#live at the village vanguard

[jazzdailyblog]

Jimmy Garrison: The Bassist Behind the Legendary John Coltrane Quartet

Introduction: Jimmy Garrison was an American jazz double bassist best known for his work with the legendary John Coltrane Quartet. Born ninety years ago today on March 3, 1934, in Miami, Florida, Garrison developed a unique and influential style that helped redefine the role of the bass in modern jazz. This blog post explores Garrison’s life, music, and enduring legacy. Early Life and Musical…

[dustedmagazine]

Kris Davis — Diatom Ribbons Live At The Village Vanguard (Pyroclastic)

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

The bio on Kris Davis’ website borrows a line from the New York Times which described the Canadian pianist as the beacon that told listeners where in New York City one should go on any given night. Diatom Ribbons Live At The Village Vanguard proposes a more expansive understanding of her relationship to jazz, because the ensemble’s music is a zone where Davis’s notions about was worth hearing in the 20th century gets processed and beamed out into the 21st.

The first project’s first, self-titled iteration wasn’t really the work of a band as much as it was the manifestation of a concept. The musicians at its core were Davis on piano, Trevor Dunn on electric bass, Terri Lynne Carrington on drums and Val Jeanty wielding turntables as a source of sampled speech, natural sounds and scratches. They were supplemented by six other musicians playing electric guitar, saxophones, vibes and voice, who enabled Davis to incorporate blues, rock, hip-hop and classical elements into her already-inclusive vision of the jazz continuum. The two-disc Diatom Ribbons was ambitious, but also a bit exhausting to negotiate.

This similarly dimensioned successor comes from a weekend engagement at the Village Vanguard. The latest material, which hinges around a three-part “Bird Suite,” and the ensemble’s lack of augmentation — besides the core group, there are no horns and just one guitarist, Julian Lage — results in a more cohesive statement of Davis’s thesis, which echoes a point that Charles Mingus already made a long, long time ago; you do Charlie Parker no honor by trying to play like him. He is the namesake of the three-part “Bird Suite,” which is the album’s center of gravity. Buttressed by Jeanty’s snatches of speeches by Sun Ra, Stockhausen, and other visionaries, as well as liberally reinterpreted tunes by Wayne Shorter, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Geri Allen, the music seems to be arguing that today’s jazz musician, like Bird, need to deal with everything that’s happened, and then come up with something personal.

To that end, Davis makes a hash of old, dualistic notions like inside/outside, improvised/composed or jazz + (one other genre) hybrids. Properly prepared, hash is pretty tasty, and that’s the case with this overflowing platter of pristine lyricism, bebop-to-free structural abstractions, shifting rhythmic matrices and multi-signal broadcasts of sound and voice. This is the good stuff, Davis seems to be saying, and a music maker following a jazz trajectory needs to deal with it all. But, while the music of the Diatom Ribbons ensemble is way more creatively inclusive than all those bebop copycats Mingus used to rail against, it’s a highly personal reordering of what is known, not a total paradigm shift into the new. Come to think of it, however, Mingus’ own undeniably magnificent accomplishments were more on the order of what Davis is doing here than Charlie Parker’s transformation of the music of his time.  

Bill Meyer

[sinceileftyoublog]

John Coltrane Reissue Review: Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy

(Impulse!/UMe)

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Not even two years after A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle saw the light from Joe Brazil's private collection, a new John Coltrane treasure has been given to us, unearthed this time by accident. A Bob Dylan archivist, scouring through the archives of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, found an August 1961 recording of John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy at Greenwich Village's long-shuttered Village Gate. While Coltrane's November performances from the same year at the Village Vanguard have long been available, either as part of his 1962 live album or a 1997 box set, this collection shows some familiar players a bit rougher around the edges. Future Nina Simone and Dylan engineer Richard Alderson, who wanted to test a newly found single ribbon microphone, decided to record the set, and everything from McCoy Tyner's restrained piano to, well, the overall sound quality, has the vibe of a group of geniuses still figuring things out, a fascinating snapshot in an ever-changing time in jazz.

In an era where our most revered artists take seemingly forever to release new albums, it's hard to fathom just what luminaries like Coltrane did back then, and the rapid pace of change they faced in a burgeoning music industry. In March, he released My Favorite Things on Atlantic, which yielded surprising hits in adaptations of George Gershwin's "Summertime" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things", the latter of which received significant radio airplay. Two months later, his Atlantic contract was bought by Impulse! While he kept Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones in his band, he replaced bassist Steve Davis with a young Reggie Workman and brought on multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy, forming the basis of a live quintet. His studio ensemble grew even larger on the first album he recorded for Impulse!, Africa/Brass, also one of his first to employ two bass players. Eventually, though, he'd settle into the Classic Quartet, Jimmy Garrison replacing Workman for the next several years, the four producing stone cold classics like, yes, A Love Supreme. It's impossible to separate this context when listening to Evenings at the Village Gate: John Coltrane with Eric Dolphy in all of its rawness.

Really, Evenings at the Village Gate is a true moment in time and one of arguable significance, though listening to it is a fascinating exercise. You constantly find yourself wishing you were there to witness it, watching an audience in real time react to where you know jazz would end up. As Jones' pattering drums and Workman and Tyner's steady bass and piano introduce "My Favorite Things", Dolphy subtly flutters his clarinet. Six minutes in, Coltrane announces himself with a brawny saxophone line before blasting streaks of notes above the band. When he very occasionally returns to the song's main refrain, it's like a sigh of relief before he embarks on another freeform journey. Sometimes, you can hear an audience member clapping, thinking his solo has finished, but he keeps going. Dolphy offers a similarly tattered solo on Benny Carter's "When Lights Are Low", while the rest of the band lurches. Tyner's solo, for example, is sprinkled but so low in the mix you can almost clearly hear background chatter in the club, and you can definitely decipher Workman's plucks. The band is risky and adventurous, unafraid to fail.

The final three tracks performed would eventually be recorded, including "Impressions", a Coltrane composition first set to tape in 1962. The version on Evenings at the Village Gate is an early run-through the way a lot of jazz instrumentalists do today. On one hand, hearing him breathlessly and immediately whittle away at schemas of jazz must have been thrilling. On the other, compared to the live versions of the song from months later, on this one, Coltrane embraces true chaos rather than controlled chaos. Only Jones and Tyner are truly honed in here, the former shining with his dexterousness throughout and underrated dynamism in his be-bop duet with the latter. If you've always thought Coltrane's recording of "Greensleeves", meanwhile, sounds a little bit like "My Favorite Things", Tyner somewhat interpolates the latter song as Jones' drum fills pervade the performance. Tyner's two-handed solo mid-way through simultaneously showcases the song's theme and his own phrasing, while Coltrane and Dolphy enter much later, as if they've been stockpiling on reserves before gradually taking the tune to dizzying new heights.

If there's a true highlight on Evenings at the Village Gate, it's of course the only known recorded version of Africa/Brass' "Africa". Art Davis fills in on additional bass drones, with Coltrane on tenor saxophone, and the song feels like the most the band had been in sync all night. Perhaps that's because there's nothing else to compare it to, but the performance is still thrilling taken on its own, from Jones' raindrop pitter patters to Tyner's unshakeable refrain. Coltrane and Dolphy give way to the rest of the band for a while, and the tune slowly ascends as they tease a return, first giving Jones his due with a rolling solo and then actually returning to rapturous applause, skronking and squeaking away. You have to think that some members of the audience had no conception for what they just saw. You also have to think the set made them want to dive in further.

[terengineer]

https://youtu.be/wme1n8noKzs

New chick the link video!

@terengineer

[astralleywright]

i have made the "orym read theory" joke like three times today alone but. i think it would genuinely be very helpful for him to develop an overarching philosophy through which to understand the world and the structure of power, because the simplistic "nice guy" approach to morality has utterly failed him in this moment.

[rastronomicals]

2:17 AM EST January 26, 2023:

John Coltrane - "Chasin' The Trane" From the album   Live at the Village Vanguard/The Master Takes (February 24, 1998)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[pstelwitchcraft]

Since I was screaming at the TV at the cast forgetting all the cool stuff they've done, I've decided to live up to my blog name and list all of my favorite Bells Hells achievements:

Those towers in Jrusar are now forever haunted by a little girl with a flower basket

Won the deathwish race

Took down the Paragon's headquarters in Bassuras

Saved Imahara Joe and Dancer + united them to help save Exandria

Zephran tourists are forever banned from flying the glider thingies

Saved the city of Uthodurn from a massive celestial bull

Helped the Hearthdell village

Gathered and united the two shards of Primordial Titans bringing their powers back to life

Saved Keyleth's life after the Solstice

Were the first ones to infiltrate the malleus key and step on Ruidus that weren't Ruby Vanguard

Stablished communication between Exandria and the Volition

Exploded Ludinus' headquarters

Saved Evoroa and brought the first ever Ruidian to Exandria

Killed OTOHAN THULL

Reunited Imogen with her mother and are now fully bringing her to their side

Have met pretty much every single pc and important npc in CR history save for a few

Trapped Delilah forever and got the closest to killing her anyone in history could since she REFUSES TO DIE

Helped kill a Grand Demon trapped for a 1000 yrs under Aeor (tho I'll admit they mostly fumbled about for that one)

[soon-palestine]

We write this call from our student movement in the Gaza Strip, from the heart of occupied Palestine, from under the brutal Zionist bombing, explosions, and the clutches of the monstrous nightmare of death that lurks around us in every corner, house, and street.

We raise it from prison cells, from beneath the destruction, and from inside the rubble, to send it to our fellow students, our comrades, brothers and sisters, in all the universities, schools and institutes of the world everywhere, & we address the global student movement… that was launched in order to stop the genocidal war that is being engineered and financed by the governments of the United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and others… this courageous student movement that was born in the universities as an integral part of our struggle, that expresses the conscience of students and peoples who yearn for justice and freedom.

We in the Gaza Strip look at you with pride and honour, as you are a revolutionary fighting vanguard, and a natural and integral part of our Palestinian liberation movement. You have come in a resounding, honest and clear response against the Israeli massacres and those who finance them, confronting the companies of the Zionist war of genocide and ethnic cleansing that have claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinian students of all ages… including hundreds of struggling Palestinian student cadres, wounded and imprisoned, in addition to our great loss in the martyrdom of our professors and teachers, and the destruction of our universities, institutes and schools.

Today, we call on you, from the midst of massacres and siege, to a new revolutionary phase of comprehensive escalation. We call on you to raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people.. In Rafah, Jabalia, Khan Younis, and the entire Gaza Strip, and against the settler gangs, armies of Zionist killers, that commit their crimes in camps, cities and villages in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. We call on you to besiege the White House in Washington, and to surround Western colonial governments and Zionist embassies, and the corporations that finance the Zionist entity and arm its criminal army with all kinds of bombs and means of death and destruction. These criminal colonial symbols represent the forces that support “Israel” to kill us – with your tax money and the money spent at complicit corporations, to destroy our homes, our society, and our future.

Therefore, we call on you to blockade them until the American Zionist aggression against our people in the Gaza Strip stops. At the same time, we renew our call to the teaching, academic, and union bodies in universities, as well as cultural, academic, and scientific figures, to advocate for and support student movements until they achieve their goals. Today we turn to high school students all over the world to participate widely in the struggles and activities of the university student movement, organizing demonstrations, and organizing educational days about the Palestinian struggle for liberation and return.

Secondary schools constitute a strong fortress and a great support for university students everywhere. Once again, we send special greetings to our brothers and sisters, the students of Palestine in the diaspora.

We greet our comrades and colleagues in Students for Justice in Palestine, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Palestine Action, and the academic boycott and divestment campaigns, and we salute everyone who participated and participates in student encampments. The duty and responsibility of Palestinian students in the Gaza Strip and all of occupied Palestine is steadfastness, commitment, resistance, unity, and alignment with the resistance and the people… …until the U.S. – Zionist aggression stops and the occupation is defeated and removed from our land — all our land, from the river to the sea.

Long live the struggle of Palestine’s students for return and liberation.

Long live international solidarity. And together we will be victorious!

Secretariat of Palestinian Student Frameworks – Gaza Strip

(available in AR original, EN, ES, FR, NL, DE)

https://samidoun.net/2024/05/a-call-from-the-palestinian-student-movement-in-gaza-time-for-revolutionary-escalation-of-the-global-intifada/

[illusivesoul]

Dragon Age Inquisition Scenery - Caer Bronach

King Brandel erected Caer Bronach in 8:26 Blessed, intending the fort as a stopover garrison for Fereldan soldiers fighting Orlesian invaders. The village of Crestwood takes its name from the fort's first captain Ser Venar Crestwood, who held Caer Bronach longer than anyone thought possible against a vanguard of the Orlesian army.

When the fort's defeat seemed inevitable, Ser Crestwood opened the gates, and challenged every chevalier in the Imperial army to a duel. Amused, one Orlesian officer accepted the offer; Ser Crestwood swiftly cut him down. 8 more followed, honor and the watching soldiers forcing them to fight Ser Crestwood one on one. The tenth challenger finally managed a fatal blow, only because Ser Crestwood had slowed due to blood loss from previous injuries.

Impressed by Ser Crestwood's tenacity and endurance, the remaining officers left the small village around the fort untouched as the Orlesians made for the capital, sparing hundreds of innocent lives.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Countess Ledrick's (Re)Doubt

You were warned about bandits in your travels through the Kingsfault mountains, but you didn't expect them to be such gracious hosts. It's about after your third stein of ale at their leader's high table that you start to think they might want something from you more than coin.

Even monsters can change, or so thinks Ledrick as she wipes the blood of her latest kill from her blade. A little over a decade ago she was at the vanguard of a mercenary force pillaging through the land clearing the way for an invading army. After the fighting was done while most of her companions were either going home or turning bandit she decided to take over the keep of a minor noble she'd help to butcher.

It was mostly a joke, a commonborn killer like her declaring herself a countess and presiding over a court of outlaws as they drank a dead man's wine. Presiding turned into setting down rules for her gang, which turned into negotiating for food with nearby villages in exchange for protection from monsters and whoever didn't want to follow her rules. Fast forward eight years and Ledrick's being cheered by the people she once came to conquer as she stands between them and and ettin looking to break down their village gates.

Time has a way of changing everything... grudges are buried, children are born, and necromantic cults of dragon worshippers emerge from their tomb sleep... all part of the great cycle.

Adventure Hooks:

Tracking a bounty into the mountains leads the party to the countess's court, where their quarry has thrown himself on Ledrick's mercy as someone who fought alongside her in the early days of securing her lands. Lendrick will let the party plea their case, but conflicted between a soldier's honour and wanting to be a lawful lord will instead send them out searching for the local priestess of Tyr, god of hardwon peace, who has offered the countess wise council in the past and has been missing of late on pilgrimage to a shrine in the wilderness.

The party may also fall into Lendrick's company after their quest or patron sends them to defend against a threat lurking in the mountainous wilderness, where they'll use her fort as a forward operating base. Learning to live alongside the Countess and her retinue of semi-retired killers may take some getting used to, but if the party can win their trust they'll have no truer allies when the threat comes calling.

There have always been drakes roosting in the Kingsfault mountains, but in recent months the countess's domain has seen more attacks than it has in the past twenty years. Something is driving these beasts to attack, and the former merc has put out a call for aid to , knowing herself ill equipped to investigate the causes and that her people would be better served with her managing the monsters.

Background: It was a little over a year ago when one of Ledrick's old warbuddies came calling, a battlemage named Hess who in recent who's post-retirement delving into the more esoteric side of magic has led him down a dark road. Showing up all smiles and grand stories of their shared suffering, Hess convinced the countess to let him and his acolytes apprentices delve an old ruin in her territory, promising to share some the riches they unearthed as repayment.

Hess was good on his word, tribute to the countess's court arrived after just a few weeks of delving and maintained at a steady trickle ever since. Part of this tribute happened to be a cursed idol that unless properly contained attracts the violent attention of dragonkind. Hess neglected to include care instructions when he sent it along, hoping to use the countess's defence of her lands as a means of harvesting drakeflesh under the guise of helping to search for reasons behind the attacks.

Further Adventures:

Several of Ledrick's underlings are beginning to fall under Hess's sway; sure the drakes have killed a few dozen peasants but merchants are willing to pay for their horns and teeth hand over first, to say nothing of the drakescale armor some of the more gifted armorers have been knocking together after their hunts. Would they really let all this stop to all this just because some do-nothing farmers got hurt?

Behind his jockular attitude and harmlessly crass jokes, there's something deeply wrong with Hess. War left wounds in his psyche and now something festers beneith his scars eating away at who he is, driving him to delve deeper into the tomb and unlock its secrets. Pretending to help with the party's investigation, he'll send them on a wild goose chase into the mountains towards a dangerous ruin claiming it as the origin of whatever's causing the drakes to attack.

By the time they realize the deceptio Hess and his followers will have cleared out of the ancient tomb, leaving behind a series of spells that will lock the party inside and reactivate all the traps and guardians the cult spent months disarming. Perhaps most dangerous of all is a construct of Hess's own fevered design; built of drakebone and sinew grafted into armor, a half finished war machine that will stalk the party through the darkened halls.

Art 1 Art 2 Art 3

[jazzdailyblog]

The Masterful Grooves of Mel Lewis: A Drumming Legacy

Introduction: Mel Lewis, born Melvin Sokoloff ninety-five years ago today on May 10, 1929, in Buffalo, New York, was a legendary jazz drummer known for his impeccable timekeeping, powerful yet nuanced playing, and his role as a co-founder of the iconic Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. His career spanned over five decades, during which he left an indelible mark on the jazz world, influencing…

[centaurianthropology]

Ashton and Silence

One of the things that has fascinated me this campaign is how ready-built Ashton is to be a leader, but how Taliesin plays low charisma to constantly stop them from being one.  Ashton has great ideas, and tends to be one of the two most grounded members of the group.   He has excellent moral intelligence (far better than they’ll admit), and one-on-one Ashton excels at talking people down from their worst points.  

But they also are in constant pain, and they’ve spent their entire life being told that they’re worthless as anything other than a slab of muscle.  So they silence themselves.  And the more unfamiliar the environment or the more people around them, the more they clam up.

Last episode was one of the best examples I’ve seen yet.  Ashton was almost entirely silent this episode.  He admitted to hating camping, likely to do with the chronic pain, but also to do with the unfamiliar environment.  Ashton is a city barbarian through and through, and they thrive in cities.  They are far more confident in cities, even when they don’t know them as well as Jrusar or Bassuras.  But the wilderness?  On an unknown continent?  He’s already on the wrong foot.

And then they go to the village, and before they know it things are spiraling.  It turns out this place was a powderkeg waiting to blow, with two factions that are, at least from appearance, both highly suspect.  The Vasselheim faction are clearly outsiders come here to impose their culture on the locals, taking too much from their land, bleeding their farms dry for distant tribute, and recently sending more and more armed thugs and more religious oppression.  Add to that the Flameguide being clearly an asshole who won’t listen to reason (very classic lawful stupid paladin, and I agree with Emily, likely a Conquest Paladin, some of the worst to deal with), and the Dawnfather folks are clearly assholes who aren’t wanted there.

But though the townsfolk in general seem sympathetic and just want to live free and worship as they will, their charismatic leader also seems to be full-on with Ruby Vanguard ideology.  She wants to tear the gods down, mistaking gods who are behind a divine gate and can’t interact with humans without a great deal of faith, with the corrupt religious institutions that sprung up around them.  But at the same time she gives a distinct feeling of hating those institutions because she’s not them.  She flat-out said that she didn’t want to stop with the town.  She wanted her own elemental worship to take over the world.

It’s a great set-up, because the townsfolk just want to be free, so they’re throwing in their lot with someone who has grand and terrible ambitions.  It’s Ludinus writ small, and playing out on an intimate scale.

And the team wasn’t really given any choice.  Once they were exploring the options, they were already sort of stuck with the elementalists.  And they mostly just want to prevent casualties, but the people in charge of those potential casualties have no care for the people who could die.  They see only glory and their own faith.

Orym spoke up, because that’s what Orym does.  But Orym’s confidence has been shaken, and there was little to no way he was going to manage to sway two fanatics.  Denise sort-of spoke up, as did Laudna, both trying but both also failing.  Bor’Dor and Prism were both basically on the side of ‘let’s fuck up the gods, whoo!’ from the off, Bor’Dor because he doesn’t really know what’s going on, and Prism out of academic bitterness.  In another life, she would have been hard-core Rube Vanguard fairly easily.

And then there’s Ashton, silent in the back, deeply uncomfortable, surrounded by an elementalist group that feels a lot like a cult with a charismatic leader.  How much must he be associating this with the Hishari?  Does it have any connection?  Some remnant faction?  Are they fighting on the side of his nightmares?

But they say nothing.  They stay silent.  They are barely noticed, despite being a big rock person in an elemental-worshipping town.  People should be all over them in fascination, but they aren’t, because Ashton has practically vanished.  They needed to speak up.  They needed to stand with Orym to try to de-escalate things, but instead they are sneaking in the background.  Why?  Lack of confidence.  Self-loathing.  Fear.  This is where Asthon’s low charisma springs from: they will never trust themselves to do the right thing, to say the right words, to really step up and be counted.  So they hide, and things crumble.

[cloaksandcapes]

Paladin Subclass, Oath of Protection

We've released our first subclass, the Paladin's Oath of Protection on our Patreon!

The Oath of Protection is all about becoming the shield for your allies. Commanding the attention of your foes, and taking the hits that would send others to their knees.

If you're idea of a Paladin is protecting those who can't protect themselves in the fantasy worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, then the Oath of Protection may be for you!

The Oath of Protection calls to paladins who wish to protect the meek and innocent from the dangers of the world. It is their aim to be a stalwart defender of their companions, and those who cannot defend themselves. These paladins see themselves as shields before swords, they wield temperance and empathy instead of retribution and divine fury.

Protection Paladins are just as adept at war and combat as any other, but their focus is on mitigating damage to others, even if it means putting themselves in harm's way. An Oath of Protection paladin might dedicate themselves to a village with little defense, standing up against a force of bandits or monsters. They may seek to swear themselves to an individual who seeks to do good in the face of adversity, that otherwise wouldn’t be able to defend themselves, such as an outspoken activist against a local thieves guild, or capitalistic trade authority.

Tenets of Protection

A paladin who takes this oath is reminded of their tenets through the many scars they bear, having prevented another from needing to wear them.

Stand Against Tyranny. Cruelty and oppression thrive in the presence of the weak, you must be the wall that stands against its tides.

Protect the Meek. There is beauty and promise in all people, regardless of their strength or influence. But not every living creature has the means to stand against those with power. You use your shield to protect those who cannot fight for themselves.

Walk Your Own Path. Men with power and gold fear losing it, and often hire strong arms to protect them. But you walk a path that is your own, unswayed by material gains, seeking to keep balance in a world that others look to tip in their own favor.

Oath of Protection Features

Paladin Level Feature

3rd Oath Spells, Channel Divinity

7th Bastion of the Meek

15th Unyielding Shield

20th Divine Defender

Channel Divinity

When you take this oath at 3rd level, you gain the following two Channel Divinity options. See the Sacred Oath class feature for how Channel Divinity works.

Shield of Light. You can use your Channel Divinity to shield an ally and blind their attacker. When an attack targets one of your allies within 30 feet of you, you can use your reaction to summon a bulwark of light that redirects the attack towards you. If the attack hits, you take only half damage. The attacker must then make a Constitution saving throw against your spell save DC or be blinded until the end of their next turn.

Holy Vanguard. To defend others, you must be willing to take the hard hits that no one else can. As an action, you drop your defenses, encouraging enemies around you to press the advantage. For 1 minute, the first attack roll an enemy makes against you each round is done with advantage.

While Holy Vanguard is active you reduce damage dealt to you by an amount equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1). In addition, if an enemy that you can see within 30 feet of you attacks an ally, you can use your reaction to deal radiant damage to the enemy equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum of 1) and give them disadvantage on the attack.

If you enjoyed this preveiw of our content, join us in Discord or on Twitch every Mon\Wed\Fri! We create new Homebrew with our chat every stream. And to support us check out our Patreon for 600+ magic items, monsters, tokens, maps, and more.

[khizuo]

A call from the Palestinian student movement in Gaza: Time for revolutionary escalation of the global intifada

We in the Gaza Strip look at you with pride and honour, as you are a revolutionary fighting vanguard, and a natural and integral part of our Palestinian liberation movement. You have come in a resounding, honest and clear response against the Israeli massacres and those who finance them, confronting the companies of the Zionist war of genocide and ethnic cleansing that have claimed the lives of thousands of Palestinian students of all ages, including hundreds of struggling Palestinian student cadres, wounded and imprisoned, in addition to our great loss in the martyrdom of our professors and teachers, and the destruction of our universities, institutes and schools. Today, we call on you, from the midst of massacres and siege, to a new revolutionary phase of comprehensive escalation, and to raise the pace and ceiling of your struggle and your honorable stances, quantitatively and qualitatively, against the institutions, corporations, and governments that participate in the slaughter of our children, our students, and our people in Rafah, Jabalia, Khan Younis, and the entire Gaza Strip, and against the settler gangs, armies of Zionist killers, and so on that commit their crimes in camps, cities and villages in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem.

(May 29, 2024)

[i-mybrunettelady]

full speed ahead: an ascalon lore post from moi! after a century and a half!

it's a little post, really, that's like. my personal hc about the position and role of women in ascalonian society pre and after searing, ft my two ascalonian girls, sofronija (sofka in further text) and nyra! i will also speak in broader terms here, so men and women = masculine and feminine roles, but you absolutely can add nonbinary people in this spectrum as well. it's just easier for me to discuss in more generalised terms now!

i don't think women were ever encouraged to just be housewives even in pre-searing ascalon; we see this in game, women serve as much of a public role as men do, hold public functions, are respected and valued and honored, but what i wanna focus here is the role of a warrior. see, how i see it, pre-searing women were allowed and encouraged to train and wield magic and know how to fight and be adventurers, but mostly in the purpose of self-defense? men went to war, that was a masculine thing; sometimes women did as well, and that was a-ok, but they mostly stayed behind to protect their villages and cities.

sofka was born in what we'd call upper middle class - or the late medieval equivalent - and married into a family of the same class. her husband was a merchant; she herself is an up and coming elementalist and necromancer when prophecies start, and she was expected to join her husband in his trading affairs, even travel. granted, she is a widow when prophecies start, but the point still stands.

she has no real aspirations for a soldier's life. she only joins the ascalon vanguard on devona's insistence, and sofka has a big fat crush on her, so she joins the vanguard to impress her crush. the searing brings her at the forefront because of the skill she gained in the vanguard, not because she wants to. she would've been fine living a life where she wasn't expected to be a soldier, but life had different plans for her.

fast forward to current day and the role of a warrior-woman is a little different. for one, it's not as rare - in the centuries after the searing, and especially in ebonhawke, they needed every capable person they could find. this developed into an expectation of sorts that men and women were to be combatants on the field, and this goes twice for the nobility.

ascalon's nobility (the remaining ones, that is) is a warrior nobility; their pride is in their ability to contribute to battles as soldiers and tacticians. they guide themselves by something akin to the code of chivalry. there are exceptions, of course. nyra's own mother, antonia, has always felt left out of that whole warrior-woman narrative because she isn't up for it, so moving to kryta and becoming a socialite was much more up her alley than the role she was expected to have in ebonhawke.

nyra grew up with these ideas of what a woman should be. in a way, she is the perfect embodiment of a current ascalonian view of women. she would've thrived in ebonhawke, not only as a member of the ainsaf family (aka a noble family with royal blood) but also in the way she chooses to live her life. her "conflict" is the fact that she is krytan-ascalonian, that she is in the middle of both cultures, and krytan view of what a woman should be is more akin to the one ascalon held pre-searing than the current ones.

her being diaspora is also super important here because in canon, ascalonian diaspora/minority communities are so keen on preserving their heritage. so there was twice as much pressure to maintain this image and role, which she happily does! but then it clashes with the things her other culture is telling her.

her choice to lean into the ascalonian side of things is not more or less valid than her mother's choice to lean into the more krytan side of things. it's just a choice. and i find all of this so very interesting...

anet what did you put in your humans to make them so fucking cool

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e66

To Zephrah!

I am reminded that there's another place in the story where we've seen wounds that leak black ichor and refuse to heal by natural or magical means: the wound that Tharizdun left Ioun with.

oh the new Laudna art is gorgeous

Orym got a custom battle maneuver! Zephran Spirit lets him expend a superiority die and add the result to a dexterity save. I'm assuming it's not a dex save specifically caused by wind, because that's ridiculously specific -- it's probably something like dex saves against falling prone, being grappled, forced movement, etc.

First to greet them is Maeve, Orym's sister (in law), with a group of guards.

Keyleth is still wounded, and are multiple Zephran soldiers who made it out of "the Red Center." That battle was an "all to arms" situation, and most of Zephrah's military force was sent there. Lida, another of Orym's systers, was unharmed and is tending to Keyleth's wounds.

In Zephrah, some of the permanent enchantment-based wards are offline, and some of their means of transportation are down.

oh god, Keyleth's spell slots aren't restoring either???

When the malleus key went off, everyone in the crater responded differently. Many were scattered across the continent, and others have been sent after them; and the rest were left behind and continued the fight.

When they arrive, Keyleth is resting. Her wounds haven't closed, and while there is no blood, they look freshly carved, with exposed red flesh that hasn't healed over. "The assassin uses the same toxin that once found its way to our village. It doesn't have a historical precursor we can find, and I barely sustained an injury last time but we all lost much in the shadow of that day. They were able to recover with the use of a... challenging remedy made from the blue perenum flower." Few grow, but those that do are found in cursed landscapes -- places of strife and unfriendly beasts. The ones they collected last time were from the Gray Valley north of Zephrah, and were all used to heal wounds from the last attack -- though notably, it seems that the use of this remedy can only affect a living creature. A party, including one of Orym's sisters, went out to find this flower, but they haven't returned.

Zephrah lost over 2 dozen people in the crater. That number includes people who were teleported away who may still be alive, though.

"The last thing that I saw, before the light took us... was someone important to me. Someone I lost long ago. And I will do everything in my power to destroy those who did this. Otohan, Ludinus, Liliana -- all of them. I will tear down everything they represent, and I will see that they leave no more pain in their wake."

"We need to rally. Confusion is woven into the design. They have sown confusion for months, in big towns and small... [the Ruby Vanguard] is now emerging publicly, using the confusion and outrage of the public to bolster their efforts." She asks them to track down the group that went missing trying to find the flowers for the cure, and to bring them and the plant back.

"Find this for us, so that we may heal. Then, together, we will rain the fury of every power that Exandria has onto these absolute shitheads." Keyleth gets to swear twice a year, canon

Keyleth regards the gods as heralds of the natural world, and the general religious vibe in Zephrah is that they worship nature and the natural world -- they try to be good neighbors and hope the gods do the same in return.

"Herald" is such an interesting description to me. It paints the gods as entities that usher in, but do not overtly create, the natural world, or that stand as a mediator between the raw power of nature and its actual physical manifestation. It just feels very intentional in its meaning, when Keyleth could've used words like "harbinger," "hierophant," or something similar here.

Oh hey! the airship crashing actually did something! it took out dozens of Ruby Vanguard members and damaged the top of the malleus key.

Both Keyleth and Lida were left in the crater after the white light went off, and they saw that both Ludinus and Liliana had been teleported away. She saw a couple of the reilora come through, and they seemed to be in alliance with the Vanguard; the "nightmarish" entities can bleed. Some were hulking, some were quick, some weren't fully material, but none spoke with words.

The Gray Valley was the site of Drassig's bargain with the demon prince of indulgence, which corrupted the landscape. There are dark spirits and errant demons, but the landscape and creatures grow more dangerous under Ruidus flares (which is interesting considering that Drassig is canonically Ruidusborn).

Ashton asks one of Keyleth's advisors about the Hishari. He gives a different date for the actual event that destroyed the village -- around 20 years ago, according to him -- but otherwise there isn't much new information.

The Bells Hells go to visit Orym's mom. He grew up in a little cottagecore house with flowers everywhere, built for halflings -- so Fearne, Ashton, Laudna, and maybe Imogen all have to stoop down.

Laura: "that fantasy food sounds good IRL right now." Travis, immediately: *picks up phone, orders doordash to the studio*

.....Orym had toys made by Chetney when he was a baby. Chetney got his start in Tal'dorei. Orym never knew his father. "Did you create my childhood, Chetney?" I swear to gods, if one of the mid/endgame reveals ends up being that Chetney is Orym's father--

Ashton and Orym head into town to finally get their new outfits! Orym is looking for new leather armor (possibly enchanted), and it sounds like he wants some bracers of defense. Ashton wants to be his "best self, I want to inspire people, the look of a champion," and he pulls design references from the hole -- anti-hero chique. Legendary hero, but make it fashion. Also, Ashton is described as a "strange hunk."

"Whitestone is for lovers, Zephrah is for fuckers."

Arriving in the Gray Valley, it is a barren, monochrome, grayscale landscape covered in petrified plantlife and the smell of burning fat. They stand in the middle of a forest, but all the trees are blanched, their leaves are white and gray.

Chetney identifies that burning fat, melted wax-type smell as the smell that accompanies fiends when they cross into Exandria.

Also in this area, they find scattered bits of spherical metal that are embedded into the dirt -- helmets with skulls in them, accompanied by the rest of a body. From the dryness and the moss growth, these bodies are quite old.

I know they were singing Tom's Diner, but Centuries sounds so fucking similar--

Aww, FCG casts death ward on Orym, taking a cue from Deanna's book.

Two gloomstalkers (I think) fly over the Bells Hells. For reference, Vox Machina fought gloomstalkers at level 17, the Mighty Nein fought them at level 9, and the Bells Hells are level 10.

Chetney notes that there is an omnipresent smell of volcanic emissions, but it's coming more strongly from an area of the forest in which the trees are darker, charred, and smoking.

For the record, the text of find familiar is vague enough that it comes down to DM discretion as to whether the caster uses their own or their familiar's skill bonuses. But if you absolutely need an answer from the rules as written, then the caster would use their own bonuses, because the spell states that, when looking through their familiar's eyes, the caster gains any senses of the familiar. This implies that when they are looking through their familiar's eyes, the caster uses their own senses except as augmented by the familiar's abilities. But again, this is vague enough that it ends up being up to the DM.

The Bells Hells continue looking for the flowers. Eventually, they find evidence of movement, and as they continue they reach a swampland. This entire area is a forgotten battlefield -- swords reclaimed by nature, pieces of armor buried in the marsh. A layer of ash has coated the entire landscape, but as they continue, they eventually find a little speck of blue.

did....... did Marisha just reference do you love the color of the sky? Is this what y'all mean when you say that Tumblr has breached containment?

Chetney harvests some of the flowers they found, but as he does, two of the armored bodies they'd found rise up and start crawling from the ground. They aren't skeletal and ancient -- they're a little more recent, and they look toward a small, shadowed figure that's been sitting, watching them. Hunched low, they can barely make out clasped hands, with dark purplish skin, golden-orange eyes, horns that curve above their head. As Chetney begins to move away, it stands, and we roll initiative!

As always, there's very little to liveblog during combat, so here's our character level updates section of the liveblog post!

This episode being so close in number to C2E55 is stressing me out--

Undead, but recently deceased, bodies attack Chetney. One is male and one is female, human or half-elven in form -- either could very well be Orym's sister or the missing Ashari.

It appears that there is some kind of humanoid form inside the ribcage of this demonic entity, and it uses the "soul rend" ability to inflict almost 40 points of necrotic damage on a failed save. This is a homebrew ability, as nothing in existing published 5e materials has the "soul rend" ability. It's also worth nothing that a low chuckle accompanies the necrotic damage, heard by everyone who gets hit by it.

"I'm gonna go to my happy place, so I'm gonna rage." Ashton rolls gravity, which causes his own form to become monochromatic like the landscape. But there are a bunch of other things on top. When they attack, they use both reckless attacks and gravity well. Gravity well causes the subject of the attack to make a STR save. Ashton also uses the belt and the ring to add more die rolls to this, but AFAIK this isn't a build update, since we've seen this effect before. But it's a massive amount of damage that clearly has an impact on the creature.

With his passive perception, Orym recognizes the corpse he's fighting as a member of the Air Ashari, but one he barely knew.

Fearne casts aura of life, which is a wildfire druid spell. Usually it's a paladin spell, but it's fucking great for a druid like Fearne.

*Laudna uses hounds of ill omen* Fearne and Imogen, immediately: "I am looking respectfully!"

More of the spectral, demonic figures aparate around them, and Chetney considers putting on Ludinus' fey energy-channeling vest.

Ashton rage build update: While the space build is active, Ashton can use their reaction to gain resistance to an attack (halving the attack's damage), then can force the attacking creature (if it fails its save) to move 30ft in any direction after the attack has resolved.

These creatures are a lot like the chasmes TM9 fought (in, btw, C2E60), in that they reduce their targets' max hit points upon attacking. However, Fearne's aura of life completely shuts this off, since not only does it give creatures in the radius resistance to necrotic damage, but also prevents their HP max from being lowered.

Anyway, I maintain that FCG's spell save is way too low for this level, to the point that it legit feels like Sam is actively sabotaging the party by not increasing FCG's wisdom. FCG's spell save should be 17 or 18 by level 10.

Ashton rage build update: Imogen casts lightning bolt, and could have targeted Ashton's hammer if she wanted. It was implied that Imogen's spell would've been cast from a different space should she have targeted the hammer instead of her actual target with it.

Fearne casts daylight, and none of these undead creatures appreciate it very much. These sound similar to the sorrow-sworn that the Mighty Nein encountered in the Barbed Fields.

With a witch bolt, Imogen dispatches the last creature along with its thralls.

Within the slain figure, Orym finds the trace of a consciousness, an Ashari warrior. It takes the form of a young, elven, female figure who touches her hand to Orym's and smiles before dissipating -- not his sister. The other two are dead beyond contact, but the Bells Hells bury them respectfully.