what that toothy old bugger does to you for bringing outsiders into the Arrowhead.  Reckon the nightmare machine’ll be just what it takes for him to finally rethink what he sees in you.”  He waves his hand off to the side once and all the archers relax their bows as one, the pair in the doorway already moving back inside while the ones who came out ahead of our new host move to follow.

With another heavy sigh, Art moves to follow him, and I step fast to get in alongside him, leaning in close as we go to whisper:  “Who is that?”  I notice Kesla’s watching us sidelong too, listening in.

“Glynven Sparkheel.  He’s one o’ the local captains.”

“That make him a big deal, then?”  Kesla ventures.

“He likes to think so, but he ain’t so awesome as he likes to pretend he is.” Art shrugs.  “He’s got a bigger rep than he really deserves, you ask me.”

“Is he what’s got you all worked up, then?”  The words are out before I can stop them.

Art gives me a particularly sharp sidelong glare, but looks away quickly. “Just keep your eyes open.  Be careful.  Both of you.”

Kesla and I exchange a glance over his head at that, and I can see her jaw visibly tighten.  The implication behind Art’s stubborn dodge, whatever the hell it actually is, starts to work on me too, and I can’t help laying my hand on my hilt again, just to feel something reassuring.

Inside it seems like my guess on this being an old livery stable was well-founded, although it’s clearly not being used as one now.  The floors are grimy and scattered with dirt and broken pieces of rubbish, the stalls empty and all former accoutrements seem to have been removed long ago, likely refitted for other things or simply sold for scrap. There are a few lamps burning here and there in the relative gloom, but this is clearly purely in deference to those among them who don’t have natural nightvision.  This definitely isn’t a working establishment anymore, merely a cover for … I really couldn’t guess what, really.

There are more of these black-clad individuals in here besides the archers who��ve already followed inside before the doors close again behind us.  Various shapes and sizes, more than a few different races too, a pretty motley crew once I’m able to get a look at them, even if their manner of dress does give them a loosely uniform appearance.  At least so much as Art’s own – clearly his particular fashion sense comes from here.

Welcome to the Thieves Guild, Shay.  You’ve heard talk about them often enough, but never really thought you’d actually find yourself in their company.  And yet here we are …

There’s a moment of awkward silence, and I notice every one of them is regarding Driver 8 with obvious nervousness.  I can’t blame them, I’m still finding it hard to feel comfortable around him myself. Sparkheel’s covering best, but I pick up a distinct wariness as he licks his lips and shoots the subtlest look the golem’s way before turning to Kesla.  “I take it you’re supposed to be the one in charge here, right?  You seem the type.”

“And just what d’you mean by that, Master Sparkheel?”  Her tone is casually conversational and she gives him a cool little smile, but I detect a little edge to her words all the same, and I think the half-elf’s sharp enough to pick up on it too.

If she shakes him by using his name he doesn’t let it show, simply giving her another quick look-over before carrying on.  “I mean that you’re the one’s gotta be held responsible for the rest o’ your folk if you get … uppity while you’re here.  So I just wanna make sure I got the right head if I gotta cut one off.”  He gives her a cocky smile, as if his words are in jest, but I doubt they really are.

“In that case, I’d say you’re right.”  Kesla’s own smile doesn’t change in the slightest.  “But if you were to try, I’d best warn you now you likely won’t get the outcome you’re hoping for.”

He looks her over again, eyes this time lingering for a moment on the hand still laid on the hilt of her bastard sword, very much mirroring my own unconscious sentiment, I realise.  Another frown creases his brow for a moment before he composes himself again.  “Well, whatever … while you’re here, you’re expected to conduct yourselves with respect, and do what you’re told.  You’re guests here, but barely tolerated ones.” He shoots Art a particularly reproachful look, and while he visibly bristles he keeps his mouth shut.  “That one’s the only reason you’re not all full of arrows already.”

Then he’s gone, he just walks off without a word, and Art gives a very quiet growl, just under his breath, before he starts to follow, giving Kesla a rather apologetic look as he passes.  She simply turns to Gael, raising a brow, and the young wizard responds with a noncommittal shrug.  Then she starts off after Art.

Most of the other Guild members remain where they are as we move further inside, and it’s clear that most of them must be deployed here full-time, guarding this … well, I assume this is some kind of entryway to whatever underworld lair it is that Art intends on taking us to.  Originally we were headed into the Arrowhead, so I suspect this is some alternative and far more covert means of accessing the Guild’s headquarters here in Untermer.  Whatever it is, only Sparkheel and three of the random assortment accompany us deeper in, and none of them are the original archers.

Sparkheel leads us through a door at the back of the former stable itself and into a corridor beyond, bare and gloomy lit only by small lamps mounted in sconces cut into walls that seem to spread down into empty distance on either side. He leads us to the right, but before we’ve cleared twenty paces he turns into a wide alcove cut into the wall, an antechamber beyond with a substantial steel door mounted flush into the back wall. There are a good half dozen more of these mismatched black-clad individuals standing guard here, or at least that must be the intention – in truth while two are actually genuinely doing their jobs as they stand on either side of the door with spears propped at their sides, the rest as just slouching against the left-hand wall and laughing over some private joke.  They don’t even know we’re here until Sparkheel loudly clears his throat and they scramble to straighten up, looking very sheepish indeed.

“Shit …”  one of them mutters under his breath before he can catch himself, turning quite red as he winces at his mistake.  “Uh … sorry, boss.  We were just … fuck me …”  His eyes go wide as Driver 8 ducks as low as he can while staying reasonably upright in order to enter the antechamber behind the rest of us.

“No chance, Durit.”  Sparkheel makes him shrink with one withering glare.  “I’m way outta your league.”  He turns to the two who are actually doing their job.  “We’re coming through.”

The guard on the left frowns just a little, clearly as rattled by Driver 8 as the others are, but his compatriot simply transfers his spear to the other hand and reaches across to thump his fist on the door.  Once, then twice in quick succession, then once again after another pause.  A beat passes, then the muffled sounds of more locks turning can be heard through what must be very thick steel indeed.  When it opens it swings outwards slowly, and Sparkheel’s already stepping through while it’s still moving.

This time when we all start to move, Art just stays where he is.  He actually looks rattled now, reluctant to move, and as I move to his side Gael seems to pick up on it too.  They lay their hand on his shoulder before I can, leaning in close.  “Are you all right?”

Art blinks, looking at them with wide eyes, and it’s almost like he’s genuinely been startled into recognising them again.  He opens his mouth and nothing comes out, then he frowns and looks down at his paws, working his fingers for a moment as he raises them before him. Finally he takes a deep breath and nods, turning to look at Gael, then at me.  Finally at Kesla, who we find is waiting just inside the now open doorway, watchful but still cool as ever.

“Ask me that later on, maybe.”  He lets go a very heavy sigh indeed.  “Right now I ain’t got a clue how I’d answer.”  Reaching up, he grips Gael’s hand as it’s still laid on his shoulder and gives it a little squeeze, then starts moving at last.

The look Gael gives me at that is pretty complex but clearly worried, and I have no idea how to respond to it.  I think I’m starting to understand how Art’s feeling, though.

I stick close behind Gael as they step through the big round doorway with Art, and I realise my hand’s come to rest on that hilt again entirely unbidden. We’re guests of Art’s supposedly, this is very much his territory, so in theory we should be safe with him, but the way he’s acting right now doesn’t fill me with much confidence.  The spelled-out threat of arrow-based death definitely stuck with me, and now we’re going all the way into Guild territory I suspect there could be much worse waiting for transgressors now.

Inside the vault it’s darker than the corridor we’ve left, lit merely by a few torches set high in the wall on either side of the passage we’re now in, while the relatively rough stone walls are a good deal darker, looking almost like unrefined terracotta in this light.  After ten feet the floor turns into a shallow ramp descending below ground, and from what little I can see in this gloom it just vanishes into darkness.  Might be a long way down, maybe.  Roomy, though, which is good.  Easily enough room for Big Man to keep with us right now.

Seems the others may share my nervousness, though, the group remaining pretty quiet as we make our descent.  We go down for a while, but after maybe ten minutes it finally levels out again, and I hazard we must be at least fifty feet under the street right now, and it’s pleasantly cool now.  The corridor continues to stretch out ahead of us, but before long pipes seem to emerge from the walls around us, running the length of it, thick, battered copper from the look of them.  There’s a subtle hum coming from some of them, and every once in a while as we make our way one of them gives off some pretty odd noises.  A low, wet gurgle, or a weird rattle, and more than once there’s a subtle popping bang that makes us all jump.  Even our erstwhile hosts freeze for a moment, Sparkheel tightening up on himself for a long beat as he watches the pipe in question, as if expecting something deeply unpleasant to happen at any moment.

Nothing does, and slowly he’s able to relax.  He still gives that section of pipe a wide berth going forward, and he’s not alone.

A little further down, a subtle, wafting cloud seems to be jetting from that same pipe, but it seems to be dispersing in the air pretty quick. Sparkheel skirts this widely as he passes as well though, and as we continue I follow his example, watching the leak cautiously.  The air’s warmer here, and wet too, I realise.  It’s steam.  That one, at least, seems to be a steampipe.  I’ve never encountered such a thing, but I’ve heard about this new-fangled technology they’ve been utilising up in Tektehr that they’ve started to bring down here since the Occupation began.  Something to do with heat and pressure, although I’ve never heard enough about it to really be able to make sense of it.  Mostly it just makes me suspicious.

Soon after the tunnel seems to open up ahead, and beyond it seems to be brighter. Staircases lead up on either side, but the tunnel itself simply rises in another ramp that vanishes into the light beyond the ceiling.  Seeing this should improve my mood, but one look at Art tells me he’s more troubled than ever now.

Clearly Kesla’s been following the same train of thought, turning right round to confront him now.  “All right, spill it. What the fuck has got you so pent up all of a sudden? You look like you’re all plugged up but you still gotta take a massive monster shit.”

Art gives her a look with particularly wide eyes, and for just a moment I wonder if she regrets speaking so forcefully to him.  Even so, it needs to be said, we need to get this out. Finally he sighs, long and deep and proper regretful, and hangs his head a little as he finally answers.  “I left under … kind of a cloud.”

Gael turns to Kesla, the concern in their face deepening now.  She licks my lips and just plods on.  “What kind of cloud?  Are you in trouble?  Are we in trouble now?”

“No, no …  nothing like that.  Not exactly. It’s more … I had problems my last months here, and they’re the reason I left the way I did.  It’s kinda complicated, actually.”

“Is this gonna cause us problems being here, Art?  Seriously, we need to know.  This is important shit we’re here for, you do realise if your problems fuck this up it ain’t good.”

“We should be fine.”  He says it a little more forcefully than I would’ve expected, and his face is harder now, along with his eyes.  It’s not something I’ve seen outside of combat, and it’s enough to put me on the defensive on its own.  “It’s my problem, I can deal with it.  Or not.  Don’t matter to you either way.”

I see Gael open their mouth, ready to speak, and I know exactly what they’re gonna ask, but it’s clearly not the time.  Then Kesla raises a hand, low but clear enough they catch it, waving them off.  They frown at her, a little hurt now, it seems.  I don’t know if Art catches it too, he might be too worked up right now to be thinking clear enough.

“All right then, we done?”  As she turns to Sparkheel I realise we’ve all come to a complete stop now, just short of the second ramp, and the others are waiting behind us with varying degrees of concern in their faces.  The half-elf, on the other hand, mostly just looks irritated, arms folded across his chest while he taps one toe in a clear show of impatience.  “I mean, ain’t like I don’t have shit o’ my own to be getting on with.”

“Then go do it.”  Art growls, and he’s actually bristling a little bit.  His face is still reasonably gentle, but there’s clear tension in his stance, even more in his knuckles.  “I can take my friends through fine on my own, you don’t gotta be here.”

“Yeah, no, actually reckon I do.  Ain’t that I don’t trust you, it’s more that …”  He shrugs after a thoughtful moment.  “I don’t trust you.  But then that’s just me, y’know?”

Art glares at him for a long, drawn-out moment, and I wonder if this is about to escalate in a way that could be really bad for all of us.  It was clear at the start these two don’t get on, but I’m genuinely worried that in his current state he might be about to do something he really can’t take back.  Gael seems to be thinking the same thing, shifting their stance a little in the hopes of intercepting him if he does try something, and I find myself mirroring them.

Then he just growls again, no words this time, just frustration, and waves his hand vaguely down the tunnel ahead, signalling Sparkheel to carry on as dismissively as he can.   Intentional, I don’t doubt.  Certainly the half-elf gives him a stinkeye that makes it clear he thinks so.

We start moving again, though.  Kesla leans close into Art’s side as we go, muttering:  “We’re gonna talk about this later.”  When he chances a sidelong glance at her she adds:  “Not open for debate.”

For a moment he opens his mouth, looking dead ahead, and I wonder if he’s going to say something he’ll regret, but he stops himself at the last and just continues on his way, quietly fuming now.  I’m not sure if I prefer it this way, the tension might’ve been better.

Making our way up the ramp doesn’t take anywhere near as long as the descent, at least.  We emerge into the open almost before we realise it, light pouring down on us from above, and when I look up I can almost make out the clear blue of the Untermer sky through the perfectly round top of the atrium several storeys above us. The shaft itself is broad and dark, the black stone of the walls largely smooth and featureless save for uniform balconies cut directly across from us rising to the light.  At ground level there are passages leading off in various directions, but each seems as gloomy as what we just left.

The floor under our feet’s the same black stone as everything else, but there seem to be mosaic tiles inlaid across it, creating patterns that twist and swirl amidst the mineral darkness.  It takes me a few moments to quite work out what it’s supposed to be, the angle’s not great here and I suspect it’s better interpreted from far above, but slowly I’m able to make sense of it.  There are three animals, picked out in heavily stylised black and white.  A cat, a fox, and a snake.  It’s quite beautiful, but something about it seems a little threatening, but for the life of my I couldn’t say why.

There are a few people moving around down here besides us, but for the most part it seems as empty as the tunnel we just navigated.  Sparkheel leads us out to the centre of the floor and then turns to face us all, looking mostly bored now.  He spreads his hands wide and sighs:  “Welcome to the Arrowhead.  I’d wish you luck in whatever your endeavour is, but honestly, I really couldn’t give a fuck.”  He looks to me now, and tips a salute.  “Hope I don’t see you round again.”  Then he just starts back the way he came, and as I turn to watch him go he waves to the other three to follow him.

Shooting a look at Art, who’s just frowning hard after the half-elf, Kesla takes a step after him.  “What the hell –"

“My apologies for Glynven.”  The newcomer’s voice is so cracked I can feel the gravel in every bass note in his words right through my bones, and it makes me jump as much as Gael.  “There’s days I ain’t got the first bloody clue what to do with that boy, I swear.”

The tall but lean human who seems to have just materialised beside us in the middle of the floor looks every day as old as his voice would’ve suggested to me – his sharp, hawkish face is deeply lined and his thick beard and swept back black hair’s largely gone to grey by now, but his pale green eyes are sharp as a hawk’s, and his stance is straight as an iron rod.  Feet planted close together and hands clasped in the small of his back, his surprisingly broad shoulders are squared in a way that makes me think more of a military man than a thief.  His dress, on the other hand, seems more indicative of a cleric, a simple black linen cassock with a slate grey sash tied about his waist, with only the single curved knife tucked on the left of his belly to indicate he’s clearly not a holy man.

He looks us all over one at a time, probably taking in the sheer surprise in many of us at his thoroughly unexpected arrival, but his expression remains as cool and detached as ever.  Now I’m looking I can see a deep-seated, icy hardness in those sharp eyes that puts me on guard as sure as Art’s clear discomfort as he recognises this man.  I leave my hand where it is on the grip of my sword.

Then he smiles at Kesla, and it’s about as friendly as a cat preparing to eviscerate a mouse.  “Oh yeah, of course.  I’m sorry. Kur Yevnik, at your service.”  He extends a long-fingered hand with skin like old paper towards her.

Art’s looking right at her now, his expression a good deal more complicated.  That mixture of shock and anger’s still there, but there’s more of an edge to it now, a strong dose of fear, and he barely has a rein on it.  It’s clear that Art genuinely hates this man, but he’s also quite terrified of him.  I can’t help taking an instant set against him myself, seeing that.

To her credit, Kesla’s cool as ice as shakes his offered hand.  “Kesla Shoon.”

“Indeed?”  Yevnik holds her hand for a few beats longer than appropriate before releasing it, his eyes scanning her without any attempt to hide their intention.  Measuring her up sure as she’s doing to him.  I realise now he just might be one of the most dangerous individuals I’ve ever met.  I’ve met stone-cold killers in my time but this one’s ice.

“Honestly, it’s a proper pleasure to meet you, Mistress Shoon.  Your da was a hell of a warrior from what I heard.  Expect the apple don’t fall far an’ all that.”

“You could say that.”  She’s working her hand now it’s free, his touch clearly set her skin crawling.  “Ain’t here to talk about me or mine, though.”

“No, course you ain’t.”  He turns to Art at last, and if his smile could become any more menacing I think it would.  Gods, this man’s a wolf in human skin.  “But it is good to see your prowler again.”

“Really can’t return to sentiment, Yevnik.”  Art growls through his teeth, his anger winning over the rest of his emotions now.  I think he might be growing protective now this man’s clearly showing such an interest in his best friend.  “I could’ve happily gone the rest o’ my life without seeing your ugly mug again.”

The smile fades, but slowly.  He looks Art over with that same appraising eye, and one of his brows hitches up just a fraction after a moment, but there’s none of the offence I would’ve expected a clear senior member of the Guild to take.  “I see you never learned that tact you were always missing when I was training you, then.  Not that you left here lacking in appropriate life-skills, of course.”

“Not sure I agree with you on that one.”  He’s flexing his paws now, itching to draw, I think.  His eyes haven’t left Yevnik’s though.  “What I seen of the world since’s taught me it takes more’n a sharp blade and light fingers to really get what you want in life.”

“You mean friendship?”  The grin returns, more mocking now.  “Now that’s some overrated shite if I ever heard it.  You were part o’ something once, Art.  Something special.  Then you turned your back on it.  If you’d listened to me you could’ve been something great.”

“No, if I’d listened to you I could’ve been a monster.  No thank you, Master Yevnik.”

They watch each other for a long moment, neither moving, their expressions fixed, and I start itching seeing it, wondering if one or more of us might have to jump in to stop a fight after all.  Right now I’m really not convinced who’d win if we did let it happen.

“There you are.”  Another newcomer takes most of us by surprise, but this time at least we have reason to be distracted.  “Sorry I’m late.”

It’s a hobgoblin, which doesn’t take me by surprise as it might do some. They’re even more a rarity in cities like this than full-blood orcs, but when you do run across them it’s almost always in these kinds of environs.  The criminal underworld is prime ground for them to really thrive in, which might sound vaguely insulting, but they’re perfectly suited to sneaking and thievery, so I’m not surprised to find one in Untermer’s Thieves Guild.

He's definitely more diminutive than Yevnik too, a few inches shorter than Art and similarly lean and wiry, at least as much as I can tell since he’s dressed in well-made black leather armour very much of a style with our prowler’s.  The bristled hairs lining his muzzled jaw and chin are cropped tight, while his shaggy black mane is tied back in a short ponytail.  His horns are jagged but otherwise surprisingly understated, curling tight around the sides of his head to tuck in under his broad, pointed ears, and his eyes are as darkly sharp as any of his kind I’ve ever met before.  He’s pretty young from the look of him, perhaps of an age with Art, and he certainly moves with similar springy ease and silent dancer’s grace.  Likely he’s as adept in the handful of knives I see him wearing and the many I can’t.

“Zuldrad, yes.”  Yevnik’s smile fades more quickly now, as if he didn’t expect this interruption.  “Young Art and I were just getting reacquainted.”

The young hob doesn’t even blink as he looks from the senior thief to our own, but then I wouldn’t have expected a great show of emotion, his race make for truly masterful card players.  Instead he simply takes us all in at a glance before clasping his hands together and dipping a very subtle bow to his superior.  “Yeah, sure.  Cobb wants to see ‘em right now, he figures it must be urgent if Art brought ‘em all in here with him.”

“Very well, I can take ‘em down with me now, then.”  Yevnik starts to step away towards the entrance to the stairs, gesturing for us to follow him.

“Yeah, ‘bout that.”  The hob, Zuldrad I take it, cocks his head.  “Cobb wants me to bring ‘em.”

“That’s fine, I really don’t mind.”  The brittle, razor-edged tone that slips into Yevnik’s voice says different. “I’m heading that way myself anyway.”

“No, Cobb insisted it be me did it.”  Zuldrad pauses for a moment, and while he’s clearly considering his words I think there’s a very subtle gleam of amusement twinkling in his dark eyes. “Essentially he made it clear he’d be a whole lot happier if you weren’t within a mile o’ young Art while he’s in the Arrowhead.  Not after what made ‘im leave in the first place.”

Yevnik regards the hobgoblin for a drawn-out moment, lips sucked in like he’s having to chew on a particularly tart lemon, then turns to Art, breathing a low hiss through his teeth.  Finally he turns Kesla’s way and his brow cocks as he starts to smile again. “Mistress Shoon, as I said, a pleasure. If you were inclined to stick around I’d love to pick your brain about your da some.  Maybe hear ‘bout your own adventures too?”

She smiles back pleasantly.  “Not if you fucking paid me to, you unpleasant bastard.”

His eye twitches slightly, but his smile stays where it is as he gives a very clipped bow and folds his hands back behind him.  “Right.  Another time then.”  He gives Art one final glance which I couldn’t read if I tried, then turns and stalks off in the direction our original escort went.

Mindful of how our voices carry in here, I wait until he’s already well down the ramp before I lean in close to Art to ask:  “Who was that arsehole?”

Art’s just watching him go, eyes narrowed almost to slits as tight as his pupils have become, and I start to think he didn’t hear me.  I’m about to prompt him again when he finally looks away with an angry growl and answers after all:  “Yevnik’s Master of Assassins here.  He … taught me to kill.”

“To fight.”  Zuldrad corrects him, although according to the emotion I can read in his stony face he’s none too convinced by his own words.  “Taught all of us, really.  All the prowlers.  You show any aptitude they send you to him, whether you’re gonna kill for a living or not.”

So that’s it, Zuldrad’s a prowler like Art.  Not just your garden variety pickpocket, cutpurse or burglar, he’s one of the Guild’s elite.  My suspicion that he’s as dangerous as Art is pretty accurate, then.

“Ain’t what Master Yevnik planned for me, though.  Bastard got one look at me an’ figured he could turn me into one of his pet killers.  Not that he let on that’s what he was doing, an’ it took me a long time to catch up to that fact.  Could’ve killed ‘im on the spot when I confronted him an’ he just confirmed it, like it was a fact o’ fucking life.”

“Except you didn’t, which is why you’re still alive.”  Zuldrad cocks his thumb over his shoulder in the direction Yevnik intended to lead us before.  “Can we go?  Cobb ain’t the most patient bloke round here, as you well know.”

Art blinks, looking at this newcomer for the first time, and his face goes through a subtle transformation as recognition seems to hit him.  “Oh … hey.”  He smiles at last, first time we’ve seen it in a little while and while it’s still pretty fragile I’m happy to see it.  “It’s you.”

Blinking, Zuldrad just frowns at him.  “Yeah, I know it’s –”

While he doesn’t exactly pounce, Art still steps forward and grabs hold of the hobgoblin to pull him into a hug so quick that he has no time to react, his dark eyes widening for a moment as his defences must go right up.  He returns the hug soon enough, though, smiling a little too as he gives Art a good crush to compliment the one he’s receiving himself.  “Yeah, yeah, all right.  I missed you too.”

Pulling back at last as he seems to remember himself at last, Art’s looking pretty sheepish now, but at least he’s finally loosening up again.  “Shit, yeah … sorry ‘bout that.”  He blinks, turning to Kesla, and his eyes widen for a moment. “Oh!  Of course … this is Zul.  Zuldrad, my brother.  KInda. We grew up together in the Guild.”

That means he’s another foundling, like Art, which explains the instant connection.  Kesla offers her hand to the hob immediately.  “Kesla Shoon.”

“Oh yeah, wow.”  Zuldrad grabs her hand right away, grinning now with surprising warmth as he pumps it with gusto.  “I can totally see what he’s meant now.  Art told me all about you in his letters.”

Surprised, she turns to Art, likely barely registering when he lets go of my hand. “You write letters?”

“Sometimes.”  The look he gives her could almost be reproach, like she’s insulted him.  “I got layers.  Like an onion.”

Cocking a brow, Kesla reaches out and gives his furry crown a little ruffle before he can stop her.  “More like a head o’ cabbage.”

“Which one’s Gael?”  Zuldrad cuts in before Art can shoot her the comeback he’s clearly scambling to come up with.

“What?”  Gael blinks as they’re also clearly taken by surprise.  “Um … yeah, that’s me.”  After a beat they remember themselves again and hold their hand out to him.

“So you’re the whiz-kid from the Order, huh?”  Zuldrad shakes their hand with similar enthusiasm.  “Yeah, Art told me a bunch about you in his last letter.”

“Really?”  They turn to give Art subtle glare.  “Well that’s just lovely.”

That really gets Art squirming now, but his old friend either doesn’t seem to pick up on it or, more likely, just ignores it.  “Yeah, I know about all o’ you.”  He frowns for a moment as he looks me up-and-down, then Tulen too. “Well, most, anyways.” Finally he blinks as he cranes up to take Driver 8 in, but if he’s intimidated it certainly doesn’t show.  “Specially you, Big Man.  I definitely get what he was on about with you.”

Driver 8 turns his full red stare on Zuldrad, and the hob just looks back into it, seeming unfazed.  I’d admit to being a bit more impressed if I hadn’t grown up knowing hobgoblins so well already, but even so he seems to be taking all of this in his stride.  Big Man, on the other hand, remains his stoic self. “I am glad to make your acquaintance, Zuldrad, since you are friend and family to Art.”

Okay, perhaps there’s a flicker of surprise that crosses his face hearing that, then he smiles, nodding as he replies:  “Same to you, sir.  Always wondered about your kind, gotta admit finally meeting one’s definitely lived up to the hype.”  He turns to me now.  “You’re … yeah, I dunno who you are.  Or your very striking friend.”

Blinking, I turn to see Tulen’s moved up beside me, looking a little sheepish now. I smile, inwardly relieved I can finally summon one again after all that tension, and hold out my hand.  “Shayline Swift-Kill, although you can call me Shay, since we’re all clearly friends here.”

“Shay.”  He nods and takes my hand, and his grip’s as powerful as I was expecting, despite his relatively diminutive size.  “I like that. So you’re new?”

“Brand new, yeah.”  I nod to Tulen when he lets go at last.  “This is Tulen.  Mistress Tulen Kelsira of the Silver Order, although she’s as informal as the rest of us, I’ve found.”

“I am?”  Tulen falters again in her surprise, but scrambles quickly enough to recover as she remembers her manners, offering her own hand.  “Um, yes.  That’s right, I suppose.  I am. Tulen.  Sorry.”  She starts pumping his hand with considerable gusto, perhaps making up for her accidental reticence.  “Hi.”

“Okay, okay.”  Kesla interjects at last, looking serious again, finally reminding us we’re here on pretty urgent business.  “That’ll do. My apologies, but we ain’t here for catching up, which I reckon y’already figured.  You said your man Cobb’s good to talk, right?”

“Yeah, he is.”  The hob gives a more curt nod, smile gone in a snap.  “This way.”  He waves us after as he starts across the floor towards the stairs.

“Y’all right now, then?”  Kesla asks Art now, beating me to my own question as we follow.

“Huh?”  He just blinks at her, as if snapped out of a trance, which is answer enough on its own, I think.  “Oh, um … I dunno.  Maybe. Ask me again later, maybe?”

The look she gives me as she lets him go ahead is a wary one, and while I still don’t know her well enough yet to really pick up on every one of her worryingly subtle nuances I think I can fathom that out well enough.  She’s worried about her friend, this is clearly messing with him a great deal.  She’s not alone …

TO BE CONTINUED ...

[shinykari]

Girl Gang DND: Weeks 11 & 12: The Good, The Bad, and The Zombies or This Cube for Hire

When last we left our heroines, they had dispatched a group of bugbears deep inside the Lost Mine of Wave Echo Cave, and were getting ready to explore the rest of the labyrinthine dungeon. The bugbears had piled up some broken furniture against the opposite door, which of course sent the ladies in that direction.

It soon became apparent that the door was blocked due to an infestation of zombies, led by a floating, flaming, spell-casting skull. Rodwen channeled divinity and scared many of the undead, letting the rest of the party pick them off one by one. A few managed to escape to another room, but those zombies are tomorrow's problems, amirite? The flameskull went down pretty quickly, and Kharris decided she wanted it as a trophy. An inter-party squabble broke out, as Callie and Raina tried in vain to talk her out of it, citing a vague feeling of unease about the skull. Eventually, Kharris relented, allowing Callie to sprinkle it with holy water, thereby ensuring it wouldn't respawn in her bag in an hour (much to the DM's chagrin, I might add).

The ladies continued to explore the cave, finding a massive cavern whose walls and ceilings were studded with minerals that looked like the starry night sky. Two buildings, both mostly left intact by the massive battle that occurred here hundreds of years ago, sat amongst the remains of the dead--and a few still mobile undead. The zombies they'd chased from the other room now turned and attacked, making little progress as our intrepid heroines quickly cut them down, with Bergamot's daggers slicing through undead flesh like butter.

But unbeknownst to anyone, a Gelatinous Cube was waiting, quiveringly, in the wings, and as soon as it came close enough, attempted to engulf Steady. Luckily for the gnome, she managed to duck out of its way, and the battle was on. Again and again, the cube tried to eat our heroines, and again and again, they managed to dodge its clumsy attempts. It did manage to do some damage with its pseudopod, but before anyone came to much harm, the cube was reduced to a quivering mass of lifeless jelly on the cave floor. (Sad!)

Knowing Rodwen's Bless spell would soon wear off, the party rushed toward the nearest room, where a still-raging Kharris threw the doors open and sprinted inside, swinging her greataxe at the floating eyeball inside. Adrenaline still pumping from the encounter with the Cube and the zombies, the ladies destroyed the small Beholderkin, and watched as its body disappeared upon its death, presumably returning to its home dimension.

Now that the room was unguarded, they took stock of where they were. In the center of the room sat a brazier of green, magical flame, which Steady, Raina, and Callie quickly identified as the Forge of Spells--the heart of this once bustling mine and the reason the orcs attacked all those centuries ago. On a side table, they found the last two items the dwarves enchanted before the end: a breastplate with a gold dragon worked into the front, and a greataxe with a macabre scene of slaughter engraved into its blade. Kharris quickly claimed the axe, which she renamed Cleavage (of course she did), and after a quick conference, the party decided the armor would go to Steady. The group also put their non-magical weapons and armor into the green flame, rendering them magical (+1) for 4 hours.

Deciding that they were safe for the moment, the party took a short rest to heal up and prepare for what awaited them in the remainder of the mine.

Join us next time for Raiders of the Lost Mine or The Cure for Arachnophobia!!

XP awards: 1000xp each

@rescuemepotts @freaoscanlin @screaming-towards-apotheosis @bowtogeneralkenobi @blackestglass @podficcerbynight

[your-dungeon-is-problematic]

Have you considered doing analysis on more recent material from D&D, like 5e? I'd be very interested to see your take on the stuff in Volo's Guide to Monsters.

Alright I know this is a question from like six months ago at this point but it’s something I wanna bring up, is that like, I’ll get to stuff that isn’t AD&D in a nebulous “eventually” kind of way. Like, due to college and other life shit going on (which is the reason posts on this blog can be so, *ahem*, sporadic) a lot of my non-AD&D books are several hundred miles away, so it wouldn’t happen until at least I get those back. Like, there’s a bunch of 3.5 stuff I really wanna cover, at some point in time, including/especially the Player’s Handbook, where half-orcs are literally the only player race that gets a net -2 to their stat spread, whereas everyone else is at a net 0. Like 3.5 at least seemed to know a little more about what it was doing in terms of realizing that maybe not every single orc is irredeemably evil, from birth, but the farther we get away from it the more the cracks show, as with AD&D. Like, there’s a whole splatbook in 3.5 about playing monstrous humanoids, which was in many regards a step in the right direction, and in many others, not, because in most respects the rules for playing monsters sucked because of empty “monster” levels that were supposedly to balance the “hideous” power of playing, say, a bugbear, or a minotaur.

In fact I’d have to work out how to make it work in my formatting, and not make it take literal days to read, but I’d like at some point to make articles about some AD&D splatbooks, too. Maybe be like an overview with the excerpts being the “best hits”, so to speak? I dunno. Maybe break them up into groups, or chapters. I still need to consider it. The Book of Humanoids, from AD&D, at least, has a roughly similar entry style compared to the Monstrous Manual, so that at least should be pretty easy to get that ball rolling.And say what you will about 4th edition, I thought the removal of negative racial stats was a good idea, because it made certain races more optimal for this role or that, while not making them totally unusable in any other role, just merely sub-optimal. Though honestly I will admit the very heavy combat focus of 4E kind of makes analyzing its fluff a little bit of a losing proposition, in my opinion? Like I remember looking through some 4E Monster Manuals and being like “??? This is just stat blocks”, with maybe a token paragraph, or somesuch.Though I liked how they provided player stats for a handful of monsters in the back of every monster manual, if you wanted to be a bullywug, or a gnoll, or what-have-you.

Now, 5th Edition, from everything that I have seen, read, and just within the last couple of weeks personally experienced, is really, really good.…Like I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to analyze a lot of the fluff, I don’t have many 5E books, but as a game it’s really tightly designed and has a whole lot to offer in terms of like, player customization and choice, and making every class feel like they’re doing something useful within their role, and not having as bad a time power balancing the wizards versus everyone else as compared to 3.5, especially, and without having to resort to the “everyone has kinda-sorta magic” solution of 4E. It feels like it’s simplified without being dumbed down? And I just, like it a lot, already, and I haven’t even done much in it. Like, the classes, the archetypes, I think it’s really cool. And they do have playable minotaurs, even, thanks to a PDF off the Wizards of the Coast website. …They’re Dragonlance minotaurs, but flavor can be mucked around with, when you’re a DM. It’s liberating that way. As for Volo’s, I haven’t read it myself, but I have a friend who has, and he’s told me I’ll especially want to take a good long look at its take on kobolds, which, I’ve heard, suuuuuuuuuucks.Like, they get a whole mechanic based on groveling like sniveling cowards?? A racial mechanic?? So any/all kobold PCs could do this??I mean, minotaurs always having a melee weapon available on account of the horns, that makes sense, because unless they’ve been cut the hell off, every minotaur’s going to have horns to headbutt people with, right? I mean, in theory a minotaur could be born naturally hornless, like polled cattle in real life, but I digress; the whole point about a racial ability is that it should be something universal, that anybody of the species has the capacity to do, usually based on an integral physical trait, like the dragonborn and their breath weapons, or the half-orcs and their ability to go down swinging because of their adrenaline, or whatever it is. But groveling and cowardice?? For shame, Volo. That’s some anti-kobold libel. You’d better hire a top-notch barrister, Volo, because whatever international organization for kobold civil rights exists in your setting is going to be breathing down your throat any minute now.Of course, if it’s Forgotten Realms, like a lot of 5e fluff seems to be almost implicitly, then he might get off scott free, but, er…

Uh, but yeah, stuff that ain’t AD&D is coming, eventually.I suppose it’s that AD&D stuff is almost like, low-hanging fruit? Like it talks so matter-of-factly and cut-and-dry with no room for nuance about a lot of these races that of course they don’t stand up to even the barest of scrutiny. :P…Although come to think of it, I could at some point do a little analysis of the 5E playable minotaur, like I did with the 5E aarakocra, and see how I like their fluff.Which I suppose would just devolve into a review of the Dragonlance setting’s interpretation of the minotaur, since that’s what the 5E minotaur explicitly is? But…?Eh. Centaur article should be along pretty quick, by the way. ^^I totally wasn’t inspired to do it because Orisa came out in Overwatch, or anything.