#goddamn druids

[obsidiinium]

Chapter 5: One Endless Darkness

Part 4

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Lilli and Zythraul both stare at the ground until Athalos speaks again.

“Okay. Here. For some reason, any mention of the name of the diety being worshipped has been stripped from this book but Gods of the Underdark, their cults and their followers says something about foci much like this one, stating that they gave them a direct coonnection to their god. They were everywhere for a while until something happened and the god’s name was struck from known existence; all record of him vanished, and the artefacts dissapeared. Something about… rampant madness and violence.”

“Not my fault. So they went a little mad. I didn’t think madness in the mortal races would result in extreme violence. I just thought it would be funny.” Zotrym mumbles from the chair.

“I’m sorry, what?” Lilli responds, looking directly at Zotrym now, who just grins. Athalos responds.

“Were you not listening? Some diety-”

“Yes… Yes, I heard. Sorry.”

“Does it say what this god’s followers were trying to achieve? Some sort of master plan?” Zythraul asks, looking queriously at Lilli as they do. Athalos shakes his head.

“It doesn’t say, but one would imagine the same as most divine worshippers. More followers equals a more powerful god. Who knows what plans the gods have amongst themselves?” He closes the book.

“Colour me intrigued. I will bring up this portal and focus to my superiors and see if we can’t send someone to investigate it. I would warn you two off getting further into trouble but you adventurers just can’t seem to help yourselves. If you find anything new be sure to stop by and let me know. If I find anything I will return the favour.” Athalos motions towards his door. The two adventurers take their leave, appearing at the gates again as they walk out the door to Athalos’ study.

They walk down the road in silence for a moment before Zythraul says.

“The temple. They will have someone who can disconnect that thing from you. C'mon; the quicker we can get it away from us the better.”

“But we were just getting to know each other!” Whines Zotrym from behind Lilli.

“Actually Zythraul, I dunno…” Zythraul stops and raises their eyebrows at Lilli, who continues.

“If I unattune from it, won’t someone else just want to instead? I’ll be fine. We can keep it out of the wrong hands while we investigate some more.”

“Did you not listen to Athalos? Hallucinations, amnesia, madness? Potentially resulting in extreme violence?” They take a step towards lilli. “I can't let that happen to you. Let's just get rid of it and make it someone else’s problem.” Zythraul turns and starts to walk away.

“Doesn’t your oath have something to say about causing other people harm through your own inaction?” Lilli says, stopping in the middle of the road. Zythraul also stops, sighs, and hangs their head without turning around.

“Oohf. that was a deep cut.” Zotrym remarks. Lilli remains standing in the middle of the road, arms folded.

“If we get rid of this, and someone else uses it to cause harm to others then it will not only still be our problem but also our fault.” She walks up to Zythraul, “I trust in your ability to protect me and I know you’d be eaten up from guilt if we did something that caused more people harm.”

Zythraul turns to Lilli, looking at her softly.

“You never make it easy for me do you?” They sigh. “You’re right; You’re right! You usually are anyway.” Lilli shrugs and winks.

“You get it.”

“Fine, so we continue investigating. Where? Do we go down the portal before the wizards get there? We do have some more spots the feebleminded people were turning up that Galodir suggested.”

‘I might make your life harder but I am certainly not jumping down any mystery portals today. Let's go check out one of these other spots.” Zythraul nods and motions for Lilli to lead the way. They head for another of the marked mentioned in the notes given to them by Galodir.

They make it through Neverwinter, back towards the lower class section. Their notes take them to the entrance of the Neverdeath Graveyard.

“Well this is a bit on the nose isn’t it?” Remarks Lilli as they walk up to the entrance. Walking in, they see a few people walking in solemn contemplation through the graves. Up the hill, a small crowd loiter around a larger mausoleum.

“That must be where Neverember’s going to be buried.” Mutters Lilli. Zythraul nods. They both look around for clues but nothing jumps out. Zythraul closes their eyes and lets their holy senses stray out of them; nothing of note appears. No holy or unholy influences to be had nearby.

“Nothing seems off from here. Shall we go take a look around?” Zythraul opens their eyes and starts to walk inside. Up the path a bit, lilli stops.

“oh, heck yeah!” and she bends down to pick something up. Zythraul turns to see a single platinum coin on the ground. As lilli goes to pick it up however, She can'tt. It dissapears as her hand goes through the illusion.

"Oh what the…” the ground begins to rumble around them. Before either of them have time to react, plant roots erupt from the ground and immediately wind themselves around Lilli, slamming Zythraul to the ground and enveloping the paladin completely.

“Hey! Argh! Hey! Help!” Lilli manages to shout towards the crowd. The crowd feels the rumble and at the sound of Lilli’s voice, look over. Seeing the plants roiling up from the ground is enough to spook them, and they all scatter in various directions. Lilli tried to escape but the roots keep her wound up. She can just see Zythraul’s form writhing under the roots but can’t see their face. A voice booms across the park.

“STOP RESISTING.” Lilli sees the vines encircling Zythraul stop moving. From where the voice came Lilli sees two forms emerge. They walk towards the vines seething across the ground. Lilli finds a spot where the vines loosen and manages to wiggle free of them. She dashes forwards, yelling “release them!” One of the people, a half-elf holding a gnarled wooden staff, cocks their head at Lilli and says “No, I don’t think I will.” There is an angry growl from under the vines where Zythraul is, but they seem unable to free themselves. The other, hooded and holding a slender wooden staff says,

‘You will come with us.” Lilli goes to argue against an obviously terrible idea but instead out of her mouth, she hears,

“Okay. Sure.”

[deathlywounded]

May the Dark Lord help me braining this size difference.

160 cm / 210 cm

[curse-of-dming-strahd]

because the party heard that the Baron's trying to find a suitor for his son, they've been very concerned that he's going to try to push Ireena into marrying Victor they've also been carrying a dirty hippy druid named Jim around in a backpack (it's a whole thing) and one of them joked they should just clean up Jim and present him as a suitor instead and lord help me, it took all my strength to not entirely derail the campaign RIGHT THERE AND THEN and spin up a whole subquest to turn this grubby perma-baked wild druid into Barovia's Most Eligible Bachelor

[druidshollow]

accidentally kills olimars dog during a fun carefree dandori battle (she was fine)

[palidoozy-art]

A random assortment of art! I've been drawing intermittently lol now that I have more time.

Kjosev's technical 'dinosaur' form. I went with a design similar of a 3e catoblepas because I've always liked this design. But, y'know, fucked up.

A more recent group picture of the party because we were talking about heights

An image I'm working on of Tereza and Florette (because one of them is probably going to die soon)

Sprites of Kjosev's dragon form. I made all the elements he can turn into with a different sprite, but most of them just have the moss/green recolored. The only two starkly different ones are the spirit-damage dragon and the mental-damage dragon, so I've included those.

[lunarifie]

Just just just Mudd being very reclused and somewhat introverted and HIM being the one to be drawn to Bart and reach out to him in the beginning, because Bart’s just a very warm and welcoming presence, and he makes everyone feel comfortable, and and and and and

[loki-is-tired]

I have two hyperfixations that are pretty connected. Like, I see something that reminds me of one of them, which then flares that back up into an obsession, and then I fall into the other one again.

This doesn't seem that weird, but then I explain that it's Pathologic and Mystery of the Druids and suddenly people don't get it anymore.

It's because I was introduced to both of them by my older sibling through video essays very soon after each other and I rewatch the video essays one after the other pretty often?

Anyway, point is Tumblr keeps recommending me more Mystery of the Druids posts and I keep getting kicked back down the hole of hyperfixation.

And now I'm trying not to reference either of the games just in typing this lmaoooo

[crickwater]

I don't know if this is a hot take but halsin is hands down the worst companion and that could be easily solved by having him join you at the beginning of act 2 and giving him literally anything to do in act 3 except hit on you

[catbirdstations]

how it feels being a fan of characters that people say stupid nothingburger shit about and then tag it with their full chest

[magic-multicolored-miracle]

One good thing about this character, Evasion feat and a +7 Dex Save means that while all of her very magical party are throwing AoE spells at the large groups of enemies surrounding me because I have once again thrown myself into the center of battle (since all I can do is stab real good) I can just shrug them off and walk out of fireballs more or less unscathed.

Which honestly makes a really cool image.

[druidshollow]

the rivers post is Absolutely going to need to be two separate posts btw, mostly likely one for pre mass ascension and one for post mass ascension (im hoping one will be enough for post mass ascension - 30 image limit sucks so hard. cowards. make it 50. im just about halfway done the first post and ive used 14 images already. i was at 18 but i downsized)

[demonsthenes13-blog]

[celemee]

I just wanted to chill tonight but ended up doing so many M+ instead. Oops.

[unholyfudgebiscuits]

Protective Stiles

Give me unhinged Stiles. All human, full confidence, protective as fuck Stiles.

I want Stiles' name to be broadcasted on Nemeton weekly as the pack guardian. Not Emissary, not Protector Druid, just full, no holds barred— willing to die, happy to kill, will gut you like a fish if you touch my beta's and or alphas—Stiles.

Isaac and Stiles are bullshitting one day when Isaac says his "I spent my childhood locked in a freezer. How would I know how to be helpful?" And Stiles rolls his eyes.

"You can't use that every time Isaac." It's unfortunate that Aiden is walking passed them at that moment and he glares at the beta.

"It's where you belonged mutt." The twin hisses and Stiles is out of his seat so fast Scott doesn't have time to grab him. Cause sure, Stiles can't beat up Aiden but the werewolf can't heal his vision back if he's missing a goddamn eyeball. And it takes both Scott and Boyd to pull Stiles away before he stabs him in the face with a newly fashioned, mountain ash pencil.

Some new supernatural cat girl has been stalking Allison for weeks. Stiles at first tries to reason with her, tells her she's under Alpha McCalls protection and though she's a hunter Allison will leave her alone as long as she behaves. But Cat Girl won't have any of it and when she threatens to scalp Allison's 'pretty little head' Stiles runs her over with the jeep.

A werewolf with knowledge of the Hale pack comes back to town one day and is relentlessly harassing Derek. He blames him for the fire and Stiles happens to be out at the preserve when he hears the asshole talking about Kate. "Admit it Hale, you're glad they died! Selling your family out for one hard rut. Or did she make you the bitch?"

Neither notice Stiles and his metal bat wrapped in barbed wire and dipped in wolfsbane until he's on the guy. Derek watches in awestruck horror as Stiles beats the crap out of him. Human Stiles covered in blood and panting as he stands over the unconscious omega. He spits on the guy before turning to Derek and the alpha is both utterly terrified and completely turned on when narrowed and angry eyes look to him with concern and gentleness.

"Please don't listen to him Der. None of it was your fault."

Alpha Ito makes it her mission to warn any new supernatural travelers that Beacon Hills is protected by two packs and one human. "You may speak freely with Alpha Hale or Alpha McCall if there is a problem but I implore you, do not insult the fox."

[thedragonagelesbian]

The real wizard hubris is thinking you can throw together a mid/high level wizard sheet quickly

[deathlywounded]

“The Bear and the mushroom shepherd ram —Chapter 1

Some time ago I made a comic about how Rev and Halsin met. Since Rev is my only non-durge character I decided to make a backstory for him. This was their first meeting, Halsin had been researching the mind flayer infection for some time and his messengers told him about a mysterious hermit living in the heart of the mountain, maybe he might know something, maybe he could have something to do with it? Halsin was kidnapped by the goblin camp not long after he started frequenting him, so in this playthrough rescuing him was one of the first things Revna did after arriving at the grove and hearing about the Archdruid's kidnapping.

Rev (them/he) is a spore Druid/urchin wood elf (my favorite kind of Druid) they have horns due to spending the last years of their life living in isolation away from civilization, adopting the likeness of goats and cervines in the heart of the forested mountains. Such is their love for these animals they decided to keep the horns and the singularly colored eyes (also, they miss the weight on their head when not wearing them) Decided to make them a genderless beast because, hear me out, a shapeshifter being connected to nature n’ living away from human costumes studying fungal behavior. What would a being like that need a damn gender for? Nothing, the answer is nothing.

I shared it in parts but now I want it to be easier to read and uninterrupted by goddamn ads. I’ll be doing the same with all the comics I shared like this.