#sol gm

[shameless-sol-apologist]

[dreamin-gacha]

Sol things

[jmtofp]

[alex-dontknow]

returning to gacha world reminded me how fixated i was on several characters

specifically the djs (even more specifically x, clover and phantom) and also some of the lunatics—

also sol!!! i love him sm he's one of my favorite villains though gm desperately needs a revamp

[gensational]

Goumang nine sols pre GM save me

(She would never)

[raptorix]

Used my Beacon access to buy a ticket for the Live Show next month (Yay!) And also listened to the first 3 episodes of Re-Slayer's Take podcast. :D

Thoughts on Re-Slayer's Take:

Great for newbies who are familiar with but not caught up with all of Critical Role. The GMs spell out more setting unique character descriptions, (What's a Tiefling? What's a Firbolg?) but also reward veterans with references we would know (like Vox Machina's brief run with The Slayer's Take.)

More spoilery thoughts behind the 'Read More'

So this is a far more produced & edited podcast than an actual-play. You're not going to hear out-of-character jokes or discussions about gameplay rules. Fully sound edited & music score.

Did my best to endure the constant squelching noises they used for the Gelatinous Cube encounter in the first episode. Someone recorded extended sessions of playing with slime or slurping on Boba *just* for that foley. DX

As for characters: Good charming cast! They utilize the 'DM PCs & player PCs' play style. One of the DMs plays as Timpani the Firbolg to help guide the story directly, while the other does narration & gameplay, and I think plays as the Goblin sidekick, Poogs.

I think I need to go back and re-listen to the first episode for intros. They don't spell out what classes the characters are playing. D:

I can't for the life of me understand why Farah the half elf (???) uses a gravely voice besides 'She's older.' Guessing from her choice in crossbow she's a ranger, though she might be a blood hunter/ranger build? She's been working as a monster hunter prior to her audition to try and join the Slayer's Take, and seems to be looking for a more consistent employment with them.

Heera Agniheart is possibly an Inquisitor Rogue, since she has a high intelligence & insight ability stats, and used sneak attack and a finesse weapon. Also an ochre yellow tiefling w/ water buffalo style horns. The artwork crops that feature out and I'd love to see a full portrait of that :O

Frog is delightful, and I hope to see more Aeormaton characters in Exandria. To make it easier, lore-wise, she was revived w/ full amnesia & is fully unfamiliar with current day Exandria. But she apparently trained with some Monks first, so gets to be the dodge-tank for the group.

Idrin Shadowstep is a Half Elf/Half Orc (I think of the lineage Matt designated as common in Jrusar) and appears to have a sorcerer lineage of either clockwork soul, or an Exandria-Dunamancy variant of it. He has a special time reversal ability he can use to re-roll his or his party member's failed rolls. Very noble of intentions and the neophyte adventurer.

DM PC Timpani Guff took Matt's Midwestern/Canadian accent he used on Pumat Sol and ran with it. A circle of spores druid who fills in as the party's healer & guide. He's trying to get the Slayer's Take to listen to his observations of an extra-planar force bringing old Slayer's Take monsters back from the dead. But because he's lied about his affiliation with them before, the members wont listen to his warnings. So now he's leading this little adventuring group to investigate this while the Slayer's Take willfully ignores it.

Re-Slayer's Take is a difficult title, IMO. RST might be a good acronym. Maybe shorten it to 'Reslayers'?

It's also all-ages friendly. No curse words!!! Injuries also are not graphic. (PCs get bruises or get knocked out, but nothing deadly.) Stakes are challenging, but like in an action cartoon and not infantilizing. I have listened to another podcast attempt to an all-ages spin-off after the prior story setting was explicit, and they started out with kid-gloves and low stakes that almost put me to sleep. Thankfully Reslayers doesn't go that route. We're playing DnD and we got DnD monsters to fight!

Setting timeline-wise is between The Mighty Nein and Bell's Hells. So maybe if we revisit Issylra in the current campaign, we might see/hear of the Reslayers. We'll have to see later, however, as the Reslayers progress their storyline.

Reblogs with any lore corrections from a re-listen or future Encyclopedia Exandria entries.

[joculine]

DIE Issue #5 Reread (Gillen & Hans)

We are so back. Lets get into Premise Rejection.

This is my second favorite issue of the first arc, after Issue #2. I think it holds my favorite panel, which we'll get to later. This is a really bombastic finale to the trek to Glass Town and it sets up what will become a wild couple arcs. I'm sure you aren't expecting a standard ending to this "hero's" journey from DIE and that's certainly not where we're going. Let's get into it.

Art

I really like the design of this harvest god above. He's massive and lanky, and seems like kind of a mess.

I absolutely adore the design of this robot brain guy from the Eternal Prussian forces. Look at him.

What a weird little thing!

This issue is also full of stand out appearances for Ash and Sol. And gosh... are they stand out...

Good lord these two are volatile together. This is a great example of a relationship between a GM and their most "In It" player. The issue is really just long fight for control over the plot. I love that they are made for each other in the worst ways possible.

So About The Fallen

Part of why this is my second favorite issue of the arc is that it has the second Oh Shit moment of this comic. The reveal that the Fallen are dead players is such a great plot point. It clicks with the whole fantasy becomes reality becomes fantasy again deal, it keeps Sol around to stir up trouble after his death, totally re-contextualizes this type of enemy and how they've treated them, and, best of all, raises far more questions than it answers.

Big contender for my favorite Sol panel.

So everyone who has ever played this game and died ("the word is die") is revived as The Fallen. What does that actually mean? Aren't our crew here the only kids who have played the game? How are there so many Fallen here already? What about the elf queen, who was an NPC Sol made?

For those first questions, perhaps this is the Homestuck in me or perhaps this is me back-reading some later plot into this, but it seems pretty obvious some sort of time shenanigans needs to be in play. And it eventually sort of will be. (It will be quite similar to how Skaia functions actually.) We'll save that for the issue it shows up in, wayyy down the line.

As for the NPC Fallen, I believe there's some clarification in the RPG book here—there are Fallen, the monster and enemy a GM can throw out and there is the Fallen class, which all players receive upon dying in DIE. Diegetically though, I think there is not much difference between an NPC who has been abandoned or skipped over and a player character (or player as the case is here) who has died. They are both expended beyond their purposes and given a new role as detritus. They also have a drive to claw relevance back from the blood of the Paragons, something that would bring them back to life (and back into importance.) DIE has a zombie curse but only for those who would make the most emotionally painful zombies to deal with. Very on theme.

In this way, it's also very Dark Souls, isn't it? I wondered about this too for those games. Why can Ornstein and Smough not just come back hollowed and kick my ass again? They lack the curse of Undead, that tormenting anchor of relevance that only affects those hungry enough for dominance to keep going past the point of death.

Those who are Fallen (like the Paragons or the Chosen Undead) are meant to exist as long as needed to see their stories to the bitter end. Is that curse something imposed on them? Yes. Is it something they feed into themselves? I think so. There's nothing stopping Sol from just giving up at this point. But that's not what he's going to do. He's going to keep going because he can't let go of the game. Dying is no reprieve. And hey, now the Fallen aren't so morally simple to kill after all! Remember what Izzy was saying about the House Rule? Looks like they may have been cutting into actually Real People from the Real World for some time now. Ruh roh. We'll see this play out more soon. For now, we can think about how poor Sol has found out he is more at the whims of Die than he may have thought.

Speaking Of, Sol Has Kind Of Always Been Like This

Which I'm sure comes as a very painful shock to him. He's someone that views himself high above the players, a plotter pulling the strings. A real mastermind GM type.

That's what this boy is telling me. His work, be it Legos, Glass Town, the ruleset, or his grand second game, it all exists in a complete, crystaline state. You admire it. You follow the path he has set out for it. It is "finished" before any of the players set foot back on Die.

This is, of course, not how things will go. The title of this issue is Premise Rejection after all. Ash figured out quite quickly that Sol has put them in a railroading Saw trap to force them to play along. In response, she is guiding the party to pull it apart by the screws. Rather than look for these keys or whatever the Chamberlain was talking about, everyone has used their skills to pick away at Glass Town's defenses and put the big robot army against Sol's cool magic castle. With a fairly light application of their magical power, they manage to pull of city wide carnage at little risk to themselves.

This is classic player behavior and a great example of how a little thinking can tear down even the grandest GM constructions. Remember how we talked about how Glass Town was a pretty poorly thought out city? Sol is finding out just how problematic his plot holes are proving to be.

I love watching him come down with his big stupid cape. Look how unprepared for this he was. Do you think he was hiding at the top of Glass Town the whole time? I bet he even had a palantir or something. What a dork.

Very quickly we watch him start to edit the rules on the fly like a flailing GM. The damage is already done, so at this point he's flexing out of spite. Look, he's even restricting class abilities:

I do find it interesting how Sol's Master abilities are written to reflect Ash's Dictator ones. They're both italicized and both have squiggly lines around the speech bubbles. They're also both highlighted in colors, Ash with red (a major one in her color palette) and Sol with blue (also in his palette).

Let's connect their magic briefly with color (we'll talk more about color very soon) and say the red Dictator compulsions in this issue are destructive and "game breaking" while the blue/purple Master laws are defensive and "game enforcing."

Importantly, they both deal with the narrative but in different ways, Ash more with emotion and motivation, Sol with what people and things can literally do. We know from go that a Dictator is a story-teller and a plan-maker... that's not too dissimilar from a GM!

But Sol, huh? What a sore loser.

A Dictator's Best Weapon

I never really got why Ash has this crazy death touch thing. It struck me as an odd choice to give the social manipulation class. Chloe shared her thoughts with me when we were talking about DIE a few months back and it's illuminated things for me.

The Dictator commands emotion, yes, but they command narrative as well. What is this death touch if not the ultimate command—a powerful punctuation to the Dictator's arsenal. If making you love her doesn't work, making you dead will get the job done too... and there's certainly no way to argue with Ash on that. It's as though she's walking around with a big pen she can use to strike out bits of Sol's story she doesn't like. She went big here and scratched out the author section. Yikes. Hope you got a plan to follow up on that, Ash!

Look at her go, already editorializing just seconds away from killing Sol. Do we think Ash believes the narrative she's telling herself? Do we think she believes she can make us buy into it? The great part is, I don't really know! It's moments like these that pull us out of the story and remind us we're being given most everything through Ash's words that get to the core of what DIE is after. It's about these people trapped in stories of their own making and how it turns them into quite awful characters.

This is probably the darkest we've gotten so far. A great reminder to Ash's friends and first example to the reader at just how much she can commit to playing the anti-hero. Anyway, let's get back to the death touch.

This is the other half of that power—the power of its implication. See how Hans has set up this panel: first, your eyes hit the glowing hand, the brightest object in the panel and the thing that has just killed Sol. Then you move back to traditional left to right and see Ash. She's crying, but resolute. Then her words. They're harsh. Maybe understandable though? Then back at that hand. It's not just the weapon that killed Sol now, but the thing that may touch someone else. She's reaching out for their hands to start the ritual. She's letting them know what "anything" means... they'd better be unanimous. Now that's a master manipulator at work.

This is that favorite panel BTW.

How Far Is Too Far?

Here's another stand out panel from this issue. Ash's expression is exquisite: pain, anger, thrill, resolve. It's all there. This comes moments after using the voice to completely dominate the Chamberlain of Glass Town and it's not what I'd expect to see from her.

She's filling her role both as Dictator and schemer and yet I feel like she's about to throw up or cry. Or both. The metaphor here paired with the destruction she saw the from the Steel Dragon in Issue 3 is delectable. She's recognizing the horrible power she's choosing to wield in order to bring ruin to Glass Town... but she's also not rejecting it.

This is a question DIE is going to keep asking of its characters: how far are you willing to go with your role? Will you play your part even if it is horrible? What if harnessing the power of a Paragon is your only option? What if it's not?

Here's Angela, the badass cyberpunk, failing to both be grizzled or distant from her humanity. I think it's interesting Case, such an innocent pet, is mechanical, especially given that our other examples of robotic entities are all warmongering automatons. She treats him as so real, while she views the Prussian leaderbot as a tool to be hacked and who's autonomy is to be overridden. That's not to say I think that leaderbot is isn't merely an automaton though... I actually think this is more damning to how Angela anthropomorphizes Case.

I said last issue Case is a pricey distraction. I think that's still correct. Even here she feeds him one last piece of Fair Gold, understanding he will probably die again tomorrow. It's a bit of a waste before what's going to be a dangerous battle.

Matt, meanwhile, seems perfectly able to indulge in his pain enough to... save his friends? Or start an attack on a city full of people? Both I suppose. Not a great look but one he appears to have little issue with for now.

This interaction stood out to me this read. I've always had trouble understanding why the Emotion Knights have talking weapons. It's cool, obviously, but I had trouble seeing something deeper than that. I realized tonight though, these weapons are their emotions, not separate entities.

That sword is Matt's own worst impulses, weaponized both literally against his enemies and psychologically against himself. After all, what is a knight but their weapon? "Don't listen to it," Ash says. She might as well say "That's just the depression talking." Yeah, no shit.

Another quick observation... is she even listening? Getting "back to [his] family" is exactly what the sword (Matt's own grief) is worried about. Very empty words, but perhaps very intentional to keep Matt on track and focused.

Chuck has no problems living as a swashbuckler in a fantasy world because he is Chuck. No other comment needed.

Imagine for a moment that I stopped there and moved onto Isabelle. I feel it's important to at least entertain the hypothetical joke if we're going to talk about the Fool. Chuck (and his class) exist as a joke, but he's a joke you have to take seriously eventually, right? And be respectful and shit.

We see his carefree and self-focused attitude come to a head when he draws a gun on Ash. Yes, Chuck has no problems living as Die wants him to and he's willing to go frighteningly far to keep it that way.

Joining him is Izzy, who has begun to take her role as a "cleric" very seriously. What's going on here is complicated. Let's lay out the facts:

Isabelle is the one who brings up the House Rule. "We treat Die as if it's real." She's also expressed fear at being relied on as a teacher (both holy and high school), while still assuming responsibility of it.

This moment is a union of those two traits. She wants to stay in Die because these are real people who's lives they've ruined and she feels like someone needs to step up and guide them. While she hates the idea of doing that, she (very rightly) does not trust anyone else to a good job of helping the residents of Glass Town (or perhaps any job.)

This is especially odd with the role of the Godbinder, who deals in debts and balances with the gods. As she describes in 1991, she's an atheist with pets—really more demonologist than cleric.

Excepting Angela (who I think is underused in this issue TBH,) the party is in full roleplay here. What comes of that commitment? The burning of Glass Town. Not a good sign.

The Emotion Wheel

This is already so damn long and emotion wheel talk is going to drag it even more... but I need to do it at some point. Let's start with the first proper introduction of the wheel.

Oh look, it's Plutchik's wheel of emotions. This is not an original insight, it comes directly from one of Gillen's essays in the back of each issue. I think we might respond to those directly soon.

The wheel posits that all emotional states are variations of mixtures of 8 core feelings. This is how the Dictator and Emotion Knights function (the former mechanically, the knights more textually. Sol may be a fan of Plutchik's work.) Dictators treat this as a palette to work with, Emotion Knights as a sworn order to follow.

I think there is a strong connection between the coloring used in many of these panels and the colors on the wheel. Memory scenes, for instance, play with purple and blue: disgust, sadness, remorse, disapproval. Ash's story of the Joy Knight is pink and red, quite far from the yellow of joy and closer to contempt, loathing, and anger after many years walking as a corpse.

But Cassie, you may say, Ash's dictator powers are always red... and so is Matt's sword! Hold onto that thought with Matt, but it's also not an exact key. Which is good! I think that would be pretty boring!

As I noted in the Dictator/Master section, I've thought of reds and blues and destructive and constructive magic. This follows with the red skeleton, the blue magic core mantaining Glass Town's shield, the red sword that destroys it, and Isabelle's portals to escape.

I also think that Fantasy Heartbreaker is just a really really red arc. If I remember correctly, future arcs have a more varied palette. Perhaps there will be more color for us to explore there.

Now that I've dropped this big unwieldy graph, I also want to share a bit about how much I love Emotion Knights. I've run a game with a Fear Knight before, which was a lot of fun. And could you imagine a Trust Knight, sapping and destroying bonds between people to use as critical hits? I can imagine a very potent relationship between her and her Dictator wife. Really just a fantastic and juicy concept. I think they should be in every game.

Other Thoughts

I don't have anything to say about this other than it's great.

I think it's fun how badly Ash reads Sol's eye theming. I don't think he's afraid at all.

It's almost impossible to see Dominic and Ash as the same person. Ash is just so... confident in everything. She schemes. She kills. She's beautiful. She's a dominatrix... but outside Die she just... isn't that at all. She's so scared and so hollow on Earth.

I say almost impossible, but that's not really true. I think it's a familiar feeling to many trans women. It's scary to see how hard she's fighting to go back to that in this issue. Is it good for her to do that? I don't think so. Not entirely. Is it easier for her to be on Earth than Die? I honestly don't know. But I think it appears easier to her. Die is the world in her closet, but it can be so painful to stay there when there's so much waiting for you outside it. And yet... I don't think she's ready to go. There's still deeper for her to go.

Kieron writes her well.

Next time we'll be talking about either the end of issue essays or just jump into issue #6, I haven't decided. It'll be much shorter than this, but we had a lot of character stuff to cover. I'll leave you on my favorite line.

[solpng]

Morning sol

hey.. gm to you too

[elperegrinodedios]

📖 La scrittura in Ro. 3:10 dice: "Non c'è alcun giusto, neppure uno". Dunque siamo tutti peccatori e sotto la legge noi saremmo tutti giudicati, ma per la grazia di Dio e nel nome di Gesù siamo giustificati e, salvati. Non guardiamo più gli errori di altri ma correggiamo i nostri. Cammineremo più leggeri e di sicuro saremo più amorevoli e felici.

===

Chiunque infatti osserva tutta la legge ma viene meno in un sol punto è colpevole su tutti i punti.

Gm. 2:10 📖

lan ✍️

[shameless-sol-apologist]

[ofdarklands]

1 and 5 for both atrum and mitr'a please? 👁👁

yes boss

1. What is the character’s go-to drink order? (this one gets into how do they like to be publicly perceived, because there is always some level of theatricality to ordering drinks at a bar/resturant)

atrum in his hometown the closest thing to a bar was his parent’s bakery and they only served beer (strongly bread flavoured). after the Incident he looked like a sick(?) 15 years old and, more importantly, had like 3 coins to his name, and now it is currently a post apocalyptic world where he can only enter one of the surviving cities under like 2 glamours and 3 hiding spells, just in case. poor man WISHES he had a go-to drink order. would probably like an irish coffee, if it existed

mitr’a by now he doesn’t drink stuff he hasn’t made himself. before ishgard he was trying to find an eorzean beer he didn’t hate, but after that he decided it obviously wasn’t to be found outside of his home forest. would have liked something like a mojito as long as it wasn’t too sweet, if he had gotten around to actually staying in costa del sol longer than it took to hatefully deliver whatever gegeruju or the titan lot wanted. perhaps he’ll make one himself now that he’s on vacation. maybe zero will like it

5. What was the last time they cried, and under what circumstances? (Good way to get some *emotional* backstory in.) 

atrum well, he’s now a npc in my gm’s hands, so i don’t quite know, BUT. last (and first) time he cried ‘on camera’ was at the very end of the campaign, after we catastrophically failed our quest, the secondary bad guy got the magic city, the apocalypse started, and half the party died in front of him. so he just, sat where he was after escaping and started crying

mitr’a hmmmmmm there were probably some wet eyes at many points, like after the fight against hydaelyn, but crying, crying, probably after the talk with venat, the moment he managed to get out of her sight for a second. that moment when you suddenly intuit the shape of the story and how it was and how it will turn, you know how it is. the circle of it all

bonus: mitr’a’s fight or flight sense is so firmly stuck on fight that if something terrible happens DURING a fight or tense situation he will not react with tears or even sadness. if you want to make him cry you have to get him while he’s not fighting, like SOMEONE in ULTIMA THULE asking about TREES. they get the honorary mention. only reason he didn’t cry outright is that he knew it was Necessary, even if he hated it. after that he just got The Foulest Mood, like after the summonings at the end of sb

[quinn-o-lantern]

Recruiting for Destiny 2 Clan

Clan Purpose: To be a community for gamers who struggle to find one.

The Whispering Mandrake [WISP] was founded by a longtime solo Destiny player who barely even ever got to raid and barely touched content outside of campaigns. We've grown this community to be one where players who don't have the chance to do non-matchmade content in Destiny 2 can finally clear their first raid, get their conqueror title, and experience the full breadth of what this silly space game has to offer. Players ranging from brand new kinderguardians to years long veterans comprise this community and all are welcome to join regardless of membership to the clan in-game. As these kindergaurdians have grown, they’ve gone on to comprise teams that have multiple world’s first raid clears under their belts, grind out titles, farm GMs, and solo flawless dungeons.

There is a place for everyone in WISP!

Clan Perks:

Weekly activities including a weekly pinnacle raid run, in-house PVP, dungeon farms, and more.

A dedicated and active Staff* of guardians with multiple world’s first clears, who grind titles, and solo dungeons, ready to help you find your footing, clear your first raid, grind out your comp rank, or prepare to tackle the same challenges they do.

Seasonal rewards for our most active members.

In-house LFG system.

Pet pics. Seriously. Lots and lots of the cutest pet pics you ever did see.

Lore readings and discussions.

A community of friends dedicated to being respectful, learning and growing together, and taking care of each other.

And a ton more.

While you don't have to join the clan to join our discord server, membership and activity in the server is required to be a member of the clan. We are not merely an engram farm and are trying to build relationships and connections.

Personally, this group is just the best. I've made so many unexpected friends and it's so nice knowing I can jump into this space and feel at home. Even if you don't need a clan, hop in and spend some time with us. There’s so much to discover in the Sol System.

https://www.bungie.net/en/ClanV2?groupid=4625023

DM me for the link to our discord.

[motheatenscarf]

Our GM had to call our weekly D&D game game early last night because he was feeling like steaming garbage brainwise, but the whole group was gathered and still up for hanging out so we ran a bunch of FF14 stuff.

There were 8 dead moogles between me and the GM for more story content, and I main a tank, another mains a healer, so we actually had a full 4 light party between us by luck. So we all did the King Moogletrial first and then ran a bunch of dungeons before the GM had to get some sleep, then the rest of us just fucked around for a few hours.

Apparently there are mounts in this game that OTHER PEOPLE can get in on, so we wound up getting chauffeured by a tiny lalafel Colonel Sanders (truly impressed how committed to this bit he is, he dresses like this and takes the culinarian job to make chicken to hand out to people and has a white chocobo named Double Down)

Also, Talia was the only woman toon in the group, so when somebody got a cute summer top in a dungeon they gave it to her. Now she doesn't have to wear a full winter coat when hanging out in Costa del Sol

[themiserymarquis]

I got a question for you guys this time (regarding the campaign).

Keep in mind characters likely can never make an informed decision about what it will do to them before they dip into Level 1!

As narrators/GMs there will be times where we may tempt the player or make them doubt decisions, but there will be a lot of (mostly headcanon based) information about Shadow Taint that will be revealed throughout the campaign.

Unfortunately I don't want to go too in depth about /why/ it's a bit different than in SoL besides that we're probably gonna make it a bit more frightening.

[chess-games-news]

[Event "I Circuito do Sol"]

[Site "Fortaleza, Ceará"]

[Date "1994.??.??"]

[Round "2"]

[White "Gentil, Luiz"]

[Black "Milos, Gilberto"]

[Result "1/2-1/2"]

[WhiteTitle "?"]

[BlackTitle "GM"]

[WhiteElo "2215"]

[BlackElo "2565"]

[ECO "A46"]

[Opening "Queen's pawn game"]

[EventDate "1994.??.??"]

[PlyCount "64"]

1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 d6 3. Bg5 Nbd7 4. Nc3 e5 5. e4 Be7 6. Bc4 O-O 7. O-O c6 8. a4 b6 9. Qe2 a6 10. Bb3 Qc7 11. Rad1 b5 12. Rfe1 Re8 13. axb5 axb5 14. d5 b4 15. dxc6 bxc3 16. cxd7 Nxd7 17. bxc3 Bf8 18. Bd5 Bb7 19. c4 Rec8 20. Ra1 h6 21. Be3 Rxa1 22. Rxa1 Bxd5 23. cxd5 Nf6 24. Qd3 Qxc2 25. Qxc2 Rxc2 26. Ra4 g6 27. h3 Kg7 28. Nd2 Be7 29. g4 Ne8 30. Rc4 Ra2 31. Rc6 Nf6 32. Kg2 Ra4 { 10 minutes for each player to reach the 46 moves' first time control. White offered a draw and Black accepted. } 1/2-1/2

[joculine]

DIE Issue #4 Reread (Gillen & Hans)

Welcome to Glass Town, let's hit the bar. I seriously forgot how much of this issue takes place in a tavern and how little of the actual city we see.

It's actually a bit disappointing, but we can get into that later. First...

Art

I mean, look at that dome though. God. What an evocative scene. The twisting, shimmering colors. The milkiness of it. Stephanie Hans is fucking amazing.

It evokes the shimmer from Annihilation, the film of which released a few months before this issue. I think there's an interesting comparison to be made between that and DIE actually—both involve the journey to a strange place, strange elements from the protagonists' pasts appearing in this new area, and the breakdown/merging of the self with the world around them. We see a good amount of the latter with Izzy this issue.

Also important to note: this magical barrier is a swirl of several colors. I can see pinks, blues, purples, and even yellows & greens towards the bottom.

The architecture of Glass Town itself is somewhat undefined (dream-like, in fact), yet what is there paints a clear picture. I especially like this establishing shot of the city streets:

There's a clear distinction between the "high" and "low" city here, buildings where the regular citizens of Glass Town live & structures that are marked as more regal—perhaps places of political or religious work. Lot of statues of Sol around as well. He looks a lot better than he did in the wasteland!

What actually is Glass Town?

It's a fair question. We don't actually know too much about the place—the party never visited on their first journey into Die. So here's what we've got:

Glass town is the first city of Die. Ash describes the formation of the world as follows: a planet of clockwork armies fighting without reason -> the appearance of Glass Town (for reasons unknown) -> development of other towns & kingdoms -> The wars continue, though with new political powers & actual objectives.

If you know a bit about the history of TTRPGs, you may be noticing something interesting here. Hold onto that, we'll get to it soon.

Isabelle tells us that Glass Town is politically neutral with an impenetrable border. The place is also called the "Ancient Confederacy of Glass Town" by a guard. We know they've got at least one religious temple, but maybe more.

All this is to say... Glass Town doesn't really make sense.

And it isn't supposed to either. How does such a massive & decadent city exist as a political hub in the middle of a warzone? Some GM made it happen. In fact, Glass Town is sort of the perfect example of a not very well thought out city, one that really just exists for the players to come find cool quests. Every race is here, special temples for your gods, cool architecture of your GM, everyone treats the players like royalty... it's a giant toy set.

A toy set, which unfortunately has people living in it.

Isabelle & The Mourner

Several of those people are followers of The Mourner, one of the gods Isabelle has to wrangle with. She's brought up earlier in the issue actually, as Isabelle is unable to get any healing miracles from her. (She was hit pretty bad by the Steel Dragon last issue) She tells us that she still owes the god for granting eyesight back to Sir Lane.

Izzy is the Godbinder class, which is a mix of a cleric and a demonologist. Outside of the Master, it is the real "caster" of DIE. The Godbinder works by managing the debts they owe and favors they can cash in from a varied pantheon of gods, effectively operating as a sort of summoner magician.

So Isabelle owes The Mourner and she needs to make amends quick, in order to get fixed up. She ends up in the temple of The Mourner and we get the standout panel of this issue.

I really love this panel. Normally, Izzy has had her gods behind her, illuminated with power and ephemeral. I've talked about it being like a Persona in the past.

That dynamic is changed in this panel. The Mourner cradles her, Izzy's armor stripped away and floating in a fetal position. She is now in the hands and home of a god, a frightening place to be.

The people in this temple watch a miracle from their god and are stunned. Isabelle is brought into the congregation hall of their church, where a book waits for her. The Mourner tells her the price to be repaid.

Shit is right, Izzy. What does it say that the person who became a school teacher feels like she shouldn't be listened to? That her words are not worth teaching or following? Take a look at the first excerpt we get:

And that's all she needs to recognize it as her diary. Yikes. It's bad enough to be put on the spot in front of all these people, being coerced into bearing your heart & sharing something so personal. For it to be so dark, so self-destructive... I don't think I realized how important that sense of shame was to Izzy's character on my initial read.

Which makes sense! Especially for her, a character who's power revolves around debts and owed favors. Remember, she was also the first to bring up the house rule of always treating the people of Die like real people. I wonder what Isabelle was like during that first adventure to make her feel this way...

As for The Mourner herself, I find her a very interesting kind of god. She seems to be a sort of life god, as she's able to give healing miracles. And yet she is so... depressive. She claims to love Isabelle, she probably loves all her subjects, but that love is a longing pity. She seems to be as much a god of sorrows as life.

Another Careless Spell

So we meet some dwarfs in the tavern. Dour and Delighted. They're so great. Dour tells us a story about a wizard who accidentally kills his own children.

You see, the wizards seem to have rebelled against Sol. In turn, he changed a rule: Wizards lose a memory when casting a spell. When one wizard had his children stolen and turned to a Hydra, he tracked them down, using every spell in his arsenal to reach them. Upon finding them he had lost the memory of his children being turned into the monster itself. As Dour puts it, he did what heroes do:

Lot of heavy moments in this issue. There's a lot going on here. I see echos of Ash's Sir Lane once again—an action from a "Paragon" (we learn the party are known as Paragons in this issue) causes a very horrible thing to happen, though in this case it seems intentional on Sol's part. The paragons aren't alone in the blame though. The mage knew the consequences and used his spells carefully until his children were in danger. Then, he acted too rashly and forgot their condition. He acted too rashly again and lost them in the process.

Power, used for "good" or for "ill" is a very dangerous thing.

Matt's Bravest Moment

We get a story from Matt here too. Everyone gets some time to shine! He tells us about a medical procedure his daughter had to go through involving anesthesia. It's a traumatic thing for Matt, given his mother passed away in a 1-100,000 case of an operation gone wrong.

This is the first look at Matt's core drive as a character. I think (at least in this moment) it is love. A love that is so strong, it makes him bury his emotions to protect others, be it fear, grief, or anger.

He's been used for that purpose in issue #2, when Ash uses her power to supercharge him. He asks her do that again in issue #3, though this time he wants it. A conscious sacrifice of his own mental health to help others.

After all, that's what his class does. The Emotion Knight harness a core emotion and can transform it into violent potential. Matt's emotion is grief, so he's very used to feeling awful. We'll learn later that Emotion Knights can also steal their emotions from those around them (it has been said in the author commentary that released with each issue, so it's not really a spoiler.) Matt is literally taking on the burden of others' grief to help protect them.

Take note of the colors in this flashback too, pinks and purples. We'll finally get to talk about the colors more in depth next issue. I read ahead and found something that clicked things into place, so I'm quite excited for that.

Angela Deflects

In the middle of a breakdown over her ex-husband, her absent girlfriend, the loss of her kids, and the loss of her arm, she gets her robot dog back and finds a moment of joy.

A dog that will end up dying if she doesn't feed it a piece of Fair Gold every day. Ah, that's the real curse of the Neo—everything that's good for the class will vanish without a regular payment. I'm not really a dog person so the personal impact here is lessened, but I get it. There really isn't a lot of good things going on for Angela, but at least she has Case. He is a momentary reprieve from the constant awfulness of Die. But he's also a distraction, and a pricey one.

And distractions & dead dogs are how Angela ended up in the game in the first place. It's a sweet scene, but forecasts more bad times ahead for her. None of the actual problems are solved.

What's Up With Ash?

Man, I've been waiting for this. Chuck is the one to break it. He asks Ash straight up: Hey man, are you gay? Isabelle follows up with a more "woke" angle (as her students would say.)

This scene is so great. Ash avoids the question. Isabelle corners her again. Ash monologues about it a bit, tells us there isn't a simple answer for why she's her. She tells us being Ash is easy. That it gives her the freedom to do things she wants. And just what are those things? We don't get it here, not yet, but it's not hard to put 2 & 2 together.

Cards on the table, Ash helped me realized I was trans. I don't think I realized it was happening in the moment, but the timeline adds up. The end of volume 2 comes just a month after my lightning bolt moment, which will be pretty telling when we get there.

And like Ash, I felt things were not simple at the time either. And they aren't. But they're simpler than I thought.

What I see here is this: Here's a woman that got to be a teenage girl for 2 years and do all the stupid things a teenage girl does. Then, she had to go back to the "real world." She had pretend to be a boy and pretend to be a man. She had to get a job and a wife and ignore those 2 years of freedom. Somewhere in that time, I think she lost herself, if she was ever able to actually find it during her first trip in Die. She believed the lie she had to live. Now she's back and everyone sees her as she is, except for the people she's closest to. That's fucking hard. Why wouldn't you keep quiet? Besides, it's not like she's going to be here for long. Soon, she'll be back in the fucking UK. It's what everyone is working towards. God. Ash. I'm so sorry.

I think Isabelle's choice of words here is interesting: "We didn't have the words then. We do now." Especially in context with Ash's reply:

There's something going on between these two. We don't have specifics on the relationship between Ash & Isabelle in the first incursion to Die, but we know it wasn't great. They were distant before the game, both wanting to see be around Sol, and they were very distant after the game. We get another hint here. I don't think these girls were good to each other.

Who's this "we" Isabelle is talking about? Her and Ash? The party as a whole? And what does she mean that they didn't have the words then? Were they too young? Is it a generational thing, as she mentions in issue #1? I don't think either of those are true though. I think this is a deflection of guilt on Izzy's part for how she treated Ash. And the way Ash talks back is calculated. Izzy calls her out on it too, calls it a "good-one liner [she's] been waiting to use for years." That's the sort of thing your formulate when you want to hurt someone. It's "what happens when thoughts curdle," to use Ash's turn of phrase about Sol from Issue #2.

We love a toxic friend group. We'll get more soon.

Other Thoughts

What a great issue! After a lot of action, it's nice to get some "roleplay" and boy oh boy does a lot happen in a short time. We're starting to see how Die is tailored to make these people miserable and how little it actually needs to do that in the first place. This party is not one of good friends.

I also want to give a little shout out to the Glass Town admin and his rod of seven parts speech.

What a great joke. A railroading GM is a lot scarier when he's railroading you into staying in fantasy land forever. This is also an interesting point towards the people in Die being NPCs... I mean, he's literally giving a GM monologue here. I don't think the comic comes down hard on an answer as to whether the people of Die have a true will of their own, but some of them have moments like this that are just... eerie. There is a horror in the way his words follow a script.

Next issue: Premise Rejection. It's a good one.