#that episode was insane?!?! crit city!!!

[inviernacular]

here’s to zac oyama’s dice on this glorious eve

[halcyon-autumn]

The bad kids are insane this episode. It's crit city. It's tactical genius. They are blowing through the kinds of monsters that make most dnd parties shit themselves. They've come SO FAR from the scared kids who died to cream corn and I am LIVING for the sheer competency on display here. No one is doing it like the bad kids are doing it.

[sotacticalsolate]

fuck I wanna say stuff about the entirety of the last stand episode but theres too much that happened, i cant think too deeply into any of it.

that whole first round where they cleared the field. crit city. adaine's clutch portents and dust mephits. the insane amount of damage dealt out by fig. gorgug just tanking. them passing with 100% AND being the first party to actually survive. kippercunt and buddy.

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Junior Year Ep 18

Oisin’s Family Reunion 

Welcome back to Fantasy High where it’s election night and there’s a storm a-brewin. Last we left off, pretty much every student at Aguefort (plus Ragh, Jawbone, and a hidden Eugenia Shadow) was at Seacaster Manor which Riz realized was tactically unwise right as Seacaster Manor was suddenly ripped from its foundations into the sky. 

Luckily, Seacaster Manor is still a working pirate ship with a ton of functioning canons, plus a ton of shields and other protective mojo put up by Aelwyn. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to worry about here:

Kristen is a shoe-in to win the election BUT that’s only if they can get everyone to vote and get the votes to school in time. This is complicated by the fact that–

Everyone will freak out if they realize what’s happening and if they freak out, they won’t vote. 

There’s a lot to be freaked out about, the first of which is that those ping pong balls Oisin left were a sort of homing beacon that’s drawing the attention of the NIghtmare King. When Kristen looks outside, she can see the storm has taken on the visage of the Nightmare King and it’s like they’re in his hand, being wound up to be thrown for a fastball. Total party foul. 

Seacaster Manor is a boat, but not an airship and it doesn’t have flight capabilities because Oisin got Adaine’s Mephits to break the Cloud Rider Engine during that first house party months ago. This is a problem both because they need to Not Crash but also ideally they need to be able to steer to get the ballots to the school.

Complicating things even further, they have another nasty present from Oisin to contend with–a whole horde of dragons, including big grandma blue herself!

So, yeah! Tons to contend with in this episode. Some good news though: In the center of town, they can see a shock of red lightning go up into the sky and then fizzle. The Rat Grinders are performing their little Porter promotion ceremony but it’s not working because they don’t have Ankarna’s name. Equally good news, Fig’s steed now had a name courtesy of Murph: Gerard Neigh!

The Bad Kids leap into action, both doing damage control on the party and controlling heaps of damage directed at the dragons gunning for them. Fig (who is actually in Wanda form right now so idk how this is working exactly lol) convinces everyone that this is just a sick music video that’s being filmed at the party while Gorgug and Sprek (aviation Goblin) get the Cloud Rider Engine running. Adaine is predictably SO excited to get to help with the canons (along with helping Fig) and Fabian gets people to vote. He also gets his surprise tattoo from Eugenia. Riz is using his insane action economy (boosted by Haste) to run those cannons like he’s in the navy. And Kristen (with help from K2) is keeping everyone up as they are buffeted by winds, physical attacks, and dragon breath weapons. 

Though this is a wild episode, not much happens plot wise so here are some standout moments:

Gorgug is still living in crit city and putting anyone who doubted his multiclass to shame.

Fig has Adaine strap GoPros on vultures to film this fake music video which she will probably turn into a real music video at some point. Maximum Legend Behavior. 

Adaine, in one of her coolest moments ever, blasts a dragon with a cannon then runs to the deck and one shots a blue dragon by punching its lights out. Defeating enemies by hitting them with her fists and shooting them with guns. The Adaine school of wizardry. 

At one point Kipperlilly, Jace, and Oisin Invisibly jump onto the deck from grandma’s back (which Adaine and Gorgug can see because of various magical effects, though they pretend like they can’t). Gorgug has to make two Wis Saves and he rolls 22 on both. Seemingly nothing happens and they use a Rune of Recall to teleport away. The Bad Kids figure that they were trying to mind read Gorgug to get Ankarna’s actual name. 22 is pretty high but we don’t know if it actually worked or not. 

Riz gets to add yet ANOTHER ancient dragon to his kill list as he cannonballs Oisin’s grandma out of the sky. Yikes my man. You’re probably out of the will now. 

At a certain point of the fight, Baxter the griffon shows up to meet then WITHOUT Sandra Lynn riding him which is *concerning* but we don’t get more info than that in this ep. Best case scenario, Sandra Lynn just sent him solo to help because she was busy with things on the ground but still wanted to send air support. Worst case scenario–we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

The last big thing that happens in this ep is the moment that broke Brennan and, I’m gonna be honest, as silly as it is it feels like business as usual from Ally to me (though I do understand why it would break a man--several years into the careful crafting of his world--who has been filming for 9 straight hours in a warehouse in Los Angeles). Kristen tries to make a Divine Intervention roll and fails. Then K2 tries to make a Divine Intervention roll–which she does by looking into the clouds and saying, “Blimey” in Ally’s atrocious British accent and THAT one succeeds. This is compounded by the fact that Brennan said that if this works, K2 will be vaporized and Ally randomly adding in that K2 is pregnant with Fabian’s child (which Lou both vehemently vetoes and also plays along with to mess with Brennan)

Brennan fully leaves the dome (Zac takes over for a few minutes) and then storms back in and declares that as weird Wizard clones, simulacrum are just made of stem cells and always test positive for pregnancy because of that. Then, he tells everyone to just wipe the past ten minutes from their mind so he can have some semblance of order for the end of the episode. 

The successful Divine Intervention brings Cass back to herself for a moment and Seacaster Manor flies into the maw of cloud Cass. They appear back in Elmville but everything is now an eerie red and lightning strikes fill the sky. Looks like another end of the year apocalypse!  If Riz doesn’t get into college after this the school board is gonna have to fight *me*.

Detention 

Eugenia Shadow for Giving Fabian a Secret Tattoo of a Ghost With Hairy Legs Showing Hole

Obviously I wanna give it to Oisin for siccing his grandma on his entire school and taunting my girl Adaine but she didn’t give him the time of day so neither will I. Instead, I’m giving it to Eugenia for the insane moving tattoo that Fabian will have to corral back into his otherwise lovely clock tattoo every day. Bonkers behavior. 

Honor Roll

Gorgug for Flying a House Full of Students With No Training and No Casualties 

And he wasn’t sure he could do it. Way to step up Gorgug!!!

Rat Grinder Notes

We still don’t have specifics on what actually happened to Lucy and how the Rat Grinders got involved with this mess in the first place. We have some guesses but nothing concrete and some options definitely make them more sympathetic than others. 

Tossing a house with ALL YOUR CLASSMATES INSIDE OF IT is such an unhinged move. I don’t know how nuanced Brennan meant for the Rat Grinders to be but man it’s hard to want anything for them besides a swift ass kicking followed by jail when they’re pulling shit like this AND we’re not getting anything mitigating to make us feel bad for them (ie: Aelwyn’s shitty home life or Ragh being manipulated by Dayne). Fascinated to know if they’re in a state where they can be “snapped out” of it or if they’re basically lucid but with heightened emotions (in the same vein of, “The shitty things you do and say when drunk are still your fault/responsibility). 

My updated list on how much I wanna see these kids get embarrassed in this fight are Oisin and Kipperlilly at the top followed by Ivy. Mary Ann I truly have no opinion on. Ruben I am warmer on than the rest but that’s admittedly because Fig has put time into investigating him and it’s entirely possible the rest of the RG’s would seem more sympathetic if the BK’s dug more into them. And then Buddy dead last because he’s pretty clearly a pawn here. Like he has other stuff to work through but the current apocalypse is not his fault and he doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with the rest of them. In fairness, Porter (+Jace) deserves to get smacked down more than any of them as the adult mastermind behind this but that’s not the list I was making. 

Random Thoughts

This is a side thing but I love that Aelwyn spent a ton of high level spell slots warding up Seacaster Manor. (She also made Fabian a cursed coin that would summon the gold tornado from Freshman Year if broken but he never used it.) She’s helping!  

Lmao at Murph being called in as the expert on honoring the cock and just being resigned to cock(ed dice) inspection. 

It was casually mentioned that Bucky might believe in Cass a bit which I'm mentioning in case it comes up later.

I love Brennan letting Gorgug use his Great Weapons Fighting feature while using the boat as a weapon. That’s such a shenanigan and Zac wasn’t even asking for it. 

I bet the Rat Grinders targeted Gorgug for the name/mind reading thing because they thought he was the dumbest one in the group. Newsflash! He’s been smart this whole time! Greatest Wizard of our Age! 

Being all, “Other kids at this school have it easier than me and it’s not fair,” and then having your trust fund baby friend send his ancient dragon grandma to attack everyone at your school so you can win an election is such loser behavior.   

Sending dragons to attack the kids who killed a dragon their first year of school and have just gotten cooler and more powerful since then seems like a profoundly shortsighted decision. Why not put their loved ones in danger like in Family in Flames if you want them out of the way? Like, they’re gonna be SO MUCH more mad at you when they inevitably come for you but it might actually slow them down whereas this did not at all. 

I imagine this is going to be a Promocalypse-esque situation where despite this being a school of adventurers, the Bad Kids aren’t gonna get much help from the rest of the student body but I hope they can at least get some cleric heals or pearls of power something before they have to go into this next fight because yeesh. 

I hope Adaine remembers that Oisin has a thing to steal control of summons because she’s been getting into summons heavily this season. 

I’m really curious to know how this fight will play out. Like if it will have a heavy RP element or not. Because if the Bad Kids had bonded with the RG’s in any way (besides the weird obsession w/ Mary Ann and whatever the hell is going on with “Wanda” and Ruben lol) I could see there being a lot of persuasion roles to try and get them to stop what they were doing. But as the story stands, this is coming off of the back of the Rat Grinders sending DRAGONS to THROW THE HOUSE THEY WERE IN. If I were them I would NOT be like, “Let’s talk it out.” I’m like, “OK cool, they can’t be reasoned with,” and casting my most devastating spell at the highest level. Of course, I much prefer combat eps when they have RP but I don’t know that the story so far has been conducive to that. We’ll see! 

[the-dandelion-dayss]

The Unsleeping City Episode 10 Thought Compilation! Double digits, baby! Starting out with Sofia fighting a succubus on the roof of a burning art museum!

Sofia opting stand in fire to just try to kill a bitch as fast as possible is so reckless and rad and I love her for it. Thought Isabella did immediately disappear after the first hit so either mirror image or teleportation????

THIS SET IS SO COOL???? THE TEAM REALLY OUT DID THEMSELVES WITH THESE BUILDINGS, DAMN.

UBAWUTBWAUTIWA Misty just IMMEDIATELY blasting fear on Priya and anyone who happens to be in the way even though no one in that room has done anything to suggest being a threat. Misty's just annoyed by this bad art and and cruel move to Pete which is very valid.

Oh damn now some devil art students showed up! And boy they sure hit for a lot! And now we get to see some of Ricky's firefighters skills! And damn is he good at it and Ox continues to be a good boy!

Kingston's spiritual guardians being just random New Yorkers is so good.

Pete just hasted Ricky and I think this is the first time Pete has used magic to help a teammate? Character development! Also he's picking unconscious Priya up, presumably because even if she did throw him under the bus for a stupid art exhibit he doesn't want her to die.

Aww Misty hopping around helping out her friends is so sweet. First getting pissed at the demon who attacked Ricky, then wanting to go help out Sofia (is stopped because the rule about one spell a round), and then complimenting Ricky and giving him bardic inspiration. So damn sweet.

Hell yeah Kugrash using giant spiders to make a big web to get people off the roof! And it's probably for the best that he gets some of the more charismatic members of the group to shepherd people up!

Oh man they're slowly getting fucked up in this fight and not doing a lot of damage in retaliation.

Misty dimension dooring herself and Sofia up to the roof to kick Isabella's ass and telling her that Sofia looks better and is 20x stronger is just so great. Misty is so damn supportive and I think this fight has solidified that she is now ride or die with the group.

Kugrash's street magic also makes me so happy. All the rats, spiders and pigeons and all his polymorphs are filthy. He has a brand and he sticks to it and I respect that.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO OX HAS BEEN INCINERATED! HE CAN'T ACTUALLY DIE BUT IT STILL HURTS!

Man Pete banishing Isabella would have been so cool BUT INSTEAD WE GOT THE INFORMATION SHE STOLE SANTA'S LIST AND IS IN LOVE WITH ROBERT MOSES WHICH IS WILD.

HELL YEAH SOFIA IS FUCKING ISABELLA UP REAL GOOD! 56 DAMAGE IN ONE ROUND IS INSANE!

Pete just looked so cool saving Priya and then immediately gets trapped behind a locked steel door but THEN his wild magic surge allows him to teleport anywhere he wants to so it's all good. What wild series of events.

KUGRASH THE MAD LAD IS KNOCKING OVER  A WATER TOWER! AT LEAST MOST OF THE FIRST IS OUT!

Ricky is just so rightfully upset by all this fire and holy shit Kingston just did a rad as hell lightning move against Isabella! I wonder who will get this killing blow because she has to be near death.

Oh nice! Pete got rid of some more fire with magic and Kugrash's rats carried an unconscious person out! And now Willy is up! It's all coming together!

SOFIA JUST CRITTED TWICE ON ISABELLA IN ONE ROUND! YEAH SHE'S SUPER DEAD! HELL YEAH, SOFIA UPPERCUTTED HER THROUGH THE CEILING!

Oh and hey no one actually died! I'm really surprised by that! And Sofia has made a pompadour for Eustice (unsure on spelling, I’m terrible with names) the Spider and now Misty is making out with Willy the Stone Golem.

uwbaurbawuraw Pete confrontation Priya about not telling him about being her art piece and she didn't seem to understand why that was so bad and so he just illusioned her to think her limbs were gone. He quickly feels bad and dismisses it but yeah, I think after pulling something like that it's a fair reaction.

Everyone's going off to  their respective places and I hope one day some one comes to Stanton Island with Sofia. She always asks presumably because she doesn't want to be alone and it always makes me so damn sad.  Also Misty's off doing some shady business? On a lighter note Wally loves his rat dad so damn much and it's so cute. He put a dog bed on a table and Kugrash started crying. AND KINGSTON AND PETE BONDING. God they've come a long way

And that’s it for Episode 10 of The Unsleeping City! I have no idea where this story is going but I know it’s going to hurt and I cannot wait!

[starshipsandsuperheroes]

Top 5 DND moments

oh shit I’m putting this under a cut cause it’s probs gonna get long

This isn’t gonna be quotes - I’m gonna tell actual stories, so if anyone’s interested in top 5 quotes, feel free to ask for those, and those will be much shorter because I will not provide context.

Ask me my top 5 anything here!

Ok so, in no particular order

1.) Two Birds, One Stoner - An almost episodic game, masterfully handled by my DM at school.  It featured the introduction of a new player, who we met as a pink tiefling bard, just like our current bard.  The resemblance was striking and strange, but she seemed interesting, so we let her tag along with us as we went to speak with an old mentor of our Rogue’s about what we suspected was the death of a god.  His advice led us to split between two temples in Rome - Bacchus (where both bards, our paladin, our barbarian, and our cleric went) and Artemis (where I, our rogue, and our wizard went).  I went to Artemis because she’s my character’s mother (that’s a whole nother story that may appear on this list later? We’ll see I’m still on this one), but our first bard went to Bacchus because his original god was Pan, who we believed was dead.  A purple tiefling met him outside the temple, her gold lipstick announcing her as a prostitute.  Paxxx (our bard) went with her while the rest of the party found themselves lost in the revelry that is the temple of Bacchus, until Paxxx returned to the main area and retrieved our paladin.  Paxxx took drugs given to him by the purple tiefling (Violet) and on the second try, found himself face to face with Bacchus, who told him what was going on - gods were dying and disappearing, and no one had any idea what the cause might be… only that Hades was the prime suspect.  He also dropped some other cryptic but important information - that Zeus loves his twins, but they had disappeared; that twins always reunite; that Paxxx should be sure to keep an eye on his “Demi-friends” (me and our paladin).  Paxxx snapped back awake, realized that the other pink tiefling we had found was his twin sister (yell heah), immediately filled in our paladin and the purple tiefling on what he had seen and learned, and gathered the party to dash over to the temple of Artemis.

I was there with the rogue and wizard, poking around the temple essentially to see if anyone had had any contact with Artemis without revealing too much about my character’s connection to her (she literally just found out like two weeks or so prior to this that it was even a thing, give her a break).  While we were there, I noticed a massive owl watching us from above - and a massive raven.  Both came down and landed on my arms when offered, but when they both flew away in opposite directions, I could only track one, and I rolled better to track the raven.  We tracked it back to a hooded figure, who was cooing at the bird until it noticed us, and disappeared when we spooked it.  

Literally every single thing I’ve told you just now went on to have an incredibly majorly important role in the last game we played before school got out for the summer.  It was absolutely buck wild.  

2.) Kost - In my other party, DM’ed by my amazing wife, this asshole sat on a plot twist for literal years, and we only found out like, last month.  We’re just chilling, minding our own business and trying to escape from prison (as you do) when our gunslinger suddenly realized something based on breadcrumbs of plot that had been dropped, turned to our swashbuckler, and asked for his last name.  Our swashbuckler immediately tried to play it cool, but it absolutely did not work, and it turned out that he was the son of a governor that may or may not have had something to do with why we had been thrown in jail in the first place - Govenor Kost.  I did start getting the flu as this was happening, so the details are a bit fuzzy, but I had skyped into the session and I almost hucked my laptop across the room it surprised me so much.

3.) “There’s no purple tiefling that works here” - This happened in the same school game (not session) that “Two Birds, One Stoner” did, so DM is here.  Remember that purple tiefling that gave our bard drugs and listened in as he recounted all of the incredibly important information he had gotten from Bacchus?  Yeah, so, uh, turns out we may be fucked because of that.

To make another very long story short, a series of very chaotic events led to our last game of the year.  The library of Alexandria has fallen, and it snowed in Giza as the temples to the Egyptian gods literally shattered around the city (this bit, by the way, gets honorable mention for my favorite moments, because it was narrated beautifully by my DM, as she told it from my character and our paladin’s perspective - two characters that had been raised in Egypt, where snow was a sign of the apocalypse).  Gods were falling left and right.  But when guards rushed into the Caesar’s palace to inform him that the Temple of Bacchus had fallen, we rushed over there - only to find a literal dracolitch standing atop the rubble, as the hooded figure I had seen with the raven at the Temple of Artemis yelled to it in infernal.

To make a long story short, she was yelling for it to stop, but since my character doesn’t know infernal, I assumed she was evil and tackled her.  After a bit of fighting, the Dracolitch literally took five characters down in a single blow, and then disappeared through a portal.  Our cleric and bards got everyone back to standing, and we started to help those that worked at the temple out of the rubble.  As we were helping them, though, someone made a comment about how we should try and find the purple tiefling Paxxx had met with when we were last here and make sure she was ok.  This sounded like a great plan… until the man we were helping up looked at us with a strange expression and said “There’s no purple tiefling that works here.”

4.) The Rats - My wife puts up with so much from us.  To be fair to us - none of us had played D&D before.  We weren’t exactly sure how things worked… so we summoned some rats to check around dungeon corners for us before we went into rooms and halls and the like.  I never pretended to be exceptionally intelligent, I’m just doing my best every damn day.

5.) Delphina - I’ve said before that my character in my school game (This DM) is the daughter of Artemis, but she only found out about it like two or so weeks prior to where we are currently in the game.  Maybe three, idk.  My point is, she hasn’t had a whole lot of time to adjust, especially since she found out like this:

 We had travelled to Giza (the hometown of our dragonborn paladin) in search of our party’s old rogue, Effie, who was played by our DM before she took over for our previous DM.  When we got there, we found that someone had been killing non-dragonborns - as Egypt is a largely dragonborn society in this world, this made the pattern very obvious.  Our trail to both Effie and the killer had grown cold and we had found a man from my character’s home village that requested our help dealing with a threat, so we left the city for a few days to help them.  While we were there, our party picked up a new member - our barbarian, Mara.

When we returned, however, our paladin’s friend was waiting for us with some devastating news - Effie had been found dead, shot through the heart by an arrow.  (Crit role fans: the bow that was being used to make these kills was Fenthras, so there were trees growing out of the corpses, which is how they were really linking the kills).  Our cleric cast speak with dead on her, and we found out a few things:  she had been killed by a cultist who bore the symbol of Artemis, and Effie had been sent to Giza by her patron (Hermes) to protect his niece, the daughter of Artemis - which was, apparently, my character, to the genuine surprise of both her and I.  All this cultist knew was that the daughter wasn’t a dragonborn and was from Egypt, hence the pattern.  We set up a trap to catch this woman, using me as bait and our new barbarian as a “bounty hunter” figure who would act as if she was turning me in for a reward.

What followed was the most genuinely invested and scared I’ve ever felt during a scene in D&D.  Our plan got put into action, and our DM’s interpretation of this cultist (whose name was Delphina) was a rather regal woman with a terrifyingly calm voice.  She stared me down for a moment before asking in all-too-gentle of a voice, “Do you know who you mother is, child?” and I legit almost lost my damn mind.  It was terrifying and insanely fun and cool.  I’d be happy to finish the story if anyone wants to hear it, but it’s already insanely long for this post, so come ask if you’d like to hear the rest.