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roguishcat · 1 month

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Augustarion Day 6 - Cream

Pairing: the reader (You) x Astarion

Tags: just silliness and fluff

Word count: 2.3k

Excerpt: “Oh, goodie! Someone in need of a rescue,” Astarion whined and threw his arms up dramatically. “What is it with people falling over themselves to get into trouble just so we can play hero time and time again! Let’s just go,” he said with an air of an overtired toddler.

A/N If you want to be on the tag list, feel free to send me a message or leave a comment. ❤️

Day 1 - 🍓, Day 2 - 🌊, Day 4 - Mythologies, Day 7 - Underwear, Day 14 - Protective, Day 15 - Shirt that goes hard

It started with you craving some pastries. The four of you were making your way through the city when you caught a whiff of something sweet, delicious and so very tempting. You kept on walking at first, because you were on a budget and new armour for Karlach was more important than letting your sweet tooth dictate your purchases. But then your stomach made itself known, to your embarrassment.

Gale smiled and pointed in the direction of the bakery. “Seeing as we are nowhere near Elfsong, how about indulging in some baked goods? I, for one, wouldn’t mind having a sweet butter bun or two.”

Well, that was a different matter entirely! If it wasn’t a senseless purchase but rather something to improve morale, who were you to refuse?

“And I find your blood tastes just a little sweeter if you enjoy yourself, dear,” Astarion whispered into your ear.

“Oooh, I’ve heard about this place!” Karlach pushed the door open, “it’s meant to have the meanest, best damn apple pie in the city!”

Looking around, you wondered why Karlach was excited about the place. The bakery looked like any ordinary bakery except for one detail. It seemed to be suspiciously empty of any people. You listened carefully. There was shouting and thumping coming from the direction of the kitchen. Something seemed off.

“Oh, goodie! Someone in need of a rescue,” Astarion whined and threw his arms up dramatically. “What is it with people falling over themselves to get into trouble just so we can play hero time and time again! Let’s just go,” he said with an air of an overtired toddler.

“We can’t leave!” you frowned, bow at the ready as you took a step in the direction of the commotion, “they might need help!”

“Well, then some other do-gooder is welcome to come by and- hey!”

Ignoring Astarion’s protests, you burst through the kitchen door, the rest following close behind, to be greeted with a most peculiar sight.

Kobolds pranced around the kitchen to the dismay of the baker and a woman who appeared to be his spouse, the latter’s face almost puce as she shouted at the wretched creatures to leave. The kobolds seemed to think that her shouts and the weak, spluttering spells aimed at them were a nice accompaniment to their meal. They mostly ignored the couple and seemed to be quite content to gorge themselves on the pastries and cakes and, cream, cream, cream and more cream! What did not get eaten got carelessly thrown at the floor, the walls and the owners. There was a great big glop of custard on the baker’s cheek and his wife almost slipped in the puddle of jam on the floor.

Astarion doubled over in laughter.

“Oh, this was not what I expected to see but I definitely needed this!”

“Oh hush,” you admonished him, feeling your own lips twitch as you fought a smile. “We have to help them.”

“The kobolds?”

You gave him a deadpan look.

“Right, so how should we go about this one, soldier?” Karlach shouldered her axe with a frown, “can hardly use most of my attacks.”

“Yes, in such close quarters and with this much flour in the air, a single spark will set off an explosion. Most magic might prove too destructive. I doubt that us destroying the building in an effort to drive the kobolds out will be received with thanks,” Gale frowned.

“Perhaps we could try to reason with them?” you suggested weakly. The idea was not without its merit. You did have a somewhat successful chat with the kobold at the Circus of the Last Days.

“Are you proposing to hold a conversation with these base creatures? Oh, I have to see this,” Astarion grinned, giving you a shallow mocking bow and motioning for you to proceed with the entertainment.

That bastard. Sometimes you could not believe that you let him get away with being such an ass.

You cleared your throat loudly, which garnered no reaction from both the battling parties. It took Gale briefly casting a Silence spell on the kobolds for them to realise that you and your companions were even in the kitchen. All inhuman senseless eyes turned to you as the creatures adjusted their stances, clearly seeing your group as a bigger threat than the baker and his wife.

“Right. Can somebody please tell me what is going on?” you motioned at the destruction.

“We give money for treatos!” kobolds screeched, each wanting to be the first to complain.

“One gold piece! It was not enough for all the buns that they demanded from us!” the baker protested loudly.

“You give no treatos, so we take treatos!”

“Oh, and just look at all the damage that you have done!” the baker’s wife lamented, wringing her hands and being quite understandably upset.

“Next time, you remember to give treatos. We give money!” the kobolds defended themselves, tongues flicking out of their mouths, shaking their scaly fists as they shouted about the great injustice that was committed against them.

“So how are you planning to defuse this one, darling?” Astarion leaned closer to you.

“Enjoying yourself, are you?”

“Very much.”

“Any chance you might want to contribute to the conversation?”

“When you are doing so splendidly? I don’t think so.”

The kobolds seemed to have decided that you were not on their side and started gathering whatever buns and cakes that were not destroyed. Their ammunition in their hands, they attacked in quick succession. Karlach and Gale were fortunately out of their range, but you and Astarion found yourself swiftly covered in jam, and cream, and sticky dough. Astarion roughly pulled you down behind an overturned table, the second barrage missing you by an inch as you dropped to the floor.

“Argh, just look at me! Will the horrors never cease!” Astarion flicked a flaky piece off his shoulder and into your face. “This is all your fault, you know! If only you did not have some kind of hero complex, we would have grabbed some cakes and been on our merry way. But noooo, we have to get involved!”

“Oh, shut it,” you hissed, “how could I have known this would happen?”

“Rule of thumb, if you see people in trouble, you walk away!”

“Astarion?”

“Yes?”

“You have jam in your curls.”

The look of pure horror on Astarion’s handsome face was just the revenge you needed.

“Gale! Slow spell!” you commanded, hoping he could still hear you over the cacophony of shrieks and cries.

“On it!”

You heard the incantation and dared peek from behind the table. The kobolds were still on the offensive, but their movements were sluggish, as if the air thickened and they had to fight against it.

“This is your last warning, you little rat bastards! Either you stop this, or we are going to turn your asses to stone and sell you to Popper!”

“Popper? You tell Popper? No tell Popper!”

Apparently, you mentioning the kobold from the Circus of the Last Days did the trick, as he was the law and order when it came to their community in the city. You rubbing shoulders with Popper, the best and the greatest of them all, was reason enough for the kobolds to regret their actions, renounce their fiendish ways, promise to never set foot near the bakery, and hastily make their way out of the kitchen.

Finally, there was silence. Complete blessed silence. Beautiful silence that lasted for a grand total of ten seconds before it was broken.

“Oh, these horrible creatures, I thought they would never leave!” the baker’s wife wiped her eyes as she tried and failed to hold back tears, “However can we thank you?”

“Coin always works best,” Astarion chose that moment to speak up.

“What coin?” the plump woman bawled pitifully, “we didn’t have the chance to sell anything!”

“Don’t worry about it,” you shot Astarion a look full of admonishment, “we were glad to help.”

“But of course we were,” Astarion rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest. “It was a pleasure to be of service,” he mocked and marched out of the room, muttering something derogatory under his breath.

The walk back to Elfsong was uncomfortable and silent. You were hungry, sticky and quite frankly not in the mood to entertain one of Astarion’s moods.

You knew that he was right, in a way. You didn’t have to help out everyone you came across on your journey. You could have looked the other way, turned a blind eye. But that wouldn’t be you. So, he would just have to deal with it!

You loved Astarion, faults and all. But if he berated you every time you chose to do a kind turn and made you feel small and stupid, then perhaps he shouldn’t have chosen to be in a relationship with you. Because you would do anything for Astarion, but you refused to change who you were on the off chance you would get a smidge of approval from him.

When you opened the door to your shared room at first there was complete silence. Everyone was trying and failing to keep a straight face as they looked at the damage done to you and Astarion.

“Oh, shut up!” Astarion shoved past Shadowheart, making sure to leave traces of cream and jam on her as he pushed her out of the way.

“I see you clearly fought a great, formidable foe today,” Lae’zel quipped sarcastically, “at least tell me that you were the victors.”

“Argh, so not in the mood to talk about it! Gale, could you do the talking, please? I just want to wash and sleep,” you grumbled and dropped your bow and arrows near the trunk. You could not wait to get out of your clothes and into a bath.

“Certainly, my friend,” Gale wanted to pat your shoulder, but then decided against it, not wanting to get whatever was on you onto himself.

It took several changes of water for you to scrub yourself clean. You were bone tired and prickly when you finally settled in, choosing to sleep alone rather than in the bed you and Astarion have been sharing pretty much ever since you started staying at Elfsong. You heard his annoyed huff from across the room and squeezed your eyes shut. If Astarion had a problem with your sleeping arrangements, he could shove his complaints in any orifice of his choosing. In spite of being worn out, it took hours of tossing and turning for you to finally drift off.

You were woken up by sunlight spilling into your eyes through the gap in the curtains. Rising and groggily rubbing your eyes, you noticed that your living quarters were empty, the others apparently deciding to let you sleep in and having gone out hours ago. You flopped back onto the bed and stretched out your sore muscles. Perhaps yesterday’s humiliating display was worth it if you were given the chance to have a lazy morning. But then you remembered your fight with Astarion, and your smile turned sour.

You heard the door open and shut as the subject of your musings came into the room. You quickly turned away and pretended to be resting, not really sure what to say to him. You felt the bed dip as he sat on the edge.

“Darling, I know that you are awake. Will you look at me, please? I come bearing treatos.”

And he did. He held a tray laden with butter buns, delicate little pastries, fruit tarts and an assortment of other mouthwatering, freshly baked delights.

“The baker sends his regards and says that you, as his favourite customer, can be assured to have a discount for life. So, dig in my sweet! I got you the coffee you like to go with it.”

You sat up and looked at your vampire, worrying your bottom lip with blunt teeth. Cautiously, as if not unsure whether you will accept the gesture, Astarion took your hand into his, bringing your fingers to his lips and kissing them gently.

“I think an apology is in order. I- I do get annoyed that you spend your energies on creatures who, quite frankly, don’t deserve you giving them a moment of your precious time. Someone odd and pathetic that you pick up on the roadside and decide their cause is worth fighting for.”

He put a cream puff onto a plate and handed it to you, long cool fingers brushing against yours. You took a tentative bite without breaking eye contact. It was lovely, not too sweet, delicious and flaky. Astarion brushed a speck off your lips with his thumb and cupped your cheek tenderly.

“But then I realised that at some point I too was an oddity that you chose not to leave behind. A creature who did not deserve your protection, just seeking to take advantage of your kind nature at the time. Recognising your worth and how truly wonderful you are as I got to know you.”

You felt something warm and pleasant bloom in your chest, Astarion’s words making your shoulders relax as you all but melted into his touch.

“So, no matter how aggravating you may be, and how you drive me up the wall with your selflessness, I do not want you to change. You are perfect in every way.”

And then you thew your arms around your vampire and kissed him, all the worries and troubles seeming insignificant as you got lost in each other’s touch. You felt Astarion release a shuddering breath against your lips as he deepened the kiss.

All was well in his world. You were his and he wanted you, faults and all. Even if that meant that he had to spend half the evening getting various foodstuffs out of his curls.

Tag list:

@ninty900, @ayselluna, @dajeong, @ravenswritingroom,

@misscrissfemmefatale, @clazberryk

@anukulee, @preciouslittlebhaalbae,

@sh3rl0ck

#bg3 #baldurs gate 3 #astarion #bg3 astarion #fanfic #astarion fanfiction #fanfiction #baldur's gate fanfiction #astarion x reader #augustarion #roguish cat

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oh-no-my-hand-slipped · 5 months

Text

An Adventurer’s Cold

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An original fic commissioned anonymously

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Subject: Original Characters By Author

Length: 3,998 Words

Genre: Denial, RPG, Contagion, Stuck Sneeze

Rating: E for Everyone

CW/TW: Slight Food Description, Mild Blood

*********************************

You have entered MARLINE’S MAGIC SHOP.

“Snf…welcobe back, traveler.”

Marline took a worn handkerchief out of her front apron pocket, blowing her nose mightily. She sniffled, leaning against the old oak counter she stood behind.

“Whad can I interest you in today?”

Terra, only half listening, looked at the many mystical items lining the shelves. Dragon’s heart, succubus horns, even a small jar filled with pixie wings for one silver piece each. Not a bad price, considering how hard pixies were to catch.

However, she didn’t have time for browsing today.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a bronze kobold fang, would ya?” she asked, looking through a green eyepiece at the tired shopkeeper.

Marline smiled. “You took thad request for the rabid fairies, I take it?”

“Yep! They’re some nasty critters, but we’ve got a potion that should stun ‘em -”

“Hah-! hhhhp’TSHIEW!”

Marline bent over the counter, her long red hair spilling over her face. She groaned, taking her handkerchief out again. Terra lowered the eyepiece.

“Good health, Mar. Though it sounds like it’s a little late for that.”

Marline blew her nose with a loud honk. “I was bushroom hunting during a rainy spell ereyesterday - snf! I believe I bay have lived to regret it.”

“I’ll say,” Terra said, frowning. “Have any faeleaf? It doesn’t taste great, but it’ll set you right again.”

“Not this week, I’b afraid. I wasn’d the only one who fell ill after the storm. I would harvest sobe byself, bud I…hih! hhh’PTCHIIEW!”

“Hey, no worries!”

Terra reached into her traveling bag and pulled out a small, bitter-smelling burlap pouch.

“I always keep some with me for emergencies.”

Marline shook her head. “You busn’t – hih’PSHIEW!”

Terra set the bag on the counter.

“Listen, if anybody has an emergency, it’s what you’ve got. Besides, I haven’t caught a cold since I was a kid! I don’t think I’m going to start getting one now.”

Marline gave a knowing smile, but took the herbs with no more opposition.

“Stday in good health, kind traveler,” was all she said before stuffing her handkerchief back into her apron pocket.

“I will!” Terra replied, not noticing Marline’s expression. “The spirit of adventure will keep me warm! And a little mead, if I can get it.”

Terra chuckled, and turned on her heel to leave.

“Ah! Your kobold fang!” Marline called after her.

Terra spun around again, putting her hand on her forehead.

“If my bow wasn’t on my back, I’d forget that too,” she said, reaching for her belt. “Let me just get my coin purse, and I’ll -”

Marline shook her head. “No, no, dear traveler, please. Your kindness has been paybent edough.”

She reached into her apron, pulling out a sharp, yellow tooth with a purple tint at the crown. She held it out to the adventurer.

“Don’t mention it,” Terra said, accepting the tooth.

Suddenly, Marline’s handkerchief was retrieved again, and she sneezed into it yet again, sniffling with a quiet groan. Terra suddenly realized that the tooth must have been next to the shopkeeper’s many handkerchiefs throughout the day. That would explain its uncharacteristic shine.

She shrugged, putting the tooth into her satchel. She’d touched worse bodily fluids.

KOBOLD TOOTH is now in your inventory.

“Get some rest, Marline!” Terra called behind her as she left.

“I shall,” Marline said wearily. “Fare thee we-heh! hhhh’PCHIEW!”

**************************************

You have entered the DARK FOREST.

“I believe this is the place, if my master’s geography is correct,” Vin said, peering at a dusty, yellowed scroll. “Though the topography may have changed since he made it.”

“Eh, how much can a bunch of rocks move?” Terra said. She squinted above her, checking the branches of the surrounding trees for glittering wings or beady eyes between the leaves.

Vin adjusted their glasses with a mechanism on the side of the hinge. “Quite a bit, actually. Earthquakes, battles, magical events, even the migration of animals can-”

ENERGY has decreased. You are now FATIGUED.

Terra yawned, rubbing her suddenly burning eyes. Vin scowled.

“You can at least pretend to be interested.”

Terra started. “Huh?”

“We have been walkin’ for a while,” Norif said, hoping to placate the scholar. “We ought to set up camp – it’s gettin’ dark anyway.”

Vin hmphed, but didn’t have any objection.

Suddenly, Terra noticed that there weren't as many sounds of footsteps as there were before. Her worn brogues, Norif’s dwarvish leather boots, Vin’s cork soles…

Terra turned around.

Frederick had completely stopped, and was looking up at the sky, which had just begun to show the pinpricks of summer stars. His wide, moonish eyes stared, unmoving. Then, with a slow motion, he lifted a thin arm and pointed a finger to the trees, his other hand moving inside his cloak. Terra instinctively rubbed her hands together, preparing her magic.

The others soon followed suit, grabbing their own weapons and standing at the ready.

Their preparedness paid off, as, before the party knew it, a swarm of angry fairies descended upon them, snarling and screeching.

Norif swung his ax at the creatures, taking large clouds of them with a single blow. Vin, with a scraping of iron, loaded their crossbow, the many cogs and mechanisms firing the arrows directly into each fairy heart. A thin rope attached to every arrow jerked them back into place with a satisfying clack. The practical Frederick fired his revolver quickly and without mercy, leaving every target a blood splatter on the dark soil.

But even with these efforts, the fairies quickly overtook them. Frothing mouths and gnashing teeth soon surrounded the adventurers.

They had expected this – after all, fairies could only be kept at bay with magic, as was their birthright. They all looked to Terra, their resident mage.

Taking this as her cue, Terra retrieved the kobold tooth from her belt, crushing the hollow bone in her palm until it was a thin powder.

A simple wind spell would spread the tooth, subduing the fairies until Terra could harness lightning to defeat them for good – electricity was the only natural element they had no control over.

Terra took a deep breath, and a howling gust of wind blew through the forest as she puffed out the ground tooth. A white cloud swirled around her. The rest of the party kept their distance, both out of reach from the spell and the rabid fairies. The cloud overcame the swarm, and, as they smelled the scent of their natural enemy, went limp and hovered in the air.

Exactly as planned.

Terra stretched her fingers, feeling the warm pulse of magic flow through her hands. To the knuckles, to the joints, then to the tips it went.

But, before she could cast the final spell, her breath caught.

The KOBOLD POWDER is tickling your throat.

Terra tried to will herself to focus on the spell, but it was no use. The powder was making her eyes water and her throat dry. She hacked out a cough, still holding her hands in front of her to cast. The spell buzzed uselessly from her fingertips.

No matter how much she wheezed and croaked, Terra couldn’t keep upright long enough to cast her spell. The cloud was starting to settle, and one of the bigger fairies shook itself from its haze, baring its fangs. It dived into a thin part of the cloud towards Terra.

“Watch out!” Norif called, but it was no use. Terra could hardly hear herself think, much less anyone else over her hacking.

Terra looked up just in time to see the fairy rear back an arm and sink its claws into her cheek. She yelped, stumbling back. A tree root caught her heel, and she tumbled to the ground. She lifted herself onto her elbows to the fairy growling a low growl, preparing another, deadlier attack. Green venom dripped from its fangs, and its yellow eyes dilated. Terra held her hands in front of her, trying in vain to ward off the creature.

“N-Nice fairy…snf…”

Unbeknownst to the mage, the tickle in her throat had slowly traveled to her sinuses. Her freckled nose began to twitch.

You need to SNEEZE.

“Deh-Don’t…hih-!”

A small group of black clouds gathered above them, and Terra’s hands began to crackle. Thunder crashed. The fairy started, looking up with wide eyes and a whimper. Terra squeezed one watering eye shut.

“A-Almost…gih-!”

The clouds grew thicker, the thunder louder. The tree branches trembled in the wind. The other fairies, still hovering, looked up at the rumbling sky. Terra hitched, curling her fingers.

“HAH-!”

KSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSH!

You used CALL OF LIGHTNING.

Lightning flashed, hitting every single fairy with a bolt of white hot magic. They fell to the ground, singed and lifeless. Barely contained, bolts began hitting nearby trees, giving them black, round burn marks with red centers. If the rest of the party hadn’t gotten out of range of Terra’s magic, they would have surely been struck as well.

It was VERY EFFECTIVE.

Once the spell had run out of targets, it ended, and the dust cleared. All that was left in the now barren clearing was Terra, stunned and still holding her hands in front of her. A light drizzle began to fall.

There was a long pause as the party stood still in front of the clearing, afraid to join the fairies littering the ground.

“Cogs and corkscrews,” Vin murmured, their usually narrowed eyes wide.

Norif gingerly stepped into the singed circle, keeping the blade of his ax above him just in case.

“Y’alright?” he said, taking a torn rag from his breast pocket.

Terra blinked, and a nervous smile shook on her lips.

“I, uh…the spell kind of got away from me, huh?”

“I’d say so,” Vin said, earning him a glare from Norif, who had begun dressing the wound on Terra’s cheek.

“At least the job’s done,” he soothed. “No one in their right head would want fairies caught alive.”

Terra nodded. “Yeah. That’s right. Just - koff! - give me a sec and I’ll -”

ENERGY has decreased. You are now EXHAUSTED.

Terra fell back against the tree trunk, wincing. Norif rubbed her shoulder.

“We’ll make sure the fairies don’ seep back into the soil. You did your part. We’ll do ours.”

Hardly in a position to argue, Terra leaned her head against the tree trunk, closing her burning eyes.

Before she knew it, a pair of strong arms lifted her up from the ground. All she heard before she dozed off was Vin complaining that their glasses would get rusted in the rain, and there wasn’t a blacksmith for miles, and was it really necessary to do a lightning spell of all things…

*****************************************

You have entered GWALT’S INN.

“A c-couple rooms, if ya would.”

The innkeeper peered over at the counter at the adventurers. Terra was standing, as she had insisted on entering the inn on her own two feet. However, she had a hand on Frederick’s shoulder for support.

The innkeeper raised an eyebrow. “On whose account?”

Terra looked around. Instead of drunken workmen or soldiers recounting battle, the fine oaken tables were filled with nobles politely chatting over honey mead or aged wine. A few of them had turned to stare at the soaked, mud-covered party in varying degrees of confusion and disdain.

This wasn’t an adventurer’s inn, but a place for those of higher standing to feel a clean ruggedness, a false sense of bravery as they “conversed with the locals.”

This wasn’t a place for them.

However, before they could return to the stormy darkness, Frederick held up a hand and reached inside his cloak. He retrieved a thin card, one side silver and the other gold. A few words that Terra didn’t recognize were engraved into the metal. Frederick laid the card on the counter, pushing it towards the innkeeper with the tip of his finger.

To Terra’s surprise, the innkeeper began to sputter, his waxy face turning red.

“Of course, sirs! Madams! His majesty’s brave battalion!”

The nobles began to whisper among themselves, their disgust turning quickly to awe and reverence.

“I am terribly sorry, no, outraged that you had to travel in such dreadful weather!” the innkeeper stammered, showing them up the stairs with a low bow. “I will have your clothes washed immediately, and perfumed of course! And whatever of our selection of humble morsels you may like, if thou wishes.”

Terra raised her eyebrows, looking at Frederick. He only nodded solemnly.

It wasn’t long before the mage was in a pair of silk bedclothes, laying in a large bed with frilled sheets and a thick quilt.

However, she wasn’t sleeping.

“Ih-! Hih…!”

You need to SNEEZE.

She sniffled, then, with a sigh, blew her nose. Mounds of tissues surrounded her, all provided by the inn staff, of course. However, no matter how much she snuffled and sniffled and rubbed her nostrils with the palm of her hand, she couldn’t bring herself to sneeze – though the need grew ever more powerful.

Unable to doze for more than a few minutes, she tried to plan the next few days' journey with Vin and Norif, but to no avail.

“If we - snf! - take the high road,” she wavered, keeping a tissue at her nose, “w-we can…meh-!...make good time.”

Norif rubbed the end of his beard. “I don’ think we’ll be leavin’ this inn for a while. On account’ve…”

He cleared his throat.

“...the weather, a’course.”

“The rain’s never stopped us before,” Terra said. “A-And we won’t - snf! - have to stop for washing! We’ll just let the rain…c-clean - HI’HIH-!”

“Would you be quiet?” Vin hissed, not looking up from the map. “I can hardly concentrate.”

Norif slit his eyes at the halfling. Terra growled in frustration.

“You made me lose it again!”

She reached for another tissue, but, finding there to be none left, she buried her nose into the neck of her shirt.

“Disgusting,” Vin said, recoiling and putting the map in front of their eyes.

Terra ignored them. “Maybe some of the kobold tooth got into my nose…I’ve neheeded to sneeze since we bagged the fairies.”

She sniffled.

“Or maybe it’s a curse? But what curse makes you n-need to sneeze?”

Before Norif could answer, the door opened, and Frederick came in, arms full with packs of tissues from the innkeeper. He moved carefully around the bed, handing one of the packs to Terra. She ripped them open with one hand – as the other was more than occupied – and put almost half of them to her streaming nose.

“Thangk you,” she said with a blow.

Norif moved the quilt up to Terra’s shoulders, gently pushing her head onto the mountain of silk pillows.

“Well, until this, er, curse passes, it would be best to lay yourself down for a bit. Maybe Vin could find a cure for ya. Yea, Vin?”

Vin raised their eyebrow at the pointed request, but said nothing to refuse.

“I’ll be fine,” Terra said, propping herself up on her elbows. “And we’re - snf! - leaving tomorrow, rain or shine…!”

She yawned, settling back down again.

“Curse…or no curse.”

******************************

The innkeeper had insisted on breakfast before the party left. An array of meat, pastries, fresh fruit, wine, and mead were brought before them – a king’s feast.

But Terra could hardly touch it.

Having been kept up almost all night by her burning sinuses and aching head, she could only lean against the back of the wooden chair, shivering as the chilly morning air drafted through. Her coat was made to be warm, even in the most frigid northern wind, but it seemed like the cold was leeching into her very bones.

She was only awoken when Norif put a hand on her forehead. The warmth of his rough palm felt her head, then either side of her neck. She heard him whisper something to the others, but the only thing she could hear was her pounding temples.

“Mmn…is it tibe to leave?” she murmured, trying to push her chair back from the table. Her sore joints were too weak, and the chair’s back legs clacked back onto the floor.

“Ah! Not just yet,” Norif saud, an odd tone of urgency in his voice. “We need’ta…er, Vin’s gonna go to a library nearby. T’cure your curse. There’s really no use ‘n you goin’, it’s all dusty books and scrolls.”

“Don’d have tibe,” Terra croaked. “Back to the guild.”

Norif gave Vin a pleading look, and the scholar fumbled with their knapsack, taking out a few tattered papers and maps.

“Eh, w-well, we are a few days ahead of schedule. We needn’t be back for at least another week, and it only takes three days to - ”

Terra was already up from the table, ignoring Vin. Without much choice, everyone else followed suit. After yesterday’s battle, they were afraid of what might happen if they tried to force her back to bed.

The weather had much improved since the day before. Though it was still a bit gray, the sun peeked out between the clouds, sending rays of light through the raindrops still left on the leaves.

Despite her weakness, Terra took the front as usual, plodding alongside Norif. Shivers ran up and down her spine as a cold wind left from the storm began to blow.

As the group walked near the edge of the woods, the clouds grew darker, and the sun disappeared again. Terra put a thumb on the underside of her nose.

You need to SNEEZE.

Terra sniffled and rolled her eyes. As if on cue, her nostrils began to tremble, and a burning tickle flared in her swollen sinuses. But, this time, the urge grew so great that it made the mage stop in her tracks.

“Hih…? HIH-!”

Attempt to STIFLE? > YES NO

She put her hands over her nose. A slow tingling made its way from her nose to the rest of her body. Soon, the air around her crackled with blue sparks of magic.

“Terra?” Norif said, reaching towards her before thinking better of it.

Terra tried to answer, but it was taking everything in her to keep the magic contained. Thunder rumbled in the clouds as she squeezed one watery eye shut.

“I-I’m…guh-! HUH-!”

She desperately waved to her friends to stand back – she knew that this sneeze was coming, one way or another. The party wasted no time, running behind the treeline with whatever they could carry above their heads to protect them.

“HihihHIH-!”

Terra leaned her head back, the magic coming to a peak inside her. The air was suddenly silent – a calm before the storm. Until –

“HIYA’TSHIIIIIIIEW!”

A circle of lightning flashed around her, and thunder rumbled loud enough to shake the earth. Smoking burn marks smoked around her.

But, before the rest of the party could join her again –

“HYESH’IIIIIEW!”

Again and again Terra sneezed, with each sneeze bringing another ring of lightning and another round of thunder. All of her lost sneezes from the night before seemed to finally come to fruition, and she couldn’t stop for some time.

Finally, though, Terra did stop. She lifted her head, dazed and with singed hair, and sniffled thickly.

SNEEZE COMBO x15!

Snottiness Rank B! Power Rank A+!

Bless you, TERRA!

One by one, her comrades came to join her – Norif first, of course, then Frederick, then, after some convincing, Vin.

The thunder had subsided, but a heavy rain had begun to fall. Terra started to shiver again, her trembling breath visible in blue puffs of steam.

“Ya poor thing…” Norif said, taking off his own fur-lined cloak and tying it around her shoulders. “You really oughta’ve stayed in bed.”

Terra rubbed her nose on the back of her damp sleeve. “Bud…th-the guild…we need…koff!”

She began coughing into her arm, and Norif fastened his cloak tighter around her.

“Ya need do no such thing,” he said firmly, though not unkindly. “You’re sick as a gnome in the rainy season. And almost half as wet –”

“And the sooner you put aside that hero complex of yours,” Vin interrupted, “the sooner we can get inside the inn, out of this weather! I’m already soaking, and we certainly don’t need two people ill in this party!”

They crossed their arms, and lifted their chin.

“Furthermore,” they added, “we wouldn’t want you catching pneumonia. That’s quite a bit harder to treat than that disgusting cold. And I will be significantly more furious with you if I catch it.”

Frederick took off his combat gloves, then put them over Terra’s red-tipped hands. He looked over his glasses and gave her one of his rare smiles. Putting his palms on either side of Terra’s hands, Frederick rubbed them together, trying to warm them.

“Ya feelin’ better, Terra?” Norif asked.

Terra sniffled. “C-Cold…”

“Well, no wonder!” Vin said, scoffing. “Heat is mostly lost through the head. If she had some sort of covering, then, perhaps…she could…”

Vin stopped. Everyone was staring at them. Or, rather, their scholar’s beret.

“I mean…or, rather…” they spluttered, then threw their hands up. “Oh, fine! But it had better be returned to me in the exact condition I lent it. It’s irreplaceable, you know.”

They took off their hat, stiffly handing it to Frederick, as if through ceremony rather than a favor.

“Your sacrifice will be remembered through th’ ages!” Norif said, chuckling.

Vin glared at him. “My patience has already been tested enough. Do not test it further.”

“Aye, aye.”

Terra could feel a slow warmness spread through her, and her eyes suddenly felt heavy as iron.

“Alright, up ya go. Let’s get ya out of the cold.”

Terra was heaved up again, and, surrounded by the warmth of her friends, drifted into a dreamless, sneezeless sleep.

FRIENDSHIP LEVEL +1!

********************************

You have entered MARLINE’S MAGIC SHOP!

“Welcome back, traveler! Might I interest you in our wares?”

Marline smiled at the returning Terra, who replied by blowing her nose into a pink tissue.

“How’s it going, Mar?” Terra said, sniffling as she looked at the glimmering displays.

Marline’s smile faded. “Are you not well, traveler?”

“I’m weller than I have been. Just a liddle sniffly now. Snf!”

Marline put a hand to her mouth.

“Oh, Terra…it must have been my chill that you caught. And I left you without any faeleaf!”

Terra rubbed the back of her neck. “About that. You wouldn’t happen to have any more of that left in stock, would you?”

“Ah, yes, a fresh bunch! Why-”

Suddenly, a large, dwarvish sneeze came from outside the shop, followed by a chorus of harsh coughs. Marline put her lips together underneath her hand, keeping back a giggle.

“Oh, dear.”

“Yeah,” Terra said sheepishly. “I’ll take three pouches.”

She furrowed her brow, counting on her fingers.

“And a few-”

Another sneeze rang out, this time small and high-pitched.

“Okay, a lot of tissues. We’re gonna need ‘em. Maybe some tea? I guess? That’s what Vin gave me when I was sick, anyway.”

Marline winked. “I know just the thing.”

She disappeared behind the shelves for a few moments, coming back with many packs of tissues, two pouches of strong-smelling tea leaves, a few pouches of faeleaves, and a thick blanket.

“May your party be blessed with a quick recovery,” Marline said.

Terra started to reach for her coin pouch, but Marline stopped her.

“I gave you and the others my cold. I’m going to cure it as best I can.”

Terra opened her mouth to argue, but closed it again. She began to put the items in her bag.

“You’ll have nothing to sell at this rate, Marline,” she said.

Marline tilted her head. “Well, I can always deal in colds.”

Yet another sneeze came from the doorway, raspy and shuddering.

“It appears I’m quite good at it, I’m afraid.”

“I am too, if being an adventurer doesn’t pan out,” Terra said, turning to leave. “See you later, Marline!”

“Goodbye, dear traveler! And good health!”

Marline chuckled as Terra joined the others.

“Though it appears it’s a little late for that.”

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thechekhov · 6 months

Note

I'm DM-ing CoS and just had my players encounter Dumas. Before he'd even really introduced himself a fight was breaking out if the party should adopt him or not - everyone wanted to but the Cleric & Rogue were like "he's so squishy we'll get him killed!" so they outvoted our Barbarian.

The Barbarian bought the breast plate and wild magic surge potion. Thus the rest of the session was pleasantly full of "I breast boobily" jokes accompanied by the player doing little shimmies. He drank the potion right at the start of exploring the Amber Temple and thus the shimmies were accompanied by teleportation. It was glorious, hilarious and very enjoyable for all.

Sorry for the late reply but - that's great to hear! I'm always incredibly humbled to know someone is actually using my silly little merchant in the game, and that is absolutely the correct reaction to have to him 😂

In case anyone is curious:

https://www.tumblr.com/thechekhov/681184472169873408/hey-dms-you-know-what-your-campaign-needs-a-tiny

#chekhov answers #dnd #dnd character #ttrpg

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outeremissary · 7 months

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Hey everyone who just followed because of a BG3 commission: I have a great game recommendation for you! 💖You should check out Pathfinder: Kingmaker (2018) for suresies. It's got:

the original mean undead elf lawyer companion: a milf

bard companion. everyone loves a bard companion.

narrative foil for YOU

betrayal!

it just keeps happening!!

big ass nature map. for the act 1 greenery enjoyers.

illustrated choose your own adventure sequences. storybook :) *

a large roster of compelling companions who fight all the time. these people cannot get it together

companion banter every time you camp! *

dynamic alignment! watch your simp behavior destroy your moral principles!

your own realm to rule! a bold new frontier of problems to have!

assign your wretched little friends Official Positions in your kingdom and watch them succeed or hilariously fuck up! this is about YOU Regongar!!!!!

goblin friends! a goblin companion!

kobold friends!!!

troll friends?!

goblin singalong!

animal companions out all the time!!! hang out with a big ass wolf or perhaps mastodon!!! **

CHICKEN FAMILIAR **

plot twist that made me actually scream. fuck offff

romances that make me want to bite something. these people are undateable (affectionate)

villain romance... thank you for my life

polyamory for real.

It's not the fanciest game and I'd be lying if I said it didn't have some Real Jank, but I think it's a great narrative experience, the companions have a lot of charm, and it's worth your while to check out as a CRPG. Next time you're looking for a new fantasy realm to explore, consider the Stolen Lands!

*Mechanics also present in Owlcat's other two RPGs.

** Also in the other Owlcat PF game, which adds mounts as well. And dinosaurs. Hey come back the mastodon is just as good-

#shoving the more popular pf game under the bed. pretend you don't see that. kingmaker!!!#originally intended to asterisk alignment but tbh wrath's a different experience. esp with the mythics.#rambling #at what point do you think I have to change my Not Recommended steam review for this game

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mithraeris · 1 year

Text

Karlach and Minthara party banter

Which almost no one will see since it's somewhat hard to have them in the party together:

If the player is in a relationship with Minthara Karlach: It's funny seeing you so smitten, Minthara. Didn't think you were able. Minthara: I took my first lover before you were a spark in your father's eye, child. She was a high priestess of House Vandree. Beautiful, elegant, ruthless. I adored her, and had been sharing her bed for some time when the order came that she must die. I stayed with her while the poison did its work, and whispered words of comfort as she slipped away. Karlach (quiet, shocked, just heard a very sad story): Oh no.

====== Karlach: Hey, so, what's romance like in the Underdark, Minthara? Minthara: In Menzoberranzan, romance is commonly a luxury enjoyed between women. Men are mostly present for propagation. Here on the surface, gender does not define one's role so strictly. There are weaklings of every sort. =====

Minthara and Karlach explore the sewers beneath Baldur's Gate Minthara: This place is foul. Drow would not tolerate rivers of waste flowing so close to their residences. Karlach: You've got slaves to manage your sanitation. Baldur's Gate doesn't. Though we do rely quite heavily on kobolds. Minthara: But surely the kobolds are slaves?

Karlach: Hell no.

Minthara (disappointed to learn ANOTHER miserable fact about Baldur's Gate - which is FAR inferior in her mind to great drow cities): Straj. Yet one more reason to despair for the fate of this city.

=====

Minthara: You allowed that smith to meddle with your heart, Karlach, simply so you can be touched? Better to shut off the carnal desires than indulge them. They are distractions.

Karlach: Yes, because every function comes with a handy switch. Next time I'm injured, don't heal, just turn me off and on again.

#baldurs gate 3 #baldurs gate 3 spoilers #minthara #karlach #bg3 script

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dnd-smash-pass-vs · 10 days

Note

hey now hey now, what happened to pitting the very similar creatures against each other? why are the abishai wiping out some excellent choices instead of taking out a few of each other first?

I mainly did that in the PC races tournament, because there were many things that were subspecies of each other. In the MPMM one I pitted the individual demon lords and archdevils and such against each other, and the eladrin, but that's about it. The rest were semi-seeded somewhat normally. Hence why there are drow and Yuan-ti scattered throughout as well. Tbh I kinda forgot about the abishai anyway. I'd say half of them die next round though. They are running headfirst into some all time greats soon. Even if, for example, the blue abishai somehow beats the kobolds...they're running straight towards the demon lords. in 2 rounds I'll be surprised if there's more than 1 abishai left in the tournament.

#not tournament #answers

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darkwingphoenix · 20 days

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Queen Iriana Ascendance: Kingdom of Ascendance

This is the Great Kingdom to be added to my @loominggaia AU, and since she herself SPAMS spoilers (Hey, least ya warn us), I'll just put info down here

LORE UNDER CUT

High Queen Iriana Ascendance, born Iriana Liatt of Woodborne, was born to a family of elves. When she turned 16, though, she transformed into a demon. She quickly left her family after that, despite her mother basically begging her to stay back.

She spent her days since then travelling around as a bard/escort, staying in Tabiya for a time with a roshava called Talul Sarfeesha. After he died, she made of with a significant amount of wealth.

Eventually, she was staying in Viersen in 6020 right as Project Starblast occurred and bombed Viersen with ejecta. She managed to survive as two divines, Saraia Hammonspielcrichton (Yes, that's Saraia's last name) and Skylie Evangeline, rescued her as they fled the city dodging ejecta.

After the incident, however, Iriana felt something extremely off about herself when practicing her lute: Unknowing to her, she and all other demons, as well as drau, adhene, kobolds, pixies, hilichurls, and some other monsters had gained a soul as a direct result of Project Starblast. She started to travel with Skylie and Saraia, using Saraia as a way to feed, until they arrived where Damijana had been destroyed, as Iriana had been feeling a massive pull to the location. There, thousands of other monsters had arrived, all slowly realizing they had souls.

Iriana decided to, and convinced the other monsters, that they should create a nation for themselves, as many didn't like monsters all that much, and it'd be a sanctuary for all monsters.

Eventually, with Skylie as a close ally and advisor, the Kingdom of Ascendance was quickly rising, using the ejecta, magic of various monsters and various refugees who heard of Iriana's promise, and sheer determination and spite, with Iriana as the High Queen. However, the kingdom was not yet recognized.

Kingdom of Ascendance: The Monster Kingdom

Ascendance was almost totally ignored by almost every High Ruler due to its seeming insignificance, as it was simply seen as monsters swarming to an abandoned region of the world, soon joined by the remaining Damijani from Slegelse Island, travelling there with no one remaining on Slegelse to investigate, and were soon integrated in.

The only Great Kingdom to recognize Ascendance was the Unseelie Court, as its ruler, Morgause, is a monster herself and as such gained a soul. She happily aided the new nation while struggling with her new emotions.

Eventually, the other Great Kingdoms were forced to recognize Ascendance when Ascendance's military assaulted Oaken Island of Evangeline soil and deftly took over the ruined island after Saraia and Skylie's attack on the island's only economically valuable item: Its siege dragons. Once it was in Ascendance control, the military quickly attacked Evangeline proper, taking Kelvingyard, Greenhearst, and even Woodborne from Folkvar. The army departed, leaving a vanguard behind to defend while the army went to invade Zareen Empire and take the cities of Uman, Elleg, Driza, and Viersen from the Zareen Empire.

After this war, Iriana simply asked for Ascendance to be recognized as a Great Kingdom, which was quickly granted.

After the Dawn War of Ascendance, the kingdom quickly settled down to repair the cities that were invaded and bolster its own economy, barely interacting with other Great Kingdoms until 6048, 10 years after the dawn War began.

Iriana's Policies

"All of those affected by the Ascendance upon which our nation was forged by were made by powerful beings known as divines. Without them, we could not exist. Therefore, all divines are legally allowed to live - and operate - within our borders without fear of attack."

"The monsters of our nation were once essentially refugees adrift in a world that rejected them. From now on, all peoples who face discrimination anywhere shall be welcomed with open hands, should they be willing to help us grow."

"Magic is a part of life for many people on this world, monstrous or not. There shouldn't be restrictions over which magics someone may practice, so long as they use it responsibly."

"While the Nymph Pact is certainly an easy way to stave off nymph attacks, there's simply no reason we should sign it, so long as we carefully regulate our industrial quarters to not overpollute and send our dirty work to places willing to do so."

Will magic is key for many peoples, commoners and meru cannot use it, and gaians don't always have access to its power. As such, iron tools shall be allowed in Ascendance."

"While many monsters are feeling nausea and headaches while witnessing art or music, there's no way for us to get used to it if it's all locked away. We need to deal with these symptoms so that we may get used to feeling art and music."

"Our population is strongly monstrous, and as such all monsters - Within reason - shall find sanctuary in Ascendance. Furthermore, all have a need to have the food they require, and as such prostitution needs to be legal so that demons may be able to feed without having to hunt for sexually frustrated individuals."

Ascendance Royal Family

Iriana Ascendance

Iriana is the High Queen of Ascendance, and is the founder of the kingdom. Like all monsters born before the Ascendance, she still struggles with having a soul, often experiencing sickness while listening to music or having nausea when looking at art.

She still allows art to be put into her palace, as she believes she'll eventually get used to it.

As a ruler, she's very serious about her policies. She's heavily focused on building an economy for her nation, made up of the rubble of a destroyed city and numerous conquered cities.

Unknown to anyone but herself, Iriana has fallen in romantic love with Skylie, as a result of her new soul. She has no idea how Skylie would react to the information and thus keeps it secret.

High General Skylie Ascendance

High General Skylie, formerly Princess Skylie Evangeline, has since become Iriana's most trusted advisor, as well as Ascendance's High General, responsible for maintaining Ascendance's military. After the Dawn War, the human divine has mostly maintained the same military power as during the war, simply maintaining the numbers and using them to maintain Ascendance's violently gained borders. She is also Iriana's personal bodyguard, using her personal weapon, the Divine Annihilator, and her Archons as assistance in helping the Queen.

She is also openly used as Iriana's food source, for as a succubus, Iriana needs sexual intercourse to feed. She is also fairly certain Iriana has gained a romantic attraction to her but doesn't say much so as not to send her into a panic.

Extra Stuff:

Color: Steel Blue/Blue Grey

Banner: Half Starburst with twinned Swirls above it

Exports: Bureaucracy, Monsters (Safe ones), Mercenaries

Continents: Noalen and Evik (And some small territories on coastal Serkel)

Diplomacy: Allied with the Unseelie Court, Folkvar, Matuzu, and Mogdir. Unfriendly with Evangeline, the Seelie Court, and Zareen. Neutral to Lamai and Yerim-Mor. At war with the Aquarian Alliance.

Military: Most common soldiers are equipped with either spears or staves and a shield, or crossfins, which are crossbow-like weapons similar to Skylie's Divine Annihilator and the chu ko nu (Just add a pair of pistol grips on either end and an auto cock action for shooting faster):

Most wear simple clothing made from monsters forged by Skylie known as Mecko, which create massive amounts of extremely strong silk. Essentially, it allows for light clothing to basically ignore ranged projectiles, especially with a shield. Most have suits that look like this:

(Yes, they're looking like 02 from Darling in the Franxx. Shuddup. Also, the uniform is more of a super dark blue, and this is the women's uniform. The men's uniform just looks the same but minus the waisting, and if we're going off of Ascendance military chain of command, she'd be a brigand, or the lowest level of officer, directly above an entry level unit)

Territories

Ascendance

Built on the ashes of Damijana, Ascendance Capital was the beginning of the Monstrous Kingdom. It's a major commercial hub, especially since the Noalen and Serkel colonies have to mostly go through it to get to the Evik territories.

Slegelse

The prison island of Damijana, Slegelse has become the primary naval power of Ascendance, and it is where most of Ascendance's ships are built, military and civilian.

It is governed by King Ventrus, a drau, although he is part of a minority in a territory mostly inhabited by merrow, mermaids, and other Aquarian people who are not part of the Aquarian Alliance.

Oaken Island

The former home of Evangeline's siege dragons, Oaken is now the primary location where new saraians are born. Most wind up in service to the kingdom as beasts of burden, and the waters around the island are flush with leviathan young, as the adults usually abandon the island to go elsewhere. The others are shipped off the island before they're too large. Globeholders are also bred here as well.

Oaken is ruled by King Merrell, a merrow.

Kelvingyard

Kelvingyard had already become defunct due to High King Cobalt abolishing slavery a few years before the Dawn War, although Kelvingyard became a major center for military programs. Many saraians from Oaken arrive here to be trained for the military. It is ruled by Angror, a drau who killed the leader of Kelvingyard.

Greenhearst

Greenhearst was once the primary farming territory of Evangeline, and now it is the breadbasket for Ascendance. Many boulderbacks and world turtles go to Greenhearst for farming purposes. While Greenhearst has the vast majority of world turtles and thus farming. It is ruled by Kiliburl, a hilichurl, and a smart one.

Woodborne

Woodborne is the least significant territory, although it is still vital for its massive lumber industry. Skylie also used to live in this territory. The drau Lilith rules this territory.

Uman

A former Zareen city, Uman is the primary industrial city of Ascendance, although it is less powerful in its industry power against before it was taken by Ascendance. It is ruled by Taura, a succubus.

Driza

Driza, after being captured by Ascendance, was repaired after Project Starblast almost destroyed it. It is still mostly empty, but is ruled by Marius, an incubus.

Viersen

The other city heavily affected by Project Starblast, Viersen managed to survive better against Project Starblast, but it still got heavily damaged. It is the only city ruled by a non-monster, by a human named Emma Viersa.

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jillyfoo · 2 months

Text

Changeling Encore, Dungeon Meshi Fanfiction [first chapter complete]

Changeling Encore, Dungeon Meshi Fanfiction

(An excuse to write about Tallchuck so I can finally stop obsessing over him.)

[What if Laios’ party did not return to normal from the changelings the second night? What if they couldn’t wash off the changeling spores right away? We will also say the 2nd fight with the gargoyles ended without them figuring out how the changeling mushrooms worked. The Mad Mage and Falin’s encounter with the Canaries had left him badly injured.

Recommend watching all 24 episodes of Dungeon Meshi anime or manga up to 51 beforehand. Alternative story and events to Manga chapters 53-56 and 62.

POV: Tallchuck ]

Izutsumi as a kobold dives into her dumplings and makes them disappear. She is becoming less picky now that she’s part dog. The now tallest member of the party couldn’t taste each individual flavor of the meat as distinctly as when he was a halfling but the savory taste is great regardless. To think the strange mushrooms can change creatures down to the muscles and cells. Chilchuck finishes his meal and feels unsatisfied. Makes sense because a tallman would need to eat a lot more calories than a halfling. At six and a half feet tall he guessed he’s probably three times the weight he was as a halfling. There’s no point worrying about gaining weight and springing traps cause he’s obviously way too heavy already as a tallman. He asks for seconds. The party stops briefly noticing his act making him feel self conscious. Senshi as an elf looks overjoyed and fills his plate with more dumplings.

“You have grown so much. Please make sure to eat your fill.” He said in a sweet feminine, yet to Chilchuck, also unnerving voice.

“Hey. I want some too.” Laios protests. Laios as a plump dwarf would probably eat the same amount as his normal tallman form, Chilchuck figured.

“You can have mine. I’m already full.” Marcille, now a tiny halfling, gives her leftovers to Laios. Chilchuck continues to eat, agitated that he is being stared at by everyone in the party. He’s not used to standing out. He sighs. “So as I am now it looks like I can’t do my job properly anymore. Marcille, I am going to have to guide you though disabling step traps as we encounter them.”

Laios buds in. “You’re right Chilchuck. I was thinking that we will have to reassign our roles in the party until we get our normal bodies back. I’m going to teach you some close combat.”

“I can also teach you magic!” Marcille piped in. Damn it, Chilchuck thought. He had hoped they would forget about their last battle debacle.

“Hey, that’s too much at once!” He pointed at Senshi. “You should teach the elf magic!” Senshi drops the pot he was cleaning. The elf’s arms curled into his delicate chest. He stammers.

“You know how I feel about magic. I.. I don’t feel comfortable with it at all. I’m not… you all may have changed, but I’m still the same on the inside.” He pleads to them with tearful, innocent doe eyes. Everyone could not help but leer at him in disbelief. Laios the ever present optimist breaks the silence.

“We are going to have to adapt as best as we can. Let’s for now clean up the dishware and then look over our inventory to see what weapons will work best in our new bodies.”

Not too long after cleaning up, Chilchuck looked over all the weapons in his possession. Throwing knives. That could work, but will run out if they can’t be recovered. Blade knife and bowie knife. He knew Laios would say that because of the aggro his large form will receive in combat, longer blades such as swords would work better. Knives are meant for surprise stabs like Kabru’s attack on Falin as a chimera. Lastly, the bow. He won’t be able to use it. His hand practically enveloped it. It looks like a child’s- Oh hell no! All his adult life he’s been working to not be seen as a kid from the other races! How dare that creep into his head now that he’s been tallman for just a few hours!

“Lights out.” Senshi calls to him from behind. The beastly dwarf turned into a paper thin shadow of himself struggles to drag his ax to him. “Borrow this and protect us.” Senshi gazes up at him like a princess at her champion. A breeze seemed to be coming from somewhere blowing his long black curly locks. Willing to do anything to get out of this awkward moment Chilchuck reluctantly accepts the gift. There’s no way I can fight with this shoddy thing.

Seeing that there was little else to do, Chilchuck undoned Laios’ borrowed armor and settled into his blankets to sleep. Thankfully Izutsumi seems to be bothering someone else tonight. Everything sounds so calm and quiet as he drifts off.

“Chilchuck!”

“Wha!” The tallman startles awake. “Laios… lights out.” Chilchuck growls.

“Oh that’s no problem for me. I can see in the dark now that I’m a dwarf.” Laios laughs obnoxiously.

“Go to bed, Laios!” Marcille calls out from the darkness, obviously annoyed. Laios tones down into a whisper.

“So I was thinking about what can be used to aid you fight and I remembered that when I started out fighting monsters I used a shield. That should distract the monsters while the rest of us take it down. I recovered my old shield from the floor we first fought the dragon in and I’ll let you have it. I don’t know if we will have much time to practice-”

“I can still hear you, Laios! Shut up and go to sleep already!”

“I’m sorry! Marcille!” Laios sets down his shield next to him. “I will leave this here for you. Everything is going to be fine. We will make it work.”, he reassures Chilchuck in a cheery tone.

A worry seed plants firmly in Chilchuck’s mind. He had very little direct combat experience. Heck Kabru and his party had way more experience than him and how many times did his party find them dead these past few days? It’s gonna be the mimics all over again except Marcille can’t revive anymore cause she’s a halfling. Nothing good will come of this.

The next morning fully geared up Chilchuck holds the ax and the shield up for Laios.

“This ax is meant for two hands.” Chilchuck tries to use any excuse not to take up a new responsibility. Laios comes up to him, handing him his sword.

“Then let’s switch. I’ll take the ax.” Chilchuck hesitates knowing that there is a monster inside the handle to that sword. It had transformed from the changelings too, becoming a kitsch looking skull and bat wings sword. A light emits from the edge of the blade.

A question emerged in his thoughts, Don’t you want to fight monsters head on too?

No. I don’t.

On the other side of the camp, Marcille draws a heat spell inscription on the stone floor while Izutsumi and Senshi watch. Izutsumi pokes her head into the spell inscription, sniffing the charcoal lines with her big dog nose.

“Izutsumi move. This is going to get hot.” Little halfling Marcille pushes the giant dog girl away as best she can. She looks up to Senshi. “See I already drew the spell. Elves naturally have a lot of mana. All I need for you to do is tap it here with my staff and channel the energy of fire.”

Senshi glumly takes the staff.

“Well if it’s to make tea…” He taps it. The lines turn red and fire erupts from it sending sparks everywhere. The three scream out and bolt away.

“What do you think you’re doing!? That was too strong!” Izutsumi yells. Laios attention turns over to them and heads over. While he’s distracted this is a good opportunity to inspect the sword. Chilchuck searched through the gaps in the hilt to find tiny changeling mushrooms growing inside. Disgusting. He will probably need to check his clothing and person to make sure there aren't more of them. For only a moment a gooey creature with snail eyes peeks out at him and sinks back into the sword.

“There you are, you little bastard.” It’s time to get rid of this nonsense before someone gets hurt. Chilchuck takes out a matchstick and lights under the area where the monster was hidden. The spores burn easily causing the living armor monster to push out in an attempt to escape. The flame causes the slimy surface of the creature to boil. Its eyes dissolve into its body as it cooks. He knew it was just an unintelligent monster, but it seems to curse him as it shrivels up. You’re not immune. Suddenly Chilchuck falls over from being tackled from behind.

“Stop! What are you doing to Kensuke?!” Laios yells. The dwarf seizes back his sword and holds it like a baby. “Kensuke, are you still there? Kensuke!” he cries.

“I’m killing it for your own good! You should have done that ages ago!”

“But he helped us get through the door…” Laios sniffs. Marcille steps in.

“Laios, having that monster around was nagging at me too. You can’t keep it forever.”

“Listen to your elders, Laios.” Senshi said in support. Thank god the rest of the party understands reason. Laios pauses and lifts the sword up in a moment of introspection. Chilchuck could not confirm if he had fully killed the monster. Laios gets up and addresses him solemnly.

“Understood Mr. Chilchuck, sir. It won’t happen again.”

That’s new. He had never had Laios behave that formally to him. Laios did not give the sword back to him, meaning the bug was probably still alive, but whatever. It’s damaged enough that it won’t be moving or peeking out for the rest of the time they are here.

They continue on to an enclosed castle wall level with multiple passage ways. There’s no monster encounters for several hours. Chilchuck anticipates his lack of senses getting in the way of moving past this level. Everyone feels tired and hungry. Laios suggests everyone to take a break to discuss what to do next.

“Something’s different. We have made no progress since going through the door. What has changed? ” Laios asks.

“I have read about dungeons that are an endless, empty maze instead of environments full of monsters. Maybe the Mad Mage changed his strategy? We got so far down here by eating monsters to sustain us. Something must have happened to scare him enough to change from offense to defense. ” suggests Marcille.

“What a cheap trick. He intends to starve us.” Izutsumi adds.

“That is a shame. I was hoping to see what monsters would be at the lowest level… What are we going to eat-!” Laios eyes widen and he points to Senshi’s head. It had changeling mushrooms growing out of it. The group scrambles away from him. Senshi picks one from the top of his head.

“Check yourselves and put every mushroom you find in the pot. I suppose we will have to make due with this.” he says.

Turned out there were mushrooms growing all over. Inside their bags. Behind their ears. The less than savvy areas the mushrooms were found were burned in the fireplace. Izutsumi rolls on her side inspecting herself in bent poses only a cat-dog beastling can do.

“Gross! Gross! Gross!”, she growls.

Senshi wet down the mushrooms and cut them. He boils the water in a pot, adds dry merman seaweed, salt and the mushrooms. The changeling mushroom miso soup went down good enough, but it was eaten more out of desperation than anything. Laios smiles cheerfully to lighten the situation.

“I should have saved Kensuke for this soup. He could have tasted pretty good with it. I apologize for not stating my intentions sooner.”

Wanting to clear the air, Chilchuck admits to Laios, “I overstepped my boundaries. I am hired to disable traps and find the quickest, safest passage. Not destroy whatever treasures you find, living or nonliving.” It’s not in my contract to do close combat too unless it's absolutely necessary, but this dungeon dive has had many deviations from the norm.

“If you did bring that living armor monster back to the surface, what would you have done with it? Have it as a pet?” Marcille smirks.

“Well since everyone thinks living armor is a spell, it would be a huge discovery. I could have put it in a monster scholar laboratory to see how it works and published a paper about it. I’m not good at writing so either you or Farlin would have to proofread and edit.” Laios explains to her. Marcille laughs.

“The elvin libraries are so huge, I am very confident that living armor monsters are already well documented in their beastaries.”

“I wonder if a dwarf like me can visit this library to see if that’s true?”

You are already addressing yourself as a dwarf… The rest of them thought.

Laios reads their discomfort and says, “It’s just as well I don’t visit. I like more hands-on work fighting dungeon monsters anyway.” Izutsumi looks down at her bowl full of disapproval.

“I’m going to find my own food!”, she exclaims as she darts out.

“Izuuuutsuuuumi!” Senshi calls out to her dramatically then sighs.

“She’ll be back. There’s nothing here.” Chilchuck reassures him. Senshi clears his throat.

“I have been contemplating our recent stroke of bad luck. I think the dungeon itself has lost interest in us. Dungeons are made to lure people in with whatever wish each individual desires. Did any of you have any desires before becoming a changeling? Has becoming a changeling affected your desire?” Marcille, Laios, and Chilchuck stay silent. “Come now… there must be more to this than merely recovering Falin. Confess!” The beautiful elf Senshi says all this as if he were a terrible actor on a stage. Senshi’s eccentric gestures and tone of voice had been really getting on Chilchuck's nerves. After another moment of uncomfortable silence, Chilchuck speaks up.

“Are you kidding me?! I had no interest in being any taller than I was! I was already paid in advance. All I want is to do my freakin job and go back home to my daughters before they leave me too.” Marcille gasps at the info drop. “Becoming a changeling I don’t even think I can do that. This is all a big inconvenience.” Marcille grabs his shoulder with tears in her eyes.

“Oh. How can I forget you have a family to go back to!” She sniffs. “Um well I think I do feel different now that I have become a halfling. I can’t do magic anymore or at least anything close to dark magic. Anyway, I was always afraid of my friends and family dying off while I had to live on as a long lived elf, but since halflings have the shortest lifespan I was thinking that maybe I don’t have to worry about it anymore since I would die first.” Laios and Senshi were moved by her words. Chilchuck cringes. He hated it when other races refer to halflings as short lived as if it was some kind of tragedy.

“I had a desire too.” Laios said confidently. “Being a tallman is boring. I had always wanted to experience being another race or a werewolf or a troll or giant flying beast and have multiple heads…” Everyone’s jaw drops at his confession of wanting to become a monster. Laios blushes and laughs it off. “Since I’m a dwarf I got what I wanted. Now I just need to stop the Mad Mage from controlling my sister. Also… while we are being completely honest… I think Falin looks cool as a chimera. If she wants to stay as she is I wouldn’t mind.”

“Have you lost your mind, Laios?!” Marcille and Chilchuck yell.

“Let him give an explanation.” orders Senshi.

“Once Falin’s mind is back to herself maybe we can use the changeling mushrooms to turn her dragon half into a creature that can live on the surface. Marcille can’t use revive or high level magic as a halfling so if Falin wants to return back to her old body, we will have to find other mages or healers on the surface.”

“Someone you can trust too that won’t turn you into the authorities. Remember Marcille is wanted now for tampering with dark magic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of us will be taken in as accomplices.” Chilchuck notes. Everyone’s mood sours at that prospect. Damn. He’s the worst person in the party for raising morale. “At- at least we know what we’re working with so we can think of a better plan later.” He feels bad he even brought it up.

Settling in for the night, Izutsumi crawls back into their quarters, slurps up the bowl of soup left out for her and rests at the foot of Chilchuck’s rolled out blanket.

“There are black horses out there, but I could not catch them. I hate to admit I need help, but I want you guys to hunt them for me.”

“Horses? That’s… maybe good to hear. Tomorrow Izutsumi. Tomorrow.

The next day. Is it even daytime? The ceilings of the endless stone walls and towers are sealed over. There’s no beginning or end to the labyrinth. The walls morph as soon as it’s out of sight. It was best that everyone stayed together. This was a situation where Chilchuck’s expertise was vital, yet he couldn’t perform to the best of his abilities. His dulled senses couldn’t quite feel the subtle draft indicating a hidden passage nor spot the one brick out of place from a wall indicating a trigger to open a hidden door like he should.

The mysterious horses were brought up right away. Nobody had seen them. Even with Laios’ ability to see in the dark, he had found no monsters lying in wait in the shadows. He wasn’t even seeing ghosts anymore.

“I didn’t see them. I smelled them. I heard them.” Izutsumi corrects.

“I thought I could hear hooves clattering too,” says Marcille.

“If they are walking that means they are not hippogriffs. But what would these horses graze on here?” wonders Senshi. It seemed like these beasts were incredibly shy if they wouldn’t let themselves be seen. So not very dangerous. The only thing that mattered to the party was how great it would be to eat something that’s not changeling mushrooms. Who knows if eating those things would affect their transformation. It would be quite awful if it was making it last longer or worse permanent.

“Senshi, Izutsumi, and I will keep a lookout for that monster while Chilchuck and Marcille work together to move past this dungeon level.” Laios orders.

“But I wanted to help find that monster too.” Marcille pouts.

“We can do both.” Chilchuck made an effort to give a more encouraging tone.

Chilchuck felt disappointment in himself that he had to employ Marcille to use her newly heightened senses to try to find a way out of here. He lifts her up and presses her side to the wall so she can listen through. A small orb of light floats over their heads. Marcille can pull off some simple light spells in her halfling form. She wanted to do more such as make another familiar to scout, but everyone had been encouraging her to save her mana. The rest of the party stands by a short distance away to keep lookout for the horse monster.

“What do you hear, Marcille?” Chilchuck asks her.

“Steps here and there. I don’t know… everything sounds like it could be a monster. I hate it…” She shivers and grabs onto his head tightly. He blushes trying not to imagine her like one of his kids.

“Try to guess where it’s coming from.”

He dreads proceeding further into the dungeon. Of the party Marcille and Laios were the power houses. Laios, despite being a weirdo, knew how to deal with almost every creature they encountered. He had training as a prior army grunt. Since entering the dungeon, embracing monster cuisine, and becoming a dwarf he’s losing focus. He doesn’t have the stamina he used to have. Marcille casted all kinds of magic to counter the Mad Mage the dungeon master during their last encounter. They need Marcille as an elf with lots of mana to stand a chance against him. Falin as a chimera dragon would be nearly impossible to defeat too. How long were they down here? He had always told his daughters to have everything cleaned up after three weeks. He would be back any day past three weeks. They must remove any evidence of partying or boys over. They wouldn’t have boys over cause his nosey neighbors would have told him all about it. The three of them were all working adults so it’s unlikely they would have any time to cause too much trouble. It would be so great to be back. He wouldn't care if it was a little messy or if they broke into the liquor cabinet. No. He would care about that. It would also be bad if they decided to take things into their own hands to look for him. The thought of his naive girls leaving the safety of their village to look for him in the shady bars and outposts near the entrance to the dungeon taps away his drive to complete the mission.

“I hear some voices.” Marcille whispers.

Chilchuck hopes it’s other adventurers. Not likely because no one else seemed to have moved past the large door they had gone through a few days ago. Yet…

“Give me a direction and distance where you heard it from.” Chichuck instructs her. She stands on his shoulders, puts her hands behind her big ears and listens carefully. “I think that way.” She points forward towards a pillar in the distance. Chichuck turns to tell the party to follow them, but they are interrupted by Izutsumi’s excited barking.

“Look there it is! There it is! See it?! See it?!”

A black horse with two large horns between its eyes stare down at them from a flat stone rooftop a hundred feet away. Laios identifies it right away.

“It’s a bicorn!”

Marcille leaps from Chichuck’s shoulders and heads over to them.

“We’re saved! We might not have to eat mushrooms again if we can catch it!”

Those idiots!, Chilchuck thought. He watches as the four of them run to the bicorn weapons raised and the bicorn darts off into the darkness. Undeterred by this setback, they form a huddle while Chilchuck tiredly looks on. Marcille draws something on the ground and whispers to Senshi. Senshi nods. Laios talks on and on about something. The cat-dog girl wags her tail. Hovering over the huddle, Chilchuck couldn’t make out what they were planning.

“Ok it’s settled!” Laios exclaims. Senshi goes into his bags, gets out a rope and hands it to him. Laios gives him the ax.

“Hey where’s your shield?” Laios asks.

“I’ll just give him this for now.” Senshi gives him his mythril pot.

“What? What’s all this?”

“You didn’t hear?” asks Marcille.

Senshi and Laios murmur to each other.

“Well he is looking kinda aged…”

“I’ll tell you!” Marcille said excitedly. “We are going to use the scorched earth method.” She taps her staff near a heat spell inscription on the ground. “We are going to make a whole lot of these on that side of our prison maze. Senshi is going to activate them. This will smoke the beast out of hiding. Izutsumi will herd it over there.” She gestures her staff to a bottle neck of walls on the other side. Senshi chimes in.

“Hate to see this happen to such a fine horse, but we are going to have you rope the beast and cut off its head when it comes to you.”

“Once you have it roped. I’ll help you slay it.” said Laios.

“But Senshi I thought you hated unnecessary damage to the dungeon environment.” Chilchuck protests.

“Sometimes we need to blow up a few walls to make an exit.”, Senshi admits. Marcille smiles and giggles manically.

“Yes. Finally. Senshi, come with me.”

Small strings of smoke emit from Marcille and Senshi’s side of the labyrinth. Smoking the monster out of hiding will take some time. Laios and Chilchuck wait by the bottleneck going out of the stone courtyard with Izutsumi between the two groups. The theory was as long as there are eyes watching, the walls won’t change. A crash came from where Marcille and Senshi were lighting fires.

“Anytime now.” Laios runs away from Chilchuck towards the entrance.

“Hey! Where you going, Laios?”

“Oh um… it has to do with the nature of bicorns. Bicorns are the opposite of unicorns. Unicorns are pure and can only be approached by virtuous people. Bicorns on the other hand only dishonorable people can-”

“I don’t need your monster encyclopedia answer. Give me the short answer. Why do you want me to do this alone?” Chichuck braces himself for Laios to give a blunt explanation.

“Ever since you became a tallman… you look suspicious.”

“What do you mean?”

Laios dug around in his pockets. “Let me get out my shaving kit. I’ve been having to use it more often since I became a dwarf so I carry it with me. The beard just keeps growing..oh here it is.” Laiosd shows him his mirror. “Look.”

Chilchuck thought he had just become taller and bigger in some places. He didn’t recognise the stubbled middle aged tallman’s face before him. The man looked like one of those loser goons the ores killed at the crooked pub on level three. One word came to mind: troll. He had turned into a troll. The kind he used to tell his girls about to scare them into doing their chores. If he turned up at their front door like this there was no way they would recognize him. Thus the tragedy of becoming a changeling. Chilchuck turns away listless.

“Oh. I see exactly what you mean. I do look like the criminal sort. I’ll be perfect for this role.” He sluggishly moves back into position.

Laios recognizes that he laid it on him too strong. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Mr. Chilchuck! Tallmen just look more aged than halflings. You don’t look bad..you just look more like a father type than you did..I had some issues with um nevermind. Anyway you said some things and I’m not judging-Oh shit!” The bicorn leaps past him. The dark horse slows into a walk approaching Chilchuck. All of his body’s dulled senses bolt awake. His weariness fades away immediately. He stares down the beast, slowly walking towards it. He holds up the rope that was tied into a slipknot and drops it over the monster’s head. The tallman holds it steady while the beast tries to jerk away.

“You got it!” Laios exclaims. Chilchuck stares blankly at the line and the monster in disbelief.

“Oh damn. I did get it.” The monster bites down on Chilchuck’s arm that was not holding the pot shield. Lucky for him, he was wearing Laios’ arm bracers. Chilchuck didn’t have a weapon ready indicating his inexperience with jobs like this. He struggles and backs off just enough for the rope to slip out of his hands. The lassoed bicorn runs back to the courtyard with Chilchuck chasing after it. Laios follows behind them. From their left off in the distance buildings were collapsing. Pillars of fire burst out from the rubble. Senshi, Marcille, Izutsumi and more bicorns were fleeing the scene with a big cloud of dust coming behind them.

“I’m never doing magic again!” elf Senshi screams.

Concentrating on his quarry, Chilchuck tries to grab the dragging rope. He almost grabs it until the bicorn leaps up a ten foot wall onto a roof.

“You’re not getting away!” He jumps up, steps on to the protruding rocks, and climbs the wall in a flash. Laios runs up to it, breathing heavily.

“Damn… Mr. Chilchuck.” He looks around for stairs.

At last Chilchuck had the monster cornered. Behind and to the right of the creature was a much higher wall that was several stories. Below was the rest of the party. He takes the ax and throws it. The ax brushes off to the side of the bicorn. He missed. The bicorn lowers its head and paws the dirt with its front hoof. I messed up. The beast springs into a charge at him. He loosens his largest knife out of his side pocket. Holding the knife he attempts to dodge to the side. The horn of the beast punctures his right shoulder. At the same time Chilchuck stabs as hard as he can into the side of the horse’s head. Brains and blood spill out. At the same time, Izutsumi pounces on to its back and bites into the monster’s neck. The monster collapses to its side, letting Chilchuck’s shoulder go. From the ground it kicks wildly until a moment later Laios steps in and finishes it by piercing its heart with his sword. The kobold beastling howls. Marcille and Senshi cheer. Laios wipes the blood off his blade and sheaths it. He goes right up to Chilchuck and embraces him. Being a lot shorter, Laios stood on the dead bicorn. Chilchuck his heart still racing, cheerfully raises his fists in the air, jumps and laughs with him.

“You were absolutely crazy! I knew you could fight monsters if you wanted to!” Laios yells.

“Of course I can! It was a piece of cake!”

It didn’t feel like him at all to be this hyped up. As a halfling his senses were at peak all the time except when he was drunk or asleep. It's probably why I’m so stressed out all the time. These lows and highs as a tallman… it actually feels really good. Maybe that’s part of why Laios acts like such a happy buffoon.

“Laios! Izutsumi! You got to get Chilchuck down here at once!” Marcille yells.

Chilchuck sees blood rushing down his arm. He reaches to his neck. The horn must have severed a few important arteries. That’s strange. I didn’t even feel any pain. He falls over dead.

Chilchuck gasps and sits up. Laios holds up tiny Marcille as her head sinks. They are inside an enclosure. Senshi already had meat cooking over the fire.

“She insisted she revive you. You died.” Laios recounts.

“Marcille..”

“The colors duke… the colors…” she murmurs to herself.

“Senshi made sure she ate before she used that spell, but it still took a lot out of her. It looks like she has a bad case of mana sickness. She’s most likely completely tapped out of mana too.” Laios explains. Chilchuck holds his head and groans. He watches Laios lay her over blankets. I shouldn’t have brought that on you, Marcille, he thought

“So I have as much luck dealing with other monsters as mimics.” Mimics which hide in treasure chests are the only monsters he as a locksmith is required to engage with as per contract. They have killed him many times. Now all monsters are like mimics… He imagined many different creatures before him turning into crabs. Senshi puts down a strange plate of stringy meat before Isumi, Laios and Chilchuck.

“I made sfilacci and I am going to try to make as much of the leftovers into bresaola.”

They all look at the hair like meat. What’s with the fanciness? Why can’t we just have BBQ?

Izutsumi asks, “What are these words? Oh well it smells good and meaty.” She gobbles it up. Chilchuck nibbles away at it, hiding the fact that he’s very hungry. Laios eats the hair meatball in one bite. The blonde dwarf looks like he wants to complain, but doesn’t. Senshi whittles away cutting up tiny pieces of the bicorn’s leg, making meticulous micro cuts. We are in a dungeon. Not a five star restaurant.

“Senshi, your food prep doesn’t need to..” Chilchuck tried to say. Senshi turns around in slow motion, his long black curls flowing, roses bloom in the air all around him, his eyelashes fluttering.

“You have a critique of my cooking?”

Chilchuck and Laios are stunned. Izutsumi bluntly interrupts, “Had becoming an elf made you lose common sense? I want steak!”

“I didn’t lose anything. I am just the same as I was.”

Izutsumi narrows her eyes at him. “Pretty Senshi, you just do your thing. Manly Chilchuck and you too Fat Laios, let’s make something ourselves too. I know you want the good parts.” Senshi frowns and keeps working.

The three of them move out of the enclosure to build a bigger campfire. It turned out that there wasn’t only one bicorn killed, but five more from the fire explosive magic. All that running around, fighting, and dying proved to be useless, Chilchuck concluded. Chilchuck helps Laios and Izutsumi carry one of the burnt up dead bodies to the campfire. As Chilchuck got the fire going the two butchered the carcass they brought over.

“Magic is so overpowered. There was no point in having me involved.”

Laios gave him an encouraging smile. “We didn’t know Senshi was going to be that effective with magic. If anything we were using them to scare the bicorns your way. We did find out one thing.”

“And that was?”

“You don’t have loose morals. The bicorn still attacked you.” Chichuck sighs and rolls his eyes. “I know Marcille would want to pry into that more, but I will leave it there.”

Thank god. Perhaps Laios is maturing a bit. They set up the grill and put as many steaks on there as they could. As it cooks, Chilchuck’s mind wanders back into his bad habit of rumination. Senshi must be very upset that 1: he was coaxed into using magic, 2: we killed way more monsters than we had to and 3: more than half of us are making our own meal. Marcille too is in rough shape.

The first round of steaks are done and Laios passes a big one to everyone’s plates. Izutsumi brows on it to cool it down before taking a bite. Chilchuck tries his and it tastes amazing probably because he was starved. Being revived takes a lot of vigor out of you. How could he convince Laios to have everyone return to the surface? He remembered the orc girl Leed’s advice to just be honest, yet he also didn’t want to plead with Laios overly emotional like that last time. Finally he said, “I feel bad for Marcille.”

“I know. I know.” Laios admits. “We are not going to be able to proceed without a confident magic user. Marcille is the best we have.”

“Admit it, we all aren’t at our best in these forms.”

“Not entirely. I did chop down on that horse real good.” Izutsumi smiles and ravishes into another steak.

“Yeah! You did do good! Who’s a good girl!?” Laios reaches to pat her head. She draws back.

“Noooo. No!” she barks back at him. Marcille weakly wanders out of the enclosure to them followed by Senshi.

“Come on! Join us!” Laios calls out to them. They gather around and Laios gives them a steak. Marcille quietly eats with tired eyes. Senshi refused their offering and just wanted to help.

And my conversation is derailed again. Chichuck takes another steak. He eats a few more while Senshi talks about the best ways to cook meat.

“You know I don’t understand why I didn’t think to just make jerky out of all this. Why did that fail to come to my mind? I don’t know. Perhaps because of the lack of salt?” As he ate and time went on Chichuck’s mood improved and he forgot about what he was so worried about. The effect of the food maybe? He probably ate the most in this one sitting than he had ever had for a meal in his entire life.

“Soooo I didn’t think you did too bad out there. You liked fighting monsters didn’t you?” Laios poked Chilchuck’s shoulder with a fork. Laios face gets covered by Chilchuck’s hand pushing him away. Chilchuck turns his head away from the group, hiding his grin.

“Maybe I did feel a bit of a thrill in it… I blame becoming a tallman or your insanity rubbing off on me. I think my luck with fighting general monsters will be as good as fighting mimics. I will probably die everytime.” They both laugh together as if they’re drunk. Marcille gives a concerned look and she speaks up to Senshi.

“I might have been too pushy making you use magic… we were too reckless.”

Senshi gazes down at her and nods. In a moment Marcille’s ears perk up and she sees a small familiar fly through the air over them.

“Hey everybody watch out above you!” They all see it. The familiar looked like a glowing bird. “It’s the Canaries. They’re here!” Marcille puts out the fire. She opens her book and flashes through the pages. “Everyone stay together. I’m going to put a camouflage barrier over us so they won’t see us.”

“Wait! Don’t-” Chilchuck cries out. Marcille holds her staff and casts the incantation from the book, stops in mid sentence and falls. Chilchuck catches her. The spell failed. Her body’s not tuned enough in magic to cast high level spells. Especially in the state she was already in. The walls change and a stairwell appears beside their encampment. A party of seven descend the staircase to them. Everyone stands up ready to defend themselves. The only weapons Senshi and Izutsumi had were knives and forks. Laios, the only one with his sword on hand, gets between the two parties. Chichuck holding Marcille in his arms sizes up the arrivals. The new group of seven only consisted of elves in advanced looking gear and armor. The elves walk up to them. Actually on closer inspection one of the men is a tallman.

“Well well. Hello dungeon adventurers. Please put your sword down, dwarf. The rest of you put your… utensils down. We are merely a dungeon investigation unit.”, an elf with long blonde hair similar in appearance to Marcille orders. They do just that. Another elf with tattoos all over his body circles them.

“I don’t see the blonde elf mage. This party is completely different than the one described.”

Chilchuck came to the realization that with their bodies transformed by the changelings, they are perfectly disguised from their wanted physical profiles Kabru’s or Shiro’s party gave them.

“Are you the only party that made it this far? Have you seen any others?”, the tan elf woman asks them. Laios and Senshi shake their heads. “I mean have you encountered a party of five that has an elf female with blonde hair?”

An awkward silence. Chilchuck watches them with increased anxiety.

Come on you two, say something. Senshi adverts their gaze and taps at Marcille’s staff with his foot. Senshi was supposed to deal with elves now that he is one. Laios is supposed to be the leader. In this moment of need they are both dead silent. From experience working with Laios, he often hesitates when speaking with people he doesn’t know. He will probably blow their cover. Chilchuck couldn’t allow that to happen.

“We’ve been trapped here by ourselves for months.” Chilchuck speaks out. Everyone in the other party turned their attention to him. Pressure’s on. “I’m Corkus and this is my daughter Neese.” The elves seemed satisfied with that response.

“That explains everything. We are also here to evacuate all adventurers from the dungeon and neutralize the dungeon lord. Would you like assistance getting to the surface?”, the blonde elf girl offers. The elves stare at the tallman waiting for an answer believing him to be the leader.

Chilchuck wanted to scream yes, but- He turns around to his party.

“What do you think? This could be our only way out of here.” Please everyone…

“Oh my head..” Marcille groans and sits up in his arms. He puts her tiny hand on his cheek. “I’m tired papa. Let’s go home.” She plays the part really well. Everyone followed suit.

“Yeah I think we went as far as we could.” It seems Laios would go with whatever Marcille wants.

“It would be nice to restock on spices.” Senshi says. Izutsumi nods with them.

“Thank you. We would like your help.” Chilchuck answers them pretending to be the party leader.

“I like it when they can be reasoned with. I’ll prepare a spell to get you all to the surface.” A dark skinned young elf in steel armor steps forward.

“Hold it. Before you let them go, I want to ask these adventurers a few questions.” The young man glares up at Chilchuck. The blue eyes look really familiar. “You know, Corkus, your gear and clothing of your party appear to be just like Laios’ party’s clothing and gear. For instance, that green circle scarf looks exactly like it belongs to a halfling in Laios’ party. ” Chilchuck suddenly recognized him. It’s Kabru. It’s fucking Kabru and he knows I’m lying through my teeth. How he disguised himself as an elf and got into the Canaries’ party is anyone’s guess.

“Um..we all shop at the same stores on the first floor?”

“Allow me to go through your gear and make sure it wasn’t stolen.”

The gig is up. We have our initials on everything. Marcille has her full name on all her gear. A messy haired elf girl interrupts them.

“Oh my gosh! Doesn’t this guy…”

The other elves drop listening to Kabru’s conversation and show interest in Senshi. Senshi pulls back his hair and lets it flow in the breeze that’s coming from nowhere.

“Yes! The resemblance is uncanny!” A female elf with short hair yells.

“Whatever do you mean?” Senshi asks shyly.

“I mean you’re that guy from the The Daltian Clan novels. What’s his name…? the one with the eyepatch on a horse..”

“The character’s name is Forva and he’s the one with black hair. The one with the eyepatch is actually General Hareus.” Marcille corrects them in a dreamy whisper.

“Oooooh!” Everyone of the elven’s party except for the tallman and Kabru exclaim with delight.

“Yeah! That!” nods the elf with the messy hair.

“Aww it’s so cute that the little ones are getting into our popular literature.” The blonde elf sighs. She completes her spell and reveals a large door portal to the Chilchuck and his companions. “All done here. Just step on through.”

“But-” Kabru protests. The tan female elf addresses the only tallman in their party.

“Captain, do we need to waste our time questioning these guys anymore?”

He responds with a firm “No.” Chilchuck thought it very strange that a tallman would be a party leader to elves from the North Central Continent. I know it’s a stereotype for tallman males to be party leaders, but this is ridiculous.

Laios’ party gather by the portal. It all unravels when Marcille fully wakes up.

“Where are we going?”

Chilchuck whispers “Out of the dungeon.”

She gasps and squirms out of his arms.

“No, we can’t go. What about Falin?” she says to her party with tears in her eyes.

“Everyone should go, including you. I’ll stay and find her myself.” Laios assures her. Frustrated that all his efforts were about to go nowhere, Chilchuck grabs both of them by their shirtsleeves.

“Absolutely not! You are both going back with us right now!”

“Hey, I still need to find that Dungeon Master to undo my curse!” yells Izutsumi.

“You think it would hurt if I go through that portal?” Senshi whimpers. Chilchuck loses his temper.

“What the hell is wrong with you all?!” They proceed to argue. Kabru puts his palm to his face.

“People. We got company.” The messy haired elf uses her familiars to widely illuminate the area. The dead bicorns that they didn’t eat, rose up. Headless men in black armor emerge and mount the beasts. One of them rides closer holding a giant sword, the tip of it scraping across the dungeon floor. The Captain uses a spell that makes two of them split in half from the waist. The headless men turn into black smoke and reappear fully intact.

“Phantoms.” The tallman grits his teeth, heavy sweat appearing on his brow.

“What are you waiting for?” The messy haired elf pushes Senshi into the portal. The cat-kobold follows him. More mounted headless black knights come out of the shadows surrounding them. Chilchuck kneels down and meets Laios and Marcille’s eyes.

“Pleeease go.” he pleads, feeling exhausted.

“Yes. We are going. Come on.” Laios puts his arm around Marcille and directs her toward the door. “I’m sorry, but Dunahan are really bad to go up against.” He shouts out to the Canary party. “The rest of you should return too!” Laios and Marcille disappear into the portal. Chilchuck leaves the elves behind, but just before he entered the portal he heard one of them say.

“We should retreat too. Captain stepped through a changeling ring and it's negatively affecting his mana use.”

They return to the inside of the governor’s residence. The room was within the town hall section. Laios held his mouth and immediately ran for the exit to throw up. Transportation sickness is the worst for dwarfs. Curious what the elves said about the Captain, Chilchuck waits for the other party to make it through the portal. He notices that Laios and Marcille have already left the building.

“Oh you’re still here.” said the blonde magic-using elf. “You can go now.”

“You said something about the Captain experiencing going through a changeling ring?”

“Yes, a couple members of our party had undergone an inconvenient transformation.” Senshi and Izutsumi grab Chilchuck’s arms and start moving him to the exit. He had to get more information. Anything better than going with the knowledge of changelings from his homeland.

“Is there a cure?”

“Yeah. It’s easy. Just practice good hygiene. Once Captain and our tallman guide have washed off the spores, they should be back in shape in less than twelve hours. It’s really stubborn the longer it isn’t treated. Once the fungus settles into your nails, you're screwed.”

Chilchuck’s color drains out of his face as he hears her warning. Senshi and Izutsumi lead him to the door out of there. Kabru happily waves to them.

“Goodbye. Maybe I’ll meet you at the bathhouse later.”

To everyone’s surprise it was a sunny early afternoon at the surface. The dungeon was in the process of being evacuated and it showed. There were people of all races everywhere. Many figured the days of looting the dungeon were over and were in the process of packing up. Temporary shops were set up with signs saying “One day only sale!”, “Last Chance before we relocate.” and “Everything must go.” If this were different circumstances some shopping would have been in order, but removing the fungal spores is a priority. They head for Laios’ apartment, the only place they have to go to in town since Senshi lives in the dungeon, Izutsumi came from overseas, and Chilchuck’s home is several miles away. Laios’ apartment key was lost with his gear in the dungeon so Chilchuck had to lockpick his way in while the rest stood around him looking very suspicious. Once inside he reminded everyone that they all must wash off those spores. Once inside Laios gathered whatever soaps he could find and a washtub. He had to use a broomstick to get a box of shampoos from Falin’s closet for Marcille. Chilchuck pushed for them to wash out back instead of the bathhouse, because it would be crowded due to the dungeon evacuation. He also didn’t want to run into Kabru, the captain, or Shiro’s group if they are still on the island. He dreaded the scenario in which Laios tells Shiro that they failed and the samurai decides to cut off Laios head or hunt down Falin to put her out of her misery.

He could not help, but feel astounded that the interior of the apartment was just like the insides of the buildings in his hometown. Everything is normal sized. Actually he now had to watch his head going through doors. It will be a relief to be short again. Chilchuck walks into Falin’s side of the apartment to find Marcille on Falin’s bed crying. Izutsumi was sitting beside her providing comfort. He turns around and heads back before they notice his presence. Laios and Senshi had everything ready.

“We will wash first outside and bring fresh water to the girls so they can bathe privately.” Senshi suggests.

“Sounds like a plan.” Chilchuck responds.

Monsters sometimes do appear outside of the dungeon. Changelings were one of them. It was thought that the fairies would replace human children with one of their own to play a cruel joke. It was said that changelings were a problem in his hometown many years ago. The way the halfling community dealt with changelings was throwing them in a burn pit. Any mushroom fairy circles found were burned. Yep fire was the solution. Good thing the real way to turn back to himself was simply washing off the mushroom spores. They went up a nearby stream and got water. Chilchuck anticipated that Senshi and Laios wouldn’t want to bathe. Senshi because he rarely bathed as a dwarf and Laios because he wants to remain a changeling dwarf. To his surprise, they both comply without any hesitation. They wash their gear and clothes too. That included Laios’ transformed sword. Chilchuck walks into a pond the creek was feeding. Wouldn’t you want to remain changed? Tiny black specks swim up to his legs making him step back out. They’re just tadpoles. Normal animals. The dangers of the dungeon have made him skittish. He jumps in, plunges himself in the water and scrubs hard. Laios once again lends him some of his fresh clothes that would fit a tallman. Laios squeezes into one of his own shirts the best he could and rolls up his sleeves. Finally Senshi boils the water and fills it for the girls. Chilchuck wanted to wash up so bad that he didn’t care about water temperature. The girls on the other hand… Well they wanted it to be nice for them. The process takes time so Chilchuck asks Laios to borrow his shaving kit. Laios and Senshi both tease him offering to tell him how to use it. Away from them with a bit of a learning curve, Chilchuck shaves his beard off revealing a warped troll version of his old face. He could already feel that the hair would grow back in hours. How could Laios do this everyday? He returned to Senshi and Laios to see them in deep conversation. They stop as soon as they see him. What were they talking about?, he wondered.

“The water is ready for them. We’ll just take it up to the apartment.”, Senshi says.

“You mean Laios and I.” Chilchuck responds knowing well that elf Senshi can’t lift. Carrying the washtub up with Laios, Chilchuck smells a flowery perfume from the water. “What is this?”

“You know… Marcille likes it fancy.” Chilchuck’s instincts sense a scheme, but decides not to push it. They bring the water over to Falin’s room. Only Marcille remained on the bed.

“Where’s Izutsumi?” Laios asks.

“Oh she got tired of waiting and took off. She told me she would clean off the spores on her own.” Marcille answers.

“It can’t be helped.” Senshi admits.

The three of them wait seated in Laios’ side of the apartment while Marcille washes herself in Falin’s room. Marcille calls over to them.

“So once we are back in our normal bodies, we will go down again?” The three grimace at the prospect of telling her bad news. Chilchuck was about to say something then Laios spoke up.

“The dungeon is being sealed away. The Canaries will enter in a couple days and defeat the Mad Mage.” He pauses. “I don’t know what will become of Falin.”

“What will we do? What can we do?” A long silence fell upon them.

“We should go to the pub tonight.” Chilchuck finally suggests. Everyone else was taken aback.

“Chilchuck really? Really!?” Marcille screams over to them.

He defends his proposal. “That’s what we always do after we return to the surface. It’s tradition.”

“We can’t go out and party at a time like this?! What if you turn back into a halfling in Laios’ clothing over there?”

“I’ll be so happy I’ll dance on the table naked. I’ll be so drunk, I won’t care.”

“Chilchuck, you’re an idiot!”

“Going to the pub doesn’t sound too bad to me.” Laios admits. Senshi agrees.

“You guys are so insensitive!”

“I thought you loved the food there.” Laios said. Chilchuck could hear splashing and grumbling from her side.

“Hurry and finish up, Marcille. There’s gonna be a big crowd tonight. We need to get there early to get good seats.”

“Come over here. I need help with something.” Chilchuck glances over to Laios and Senshi sitting in the corner looking a bit scared. He sighs, stands up and walks over to the entrance. A fully clothed Marcille drops a bucket of water on his head from above. She laughs and surries away.

“You little gremlin!” He yells as he chases after her.

To be continued... (1 of 3)

#chilchuck #dungeon meshi #dwarf laios #elf senshi #halfling marcille #stupid fanfic #tallchuck #tallman #tallman chilchuck #Chilchuck Marcille #fanfiction #dungeon meshi fanfic #dungeon meshi fandom #changelings #Not as cool as the original but I tried.

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the-rogue-that-goes-stab · 5 months

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HORUS Slaad

The weird fucked up gremlin child of goblin and kobold, the Slaad is a half melting frame referencing the Slaad, the parasitic toad aberrations from DnD. The main theme of the Slaad is being a parasite, as it takes inspiration from Slaad tadpoles.

To begin, the Slaad steals the ignoring engagement aspect of Atlas' Giantkiller but buffs the soft cover when being in the same space as a character to hard cover. Furthermore it also becomes significantly faster and larger sensors while being in the same spot as a character, and whenever it desires, count as adjacent to a character it is sharing a space with.

For its core passive, the Slaad is able to use its endlessly mutating morph-code literally pooling off its hull to harmlessly climb inside a frame, its hull and components moving to the side like a blanket without any detriment to functionality. While jockeyed inside a mech this way it can still be attacked as normal (hard cover due to above) but is able to use full action on subsequent turns to force its host to make a save. Based on v the type of enemy they gain bonuses. Based on the successes and failures, different effects happen as tracked in the ability. After two failed saves, the target becomes controlled by the Slaad until the it scurries away or the host is destroyed. Don't worry,. based on the host they receive different bonus (or detriments) on the saves. For example grunts or remotely piloted vehicles have a harder time resisting the parasite's influence while a ultra can easily shrug off a slaad (and players auto succeed). if a host succeeds 2 times before they fail two times, they kick you out, ready to destroy the poor Fragile tadpole.

For its core power, it dumps its heat into the victim. If the victim overheats or the Slaad is controlling its host, the Slaad can make the host self destruct.

Truly a little fucked up guy.

License:

(LL1) Green-Banded Targeting Array - hey so guess who learned the name of those fucked up eye parasites for snails. Yeah they are called the Green-Banded Broodsack. I hate them. They make my autistic ass squirm with imaging how that would feel;, a thing moving inside your eye, ungulating. Anyway this system takes inspo from that fucked up little guys. It gives a reaction too when an adjacent character loses lock-on to mark them again at the cost of marking yourself. This is meant to embody the fact that the broodsack ungulates to signal birds so its host gets eaten.

(LL1) Morph Mod - wow, using morph code to turn any weapon into a shitty rifle or shitty sword at will. wow. They aren't that bad, just worse versions of non-mushy weapons

(LL2) frame

(LL2) Cable Talon - a grappling hook knife to fill the singular Aux (not aux/aux) mount the slaad has. You can reel it in as a protocol. When thrown, it embeddeds itself into a target, allowing you to pull yourself towards them when you reel it in.

(LL2) Digital Plague - 1/round, when you invade an enemy, you can invade one of your allies near-ish to your target, (ie invade allies synergy, yippee)

(LL3) Beak.ox System - hey so you know Ox Peaker's how some people say they eat bugs off of host animals but other reports say they also dig into the skin to drink blood. Yeah this is based on that. You target an ally as a quick action, they take a whee bit of chip but they clear 2 heat (wow a whole invade's worth).

(LL3) Cuckoo Module - the best system in this license for the Slaad, it allows it to be considered an allied character when adjacent to a hostile character for that characters effects (such as accuracy bonuses, or defense bonuses, or free invisibility, just a great way to be a piece of shit to enemies). You still are hostile to them tho, you just stealing from them

I love Slaad, its a little guy that is like a goblin alt-frame but risky and mall fucked up. Oh also Maximum Threat was a big inspiration from for this frame, the idea of taking an enemy mech is really cool and you should support GeritzDev on their itch page.

Oh also the physical manifestation of code stuff comes from infection in Horus: Thy Hubris Manifest. This was also the inspiration for NIDHOGG's functionality, coating weapons with materialized invade code

#lancer #lancer rpg #new stelia #homebrew #horus

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lodichi · 2 months

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d&d&drabbles -- Kiss Prompts

Tanith/Ish -- Forehead Kiss

campaign: Titanomachy

**author's note: Ish is a Kobold Circle of Spores Druid who went to Barovia and got traumatized. He then returned to the Doloch Vale (setting of Titanomachy) and has since interacted with Tanith's party as a DMPC.

---

With a sigh of exertion, Tanith dropped the pile of lumber she had been carrying down at the top of the hill, and she paused in her task for just a moment. She stepped away and looked out over the plains, where the ruined city of Beachburton stretched out before her. Unlike the last time she had been here, however, the ruins were bustling with people today: refuges that finally felt safe enough to begin the arduous task of rebuilding their home.

It was the least Tanith could do to help. Even the citizens who had avoided enslavement were malnourished at best, and while they had the technical know-how to rebuild their homes bigger and better than before, there was a great deal of lifting and moving with which Tanith was well suited – not to mention protecting the city’s perimeter from any unwanted enemies that might try to attack during the night.

Oz was here, too, out on a hunt right now to help secure a food supply for the workers, and so was Nee – not hunting, but using her magic to help the efforts along – and then, there was…

“Hey, uh – hey Tanith, can you c’mere for a second?”

Tanith turned at the sound, and smiled when she saw it was Ish standing at the top of the hill. He looked a little less grubby than he had when Tanith first met him, but he was still the same kobold under his cloak

“Oh, Ish!” Tanith tried to wipe the dirt off her hands onto her tunic as she approached him. “Hello. How are things going on your end?”

Ish kicked one foot against the dirt, looking down nervously.

“That’s kinda what I wanted – I just, I’d like your opinion on somethin’. If you have a minute.”

“Of course; what is it?”

Ish held out his fist, clawed fingers curled tightly against his palm. When he opened his fingers, he held a small cluster of mushrooms – simple, tan-colored caps that Tanith didn’t recognize immediately.

“So, these little guys, they have a really quick life-cycle,” he began to explain. “They can grow just about anywhere, y’know, and they convert a lot of nonsense chemicals into nutrients – and then when they die, they decompose into really nutrient-dense dirt, so I was thinking that maybe we could plant these in the old farm fields to jumpstart the soil for the next crop cycle, but I ran into a buncha people already tilling the fields and I was worried they’d just kick me out if I started planting mushrooms everywhere, and—”

“Ish! Ish,” Tanith exclaimed, laying a hand on his shoulder. Ish stuttered to a halt as Tanith leaned down, pressing a tender kiss against his forehead.

“I think it is a wonderful idea,” she told him. “You have never steered us wrong before. But perhaps we should ask permission first?”

Blushing as hard as a kobold could, Ish nodded his head vigorously as Tanith took her hand from his shoulder and offered it to Ish instead.

#d&d&drabbles #tanish #campaign: titanomachy #character: tanith

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ace-malarky · 7 months

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Take One For The Team

This is an aside to what the party of @dorksndisasters are traipsing back into in the current arc; problems they created for themselves by stumbling across Plots they still haven't full worked out, half following them through, and then fleeing the city sjsks

It's going great.

Aszaccixl walks into Aewyth’s office doing his level best not to let his rage show. His hands were in his pockets, the only way he could keep them from trembling, from forming fists.

“Oh, hey, Asz. So glad you could make it.” Haucey was forcing the cheer in her voice, overselling it. “It’s been far too long.”

Rarder was also there; he nodded at Aszaccixl and didn’t budge from where he leant against the wall, arms folded.

“We’ll need to make this quick.” Aewyth was sitting at her desk, notes in front of her. “They’re going to call a curfew and impose Martial Law.”

“How do you know?” Aszaccixl rumbled. There is still blood staining his coat, slowly drying in.

“Well–”

“She means me!” A kobold pops up from behind Aewyth’s desk. “I hear things.”

“Bituin alerted me,” Aewyth says, and if Aszaccixl didn’t know her as well as he did, he’d never have seen her flinch.

He does not think that Bituin was down there before he spoke.

“Of course you do,” Haucey says, a coo in her gruff voice. “You’re always such a great help to us.”

Bituin giggles.

Rarder is watching Haucey interact with Bituin, a strange look on his face.

“So what do you expect us to do?” Aszaccixl asks, pulling back to the topic at hand. “I am a private citizen these days, in case you’d misremembered.”

“You were at the Waygate,” Aewyth says. “You saw the,” her lips thinned out, whole face going stern with disapproval, “execution.”

Aszaccixl nods.

Haucey whips round to face him, taking in the bloodstains on his coat. “Were you involved? Are you hurt?”

“Our mutual friends left her in my care,” he says to Aewyth, ignoring Haucey’s questions. “She became impatient and tried to flee.”

“Who was it?” Rarder asks.

“Annan,” Aewyth replies. “I’m sorry.”

Rarder makes no effort to hide his anger; he snarls, starting to his feet and striding towards the door.

“That won’t solve anything,” Aszaccixl says, shifting slightly to get in his way.

Rarder turns on him. “What would you know?” He squares up to Aszaccixl.

“I tried to help her. She might have been dirty, but she was a good kid,” Aszaccixl replies, as if Annan hadn’t been less than five years younger than him.

Still too young to die like that.

“They won’t acknowledge that she was a guard,” Bituin says.

Aszaccixl wonders how old he really is, because the kobold certainly isn’t the child he claims to be.

“So what can we do?” Haucey asks. “Is there – something we can do? You called us here for something.”

Aewyth hesitated. “It could ask a lot of you.”

“Anything,” Haucey replies, too fast to be anything other than a gut response.

Aszaccixl has always liked that about her.

“What has happened with – the body?” Rarder asked.

“They took it away, they didn’t answer anything.” Aewyth shifted. “They know who it is–”

“They’ll be coming for us,” Rarder growled. “Let them.”

“That is not our best course to take,” Aewyth says, gaze on Rarder. “Aszaccixl, how many can you protect?”

“He could barely protect one,” Rarder snaps. “He left, he gave this all up, he isn’t under suspicion here.”

Aszaccixl tilts his head. “If you remember, I raised enough suspicion of my own before I left your ranks.”

“You’re running out of time,” Bituin murmurs.

Aszaccixl snaps his attention to the kobold, seeing the hint of a fading glow about his eyes.

“They’re coming here.” Bituin looks up at Aewyth.

Aewyth nods. “One of you,” she turns her attention to Rarder and Haucey, “needs to go with Aszaccixl. It’ll be called a dishonourable discharge for what has happened, but if I’m still here afterwards then I promise that you will be welcomed back.”

They both volunteer at once. Aszaccixl watches them and says nothing.

“I don’t have any responsibilities, no command,” Haucey says. “If they replace you with one of theirs, it will get harder.”

“Annan was my responsibility,” Rarder replies, not quite growling. “If I am still here, they will expect more.”

“He has a point, Haucey,” Aszaccixl says, when she looks likely to argue. “Rarder makes the most sense.”

Bituin scrambles around the desk and reaches out his hands to Haucey. “We can do more from here. Someone has to protect Aewyth, you know?”

Haucey smiles as she picks him up. “You’re right. So clever!”

Rarder is watching them with something approaching jealousy crossing his face.

“Asz,” Aewyth says. “I’m sorry I haven’t asked, but–”

“Of course.” He dips his head to hide his smile. “You didn’t ask and I didn’t say I told you so.”

From his perch in Haucey’s arms, Bituin giggles.

Aewyth forces a sigh, not quite managing to hide her own smile. “Thank you. Rarder–”

“I’ve already agreed to take this one for the team, you don’t need to harp on about it,” Rarder grumbles. “Aszaccixl, where area you stashing me?”

“By the Stone Giant. There are many escape routes, as needed.”

“I know the tunnels very well, I can lead you,” Bituin pipes up.

“You shouldn’t be walking those tunnels alone,” Haucey says to him, “it’s dangerous.”

Bituin pats her arm. “I’m never alone in them.”

Rarder clears his throat. “We should go, if they are coming.”

Aszaccixl nodded.

“Thank you.” Aewyth looks tired. “I’m sorry.”

“We will get through this, one way or another.”

“See you on the other side,” Haucey says, shifting as if she would have saluted had her arms not been full of a kobold.

Rarder sweeps one last look around the room before he turns to stalk past Aszaccixl and stride out.

“Look after him,” Aewyth says.

“I’ll be in touch,” Bituin says. “Or Set will be.”

Aszaccixl closes his eyes for the briefest moment. “Whichever one of you that will be less obvious, please.”

Bituin giggles.

Aszaccixl gives Haucey a brief nod, Aewyth half a salute, and then turns to catch up with Rarder.

He hasn’t got far, hesitating in the entrance hall. “Was this what happened when you left?” he asked. He’s eyeing the place like he’ll never come back, the patch already gone from his armour.

“Not quite.”

They leave the command post and stride across the street. Aszaccixl looks back to see a group of people enter the command post, General Wulfwe amongst them.

“There were fewer repercussions, but almost the same story. I will fill you in when we are safe.”

Rarder grunts. “I think I will need a drink with it.”

“We will need several.” Aszaccixl claps his back. “But we will come out of this.”

#writing pieces #mist worlds #Aszaccixl

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kobblefort · 1 year

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Rushsly: The Early Days 2

She's done it! Osgi made a wool turban. Besides "menacing with spikes of sheep wool"(???) it has no real interesting aspects, but it's pretty valuable and now I have one less kobold meltdown to worry about. The kobolds also demanded I build a temple for "The Goldenrod Creed," a religion about worshipping rainbows and the rain. And yeah sure I can get down with rainbows, I fuck with rainbows.

Looks pretty cool I think. Their priest is called "Holy Fish." I gave the job to a new arrival called "Cokuk Warnbarbs" and I'm sure I won't regret placing a hateful, greedy kobold in a position of religious authority.

Humans showed up to trade and seem to just be stuck here. The rabbits haven't left either. We didn't actually have any crafts to trade with the humans so they just sort of stood around. Eventually I read that when this happens you can get them to leave by deleting the trade depot. However this also made the humans just drop everything they brought and leave. I guess that made it our stuff. Well this could be a funny exploit but I don't know if they'll just see it as stealing.

Before the migrant wave even finishes I have to make it clear that this is not a hunter-friendly fortress. If you want to run around shooting arrows do that shit somewhere else. We don't do that here.

We're getting quite a sizeable population now and whoa hey hold up what the fuck

Some ratfolk dickhead broke in!!! A peasant Almda is just punching the absolute fuck out of her. Just going at her head like a fucking speedbag.

I mean holy shit

I love when they say this.

As Almda beat the ratfolk to death, a woodcrafter created their masterpiece across the room. Can you imagine being that kobold. Just like "whoa, that's crazy. I'm busy though"

Things are going smoothly. I'm trying a different bedroom setup for once. Glass production is going kind of slow, they keep canceling stuff because they "need sand-bearing item" (it's usually right next to them but they won't use it for some reason) I'm sure there's some way to fix this but I'm not sure what it is. "I ball to remember" - thought that came to me so vividly while i walked through the kitchen that I had to say it out loud. "I ball to forget" the only logical conclusion to that thought.

Rushsly was elevated to a Warren (kobble version of a barony) and crystal glass operations are up and fucking running baby!!! Big things poppin!!!!! We also have enough fucking iron and billon to get absolutely rich but the faster the economy go up the sooner we're likely to get raided and there's still no military here. You might be wondering how I got all these magma furnaces without embarking on a volcano or digging into Caverns 3 well baby I fucking cheated. I busted open DFhack with ` and I went to gui/liquids and I made some little magma pockets. I don't know how to get kobbles to move around buckets of magma without killing themselves in the process but if I did I would still probably do this. I'm still ultimately just using the resources I have and I'd never outright cheat to fix a kobble's mood or survive a siege or anything like that, sometimes I just get sick of the clerical bullshit! Maybe that sounds fun to you. Maybe it sounds insane for me to say that about a game that is, in essence, literally just clerical bullshit, but what is more insane than caring? I am still going to attempt to make steel completely legitimately, if you think me speeding things up so that I don't have to deforest the entire map and wait three times as long for the coal to actually get moved around ruins the integrity of the fortress then I don't know just stop fucking reading and you'll be better off.

We are also establishing a hospital even before we establish a barracks (I have decided to go the military route after all though traps are still in the cards) and guess how I got those water tiles two z-levels beneath those wells. Go ahead guess. Actually it's not a great solution because they will eventually dry up given enough use and I certainly don't want to manually re-fill them but by the time that becomes a problem I should be able to breach the caverns (relatively) safely and make me a mother fucking pump stack. I refuse to use windmills because I believe they make power too easy while also providing a really bad defensive weakness (I have had a forgotten beast break in through the axle tunnels and slaughter my entire fortress because of that one-tile-wide vulnerability) so drawing waterwheel power from the caverns is simply what I'm going to have to do. And yes I know that's a weird double standard for a guy who magically summons the water and magma from console commands but this is not a competitive game!!! When you boot up Dwarf Fortress it's YOUR choice whether you want to play as some kind of omnipotent god, minor deity, or literally just advisor to your little ant-farm of fake people. And I like being a minor deity with power over little time-and-effort-saving things but ultimately leaving matters of actual survival in the hands of my kobbles.

Just found a fat-ass native platinum vein, you wish you were me so bad.

A big part of why I'm so hesitant to breach the cavern layers is actually just that once you do, all your un-floored areas start growing cave fungus, which I hate. It can even start growing trees which will bust through your entire base but you can't really cut them down early you just have to literally build floor over them which is annoying and takes up so many resources. Some of it, like the red fungus, looks cool but most of it just looks ugly. However it does let you pasture your animals indoors which is always a boon, invaders fucking love to kill animals and if you can just have them sealed off in their own little chamber where nothing bad happens to them you don't have to worry about them. Once the kobolds get barracks set up and a bit of training under their belts I guess I'm just going to have to deal with it.

Right we've fucked around long enough, barracks time. And I smoothed them because if they're going to be stuck "constant training" they may as well get to enjoy the place. I particularly like having the dungeon right next to the barracks because it means any attempted jailbreakers will have to try and sneak through a room full of heavily-armored goons who are in the middle of swinging their weapons around. I don't really have the logistics set up for leather armor but I have an absolute fuckton of iron so it might be good enough to just make a 10-kobble melee squad and 10-kobble xbow squad with iron armor. For some reason, holding off until I have steel production up and running just seems like a bad idea.

I saw this notification and thought "oh shit, is there another thief or something" but it turned out my kobble actually just had a panic attack at work thinking about her friend dying in the Fucked Up Bridge Incident. This is a fucked up game. If you ever ask "what kind of god would make monkeys that get anxiety and have to drive big metal boxes to go operate a deep fryer all day," well, us I guess. We do that. Maybe this is what "god made man in his own image" means right. We've literally evolved so much that we can simulate being the same uncaring god doing the same awful things to little unassuming people. As above so below. I feel pretty normal playing Dwarf Fortress. It feels like a very natural behavior to me. Am I simply taking after my own creator

Ratfolk tried to sneak in, but gave up the element of surprise by shooting at some boar halfway across the map. Welp time to lock shit down! To be honest they seem more like they got lost on a hunting trip than they came here to fuck with us but we don't actually need to go topside for much of anything. And that "anything" includes making a good 10 or 20 sets of iron armor. Be our guests ratfolk... stay as long as you like.

Sometimes when I'm just sitting here doing this, I think about how happy I'd be with a soul-sucking spreadsheet job. Like the guy from OfficeSpace was such a bitch! What was with Generation X and going "no maaan, you don't want a job with fixed hours where you don't get cut or burned or blow out your knees! Having the same weekend every week and only having to worry about fucking up your posture will suck your soul out, maaaan!" Passing papers around pointlessly and doing fake social niceties for it sounds great. If it's so bad then give up your fucking paid vacations and holidays off and liveable pay and just switch places with the guy pushing carts around the Wal-Mart parking lot while 60 year old Xanax addicts in pickup trucks and SUVs try to run him down as practice for when they finally live their ultimate wish fulfillment by driving their car into a bunch of protestors for daring to temporarily mildly inconvenience them.

Not now bunnies

Oh I guess they have no beef with each other. That sort of makes sense they're both rodents right. Well uhh they just keep standing there on the edge of the map.

It seems kind of arrogant for William Shakespeare to say "All the world's a stage." Maybe not arrogant, but I don't know, of course you see it that way, you're a fucking playwright. What about everyone else? To the dishwasher, is all the world that salad you barely even took three bites of? What about to the soldier? Is all the world a target, a threat, an enemy? It is convenient for us to only see life through a pinhole. Both for us and the next pigeon up on the higher wire. Life isn't really a play or a fight or any one thing but as long as you never drop out you don't have to worry about that. You can stay right on a track and become a software engineering guy who can't cook instant noodles for himself or tell the difference between different species of trees. People always told me "ginkgo biloba trees smell like cum" but I've never smelled it. I've never really considered cum to have a smell, maybe I just don't have smelly cum. I mean I know the smell of a cum rag you toss in the corner of a room that you ended up forgetting for way too long and had to throw away, but that's more of just a bacterial smell to me I think and I've never smelled something like that while I was walking out in public, even around ginkgo biloba trees. It feels like you can generate infinite cum in life sometimes, like even when you haven't eaten or drank you can still make some come out of you, but you will run out eventually. I'm not sure about the "semen retention" guys, I kind of believe more in the "balance of fluids" thing. You can definitely have an excess of cum sometimes and it makes you act like a fucking idiot. If you don't jack off or otherwise dispel excess semen (as if anybody even has sex anymore - Not gonna catch me doing that nerd shit!) at least once every few days everyone can tell and they think you're wound-up and stuck-up and way too aggressive over little things. At the same time if you masturbate too much that's also weird and everyone can tell that too. Just do it once every two or three days to keep your levels normal. Hop on e621, punch in "breast_expansion dragon" and you're good to go. You're normal again.

Some migrants showed up, got into some martial trances, and then all died futilely to the four ratfolk rangers that kinda just won't fuck off. Well, actually, one of them went home. I guess he got his fill of fucking around. I don't really feel the urge to take revenge because I didn't know any of those guys really. We don't really need a fish cleaner and we certainly don't need any milkers or shearers so I don't know what to tell you. Bad day to show up. You really should have phoned ahead. You really should not have showed up to your girlfriend's house after she ignored your calls for like 3 hours obviously she was cheating on you!!! Sometimes a girl is just giving you those psilocybin mushrooms to try and subtlely convince you that you want to break up instead of just saying "we should break up" maybe direct communication isn't that great maybe you should just play weird interpetive-dance games with each other trying to change each other's minds instead. Sorry. I said I wasn't going to talk about David Cage.

Alsrta, previously the gelder, is now our Caravan Voice (manager) because Anl was stuck in a strange mood that I thought was going to fail but we managed to sneak a kobble out to collect a single log for him. She seems better at it anyway. Also, after drinking booze straight from the barrel even though there are plenty of cups, she gave birth to three children: Anl Crystaldepth (badass name) Iltos Coveredspells (decent name) and Zhatrsi Homagebutters (I'm sorry lil lady) making the need for protection clearer than ever. Death and birth within just moments of each other. Existence, even in this little pixelated simulation, is far too complicated to ever summarize with just a witty quote, but we keep trying. Maybe there really is an all-encompassing philosophical Theory Of Everything that's catchy and fits in as many characters as a tweet. Before they let the Twitter Blue perverts write as much as they want, I mean. I'm not sure 140 is realistic but 280 could probably fit it. Everything in the whole universe can be flattened into one slogan. Why else would everyone be trying to build an ideology out of little quotes and zingers

The kobolds are dancing around and listening to stories casually like there aren't any murderous ratfolk creeping around outside. Feels kind of opposite to real life. Everyone locked away in their McMansion is glued to one of three boxes telling them that everything is going to hell and everyone is out to get them and that we are in an untold flood of violence and despair. Then you go outside and you walk through that "bad neighborhood" and it's just people going to the store to get fucking groceries like everybody else. But I guess kobolds live more communally. And I can't say I'd ever want my bedroom to be right next to anyone else's ever again - even if I do get a box and a cabinet!

Some of that food they be making sounds good as hell

Kody Inkblighted has an appropriate name for someone who is regaling everyone with poetry. Apparently it also thought the last person doing poetry sucked.

DANKNESS AND NOTHING MORE LOL!!!!!

That peasant got their head bashed in with a crossbow so fucking hard that it exploded. That's pretty fucked up. I guess it's kinda even for our kobble punching that thief in the head over and over until they died but we only killed one of them and they killed five of us and it's not like we went out to fuck with them, they were literally sneaking around trying to steal our stuff. Well folks I hit 30 images and I'm high as fuck and honestly the things I'm about to do to a tuna sandwich would not be allowed on television in ANY country. I'll be here though not doing shit else so expect another post in I don't know a few hours I guess

#dwarf fortress #kobblefort

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