#g:pirates

[highchalowwis]

sometimes your ship sinks and a part of it appears magically as a raft and mysterious currents guide you to an island where the anti-magic people are doing their research and what are you supposed to do, say no when they offer you a bed?

[highchalowwis]

pirates time tonight here are lyrics from the mountain goats songs on my cas playlist

autoclave: because it is easier to be empty than emotional

[Image description: A screenshot of lyrics from Autoclave by The Mountain Goats: “[Verse 2]: / When I try to open up to you I get completely lost / Houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost / And I reach down deep within, but the pathways twist and turn / And there’s no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn / [Chorus]: / And I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam / And no emotion that’s worth having could call my heart its home / My heart’s an autoclave / My heart’s an autoclave (x2) / [Verse 3]: / I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls / On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and screeching seagulls / And the dream went on forever, one single static frame / Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” End ID.]

birth of serpents: because how you are raised doesn’t have to become who you are

[Image Description: A screenshot of lyrics from Birth of Serpents by The Mountain Goats: “See that young man who dwells inside his body like an uninvited guest / See the tunnel twist / Clutch your birthright in your fist / Let the camera do its dirty work down there in the dark / Sink low, rise high / Bring back some blurry pictures to remember all your darker moments by / Permanent bruises on our knees / Never forget what it feels like to live in rooms like these.” End ID.]

clemency for the wizard king: because we’re in Fucking Jail

[Image description: A screenshot of lyrics from Clemency for the Wizard King by The Mountain Goats: “[Refrain]: / Cut loose the handcuffs / Let him go free / [Verse 3]: / We who travel by starlight / We who slip by your guards in the night / We come before you now / We come before you now / [Bridge]: We who boldly lay claim to our own / We who’ve seen the chamber of the one true throne / [Verse 4]: / We who’ve seen the kindness of the cracks in his face / We who will die if we must in his place.” End ID.]

[highchalowwis]

yes it’s been two weeks yes i’m still thinking about the crew, wet and bedraggled and injured, trying to figure out what to do on this island that shouldn’t exist, seeing exterminator guards walking towards them over the hill, our hands going up on instinct, a second away from readying spells when someone - jettie? - whispers “they don’t know we can do magic”, thinking about cas’s hands clenching into fists as if she’s only ever punched people, abt devo reaching for her sword instead of within herself, about that little shift in behavior and movement before they get there and start questioning us, the nanoseconds we had to make that realization and that call-

[highchalowwis]

2 and 8 for cas!

2. already answered!

8.  What’s one weird personal headcanon you have for the character that’s not addressed or that you haven’t found a way to share yet?

i don’t have many? i think cas is the biggest cheat at cards and i’ve been trying to get us to play for like nine years but i think she started playing at fancy balls and stuff to avoid dancing with other noble kids and her older brothers’ friends let her play because she was pretty and then got distracted by her little batting eyelashes and didn’t notice her cheating her ass off. they claim they let her win but it’s not true. she lets them think that because otherwise she’d have to admit she was counting cards like a goddamn mathematician. she was 18 cha and 15 int and she used it to her advantage baby. 

[highchalowwis]

5, 7 and 9 for cas!!

5  What was the first time you really connected to this character, if ever? Why do you think this moment made the character special to you?

hannah asked this too but another moment for this one was when the guards spotted us - we all rolled super low perception and the first warning of it we had was them being literally behind us and cas, on instinct, casting invisibility in the middle of the market was so stupid but also i was like. yeah this is what she’d do. she doesn’t deal with problems she just hopes they go away or hopes she can go away. it’s the figuring out how they deal with conflict of it all. and then later in the prison with devo and luca not telling them what was actually really going on because she felt really guilty and scared and just. holding devo’s hand for a little bit because she is still just a kid (i say, about a 20 year old, at 19 years old myself). and it was more she was digging her nails into her palm rather than talk about it and the only way she could think of to stop doing that was to hold someone else’s hand because she wouldn’t hurt them. it’s so easy to play characters when they’re just flirting w people at a bar or in combat that doesn’t have emotional stake but man. the past coming back to haunt you do make you think.

7.  Did you ever rewrite/revise their backstory during the campaign? How much of a change was it? How much do you think the DM cried, and how sorry do you feel for their tears?

i don’t think i’ve revised anything so much as i’ve just fleshed stuff out? because with the tulas “arc” being first we got to the island and i was immediately like “huh i need to figure out what cas’s family is really like etc” and so then mac and i spent a while talking about her sisters and the country and cas and amias which was delightful. it didn’t change much (except the one thing that i talked about in coggers a bit) but it did make it easier for me to just say shit which i love doing. i doubt mac cried and if they did, whoops.

9.  What are your character’s relationships like with every member of their party? Bonus, if you want to write a short blurb on your character’s opinion of them.

ah delightful! they simply don’t know each other yet but that’s okay:

sera: cas has forbidden older sister emotions about sera but it’s Fine it’s just a LOT for her sometimes. she thinks she’s very sweet and delightful and is a little scared of her because she seems incredibly powerful without knowing it.

jettie: cas has less forbidden older sister emotions about jettie. she admires her strength and her resolve and is mostly still confused about what’s going on there but she also trusts jettie with her entire being to either beat some fuckers up or reveal something crazy like wings to save their asses (jettie uses an ability she hasn’t before and cas just goes. you know those days when you’re like. this might as well happen. adult life is already so goddamn weird)

fin: cas is legitimately so awed by fin because she knows SHIT about her and thinks she’s fucking cool as hell. also right now cas probably thinks fin’s magic comes from somewhere mysterious and unknown too which it does but not in that way. also. fin’s been to JAIL?!

devo: literally. yeah. cas has forbidden emotions about devo too in the opposite direction and needs to ask her like nine thousand questions once we’re done with this battle but cas would literally fight with devo til the end of the earth it’s just how it be.

bonus round luca: cas loves him and thinks he’s fucking hilarious and is constantly worried for his well being. amias: cas still likes him but jesus christ man get your act together no sleepovers for a while we both need to be healthy human beings (elven/infernal beings, whatever)

overall: cas is starting to like. trust the party to have her back and trust herself to have theirs and it’s nice :]

[highchalowwis]

actually, listening to a party member’s playlist and live reacting to their player in dms with just sad emojis or the song title whenever a new song comes on IS self care

[highchalowwis]

cressophiliel aeronwen seadweller but as lyrics from daisy the great’s i’m not getting any taller:

“dips” mostly for the ocean imagery a little bit for knowing this moment of closeness to someone can’t last forever but screw it, let’s swim

[ID: A screenshot of lyrics from “Dips” by Daisy the Great: “The current under us is busy tugging at our feet / We’re floating breezy / [Pre-Chorus] / Out to sea / Come with me, me, me, me, me / [Chorus] / There’s salt on my lips / Your hands on my hips / And I’m taking sips from the ocean / I keep kissing the sweet in your lips / The salt at your hips / And you’re taking dips in the water / [Bridge] / My fingertips are turning into raisins / And too much sugar makes you sick / But for now, let’s take a dip.”

“seasoned” for faking it so well that even you start to believe the things you’re saying

[ID: A screenshot of lyrics from “Seasoned” by Daisy the Great: “Everybody’s laughing at you / Everyone thinks what you say is stupid / [Chorus] / Seasoned words of the wise one / Plucked out of the crowd of / Desperate fish in a big pond / Pretending to be proud and / Trying to say something important / Blah blah blah blah blah b-blah-blah / Everybody knows it’s nothing more than talk / Nonsense, you are / Nonsense, you are / [Bridge] / Making it up as you go along, you are / Making it up as you go along, you are.”

“company” for being surrounded by people telling you who you are and going along with it because at least you have people

[ID: A screenshot of lyrics from “Company” by Daisy the Great: “[Verse 1] / Tracking the time / Inspecting the air / Hopelessly searching for something you care about / There, about to ask you / [Pre-Chorus] / Who do you wanna be? / What are you doing here? / Are you living a lie here? / What if you grow old and die here? / [Chorus] / Eyes riddled with lies / Telling you why you’re alive / If I liked being alone / Maybe I’d have some thoughts of my own.”

“specimen” because you are built by other people, and your body is an object

[ID: A screenshot of lyrics from “Specimen” by Daisy the Great: “She is made of starlight and she does not understand / Why Mama said she can’t be in the marching band / [Chorus] / Knuckles bruised, blood runs white / Rap on the glass, you’re a specimen / [Verse 2] / Every damn night she’s lying / She’s got no love, they all say she’s a fake / Water will rust up her pipe’s [sic], recycled from the factory / And she’s never shed a real tear, no she’s just an actor / [Pre-Chorus] / She keeps her mind locked up tight / She wears the keys on a chain / She won’t speak a word, don’t bother asking her name.”

[highchalowwis]

just kidding no pirates time tonight because of a power outage have some devo theories: (devo being the party member in jail with cas currently and also the best fucking character in pirates right behind her not-dead brother)

is devo a criminal? is devo’s soul sold to trita? i know where devo’s soul is but is luca trita? does devo have a biological brother? is luca technically her biological brother but in a different body a la reincarnation shenanigans? (he rolled for a human on the reincarnation table boring!) why won’t devo leave cas in jail? (this is of course appreciated but questionable) when will devo and cas like. tell each other the truth?

[highchalowwis]

if you’re not one of the ten people who get yelled at about pirates weekly, here’s the rundown: the campaign itself is centered around a group of pirates, all of whom practice magic in a slightly anti-magic world, being hired to break a political figure from a pro-magic island out of prison on a very anti-magic island. it started that way, anyways,

three months in and my character, cas, was arrested upon return to her home country and it was revealed to the rest of the party that she ran away from an arranged marriage to the prince and now she, another pc devo (a mastermind hot gay druid), devo’s brother luca (an npc fighter who’s also dead), and recently amias (captain of the boat we are on, tiefling bard, cas’s sometimes friend with benefits and recent fake husband) are all awaiting the marriage after some shenanigans involving a fake marriage, lying about wanting to get married, and stealing a dog (to be fair, that was the other half of the party).

currently, the most viable escape plan is for devo to wildshape into something small, sneak into the heavily guarded tower where cas is being kept in preparation for her upcoming nuptials, stage a kidnapping with a mixture of a ransom note, blood, and invisibility, and the two of them then hide in the harbor because they can both just breathe underwater.

that’s the Most Viable Plan

[highchalowwis]

pirates update: we’re fighting a kraken but it’s fine it’s been “modified” (we’re level five and we don’t know what modified means). half of us are in the water off the boat, one of us just landed a nat 20 acrobatics to not die, and both clerics are at under 15 hp. the ship is falling apart but that’s not a problem right now so it’s not a problem yet. i got some bad lore but i’m at full hp (35) so it’s fine it’s all fine

[highchalowwis]

2 and 5 for cas :]

2.  When you were creating this character, what was their original draft? Are they the same character you intended to make?

i think she’s stayed mostly the same? the very first idea i had for this campaign was actually a martial character of some sort because I was sick of spellcasters but then we decided to go oops! all magic! and i decided sorcerer was fun, and i liked the flavor of UA sea for pirates but also i think wild magic surges are just fun (the threshold is now up to 8 which is just delightful and worrying). my original thought once i settled on sorcerer was definitely “elven nobility, running away from something” and mac and I worked out that it was an arranged marriage because I love cliches. i think she was going to be a bit more childish and naive at first, kind of playacting at adulthood, and she did start that way but the whole Tulas thing made her grow up a bit.  

5.  What was the first time you really connected to this character, if ever? Why do you think this moment made the character special to you?

oh man. there were a couple i think and i’ll do one now and one later - the first time amias mentioned going to tulas i had to do some brain thinking of how to get to tulas without wanting to get to tulas, and basically all of cas being pissed at amias and feeling betrayed but not being able to talk about it with the others because of secrets and understanding that this had to happen and hoping (naively!) that it would just somehow be okay was very fun to play and i liked getting to justify her being a little bit of a brat for a while because it solidified her as a character with real flaws that aren’t just “oh she’s childish sometimes” - it was like she doesn’t deal with anger well and doesn’t talk about it but just. retreats into herself and sulks in her room or in the captain’s quarters for a couple of days and then does something stupid like run away from a wedding or run back into the town where she’s wanted. i am not articulating this well but seeing what your character is like when they’re upset in a valid but not valid way is very fun and made me love playing her

[highchalowwis]

shoutout to pirates for the most fun rp.... in one session we get amias out of context “i didn’t think it was THAT bad of a story” and ALSO devo/cas “you didn’t deserve that to try to save her” “i didn’t do it for her, i did it for you”

[highchalowwis]

cas 8 and 20 🥺

8. how does the sunrise make them feel?

ohh she Loves the sunrise. i think she's normally. like up with the sun? or at least early bc elf trance so she goes to bed like three hours after people and gets up like an hour before them if we're talking eight hour sleep so she likes being up early and alone and watching the sunrise because it's like. new day baby and it's nice to have that moment of silence. also you've heard my cas moon [redacted] sun discussion so. yeah :]

20. what did they dream of "growing up" to be?

i don’t know that she. dreamed of this but she definitely from a young age was like i’m going to be involved in elven nobility and politics for the rest of my life. she didn’t like desire it but she was like guess i’ll be a trophy wife! or something! bc she never would assume she was smart enough to be the politician herself, that’s ara’s job, she’s the pretty one. i think she would be like “idk it’d be nice to visit other places” so. traveler. which she. technically. Technically. is

[highchalowwis]

cas 17

17. how do they feel about snow?

oh i. don't know the climes of skara islands but i feel like. cas has never seen snow in real life and ADORES it in her mind and is like the Vibes the Aesthetic the Shiny Stuff From Sky and in actuality would hate it and be freezing and NOT dress for the weather but if you're hot you're not cold so she doesn't admit she's cold <3 will admire it from a distance but does not actually wish to be in it (would definitely engage in a snowball fight though. very pro snowball fights in theory and in practice especially against amias,)