#the lich could also come back for however many times he has if it's a different instance of him from across the multiverse; but idk

[r0semultiverse]

Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake finale spoilers without context

[solisaureus]

Robin's Solangelo Fic Recs

many of these fics are old or have a lot of attention already, but if you're antsy waiting for The Sun and the Star to come out, here are some solangelo fics to fill your brain with heart emojis!

double-crossed, star-crossed, fingers-crossed by orphan account - 2.2k - During their first kiss, Nico sees Will glowing, but keeps it to himself. Will doesn’t even know he’s doing it until someone else sees them kissing and gets very flustered. Soooo cute

echoes of lies that i told by demigodbeautiies - 29.9k - College AU, Nico agrees to be Will’s fake boyfriend for Naomi’s wedding. He curses himself later when he catches real feelings, assuming Will would never actually see him that way (spoiler alert: he would).

 My memories of you by Fl_utterby - 56.1k - Will is cursed by Niobe to lose his memories, including his years-long relationship with Nico. When he shows up at Camp Jupiter, Nico arrives to take him to Camp Half-Blood in a cross-country quest with Reyna. Bittersweet and soft with a happy ending!

 i could be your hero by sundaysabotage - 10.8k - a few years down the line, now that Percy Jackson is off at college, Nico finds himself in an unexpected position of senior authority at Camp Half-Blood. It’s not easy to reconcile with his own self-image. Light on the solangelo, mostly a Nico character study, but very good!!

The Rose of Paphos by Tundras_and_Taigas - 19.3k - The Aphrodite cabin unearths a magic item that indicates whether the holder has romantic feelings for someone, and discover that Will has a big crush on some person he won’t identify. Nico finds out about this and gets in his head about who that person could be. Feelings ensue! Also has a whole chapter for Mitchell/Connor if that’s your thing. Very cute and soft with a nice take on the Aphrodite cabin.

our lips set the sun by @thebhorror - 4.1k - a soft first kiss that Nico has spent 10 months agonizing over. In-character and sweet with a delightful payoff.

lich by @pinkerpick - 2.6k - content warning for death, torture, injury, and suicide! Since Thanatos was chained while Nico was in Tartarus, he dies many times and always comes back still trapped in the pit. Also light on the solangelo and more about Nico, this is some seriously well-done angst. The follow-up fic, penitent, wherein Nico confronts Hades about the events of this fic, is also very very good!

i bleed for your love by flannelfeelings - 7.5k - Nico semi-unintentionally keeps getting himself hurt so he can hang out with Will in the infirmary, because he is too repressed to just ask Will to hang out. Super well written, heartwrenching character voice, and butterflies-inducing romance!

Austin’s Best Barbecue also by flannelfeelings - 3.8k - Will gets hurt protecting Nico from a monster, so Nico shadow travels against doctor’s orders to Austin to get Will some of his favorite comfort food from home. While there, he accidentally meets Will's mother for the first time. Super super cute and funny, this author has great fics!

 Falling for You (Literally) by peanutbutterapple - 4.8k - Nico is acting weird before he visits Hazel at Camp Jupiter. On his return, before Will can ask him about it, Drew Tanaka pranks everyone with a magic hat that makes the wearer feel their romantic feelings very intensely for everyone to see. So adorable and Nico’s reason for his weird behavior is the best thing. 

Opportunity Knocks by nikkiRA - 35.5k - Nico tries to kiss Will, who freaks out and rejects him. Nico decides the same day to run away from Camp Half-Blood, but is intercepted by some meddlesome gods who trap him in a time-loop. He repeats the same day over and over until he can find out what it is he was supposed to fix about this day. I love a good Groundhog Day AU and this one is awesome!!

 constant craving (however hard i want, i never really get) by @thebhorror - 5.5k - another banger character study focusing on Nico’s unmet (and then met) need for affection throughout his character arc. A very believable and heart wrenching deliberation on Nico’s character arc and how his relationship with Will complements it! 

there are so many lives i want to share with you by penandblankpaper (@kiarrahatesboys) - 8.7k (so far) -  still a WIP but a WIP that slaps, this is a post-ToN, pre-TSatS solangelo mini-quest story. Rachel informs Will and Nico that they need to take a journey with no goal before they go to Tartarus or they will die. Lots of soft banter and gentle familiarity with a bullet train of angst incoming! Please read it (for me) please please please

Bonus: Solace by solisaureus (that’s me!) - 73k - A Will character study to complement all these Nico character studies, this work spans the entire narrative across all three series. This is my longest PJO fic and the one I poured the most love into! Though the fic is about Will and his coming of age, there’s plenty of solangelo in here.  

I (and many of the other authors in this list) also write a ton of other PJO fics so do check those out too!! :) happy reading!!!

[archive2394934]

Why are we still vague posting each other in the tags? Uh ok, @aemiron-main !  Response to this. 

That's an interesting take on it. I definitely did not forget that! Maybe in some way he does refer to the other souls that are somehow connected to him. I have definitely considered that, but placing it with all the other things I mentioned in my post and there was a lot, I'm not sure it that's what it was or if we can/should boil it down to just that.

I would be able to buy it though, like I said, its an interesting take, not hating on it at all, I think it may be a factor, but again what about all the other stuff?

I don’t think its disjointed from anything else, especially not this. And speaking of some of that other stuff, can we even be sure how this “soul” binding thing even works with Henry? So here's some other things I find interesting!

In Vecna’s mindscape we can see Chrissy and Fred. I’m not sure if I saw Patrick but I’m presuming since Chrissy and Fred’s dead avatars are there he’s gotta be there somewhere too. The whole aesthetic here is to draw parallels to a spider’s web, with the victims on display within it, the spiders previous meals.

So where are Henry’s others victims? Why just those three? Does Vecna clean his web like some spiders do, or, maybe more accurately, are they separated from Henry’s other victims? I’m leaning toward the latter, because Chrissy, Max, Fred and Patrick were all killed for the specific purpose of opening the gate. Though its still interesting as to why there doesn’t seem to be any trace of any other victims in Vecna’s mindscape. (That being said I think I did peep a random skull on the floor of the mindscape in one frame! Frankly, I envy his decor. Gives me real 14 year old me with mutilated dolls hanging around my room vibes.) 

What does that mean? Well it could just mean Vecna, like other spiders, cleans his web from time to time lol. BUT again, I think there might be more to it and UNFORUNATELY I have to go back to the suspicious cloud that we all think is completely innocent for some reason. Sorry, I just don’t trust the cloud, guys! 

Back to the last thing I said in my previous post, about the Serpent? The thing that's often depicted as a lighting/thunder cloud that gave Vecna his powers in the DnD lore?

That thing? Yeah, ok, so lets reference DnD lore again real quick because Vecna did not become Vecna randomly or just cause. 

So according to DnD lore this is what we know about the path to Lichdom:

No wizard takes up the path to lichdom on a whim, and the process of becoming a lich is a well-guarded secret. Wizards that seek lichdom must make bargains with fiends, evil gods, or other foul entities. Many turn to Orcus, Demon Prince of Undeath, whose power has created countless liches. However, those that control the power of lichdom always demand fealty and service for their knowledge.

Hmm! Thats interesting. *noah schnapp shocked.gif* SO if Stranger things Vecna straight up SAYS the mindflayer-cloud is the reason he became Vecna, the Stranger thing’s universe answer TO a lich, and the DnD lore tells us that lichdom is something that requires a pact with an evil god or foul entity, maybe I’m not actually wrong to be suspicious of that damn cloud? The thing thats already been described as an ancient monster? LIKE maybe, maybe I am a hilarious, delusional idiot who can’t understand basic concepts about this character, maybe! But maybe I’m not?  Lets continue with the DnD lore though since we know how important DnD lore is to the ST universe, particularly in understanding the themes. According to DnD lore, lich’s steal a part of their souls into a phylactery! Whats a phylactery? Well it varies from lich to lich but its pretty much where the soul is kept. Usually its a very special jar or box in DnD. Now, for me? I’m once again looking at the suspicious cloud. Is it possible Vecna’s soul is bound to that thing? I think it is, but I’ll come back here.  Because its also possible his “soul” is bound to something else- or like, the stranger things world equivalent to like, binding your soul to something. Which is kind of why I’m looking at the “innocent” cloud again and back to the other characters used to create Vecna as a character. Again we’re gonna look at Pinhead and Freddy Kruger, because they were the big ones beside DnD Vecna himself.  Both Pinhead and Freddy Kurger were transformed by and are “bound,” so to speak, to the evil entities that gave them their power. Pinhead, by “the malefic power of the Levithan,” and Freddy by his pact with the Dream Demons. So perhaps it is in fact that Henry’s “soul” or whatever, is connected to the Mindflayer. The innocent cloud. The Hive mind, maybe? Perhaps that's exactly what the “hive mind” truly is. A collection of souls, that are bound together and can hence be utilized as needed. A power source? Maybe some of these souls remain bound and submissive to the head of the hive, but can still function independently when they’re not “needed.” (The demogorgons, I think, could fit this, as well as Vecna himself, although he is def of a way higher “rank.” Y’know, the five star general, the second highest in charge.) Just a theory, but I think it could work!  Because heres another thing from DnD lore. When a lich “imprisons” someone’s soul, its fed to the lich’s phylactery. IF, the cloud in the upside down is in any way Henry Vecna’s phylactery, maybe the souls Henry takes are being fed to the cloud? To the MF? This wouldn’t be far out, given we’ve seen the Vines, that are also connected to the MF, and really anything the MF touches, is corrupted/rotted- it seems to suck energy/life out of anything it touches.  This being said, we know Henry was able to do this whole soul suck thing BEFORE he became Vecna. Yet we also know Henry seemed to get his powers from SOMEWHERE, and it seems he was somehow perhaps subconsciously driven to use them in certain ways. It would explain how and why little Henry suddenly knew how to demonically eat souls and all the other things I mentioned that can trace back to the MF. So my theory about him being, essentially, a medium for the mindflayer holds up very well here. This would say that Henry and the MF have always been linked, before Henry even entered the upside down and I think I’ve provided sufficient enough evidence to back this possibly being true. Now remember how I ALSO talked about how it seems that Vecna wasn’t personally active during S1, S2 and maybe the first half of S3? That his influence in those seasons seems minor? This is also detailed more in the previous post. But anyway, theres a STRONG suggestion from canon and basically from Vecna’s own mouth, that he was very de-powered at that time. And in order to act himself seemingly rather than just sitting back and letting the MF do its thing, Vecna had to get power from Eleven. So what happened to Vecna’s power between him being sent to the Upside down in 1979 and the first few seasons of Stranger things? According to DnD lore: 

When lich's soul enters the phylactery for the first time, it is an exhausting process causing a loss of life-force and might, as well as erasure of their most powered prepared spells. Once their soul and vitality were successfully stored in the phylactery, they could leave and rest for at least a few days to recover.

Hm! Could it be that Henry’s ‘transformation’ into Vecna and/or his link up with the “MF” drained his powers? Seems like a possibility.  But we also have the VR game, which apparently shows Vecna “shaping” the upside down for some reason. That could have drained a significant amount of his power as well. The VR game is the one thing I don’t know exactly how to place into things so I don't factor it a lot and I’ll have to actually play it before I can say anything.   none of the less, none of that seemed to drain the MF, given it was going strong until Eleven closed the gate at the end of s2 and 3 and disabled its corrupting influence for those short periods. We know however that the psychics like Henry and Eleven have literally been referred to as batteries. They can run out of power. And when they do it takes them out of active duty until they can ‘recharge’ and the recharge period seems to be related to exactly how much power they’ve used so it could take a while.  With Vecna it seems more and more likely with all this in mind that he did something between his banishment to the UD and the start of S1 that took him out of the game, so to speak- whether that just be the process of becoming Vecna or something else- and he had to spend time recovering, thus couldn’t personally participate in the UD-hawkins invasion like the MF and the Demogorgon's were in the start. Not until he was able to grab that power from Eleven in the back half of s3 to instantly get back into action in s4, where Vecna decided no more fucking around and created the four fresh gates to finally destroy the barrier between Hawkins and the UD.  This all gives the impression that Vecna and the MF have been a team of sorts. How did the MF know to target Eleven and her friends? Well that came from Henry, I do believe that to be true, and “they” were targeting Eleven, specifically. the other kids just happened to be there and ended up getting pulled into it as well. But this is not me saying I think Henry was behind the initial Demogorgon or the MF entirely itself. Rather, I think its because he’s part of the “hive mind” he was able to share his memories with the MF, allowing the MF to see that there was a huge threat to their little operation existing in the rightside up- that being Eleven, the only other one with the “power” to stop all this, like Henry had the power to start it and it may have always been Henry’s “destiny” so to speak to open the gates, from the moment the MF made contact with him if that theory does ring true.  BUT a LOT of that is FAN THEORY. It has canon evidence to back it up but it cant be proven for absolute sure, and I could very well be off on a few things. I’m not ruling out conflicting theories entirely, but the one I don't buy is that this character committed full on CSA and is a p*dophile or n*zi based on other fan theories that PERSONALLY don’t make as much sense to me or seem as canon supported as all this does. I think, with all this in mind, its PERFECTLY fair to want to wait to see what canon shows us in s5 before passing THAT kind of judgement on this character and mocking his fans for daring to be skeptical and feeling differently/positively about him. 

Annywayyy, lastly, I just wanted to mention something I find interesting about Henry's murders. He doesn't seem the to soul grab everyone. Its specific people.  Upon looking back, I'm not even sure if Henry killed Alice n the same way he killed Virginia. When Henry kills a victim in that strange demonic soul sucking way he does, the bodies are horribly mangled. Alice’s body wasn't mangled when we saw her after she was killed.

We’ve seen that Henry doesn’t have to do the soul sucker thing to kill someone. He can just reach into their bodies and crush their brains/organs. We saw Eleven do this multiple times in season 1. In particular we see a clear example of it in the end of season 1 when Brenner’s associates are trying to recapture her and she kills them. They’re shown to be bleeding from their eyes and their ears after this occurs. Alice was the same. Her body wasn’t mangled, she was just bleeding from the eyes and presumably the ears. Which indicates Henry didn't soul snatch her unlike Virginia, he just killed her.  We also have the guards and other orderlies in the Lab Massacre. Many of them are bleeding about the head creating a whole lot of blood all over the place, but they're NOT mangled. The only ones mangled are the test subjects. Which heavily suggests that Henry only “took the souls” of the test subjects, not everyone. And that kind of begs the question why? Why the souls of those particular victims? Is something guiding Henry’s choice of souls? That does seem possible but tbh anything I could imagine here would be PURE theory. I’m kinda thinking it might have something to do with this idea of corruption within certain souls that Henry can somehow see or sense? Perhaps due to his connection with the MF? Who seems to feed on particularly negative emotions/thoughts/feelings? Something in that area, anyway, taking reference from the way Pennywise particularly likes the “flavor” of souls/flesh full of fear, maybe it has a similar aesthetic going on? But yeah. Completely theory there but I’m just saying there has GOT to be a reason for all this and a reason for WHY Vecna thinks he’s somehow DOING GOOD.  ANYWAY. Thanks for the response to at least ONE tiny thing I mentioned! Theres my expanded thoughts on that in particular, hope you enjoy!😊

[tabletopbrainrot]

My face when my phone has done nothing but ding in the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers jingle all day

Now then uhhhh... Weekly recap?

Sunday game:

Our replacement for our Owlin Monk has showed up, they're an Assassin Rogue/Drakewarden and they're suspicious as hell. My dragon hating Drow is already barely stomaching one dragon in the party, now we have Spooky Toothless and their pet noble.

Now why is this suspicious you ask? They're from the capital city, so far behind enemy lines that there is no reasonable explanation for how they got there... And hunting displacer beasts sure as hell ain't it.

Our Drow Monk got feebleminded and unfeebleminded in the span of like two sessions. She's basically a cat when at 1int

Our Witch( hag wizard) is so low on resources that it's not funny, I don't think we could squeeze a spell slot out of her if we tried.

Kobold Paladin is just chilling, also might be the key to reintroducing a lost magic used by the divine to create souls to the world.. where did souls come from before this? Great question couldn't tell you if you had a gun to my head

Me? Drow Fighter also just chilling nothing to say other than, tried to earn the trust of a Gloomstalker(Explorers Guide to Wildmount creature, not the really good ranger subclass) after one tried to once again kindnap the Owlin didn't go so well sadly..

(Dog)Centaur Ranger helping us navigate this mess of an underground labyrinth, can't really say anything bad is happening to him he's just rolling survival really.

When this session ended we had found an abandoned minecart station full of intricate clockwork, and at the far end there was a shadow dragon seemingly stuck in a time loop? Or causing one? It pings as Winter Fey, Dragon, and Undead to the ranger. The party wants me to do something given my alleged Winter Court affiliation. So yeah that'll be fun

Tuesday game:

Aka I swear hand on a holy book of your choice it's not Fate

No session this week so a recap of last, we basically hot dropped into the center of the Woad warrior tribe our Fighter is from, and things were hell chaos creatures being vomited out of multiple purple worms, and an impenetrable barrier keeping anyone from escaping.

Our Illithid friend remarked about how dangerous it was for the choir to be away from the capital city, and offered to get us into the central command worm in exchange for allowing them to evacuate the choir. We agree even though we know this will make our lives harder and get ported into the worm and lead into a kill chamber with a red dracolich under the control of a Illithid wizard with a Roman name I can't even remember off hand.

We spend time whittling away at the dragon in our various ways, including our Woad Fighter burning an ability to reroll key events allowing me to crit a shot from my Spelljammers main cannon (20d10+4d8 my DMs face was such a meme, literally slap it on a sticker I swear)

Unfortunately for us the keyword of Dracolich is infact lich so even after all that and our Hobgoblin Irish king with no serial numbers filed off with a dragon slaying sword beating on it, it still gets back up. However our Squidly friend goes full Senate on the wizard and stabs him in the back telling him Caesar sends his regards and breaks the Dracolich's phylactery. Session ends before we see this choir, we'll deal with this next time.

Lancer:

⚠️⚠️We're playing Stolen Crown I can't really spoiler tag so you've been warned⚠️⚠️

• We stop one Ragnarok themed Mecha Kaiju assault, only for two more to kick off, despite us being very dumb we did decide to not split the party and sadly could only directly help one clan that was under attack. Cue Eikþyrnir, which would have had so much advantage, and could have collapsed the caves we were in, except one two many things first of all being I don't care about your Razor Swarms DM I have a Tempest Charged Blade, two we have a Manticore, Three our Sherman is going to use the full reactor or else.

So our Manticore swapped places with Eikþyrnir, and I ran up and Structured it with one swing, triggered executioner and hit the Silverhoof with the back swing and Molten Wreath. Bless our Death's Head's heart, the lad is in constant suffering after getting Gallagher'd by Jörmungandr last session but did pop Eikþyrnir which basically let us take our time, also fuck hornets all my homies hate hornets.

The underground Kaiju fighter clan is saved temporary reward get!

• Cue mysterious radio broadcast, The guerilla insurgent that still thought they were fighting Seccom reaches out to negotiate, we agree to meet.

The DM improvises us a whole narrative clock check system trying to get this person to understand that times have changed and if the people of Sparr really wanted out of Union while it would take time the request would be honored. This whole scene mostly consisted of our single actual Union employee being fed information from the two mercenary Sparraboos known as Coyote and Vermin.

Despite Foundry's best efforts we pass and flipped Yennval's most radicalized guerilla.

• Which leads to us being warned about Huginn and Muninn and having backup in the form of an ace pilot, Yennval is redirecting power somewhere we have to stop this.. now if you've seen my last post... And I repeat who are you people? You'll know that I've been using a liberal interpretation of how [Total Strength Suite I] works, meaning I've been running, dashing, throwing a cover halfway through the second dash, then using [Xaioli's Ingenuity/Tenacity] for more movement by breaking the rock, triggering it again and hitting another target on the map to reset my counter to break the power poles while the most epic of ace combat dogfights is going on in the background.

Unfortunately we didn't stop Yennval from doing her thing, now like some unhinged 3D vtuber concert she's rising from her hidden bunker on the back of a spaceship shouting some unhinged shit..

I don't wanna kill this local god entity I'll be real, and I feel like that'll polarize the locals, but uhhh she's been off her gourd for over 500 years and something's gotta give.

Next session tomorrow the DM is hype and so are we, I think they've found this shit blog too from the meme so by all means expand anything you think I skimmed too much.

[babybluesquid]

Consequences of Karrnath Session 40

An Assent to Ascent

Our Players this week:

Dagne, Redemption Paladin, party leader, an undead soldier created by the Odakyr Rites, but has a soul. They are a Seeker sworn to protect the living. Has a skeleton horse mount from Find Steed named Coffin. Can be abrasive and dishonest, but they are ultimately kind.

Nux, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer, a young teen Marcher who escaped an imposed warlock pact and is now discovering their own innate magic. Their personas are Murlo, a preteen orc girl, Orim, a young adult elf boy, and Vel, an adult tiefling enby. They hold a lot of anger and anxiety and they struggle against authority.

Vaeren, Gloomstalker Ranger, a blind former Deathguard. They were initially sent to investigate Dagne, but instead started dating them. They’re contemplative and disciplined, but with an angry streak and often question Dagne’s decisions.

Evakhal, Zealot Barbarian, a mysterious half-orc Gaash’kala who joined the party due to his visions of the future where they stop a powerful servant of an Overlord. He’s generally optimistic and supportive of the party’s efforts.

The snake person leads the party into an entrance in the base of the pyramid. Inside is a hall with a large throne at one end. Thirteen other people stand around the hall, watching warily as the party’s escort approaches the throne. Seated there is a large snake person, snake headed and tailed, completely covered in scales in a black, yellow, and red banded pattern. The Baron is wearing many pieces of gold jewelry. “Baron! Baron Francis ir’Stanburry! It’s the Bone King!” The panicked underling announces, “the Bone King has come demanding the artifact we’ve been guarding beneath the pyramid!” The Baron regards the party with fear and bewilderment, but keeps his wits about him, “if that one is the Bone King, then who are the others?” His voice is a hiss, even more drawn out than that of the first snake person, but there’s a hint of Five Nations in the accent, maybe Breland.

Dagne answers, “mortals sworn to my service.” “Why does a power so great seek the weapon we hold here?” “I intend to bring death to the dragons of The Chamber.” The Baron sits back, contemplating a bit, “this is a goal that my people can understand and appreciate. However, how can we know you are the Bone King and not just a lich or something like that?” Dagne responds in the infernal language, “if you question my authority, you shall suffer an eternity in Mabar.” The Baron shrinks back, “sorry, your Dark Majesty. Let us make it up to you.” He turns and whispers to his subordinate who descends a staircase. “Just a second,” the Baron promises. As Dagne waits, they tap the shaft of their poleaxe impatiently.

The snake person returns, leading three more armed snake people and five prisoners, three humans, one halfling, and a dragonborn. The party recognizes the Dreambreaker Covenant, Sword Bartholomew Skipwith, SanShara, ZarShara, Mata of Hammertail, and Xarlic, disarmed, gagged to prevent spellcasting, and without armor. “To provide a salve to the offense we gave to you, we offer you, Dark Power, these lives for you to consume,” the Baron offers. Dagne thinks quickly, needing to buy some time, “who are these lowlives?” “Thieves who came to steal the artifact you seek.” “Adventurers?” “You could call them that.” “This offering pleases me. I need adventurers to face the dragons,” Dagne gestures back at their own party.

Meanwhile, when the prisoners are brought out, SanShara initiates a telepathic conversation with Vaeren, “kind of in a tight spell here, mind helping us out? Also is Dagne a skeleton? What’s up with that?” “Don’t worry, we won’t let you die,” Vaeren replies, “and Dagne is… well it’s a long story.”

The Baron seems bothered by Dagne’s response, “why would the Bone King need adventurers to face the dragons? Do you not have your own armies of the dead and your own great powers?” But Dagne is ready, “this is the very reason I seek to eliminate The Chamber. The placed me into a mortal’s body to use me for their prophetic ends. I will have my revenge for this grave insult.” Amused, the Baron turns to Sword Bartholomew Skipwith, “say, good knight, would you serve the Bone King in this endeavor?” The guard pulls his gag off and Bartholomew glances around for a second, settling a quizzical look on Dagne. They provide him no sign, no movement or direction. Cautiously, he replies, “if it would save my friends, then I’d have to, of course.” “How noble of you,” Dagne replies hatefully. The Baron is unconvinced, “you have some kind of scheme to run from the Bone King with your friends. I tire of you,” he faces Dagne, “the offer on this man’s life to you still stands as he will not properly serve you.”

“Do not underestimate me, worm!” Dagne shouts in infernal, their voice magically amplified to fill the room, “my will can easily dominate even the most virtuous of knights!” The Baron lurches backward in surprise and terror, pointing at one of his underlings, “servant, bring the adventurers’ equipment so they may properly serve in the Bone King’s army.” The snake people scatter and return with armor and weapons, standing uncomfortably near Dagne.

SanShara reports to Vaeren, “Mata has picked her handcuffs. We can break out if you’ll help us out of here.” “With the way things are going I don’t think we’ll need to fight. That’s our hope at least. If you can play along things may work out peacefully.” “Perhaps.”

Dagne stares at the Baron, “I tire of your questions and your offerings, worm. Bring me the artifact.” He stands up himself and leaves with a small retinue of his servants. A short while later, he returns, holding a small white glowing orb. As he approaches Dagne with it, his eyes don’t leave the floor as he bows. He holds out the orb to Dagne, his other hand darts to his belt. They lunge forward with their poleaxe, but he is quicker. The Baron draws a dagger, announcing, “you are a fool if you think I would give this up, but its power can send you back to Mabar!” He rams the pommel of the dagger into the orb, and it ignites. The Baron burns up in silver light and fire, reduced to ash and bones. The orb clinks to the ground, unharmed, and rolls to Dagne’s foot.

“My hands are free,” SanShara telepathically notifies Vaeren, “shall I conjure my blade?” “Don’t do anything. Whatever Dagne does, play along.” “How do we know we can trust you?” Vaeren responds with dead seriousness, “look, Dagne couldn’t hurt a fly without feeling guilty. We have your party’s stuff. We can get it back to you if you pretend to be under their control. Not sure what they have planned but they’re uncomfortably confident.”

Taking control of the situation, Dagne announces to the rest of the room, “witness what occurs when a mere mortal attempts to wield the artifact. Stand against me and your blood will slake my thirst for death!” Terrified, the snake people back away as Dagne picks up the orb. Then, they notice Mata and SanShara have removed their handcuffs. Dagne turns on the group, hand raised and yelling out in infernal, “fall before my will!” Instantly, all five of them drop to the ground. “Now rise.” They stand and go to equip themselves. Mata approaches Dagne, “my mighty lord, I would of course be of less great effectiveness without my trusted companion. I would ask you to tell the serpents to return my clawfoot to me.” Dagne turns on the nearest snake person, “bring it.” Scared, it runs off, returning with the dinosaur. “Now,” Dagne announces, “we shall leave this place.”

As the party returns to the surface, once out of earshot of the snake people, Bartholomew turns to Dagne, “that was quite the fine trick you pulled back there, my skeletal fellow, but I must ask what the deal was with that. Swords of the Crown and followers of Dol Arrah don’t normally tolerate the undead of course.” “I’m Karrnathi,” Dagne replies bluntly. “Well, of course I know that,” he presses, “I am more curious about why a skeletal undead would be both intelligent and leading a group of adventurers.” “I’m just built different.” “You’re not a wizard so you can’t be a lich, and you’re not mummified either, and you don’t possess the false vitality found in vampires. I can’t say I’ve seen any of your like before.” “If you served in the war, you likely did. I’m an undead soldier, that is all,” Dagne sounds wary, he’s pressing too hard. “Your grasp of language and morality is more than I would expect from seeing those creatures out in the war.” Dagne turns to face him, “if you’re attempting to make polite conversation, you’re failing. If this is a threat, stop.” Immediately, Sword Bart stops his line of questioning.

When the party reaches the surface, Atamu is surprised that the group not only survived, but acquired new people. He stares at ZarShara in particular but makes no comment, only asking if the expedition is over. Dagne confirms it and they pack up camp, heading back to Gatherhold. Money changes hands and the groups part ways. Before the Dreambreaker Covenant leaves, however, Xarlic approaches Dagne, “what are you doing with the artifact?” “I’m gonna kill Mordakesh,” they respond. “I will tell our employers your plan. It is a good idea, if you win. You have a high chance of dying.” Annoyed, Dagne rebuts, “I know that. Now begone.” Before leaving the city, Dagne finds a craftsman to quickly repair their visor. Once that’s done, they hop aboard the lightning rail for Atur.

On the rail, Nux’s body right there in the cabin with the party, Ev speaks up. “Guys, we need to talk about Nux being gone.” “What could you possibly say?” Dagne bites back. “Well, what is going to happen?” “We can’t carry them around forever,” Vaeren agrees, “we need to take them somewhere but- I don’t know.” “I am not giving up on them,” Dagne says. “You’re going to try to bring them back?” Vaeren asks, surprised. “I don’t have the power to do that, but the Crimson Covenant might. Khyber, even House Jorasco. I refuse to let them be dead.” Horrified, Vaeren replies, “would you think about what they would want? Sure they’re dead, but I don’t think they would want to be brought back.” “How dare you.”

Ev butts in quietly, “I don’t think we should do that.” Dagne turns on him, “the Rakshasa stabbed Nux while they were already down! They had no awareness of the situation! We ought to fix this! They have a right to know what happened and go live their life!” “But they died,” Ev says, confused. “Both of you shut up. Yelling is getting us nowhere,” Vaeren says. Dagne turns to them, “if you truly believe saving Nux from Dolurrh is wrong, leave me now.” For a long moment, they’re silent, then say, “try then. They shouldn’t have to disappear.” “Thank you.”

As soon as the party arrives in Atur, Dagne leads them down into the catacombs of the Crimson Monastery. They soon run into a vampire, one they recognize from the last time they were down there. Dagne bows, “I need your help. Please bring my friend back to life.” The vampire regards Nux’s body, “this is possible. How long have they been dead?” “I’ve been preserving their body with my magic, Dagne responds. The vampire nods and leads them through the catacombs to a deep chamber. More martyrs join them on the way. Ev is directed to lay Nux down on an altar and unwrap their body. A skeletal figure enters the room, stands over Nux, then says, “Nux’s soul is not in Dolurrh.”

“What do you mean?” Dagne demands, “where could they be?” “Some weapon which traps or destroys the soul, such as a Keeper’s Fang, is the most likely explanation.” Dagne’s mind races, “can they be brought back if I acquire this weapon?” “If they’re trapped, then yes, that’s possible.” Dagne’s voice fills with determined anger, they turn to their party, “let’s go find Mordakesh.”

Once the party leaves the catacombs, Dagne pulls the artifact out. They stare at the glowing white orb, pulsing faintly. Then, they slam it into the center of their poleaxe. The party jumps back in surprise as silver light fills the room, but there is no burning. The orb melds into the weapon, vanishing into its center. Then, a voice asks, “so, who are you?” It’s in their head, and Dagne replies with a thought, “I’m Dagne.” “What are you trying to kill?” “Mordakesh, the Shadow Sword.” “That’s exactly the kind of thing I wanna do,” the artifact replies, “I’m Garthir, an orc in an orb that makes weapons very strong.” “Well, Garthir, let’s go slay a Rakshasa.” “Awesome! I have not done anything since the Year of Blood and Fire!”

With Dagne not immolated by silver fire, the party looks around for Nenad Rukavina, but another guide informs them he’s on a trip and will be back tomorrow. So the party gets a room at an inn instead to wait. One by one, the party members go to sleep, and Vaeren starts their trance. Dagne waits, hand on their weapon. A figure steps from the shadows. A Rakshasa, not the same one, an orange one with black stripes, but holding the same weapon, the weapon that killed Nux. Dagne stands defensively. The Rakshasa speaks softly, “do not wake your friends if you ever wish to retrieve Nux’s soul.” “What do you want?” Dagne demands. “Meet me in at the last hour before dawn at the other side of the conductor stones of the lighting rail station. Come alone with your poleaxe.” “I’ll be there, since I’m going to send you back to Khyber.” “You won’t,” the Rakshasa promises before vanishing.

Dagne considers the proposal for a couple hours, but there is no real choice to be made. They have to go. Quietly, they leave the room and head to the lightning rail station. There, on the other side of the conductor stones, holding the weapon, is a dwarf with red eyes, wearing heavy chainmail, Valtis Redeyes, the companion of Inesa’s who got away. They also see Vakaris, standing at a distance. Dagne approaches the disguised Rakshasa, “give me that weapon, now.” “Well, I can,” Valtis replies, “but I’d like to make a deal with you. Don’t destroy me, you wouldn’t be able to retrieve Nux’s soul.” Dagne points their poleaxe at him threateningly anyway, “talk.” Valtis smiles, “you give me Garthir and I’ll give you the sword with Nux’s soul in it.” Garthir pipes up in Dagne’s mind, “I’d rather not be given to a Rakshasa.” “Prove Nux is in there,” Dagne says. “Sure,” Valtis says, still smiling, “touch the sword now.”

Reluctantly, Dagne reaches out and places a hand on the blade. They hear Nux, “for a damn minute would all of y’all fuckers shut up?” They also hear a meld of other souls surrounding Nux, screaming, threatening to consume them. Nux suddenly goes silent in their tirade against the other souls and whispers, “Dagne?” Then, they shout, “Dagne!”

Valtis draws the sword back, “that’s them in there. You can recognize their mind.” Dagne doesn’t hesitate, “deal.” Garthir sighs, “that was not a good idea on your part.” Simultaneously, Dagne passes their poleaxe to Valtis and Valtis passes the demonglass sword to Dagne. As soon as they take the weapon, it morphs into a poleaxe made of one solid piece of demonglass. Dagne glances over at Vakaris, and Valtis follows their gaze. “Oh, I have one more thing to do here,” he says nonchalantly. Then, suddenly, he’s behind Vakaris and stabs him through the neck with Dagne’s own poleaxe! Valtis shoots Dagne a wicked grin and vanishes in a puff of acrid smoke.

“Vak!” Dagne shouts, running up to their brother. He’s fallen, clutching at his ruined neck, and Dagne can tell he’s already dead. They fall to their knees and lay hands on his wound, willing him to come back, to not fall to Dolurrh. Miraculously, red light flows into him, mending his spine and torn throat and stitching blood vessels and skin together, and catches his fleeing soul. He breathes in, shakily and shocked, then deeper as he sits up and regards his blood on his palms. “Oh! I sure died there…” he trails off and looks at Dagne, “oh, you.” “Yes, it is me.” “Wait, how’d you bring me back to life?” Dagne hardly knows themselves, it’s the first time they’ve been able to do that, “I’m sworn to protect the living. The power of my oath empowers me. Brother, you are alive.” Vakaris stands up, “so I am. You are not though.”

“No, I’m not,” Dagne replies seriously, “I hope you can forgive me for going off to die.” Vakaris’ voice breaks a little, “how could I blame you for saving me?” “Vakaris…” words fail them. “Course, I was a damn fool and signed up with the wolves,” he says sadly. “We both made the same mistake. I’m just glad you’re alive. Thank you for staying alive.” “Thank you for bringing me back to live, I would say,” he rambles, “I almost have half a mind to fight you, I would say.” “No,” they reply, “you should go and live. Leave the Red Watchers and make a new life for yourself without revenge. Go to Korth and find Andrev the Wolf, he is in much the same situation as you. He can help.” Vakaris listens and considers for a moment, “that does sound like a better idea. Oh, fuck, wait. Can you tell me anything about that dwarf?” He rubs his neck. “Valtis Redeyes, a Red Watcher and also a Rakshasa,” Dagne explains. Vak’s eyes widen, “I am not going to report to those guys again. Anything you can tell me about this Andrev before I leave?” “He’s former Claw, but he’s a good man. I trust him implicitly.” “That’s good. Well…” Vakaris dusts himself off and puts on his helmet, “hope to see you again, Almante, er…” “Dagne.”

The two part ways and Dagne returns to the party’s room. They take a minute to gather themselves, then wake the party. “I have it,” they announce, showing the group the demonglass poleaxe. “What did you do?” Vaeren asks. Dagne doesn’t respond to them, “Ev, unwrap Nux’s body.” He complies silently. “Can you explain like, anything here?” VAeren asks again, annoyed. “I made a deal and got Nux back,” they reply. Dagne then focuses on the weapon. They have a thought, which feels like their own, but they know it’s not. They place the flat of the axe blade on Nux’s forehead and revivify. Red light pours out over Nux’s body. The holes in their chest close, their heart knits itself back together and starts beating, they gasp for breath, alive. They shoot sitting upright.

“Nux!” Dagne shouts, overjoyed. Nux looks over at Dagne, who falls to their knees and hugs them tightly. “Thank goodness you’re okay,” they say, “I couldn’t do anything but get you back. Ev pats the shocked Nux on the back, “we thought you were gone.” Finally, Nux processes the situation. They begin laughing hysterically, “I’m someone who’s survived death seven times!” “I’m so happy you’re alive,” Dagne says. Nux wriggles free of the hug and inspects their cut up shirt, “damn, I kinda liked this outfit,” they then glance around the room, then right at Dagne and the demonglass poleaxe, “what the fuck did you do now, chalk stick?” “Valtis Redeyes is a Rakshasa,” Dagne explains, “he offered me a deal, the artifact, Garthir, for you. There was no decision to make.” Ev is horrified, “we needed that!” Vaeren remarks sarcastically, “so what are you going to do? Trap him in that weapon?” “That’s not exactly an unreasonable idea,” Nux says, looking at it. “Exactly,” Dagne says. Vaeren ignores the comments and goes to give Nux a hug. “Yo,” Nux says, “if we’re done with this shitshow can we go get some food? I’ve been dead almost a month so I’m hungry as Mabar. Also, I need a new shirt.” “Sure,” Dagne says, their voice sounding like a smile, “let’s go.”

The party heads to a restaurant called The Karrnathi Breakfast, which naturally serves typical Karrnathi breakfast food: toast, steak, milk products, cheese, and eggs. Nux, absolutely famished, orders two stacks of cheese, apple, and blueberry stuffed pancakes and a nightwood ale. Ev orders a breakfast sandwich consisting of steak, egg, and cheese on toast. Vaeren gets plain pancakes topped with seasonal fruit. Dagne, remembering the taste of food, sadly orders just an emberwheat ale, wishing they could eat something.

When their meal is over, the party walks over to Nenad’s neighborhood. Surprisingly, once they reach his neighborhood, they see him running down the street. Within moments, the thing he’s running from turns out of an alley. He’s pursued by six werewolves!

——————

Highlights:

Losing my mind over the Yuan-ti Baron being some Brelish noble named Francis ir’Stanburry. That whole scene was hilarious, with Dagne carefully maneuvering to not kill anyone while keeping up their act.

Vaeren was absolutely the MVP in that discussion, keeping the Dreambreaker Covenant from doing anything rash while Dagne sorted things out with the Baron.

Bartholomew Skipwith, a Sword of the Brelish Crown, saying Swords of Crown don’t tolerate undead to Dagne? Threat. Huge threat. Hate that.

I’m still angry that Vaeren and Ev tried to argue in favor of letting Nux stay dead.

Why did Valtis kill Vakaris? Just to be an asshole I’m assuming. Lords of Dust didn’t count on Dagne knowing how to cast revivify though.

“There was no decision to make” is such an utterly raw line. Dagne really fights for Nux.

Nux being alive again makes me so happy! They brought the joy back to the party with their humorous take on being dead and brought back.

Session 41.

[coalitiongirl]

Fic Recs (under 300 edition)

So I wanted to get back to reading Swan Queen fic regularly, and I asked people to rec longfic that they'd read (not written) and loved that had fewer than 300 kudos! I haven’t read most of these, but I’ve collected them here so y’all can go through the list and discover some new fics with me! Please try to kudos and review every fic that you read! It means the world to the writers and will keep em writing, and then we all win. 😁

Atonement by SgtMac (M): With Regina's magical heart failing thanks to years of previous evil, Emma and Regina and Henry (and Granny!) set out to save her life by traveling to the Enchanted Forest and requesting help from ancient magical beings known as the Guardians. Given a mission as simple as it is impossible - to achieve atonement by creating peace - the ladies find themselves joining a rebellion and fighting for the very soul of the Enchanted Forest all while trying to help Regina to understand that the self-loathing and guilt which have driven most of her actions don't have to doom her chance for a new beginning or even, a chance to live and love again. A S4(ish) SQ love story set against the turmoil of war and the chaotic savagery of the old world.

Blood and Sand by cheshire6845 (E): A/U The Savior is a slave forced into the role of fighting as a gladiator for the House of Hearts. The odds are against her survival as she will have to win in the arena, navigate Cora's schemes, outlast a general's vengeance, and not be killed out of spite by the current House of Hearts Champion - Regina the Undefeated. This story follows the major plot points of Starz Spartacus with some twists along the way.

But what if there was no time by KizuRai (M): When she wakes up, it's dark. She can't move, she can't see, she can't feel and she can't hear. Where am I? She feels a forceful oppression, pressing her down, draining her of her energy and she's powerless to stop it. How did I get here? The question of here is relative, she's not even sure where here is. What happened? There must be some reason for being stuck here but her memory is fuzzy, like all her thoughts are being sifted through a filter. Who am I? She's not sure if she actually exists or she suddenly became sentient in the darkness.She hears a voice reverberating in the distance, it's distorted and quiet but she hears it all the same. It breaks the monotony of the silence. Someone's coming for her, they will get her out. She's just not sure she wants them to as the price might be too great.

Finding Home by evl_rgl (T): “I wanted to remember you so badly that I pulled back your cursed town just so that the memories would make sense. I needed you so badly that even when I had no memory of you, I still tried to find you.” Regina gave Emma and Henry memories of a happy life together before they fled Pan’s curse, leaving them with no memories of their lives in Storybrooke. However, when the memory spell shows signs of failing, threatening to rip apart the minds of both Emma and Henry, Regina makes a drastic choice to go back and fix it, understanding that it will mean living alone in a world where her son doesn’t know her. Was the spell really faulty, though? (swanqueen)

Five Flames by MariaComet (U): In the past, Emma Nolan disconnected from her peers in high school, preferring to keep to herself. In her sophomore year of high school, she decided to try and join the boy’s wrestling team because she was bored. She didn’t expect herself to become the champion of the most bullied kid in school or the secret best friend of the school queen. She also didn’t expect to join a club that would change her life. In the present, Emma is trying to cope with a humiliating loss in her martial arts career. She claims to be “training” but is stuck in limbo between wanting to retire and try again. She is isolated from her former best friend, Regina Mills, a local celebrity chef and the rest of her old friends. When one of them calls her with an idea to honor their deceased teacher, she is confronted with unresolved feelings and questions about how powerful love truly is.

A Glamour of Truth by PrincessCharming (T): After 2x10, Regina uses magic to show Emma the obvious truth. A tentative trust forms between them amid hilarious bickering. With Emma's help, Regina struggles to regain a place in her son's life... until Cora arrives, wanting her daughter back. Pieces of Regina's past emerge showing that the board was set long before the game started. The final battle begins soon.

His Dark Materials 'verse by MoonlitMidnight (M): A modern Alternate Universe in which Dæmons (the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner self' that takes the form of an animal) are present. In which Emma and Regina have led slightly different lives and they make slightly different choices.

How Many Miles to Avalon? (WIP) by RavenOutlander (E): Regina would do anything to save Emma from the darkness and bring her back home safe and sound. Even put up with the two idiots, Captain Guyliner and a bunch of dwarves she decidedly wanted to drop off at the nearest exit. But in their search for Emma, they find that she might not need that much saving after all. Caught up in a search for the infamous Philosopher Stone, an all out war between DunBroch and Camelot, and ghosts from the past to haunt her every waking moment, Regina finds herself scrambling to keep her and her family's happy endings from falling apart.

The Hyperion by FrankenSpine (M): After wishing upon what she believes is a shooting star, Emma Swan finds herself aboard the Hyperion, the royal starship of an alien Queen from a faraway galaxy. She quickly learns of the tensions between the Queen's people and her own, but the Queen takes an interest in her and agrees to take her away from Earth forever. Adventure awaits. *(Loosely based on Guardians of the Galaxy with just a hint of Farscape)*

If Wishes Came True (It Would've Been You) by Angeii_K (M): After Regina films a guest appearance on her friend Neal’s popular show, he invites her to spend the weekend with him and his girlfriend. What she never expected was to actually like the woman. Sparks fly between the two, which results in them questioning everything and making choices they will later regret. 4 years later, they meet again in the most unexpected of ways. Now co-stars on the same show, they are forced to work through the emotions from their last encounter. What will happen next? Only time will tell.

The King Doesn’t Have To Know (WIP) by highheelsandchocolate (M): The White Knight had never seen anyone like her before: the Queen was nothing short of mesmerizing. Her possessive yet neglectful husband, however, was another thing entirely.

The Lich by Dangereaux (M): Gay disaster Emma, exasperated Regina, and a monster. A Halloween special.

Maybe if We Close Our Eyes we Can Reach the Stars by wellthizizdeprezzing (T): Emma is a lonely astronaut. Regina is an adventuring alien. Their paths cross leading them onto a journey of new discovery. Between galaxies and many miles of cold black space, despite not speaking the same language, they manage to fall for each other. An out of this world love story.

A prisoner long forgotten by sugarsweet_19 (M): ‘I wish I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood and as black as the wood of the window-frame. Soon after she had a little girl, who was as white as snow, with lips as red as blood and with her hair as black as the ebony of the window-frame. She was therefore called Snow-white.” This is how our story starts but how will it end?The evil queen as been locked up in a tower and forgotten that is until princess Emma looks for a place to hid from her parents after they tell her she has to marry Neal the son of the dark one.

Revenge of the Three Little Pigs by mskyo (M): Regina and Emma find themselves alone and looking for the rest of their party. The Evil Queen must face the consequences of her past actions. Will Emma come to her aid, or understand that justice must be served... *Some chapters have fairly graphic sex, and violence*

Things I Almost Remember by cheshire6845 (T): A/U Despite an oncoming war between the Dark and the Light, Emma and Regina are best friends growing up in the Enchanted Forest. When war does come, they find themselves on opposite sides. Regina will have to defy her mother to save Emma. Will Emma be able to save Regina when Cora curses her daughter to live in the Land without Magic?

What We Make (WIP) by DiazTuna (M): “My mother.” He says calmly. He’d known all along, she’s aware. But he’d known that today would be the day that would get this going. She wants to ask what it was like, to have woken up this morning, laced up his boots and walked into hell just knowing. “It’s programmed the cyborg to kill her. Before I have a chance to be born.” -In which the leader of the future sends his best soldier back to the past to save his mother from a killer cyborg. Terminator AU.

The Wrong Way by pcworth (M): Takes place right after Zelena steals Regina's heart. Zelena offers Regina a chance to go back in time with her and change both of their lives for the better. But what will be the price of that decision. Slow-burn to SwanQueen

zombie trash by 13pens (T): Zelena could have her brain and eat it, too. Fic operates on three premises 1. this takes place in any universe where zelena is a reformed asshole 2. zombies are a thing and exist iZombie style 3. i have NO chill

[sometipsygnostalgic]

This is the post I was working on that I accidentally sent privately before I’d finished it, LOL. Thanks @imorahtarm107 for sending it back after what must have been a confusing request. 

CONT: Rebecca Sugar  has spoken before about how much they dislike the statement by press that Bubbline only became “canon” in the finale, because Sugar and Muto were working on that pairing all the way back in s3, those characters have been canonically queer the whole time. It’s not some novelty thing that was canonized at the very end just because everyone else was doing it, or that the characters were only queer and dating if they got to kiss on the mouth! 

So yeah, I was a bit salty abouta  few things. I mostly thought that season 10 had been underwhelming compared to the spectacular seasons 7 to 9. Honestly, I still stand by that opinion because those seasons were really good. 

I felt that there were some other things missing from s10, but some of those got followed up either in the finale or in Obsidian, albeit less in depth than I’d have liked (primarily the fallout to Elements on the side of the Elementals themselves - I thought this was only appropriate considering what happened in Jellybeans Have Power. Are they not terrified of themselves? What are the long term consequences of that takeover, if any? It seems much bigger than the stuff with the Lich that barely anyone knew about.)  

HOW MY THOUGHTS HAVE CHANGED

Well, honestly? Just hearing more from the crew about the problems they faced on CN, not just the AT crew but also Rebecca Sugar with SU, it clears SO much up. 

Kent Osborne said to Ghostshrimp in a podcast that, even though they knew the show was ending, the team had no idea how many episodes they had left! Unlike the earlier seasons where CN just made block orders of 52 eps, it seems like from s6 onwards, things were far less stable. CN no longer ordered consistent season lengths. I’m not sure if they instead ordered blocks of eps, or if they gave the crew a flexible budget to work from, like Legend of Korra had. 

From my observations and theories, the reason seasons 7 to 9 have so many miniseries is possibly because Adam Muto was using those as a way to appeal to what CN wanted out of Adventure Time, and therefore, to prolong the lifespan of the show. It worked really well as both standalone miniseries and as episodes of the show. Olivia Olsen commented that there were many times they thought they were on the last season but it turned out they weren’t.  Adam Muto pitched the first eps of Distant Lands originally as miniseries to “extend” season 10. He was probably hoping he would be successful! 

Unfortunately, this time he was not successful, and Kent Osborne said that the crew were taken off guard by Come Along With Me being their last ep. When they started work on it, they thought it was a special in the middle of what could be a longer season. Kent even believed they would’ve had another 26 eps left. Adam had to beg for an extra couple of months so they could figure out how they could turn what would have been a gumbald special (whatever that would have entailed) into a finale for the entire show! 

Watching Come Along With Me with the knowledge that the crew were taken so off guard changes entirely what I think of it, because what originally seemed like lazy rush jobs - Simon turning back but not having any time as himself, the ep havingt so much going on, the conflict between Bonnie and Gumbald being a bit empty - now feels like the best possible outcome!! How on earth did they make Come Along With Me as good as it was?? They gave so many characters good moments, they had the whole thematic resolution to the land of Ooo and the themes of the world going in circles but nothing staying the exact same, they paid respects to Finn’s growth, and had the outro as the finale song while showing life goes on! 

Now that I’ve had so long to process exactly what happened in the ep, I greatly appreciate so many scenes that I previously overlooked or dismissed. The intro sections by Steve and Tom are brilliant at building up tension, which is part of why the second section feels so jarring. However, the dream sequence is so funny, with interesting imagery that it’s still nice to pick apart. Jake gets to be a good brother, Finn gets to battle Fern, and you have that chilling swapperoo epiphany with Gumbald and PB. The scene where they’re all on the beach is so cathartic. 

Then the second half of the special is just intense start to finish - everyone working together at the culmination of their character arcs, to take down GOLB! Until the power of a little robot’s song turns out to be the best tool of holding it back, and Betty performs the ultimate sacrifice for her mistakes with a smile on her face. So good.  The ending scenes with Finn and the treehouse, Shermy and Beth, the music hole, those are a thematic conclusion to the show. 

So, yeah, it did a great job. To an extent it’s better enjoyed if you pick it apart than if you watch it all at once, since it’s unfortunately not as hard-hitting as a lot of the single 11-minute eps of Adventure Time, including the previous season finale Three Buckets. However it absolutely does its job.

As for Bubbline, well...  Adam was trying to get the show extended, and if anyone looks at the twitter comment I currently have as my pinned post, then you’ll understand that there’s no way PB and Marcy could have kissed or made their relationship undeniably explicit unless it was the very end of the show :/ 

Adam said himself that he didn’t see it as much his fight to battle the decisions of execs as Rebecca did. And while that hurts, it makes sense - he was the owner of someone else’s show that is a smorgas board of a large number of people’s ideas, whereas Rebecca was the owner of their own show and felt that if they weren’t able to express themself in their own show, Sugar was willing to completely take down SU. And that actually happened - Steven Universe got cancelled immediately!!! Adam was not prepared to do that with AT, especally when CN were already talking about cancelling it. 

The good news is he didn’t give up on having PB and Marcy’s relationship be at least fairly clear, especially s7 onwards. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes, but it’s likely a number of the crew members taken on at that time found it important to press for Bubbline, and Adam decidedly agreed. If someone other than him had taken over as showrunner, or even if Pen stayed in charge (he supported it but didn’t want to be wrapped in controversy), I wonder if they’d have never interacted after What Was Missing :/ 

So yeah, with that in mind, as annoying as Marcy and Hunson still is, I can forgive the crew for doing a finale kiss. Rather, I can really thank Hanna K for pressing for one - she knows how important it was to at least confirm what people had expected, without a retroactive tumblr post ala Korrasami. 

[supercantaloupe]

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

[ravnicaforgoblins]

Ravnica for Goblins

Alignment

Figuring out where on the spectrum of beliefs, morals, and neutrality your character falls can be a challenge. One individual’s Chaotic Good is another’s Lawful Evil. To help clarify things, most campaigns include alignment for significant NPCs, and one can often draw a line between that NPC and that alignment. This doesn’t apply to every NPC, but the more important someone is, the more they come to represent a specific section of the moral grid in a campaign.

Ravnica does this as well, with most of the alignment chart represented by a Guildmaster. This isn’t completely uniform, however, so there’s wiggle room for an NPC to lean one way or the other as fits the story. There are some pretty safe bets, however, who can be counted on to check certain boxes at all times.

Isperia of the Azorius Senate: Lawful Neutral

Isperia represents the goal of the Azorius; objective devotion to upholding the laws as they are written. She was elected to her position because of her ability to look passed right & wrong, instead focusing solely on interpreting Ravnica’s 10d6 of Psychic damage legal system for all disputes.

Lazav of House Dimir: Neutral Evil

Lazav is the Dimir at their most annoying but least murderous. Blatant disregard for everyone’s privacy, but preference for stealing, secrets, and information over assassination. Lazav infiltrates every Guild, including his own, always determined to stay several steps ahead of any potential threat. This is not to say he won’t kill people if necessary, but his is a cold, “bloodstained calculus” methodology. It’s never personal.

Rakdos of the Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic Evil

On this plane, Rakdos is the living embodiment of Chaotic Evil, a title he takes very seriously. It’s just about the only thing he takes seriously, as he prefers to live without rules and have everyone else do the same. Unrestrained hedonism and mayhem are his bread & butter. You do what you want, whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want, regardless of what anyone or anything else says. No restrictions, no inhibitions, no hesitation. Encouraging this kind of destructive chaos in the streets is the only thing keeping Rakdos from embracing more orthodox Chaotic Evil behavior of slaughtering millions, enslaving thousands, and bowing to no one.

The Obzedat of the Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful Evil

Hard to believe there can be something worse than an actual Demon given permission to encourage every sin imaginable, but that is what the Ghost Council are. The Obzedat exist to stretch, bend, and twist every law designed to maintain order, neutrality, or justice so as to benefit themselves. What’s worse is how the Orzhov play innocent when they do it. Unlike the Dimir or the Rakdos who accept and even embrace society’s interpretation of their actions, the Orzhov refuse to be seen as anything but humble, spiritual, gracious public servants. The very antithesis of what they actually are; arrogant, miserly, manipulative bastards. They will point out exactly which laws they are not breaking, which laws there is insufficient evidence to prove they are breaking, and which laws prevent you from punching them in the face right now.

Trostani of the Selesnya Conclave: Neutral Good

If there’s one thing to be said for Selesnya, it’s that they are rarely the problem. The Conclave is perfectly content to keep to their fields & forests most of the time and focus solely on building up their own Guild. In a city where every Guild has a problem with every other Guild, Selesnya is the only one who at least tries to get along with everyone else. They don’t tend to get involved in matters that don’t concern them, but theirs is always a safe haven for those who seek it. Trostani is made up of three dryads representing Harmony, Life, and Order. You don’t get much more Neutral Good than that. The only problem is that Trostani basically never leave their Guildhall, so their influence only spreads so far. The reason they can live so peacefully is because so little of the chaotic city life overlaps into theirs.

Besides them, everyone has wiggle room and gray area to move around in. Both Niv-Mizzet and Borborygmos are canonically Chaotic Neutral, but with their most prominent personality traits being vanity & anger, respectively, the “Neutral” part of that can go out the window quick. Still, almost every Guild has at least a semblance of a position somewhere on the chart to start from. You can basically count on a member of each Guild to be at least:

Azorius Senate: Lawful

This is the Guild that writes the laws of Ravnica, after all. They literally draw their power from this ancient legal code, so it makes sense that, whether an Azorius leans more towards Good, Evil, or Neutrality, they do so lawfully.

Boros Legion: Good

If the Azorius follow the intellectual letter of the law, the Boros follow the passionate spirit for which said law was originally written. Justice, not legal-ese. Sometimes the law is good enough, but sometimes it fails its citizens. A Boros should be an inspiring force for Good, whether Lawful or Chaotic depends on the individual.

House Dimir: Neutral

The best a Dimir operative can hope to achieve, morally speaking, is neutrality. If you are working for this Guild, you are lying & stealing. Odds are you are infiltrating another Guild to find/steal information to report back to your superior(s). Not every Dimir agent does this willingly, however. Maybe a character only became a Dimir operative after finding out their mentor was. Maybe a character had nowhere else to turn and no one else to depend on. Maybe they just needed House Dimir’s connections to get them close enough to someone in another Guild who wronged them. Whatever the motivation, cling to that gray area of neutrality like your life depends on it. It’s all you’ve got.

Gruul Clans: Chaotic

Gruul are many things. “Lawful” is not one of them. If you’re a member of a Gruul Clan, you’ve definitely got a bit of a temper on you and a strong disregard for authority. Now, a Gruul can absolutely be a force for good, or, conversely, evil. Maybe you joined the Gruul after your ancestral home was bulldozed over for a smelly Izzet facility. Maybe you had a mental breakdown after decades of trying to uphold law in a city where the laws mean jack shit unless there’s a guy in blue sitting at his desk. Maybe you got tired of planting trees and getting stepped on. Maybe you don’t like the pretentiousness of so-called “artists”. Maybe you just like hitting things. Whatever your reason, the Gruul will welcome another anarchist.

Golgari Swarm: Chaotic/Evil/Neutral

The Golgari Swarm are the first Guild where you’re really going to find a lot of diversity in alignment. Some definitely fall into the chasm of Chaotic Evil Necromancers, others stand firmly in the fields of True Neutral Rot Farmer, and some idly wander between the two. Necromancy is pretty normal in Golgari society, and “Evil” can be considered a harsh word to describe it. It’s definitely more normalized in the Undercity than it is on the surface. A lot of typically Evil behavior is like that for the Golgari, lest we forget that this society of giant bugs, necromancers, zombies, medusa, etc also run the sewage system and food stamps program for the city. That said, there are definitely Golgari with sufficient ambition/motivation to become ready-made Big Bads. What is a Lich, after all, but a wizard who says, “No, I’m too important to die!”

Izzet League: Chaotic

If there’s one predictable aspect of the Izzet, it’s that they are unpredictable. For a Guild whose founding principle is “I wonder what would happen if....”, it’s best to accept that you’ll never be Lawful. Your job, as it is, is to look at laws (nature, physics, etc) and poke at them with electrodes to see what happens. Your focus will always be on things that haven’t been written down yet, as opposed to what already has. It’s almost literally impossible to be Lawful and Izzet for that reason alone. As far as Good, Evil, and Neutral go; that’s up to the individual. This experiment could replicate food so we never have to eat Golgari rations again! Or it could replicate essential personnel to prevent understaffing! Or, it could even replicate.... ME (cue maniacal laughter).

Orzhov Syndicate: Lawful

The Orzhov, like the Azorius, draw their power and influence from the laws of Ravnica. Evil is expected, though not mandatory, but Lawful is a requirement. An Orzhov who doesn’t know their way around Ravnica’s laws is a loose end, and the Orzhov don’t allow loose ends to jeopardize their schemes & ambitions. One can absolutely be a Lawful Neutral Orzhov, also known as an Accountant, but such individuals rarely find their way into a life of adventure. A Lawful Good Orzhov can exist, but your greatest adversary will be the large majority of your Guild who sees you as a potential threat to their illicit activities. In which case, you’ll want to know those laws even better than they do.

Cult of Rakdos: Chaotic

Chaos is mandatory, evil is encouraged. By “Evil”, we mean “things people tell you are Evil”. Anything you would do while drunk you should be able to do at all times! There’s really only three rules in the Cult of Rakdos:

Rule #1, Rakdos is #1

Rule #2, JUST DO IT

Rule #3, Don’t be boring

Being Neutral breaks Rule 3, being Good breaks Rule 2 and/or 3, and being Lawful breaks all 3 rules. Which reminds me of the fourth rule:

Rule #4, NEVER break Rule #1

Truthfully, being Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral is perfectly fine as long as you don’t impede on someone else’s hedonism without a reason, or lack thereof. As long as you’re being free & crazy, that’s what really matters.

Selesnya Conclave: Good

As stated with Trostani, Selesnya is a pretty consistent force of Good, if nothing else. They don’t really do hate, you know? Life in the Conclave is pretty uniformly Good, so why make trouble? Why can’t everyone just be Good? In short; ‘cause they don’t wanna, none of your business, go hug a tree, and/or because fire is FUN. Lawful fits some individuals but can just get in the way for others. Neutral is pretty solid but some things must call you to act. Chaotic is if you really want to embrace being a Nature Warrior in a planet-sized cityscape. Selesnya is the Guild for goodie two-shoes, as if that’s a bad thing.

Simic Combine: Any

The Simic Combine is the one Guild that can honestly fall anywhere on the alignment chart. The Guild started out as Doctors, Naturalists, and preservers of life. Now it also operates large-scale bioengineering. You can have a Lawful Good Simic Paladin committed to preserving life and health, a True Neutral Simic Forcemage (Druid) dedicated to living a simple life bolstering plant growth, or a Chaotic Evil Simic Wizard who has decided on everyone’s behalf that flippers and gills are now mandatory. Just like science can be used for great Good, great Evil, or mundane routine, the Simic Combine can turn its experiments to any purpose, depending on the individual. And whereas the Izzet are firmly Chaotic, the Simic have the foresight to think ahead before they try an experiment. You can be anything you want in the Simic Combine, just plan it out.

[honourablejester]

Homebrew Thief Deity

A little bit of an expansion on one of the homebrew gods from this post, building him and a few of the others into a bit of a history and a pantheon. A god for rogues, thieves, urchins, exiles, travellers, and clerics of the grave, trickery and twilight domains:

OREM, THIEF GOD OF THE BOUNDARY

Alignment: True Neutral/Neutral Good

Domains: Grave, Trickery, Twilight

Symbol: A Hooded Lantern

A gentle shadow padding silently through the twilight, his hooded lantern held aloft, Orem is the thief god of the grave, the boundary and the night. Believed to have once been a mortal man, he is the guardian of lost souls, all those who die alone or in dark places, the dim light of his lantern guiding them to their rest. He is the messenger between the lands of the living and the dead, and may be implored to carry messages past the bounds. He is the god of thieves, watching over all who find their comfort and their livelihood in the shadows. He is the gentle warden of the outcast and abandoned, granting shelter and comfort to any who pray in desperation. Orem is the god of the in-between, the guardian of all that is lost or fallen through the cracks of the world, and all who seek them.

TALES OF THE THIEF GOD

God of Thieves

Orem is the god of thieves, and believed to have once been a thief himself, when he was still a mortal man. He is the god of shadows, of seeking, of hidden places and forbidden things. He encourages exploration, trespass and the seeking of knowledge. He protects those who making their living in the shadows. Thieves pray to him for luck, for protection, for that wisp of shadow or sudden noise from another direction that will keep them safe from discovery, and he is often known to grant it. Many a thief has a tale to tell of a desperate kiss pressed to the sign of the lantern, and a sudden stroke of luck that kept them from the eyes, the prisons or the knives of their opponents.

Nor does Orem shy from theft himself, even still. Of knowledge, most particularly, and of opportunity. The Thief God travels the planes at his will, and suffers no power to keep him out. He has walked the planes of the dead and brought secrets and mementoes back to those who seek them. He has walked the hells and the abyss and stolen souls and knowledge and some more intimate things from devils and demons alike. From Oromasdes, the Lord of Wisdom, the Holy Fire, he stole a tiny, flickering flame of magic, and taught it to his chosen, granting them the small but necessary magics of thieves, the slender wisps of illusion and see-me-not. Oromasdes, curiously, was not offended by this, for the Lord of Wisdom is rarely opposed to those who seek and spread knowledge. Had Orem kept that flame for himself, perhaps the Light of Truth might have judged him more harshly for it, but Orem chose to teach it instead, and thus did Oromasdes forgive him. After, it is said, reminding the Thief God rather gently that he could have simply asked instead.

To which Orem is said to have replied, but where would the fun be in that?

God of the Grave

Orem is the god of lost souls and those who die alone, their shepherd and guide to what lies beyond death. He is fiercely and dangerously protective of this duty, and a hidden, implacable enemy of those who would steal souls for their own use. As such, he and his chosen people are ferociously opposed to liches, necromancers and other soul-stealers.

It is said that once, in the early days, when Orem was only newly a god, a great and terrible archlich sought to devour enough souls to fully destroy the boundary between life and death and unleash a plague of undeath across the planes. While the other gods and champions took up arms and stood to fight this black menace, Orem instead took a more secret path. While the lich stood against his fellow deities, blazing with necrotic power, Orem sent a small, fragile party of his own champions to seek the archlich’s phylactery instead. Though almost all of his champions died in the attempt, the last managed to seize the object and bring it to her god’s temple, bleeding and near death herself. Safe and reunited with her fallen companions under the shadow of the Grave God’s cloak, she watched as Orem reached into the phylactery and drew forth and reconstructed every soul that had ever been fed to it, slowly and viciously unmaking the lich to repair all the damage he had caused. When the lich had been broken and siphoned down to only the tiny, stained remnants of his own original soul … Orem gathered it up, quietly and carefully, and stowed it in his own lantern, there to be kept safe and warm for all eternity. His three champions, who had died for his cause, he gathered also, and tucked them gently into his cloak to take them wherever they need go. Even, along with all the souls the lich had stolen, back to the realm of the living, if they wanted to.

It is unknown how many souls are stored in the Grave God’s lantern. Only those that he wishes to keep close, either for their own protection or for the protection of everyone else. The lantern is not a fearful prison, however. Orem is the god of lost souls, and there are none more lost than those who seek to destroy others. Perhaps he hopes that in time, in his company, seeing all that he sees, in the dim light of his hooded lantern, they will come to think as he does.

God of Outcasts

Orem is the god of the outcast, the abandoned, and all those who have fallen between the cracks of the world. He is the god of the lost, both living and dead, and all who have lost their way in the world or in life may pray to him, for the dim light of a god’s lantern to guide them onto the path once more. Even those who do not venerate Orem himself, those who despise him as the God of thieves and the lawless, sometimes tell tales of a light in the darkness when they were alone and terrified, and a tall, grey figure who guided them to safety. Of a grey cloak, warm and welcoming, that draped over them where they scrabbled, freezing and abandoned, and brought them warmth enough to survive that little bit longer. Those who survive where they should have died, who walk away from swamps and battles and slums and mass graves, often whisper of the quiet god who helped them, who warmed them and sheltered them and showed them the way to freedom.

It is also said, however, that there are other entities, spirits and demons and creatures of illusion, who have used the God’s image falsely over the years. Will-o-wisps who have used the hope of his lantern to lure travellers to their deaths, demon lords of illusion who have taken his guise to sow false hope and entrap souls into their webs of deceit. There is nothing, save perhaps the trapping of souls, that will earn the Thief God’s enmity faster. There is no demon he hates more than the Lord of Lies, who has used Orem’s image far too many times to betray those Orem would protect, and done so knowingly, with aim to taunt and wound him. Only the lords and masters of undeath are as antithetical to him, and he hates them with equal passion. If there is one creature in all the planes that the Thief God has sworn to see destroyed, it is this demon.

Those who wield the Thief God’s powers, therefore, those who have learned the magics of illusion and the turning of eyes from him, must be careful to what purposes they put their powers. He does not forgive those who use his power, his lantern or his image to betray those he protects. For this reason, among others, certain fey and demons remain extremely cautious of him.

God of the Boundary

For all else that he is and was and will be, however, Orem is first the God of the Boundary. Between life and death, between light and darkness, between danger and safety. Orem is the god of trespass, of exploration and intrusion, of crossing the line, and there are few beings in all creation as conscious, therefore, of where those lines actually are.

Once upon a time, the story goes, a mortal man met a trapped and dying god. A god of death, who could not die. An ancient, desperate being, alone and in agony. The name of this god is unknown, long lost to time, remembered only by Orem and by those gods who mourned or despised its passing. That god pleaded with the mortal man to take its immortal soul from its body and carry it beyond the bounds of death, into the quiet lands where it could, if not die, then at least know rest. The man was a thief, you see, a wily, dauntless creature, and the god knew that if anyone could find a way to free it from these immortal chains, it was this tiny, curious, fearsome little man. Duty demanded that the god stay, endure, but desperation and despair pleaded that it be allowed to rest. Against all the laws of good and all the forces of evil, it pleaded with this man to bring it rest.

So the man named Orem took the god’s soul, its divinity, and hid it in a lantern, the better to carry it unseen across the dividing line. For who looks for a hidden thing in the light? Who looks for a secret thing in that which reveals the darkness? Orem hid the god’s soul in small light of a lantern, and smuggled it gently into darkness. Into peace.

And when he returned, that thief, from the lands of the dead, he found himself changed. A piece of the god he had helped to die had remained in his lantern, and a piece of the god’s divinity had remained in him. Not a god the dead, not fully, but a god of the boundary. Of the line, of the gate, and of the ability to move across it. Orem became the god of the boundary, the god of lost souls, the guide between the lands of the living and the dead. He became the god who carries those who need it into rest, and the god who, sometimes, allows those who deserve it back to life. The god of thieves, yes, the god of outcasts, the god of the dead, all of these. But first, and foremost, before all things, the god of the boundary. The god of the in-between.

And here, in this, he has his allies. Even among the lawful. He has a strange and special relationship with those other gods who guard the boundaries, who endure when nothing should be forced to endure. Elaia Siveth, who offers respite, healing and death in equal measure, whichever should offer freedom from suffering faster, and who approved of the actions for which he became a god. And Yorm, the Unyielding, who guards the light against darkness, who fights demons and devils, who protects the vulnerable beneath his shielding cloak and his watchful remaining eye. They have a strange bargain, those two. Yorm, bound by law, turns his blinded eye to where Orem needs to tread unseen, and will not leave him to die undefended should the thief be caught. And Orem will not leave Yorm to endure alone, nor Yorm’s people to be ravaged after death. The souls of all Yorm’s paladins who fall to demons are ever safe in Orem’s care.

Notes:

There’s a lot of inspiration from Hermes in this, god of thieves and travellers and guide of souls, with a little bit of Prometheus as well. Oromasdes is taking a lot of inspiration from Ahura Mazda, while Orem and Elaia Siveth have a bit of Janus to them. And I threw in Yorm from this story, because they felt like a nice fit, two gods of the boundary, one lawful, one not, but united in a common purpose. Also, I like the rogue/paladin dichotomy. Heh.

And I like the lantern imagery, the hermit from the tarot, the god carrying souls in his lantern, the thief smuggling things in the light, because who goes looking in what you look with. I can’t remember what book or story I came across that concept in (possibly Discworld?) but it stuck like glue. Not least because I remember an episode of Wild Wild West where the shoddy lighting on that show threw a shadow of a lantern that a character was holding, and that was supposed to be throwing the light, against his shoulder, accidentally highlighting the fakeness of it all. Playing with light and dark and reality and illusion is a bit of a theme for me

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: The Maw, First Visit

So our Shadowlands journey starts with the Maw. You know what? People hate this scenario now because you can’t skip it and have to go through it on every character, but the first time through, this is actually really good. You’re kicking in the gates of Hell with a platoon of Death Knights and then everything goes tits-up and you don’t have a beachhead and you’re lost and wandering and there are awful, awful things everywhere and you’re hiding and isolated and need to learn how to escape. You just need the option to skip it on your alts.

Plus the aesthetics of the Maw are great. They sell what it is -- the hostile architecture, sinister crystal formations, the way everything seems swept and shaped by a windstream of souls. We’ve seen plenty of environments that look like a Hell of flames. This is a Hell of pure suffering. Pain is what lives here. Pain is all that enters and pain is all that is produced. It’s only after you went farming Stygia for a while that the pain gets inflicted on you.

So we assemble the crew, get the exposition while we put together the Helm of Domination, get given a portal stone to establish a beachhead, and we bust in to find the four captives: Anduin, Jaina, Baine, Thrall. We rally the Death Knights into enough of a formation to make it in and find the evidence of Jaina, and I like that, I like how you track her by the huge formations of ice -- it shows you her power and the mark she leaves. Finding her is mostly the same although her dialogue is less generic and content-free (from now on assume I apply this caveat to all dialogue). She’s more confused and disoriented and even though she’s fighting it’s with a resignation that she knows it won’t work and she’s starting to think she’s only hurting herself by trying. She acts like she has been there for years. But you say you and the DKs are here to save her and she follows against her better judgment and agrees to try and find Thrall, who she struggles to remember, but seems to be trying very hard to be able to remember.

Then the Mawsworn Kyrian show up and laugh about her hopelessness, and you fight them. And they kill the shit out of you. 

More and more and more of them keep coming and they’re level 60 when you’re level 50 and if you do some bullshit to survive eventually one of them will grab you by the neck to Silence you, lift you into the air, and do the ol’ Val’Kyr Special and fatally drop you. You unavoidably die.

This is necessary early to establish what dying in the Shadowlands means. Play a special graphic effect when the player dies, something more drawn out and grasping. Play a sound effect appropriate to race/gender of the PC of them struggling against great pain and gasping. Then you appear next to a Spirit Healer (yes normally in the Maw you just respawn alive so you have to pick up your Stygia like in Dark Souls, we’ll explain the discrepancy later), a Mawsworn Spirit Healer, who says “No. Your suffering will not end. The Maw claims you.” and then starts to chase you the fuck down with a bunch of shades. You need to run, as a ghost, to claw your way back into your body. Obviously, if the shades catch you, you get dragged back to the start and the Spirit Healer fucks with you a bit. 

Your body has been dragged over to the area where Jaina and the rest are hiding; they fled while you were being merced. Jaina sees you stir. And she says “I’m sorry, champion. Death is no respite here. It is so hard to fight the pull… I struggle to even remember my body when I try to return.”

Jaina has been brutally killed over a dozen times. This is not her first rodeo. This is not her first escape attempt. This is not the first time she’s killed that particular Mawsworn tormenter whose name I don’t recall. It doesn’t end. It never ends. She doesn’t know why she tries any more, when she knows it will fail and she will die and suffer and claw her way back to her flesh and every time it gets harder and harder. All it buys her is the ability to offer futile resistance and maybe that isn’t even worth it.

Mood: established.

From there it goes mostly the same. You try to pump the shades for info about how to escape and they don’t know, they can’t know, they can’t even want to escape. The info you get is a memory of spitefully hating someone who fled to the waystone. You rescue your buddies. You see the Jailer fuck up Baine, only instead of giving him a spirit poison, he fucking snaps the dude like a Kit-Kat and drops his lifeless corpse, and you drag it to safety. You don’t need to find a poison dagger to counteract the spirit poison; you need to keep him safe and clear a path for his spirit to flee back to his body. Thus reinforcing what the danger here is and how it’s different and what they fear.

And while you do this, at some point, you run into Sylvanas. Maybe she just walks up to you while you’re all collected around Baine trying to help him revive. Since the Jailer won’t be saying “it’s not like you won anything b-b-baka, it was just a temporary setback,” you need to establish that feeling that he views your victories as completely meaningless. Sylvanas knows you’re here saving Baine. So does the Jailer. It does not matter. You cannot accomplish anything. 

Thrall kills her dead. She just gets back up. She has an escort for her soul to go back to her body. “How many times are you going to try that before you learn it’s futile? Come now, Thrall. I know you’re smarter than this. I know you respected me more than this.”

And then stuff like “How could you do this, Sylvanas? How could you betray the Horde?” Thrall is incredibly angry and offended at her. He thought he knew her. “Neither of us had any illusions you were not a monster, Banshee Queen. But I trusted you anyway because I knew you wanted what was best for your people. You were a monster, but a loyal one. How can you now turn your back on what little principle you had?” Sylvanas is hurt by this, but she doesn’t linger on it.

Jaina, however, is desperately trying to flatter her. Do this to sell the kind of impact this has had on Jaina, and what this suffering drives her to. “Please, Sylvanas. I know you were my enemy but you were an honorable one. It isn’t too late. Someone as cunning as you must know that this will end in ruin. I promise… I promise… I will surrender if you let me return. Kul Tiras will become servants of the Forsaken. Just, just let them live… please, you could rule our world, not slaughter it…”

Jaina breaks down in tears. Yes, she just tried to surrender her people to the enemy for mercy. Jaina is breaking. All of them will. The Maw is a Bad Place and makes them give up hope. That’s how we sell the threat. Not by making the enemies bigger or spikier, showing how they have broken these heroes. Less screaming anger. More pain.

Sylvanas scoffs at her offer. “It doesn’t matter where your people’s loyalty lies, Lord Admiral.” And then she says the phrase that will become a motif: “Nobody escapes the Maw.” She leaves. She doesn’t care what you do. It doesn’t matter.

But you have to still hold on to that sliver of hope that maybe the waystone is a way out. So you get Baine up and you sneak past this big-ass Maw army that can fuck 31 flavors of your day up. The jailer notices you and sends out a force to stop you at the waystone, and he repeats the phrase when he sends out the order: “Nobody escapes the Maw.”

So there’s the event, you fight off the army while the waystone charges, the army gets bigger and bigger, the charge meter gets stuck at 90%, you go to kick it and it teleports you to Oribos.

The mob descends on the other captives. Sylvanas and the Jailer look completely unconcerned with your escape. After having clearly seen you physically leave the Maw, Sylvanas brushes it off with “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Dun-DUNNN! Cutscene end.

You appear in Oribos. The Protectors stop you because you stink like the Maw and what the hell dude, yada yada. This is when you get a tour of the city, here’s the profession trainers, the bank, the transmog. Only secondary details need to be changed here. One, this is an instanced version of the city where no other players exist (you are the first one there, nobody else is). Two, Lich King Bolvar (hashtag #notmylichking) arrives from Azeroth and says SOMETHING to justify other players coming from the Maw but being less important than you. Something like, he saw what you did, there are other adventurers from Azeroth still in the Maw, his DKs are hunkering down in defensive positions and will try to make their way to the Waystone once it cools off because you already activated it, since you are the more special one, and there might be a chance that a couple others might have an echo of your power because they have had similar adventures. You are the True Maw Walker, and the context of the massively multiplayer element is “for your story, all those other guys have shitty Maw Walker powers that only work once you opened the pickle jar for them.” They can’t bring passengers, either.

Third, not the most importantly but yes the most importantly, if you are Forsaken or a Death Knight or Mechagnome or whatever you get a special dialogue where you say “Why do you keep calling me a ‘living mortal’? I’m not alive. I’m undead / a machine / maybe something else like maybe I missed the fact that vulpera are made of rocks and string.”

So Tal-Inara or whoever can be like “Oh, THAT’S what that is. Something was odd about you, mortal, that I couldn’t quite place. I call you ‘living’ because your soul is still tethered to a body. To us in the Shadowlands, to be bound in a vessel like this is far more important than the nature of the vessel itself.” That’s why people keep calling you “living”, to them you’re easy to mistake for one.

Kyrian in the Maw is disturbing news, and also WEIRD, because as Tal-Inara reminds us, “Nobody escapes the Maw.” Why would the Kyrian go down there when they can’t come back? It is terrible but not unheard of for mortals to try and speak to the Jailer but they never GO there because they can’t get out. And yet Sylvanas just walked in there? And he is mustering armies? Better go to Bastion and find out what is up. Let’s crank open this gateway, and...

[darkpetal16]

Can’t wait until Overlord gets posted!!! I’ve only ever found one fanfic of it I’ve liked and it’s a HP crossover

:)

Character Sheet

Name: Momonga

Title: The Strongest Magic Caster with the Appearance of a Skeleton

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Undead

Job: One of the Almighty 42 Supreme Beings; Ruler of the Great Tomb of Nazarick

Residence: Great Tomb of Nazarick; Room in level 9

Alignment: Extreme Evil; Sense of Justice - 500

Racial Level: Skeletal Mage lvl 15; Elder Lich lvl 10; Overlord lvl 5

Job level: Necromancer lvl 10; Ruler of Death lvl 10; Eclipse lvl 5

Creator: N/A

Personality: Cautious, loyal, avid collector.

.

Name: Lumière

Title: High Priestess of Light

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Angel

Job: One of the Almighty 42 Supreme Beings; Lady of Light

Residence: Great Tomb of Nazarick; The Hidden Tower

Alignment: Extreme Good; Sense of Justice 500

Racial Level: Angel lvl 15; Archangel lvl 10; Seraph Empyrean lvl 5

Job level: Light Priestess lvl 10; High Priestess lvl 10

Creator: N/A

Personality: Demure, loyal, romantic,

.

Name: Albedo

Title: Warm and Caring Devil of Pure White

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Succubus

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick Overseer

Residence: Throne Hall; and a room in level 9

Alignment: Extreme Evil; Sense of Justice - 500

Racial Level: Imp lvl 10

Job level: Guardian lvl 10; Blackguard lvl 5; Unholy Knight lvl 10; Shield Lord lvl 10

Creator: Tabula Smaragdina

Personality: Loyal, yandere, extremist

.

Name: Jack

Title: The Smiling Ripper

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Undead

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick Head Researcher

Residence: The Hidden Tower; and a room in level 9

Alignment: Extreme Evil; Sense of Justice - 500

Racial Level: Skeletal Mage lvl 15; Elder Lich lvl 10;

Job level: Necromancer lvl 10; Researcher lvl 10; Assassin lvl 10; Master Assassin lvl 5

Creator: Lucille

Personality: Loyal, yandere, cruel

.

Name: Aura Bella Fiora

Title: Renowned Trainer with an Indomitable Will

Level: 100

Race: Human Race; Dark Elf

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 6th Floor Guardian

Residence: 6th Floor Giant Tree

Alignment: Neutral ~ Evil; Sense of Justice - 100

Racial Level: N/A

Job level: Ranger lvl 5; Beast Tamer lvl 5; Shooter lvl 5; Sniper lvl 5; High Tamer lvl 10

.

Name: Mare Bello Fiora

Title: Unreliable Envoy of Nature

Level: 100

Race: Human Race; Dark Elf

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 6th Floor Guardian

Residence: 6th Floor Giant Tree

Alignment: Neutral ~ Evil; Sense of Justice - 100

Racial Level: N/A

Job level: Druid lvl 10; High Druid lvl 10; Nature’s Herald lvl 10; Disciple of Disaster lvl 5; Forest Mage lvl 10

.

Name: Cocytus

Title: Ruler of Glaciers

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Vermin Lord

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 6th Floor Guardian

Residence: 6th Floor Snowball Earth

Alignment: Neutral; Sense of Justice 50

Racial Level: Insect Fighter lvl 10; Vermin Lord lvl 10

Job level: Sword Saint lvl 10; Asura lvl 5; Knight of Niflheim lvl 5

.

Name: Demiurge

Title: Creator of the Blazing Inferno

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Arch-Devil

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 7th Floor Guardian

Residence: 7th Floor Blazing Shrine

Alignment: Extreme Evil; Sense of Justice - 500

Racial Level: Imp lvl 10; Archdevil lvl 5

Job level: Chaos lvl 10; Prince of Darkness lvl 10; Shapeshifter lvl 10

.

Name: Shalltear Bloodfallen

Title: The Bloody Valkyrie

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; True Vampire

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 1st ~ 3rd Floor Guardian

Residence: 2nd Floor Burial Chambers

Alignment: Great ~ Extreme Evil; Sense of Justice - 450

Racial Level: Vampire lvl 10; True Vampire lvl 10

Job level: Valkyrie / Lance lvl 5; Cursed Knight lvl 5; Cleric lvl 10

.

Name: Pandora’s Actor

Title: Ever Changing Man Without A Face

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Doppelgänger

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick Treasury Zone Guardian

Residence: Treasury Zone Manager Office

Alignment: Neutral; Sense of Justice - 50

Racial Level: Doppelgänger lvl 15; Greater Doppelgänger lvl 10

Job level: Expert lvl 10; Craftsman lvl 10; Lord of the Castle lvl 15

.

Name: Cheshire

Title: Cackling with Madness

Level: 100

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Fairy

Job: Hidden Tower Guardian

Residence: Hidden Tower

Alignment: Neutral; Sense of Justice - 100

Racial Level: Fairy lvl 15; Trickster lvl 10

Job level: Illusionist lvl 15; Shapeshifter lvl 10; Stalker lvl 10

.

Name: Victim

Title: Sacrificial Fetus

Level: 35

Race: Heteromorphic Race; Angel

Job: Great Tomb of Nazarick 8th Floor Guardian

Residence: 8th Floor Tree of Life (Sephiroth)

Alignment: Neutral; Sense of Justice 1

Racial Level: Angel lvl 10; Archangel lvl 10

Job level: Patriot lvl 1; Saint lvl 4; Martyr lvl 1

.

A Sneak Peek

In the year 2138 AD there was a term: DMMO-RPG. That word was an acronym for “Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game”. It was a revolutionary new way to play games that used virtual reality and nano-technology. Among the myriad DMMO-RPGs that thronged the market, one of them stood head and shoulders above the others: YGGDRASIL.

That game had been painstakingly developed and released twelve years ago, in 2126.

Compared to other DMMO-RPGs of the time, YGGDRASIL’s selling point was player freedom; it had over two thousand basic and advanced job classes.

Every class had a maximum of fifteen levels, and so in order to reach the overall level cap of one hundred, one would need to take at least seven different classes. However, players could take as many classes as they wanted as long as they met each class’s prerequisites. A player could even take a hundred classes at level one each. As such, in that system, it was exceedingly difficult to make identical characters unless one was deliberately trying to do so.

One could use various creator tools (sold separately) to fully customize one’s armor, weaponry, flavor text, appearance, and other cosmetic settings. A vast playing field awaited its players. There were nine worlds in total: Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Nidavellir, Midgard, Jotunheim, Niflheim, Helheim, and Muspelheim.

In essence, YGGDRASIL boasted a massive world, numerous classes, and freely customizable appearances.

It was inevitable that it would skyrocket in popularity and infinite the muses of millions of creative players.

Of course… that was all in the past now.

.

A gigantic table carved of gleaming black stone sat in the center of a luxurious room, surrounded by forty two chairs. Of all of those chairs, only three were occupied.

One of the seated attendees was clothed in a magnificent black academic robe edged in violet and gold. The collar was excessively gaudy, but it still melded well with the overall design. The person’s head was exposed, revealing a bare skill. Points of dark red lights glowed in its large eye sockets. Behind that skull pulsed a halo of black radiance.

Further down the table was a being that was not human either, merely a mass of black, sticky substance. Its tar-like surface roiled and writhed continuously, never staying in shape for more than second.

At the very end was a person who at a glance could pass as human, if not for the pointed ears and wings at their back. That person wore magnificent priestess robes of silver and blue. Its halo at the back of its head illuminated its long curly white-blonde hair.

The first attendant at the table was an Overlord, the highest-ranked of an undead magic-caster. The second was an Elder Black Ooze, which boasted the most powerful corrosive ability of the slime families. The last was a Seraph Empyrean, the highest-ranked of an angel-raced healer.

One might encounter those monsters in the most difficult of dungeons in YGGDRASIL. Overlords could use powerful curses or spells of the highest tiers of magic; Elder Black Oozes were dreaded for their ability to degrade weapons and armor; and Seraph Empyreans were universally despised when found near bosses.

However, they were not game monsters, but players.

In YGGDRASIL, players could choose their character races from three broad groups: humanoid, demihuman, and heteromorphic.

Humanoids were the basic player type and comprised humans, dwarves, wood elves, and the like. Demihumans tended to be ugly, but possessed superior attributes to humanoids. Examples of demihumans were goblins, beastmen, ogres, and so on. Finally, heteromorphic races had monstrous abilities, but despite their stats being generally higher than those of other races, they also possessed various drawbacks. There were around seven hundred playable races in total, including the advanced versions of those races. Naturally, the Overlord, Seraph Empyrean, and Elder Black Ooze were among the high-tier heteromorphic races that were playable.

The Overlord—who was speaking at the moment—did not move his mouth. That was because even the most advanced DMMO-RPGs of the time still could not overcome the technological hurdle of properly modelling the changes on a character’s face in response to emotions and speech.

He spoke in a jovial tone, “It’s really been a while, Herohero. Although this is the last day of YGGDRASIL, we didn’t expect you to show up.”

The slime wobbled. “Indeed it has, Momonga.” The slime nodded in the direction of the Overlord, then at the angel who nodded back in return. “Lumière.”

“How has work been for you?” asked the angel.

The slime sighed, letting loose a small tirade of complaints. Momonga and Lumière listened patiently as their friend vented.

After about ten minutes, the torrent of words that flowed from Herohero dwindled to a trickle.

“...I’m sorry for making you listen to my whining. I can’t complain much IRL.”

“It’s really no worries,” assured Momonga. “We’re happy you were able to come by at all.”

“Ah. It was so nice to see you both after so long. I was afraid to find no one here.” Herohero’s tentacles waved at both of them. “But it is getting late… How long will you two be on?”

“Until we’re automatically logged out once the servers shut down,” answered Lumière.

“Since it’s still a ways off, we might get more visitors like you,” added Momonga.

“Ah. I hope so. I see you both have taken good care of this place.”

Momonga and Lumière did not respond, neither of them wanting to show the surge of mixed emotions Herohero’s words caused.

There were a few more parting words, but eventually, Herohero left and it was only the two remaining members once again. Momonga sighed again and Lumière spared him a glance. Their expressions could not be relayed through their avatars so she sent him a frowny face instead.

The quiet disappointment was understandable. Their guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, had slowly died out over the years as more and more members left the game. In the past two years only Momonga and Lumière regularly logged on. They had sent emails out to the other members of the guild asking for them to join them on the final day, but unfortunately only Herohero responded.

“I’m going back to the tower,” said Lumière. “Meet up later?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to you in a bit.”

Lumière left after that point, teleporting to the Hidden Tower at the 10th floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

The Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick had once been a six floor dungeon, but it had been dramatically altered after Ainz Ooal Gown took control of it. Currently, it was a ten floor dungeon, and each floor had its own unique theme. The First to Third Floors were modelled after a tomb. The Fourth Floor was an underground lake. The Fifth Floor was a frozen glacier. The Sixth Floor was a rainforest. The Seventh Floor was a sea of magma. The Eighth Floor was a wasteland. And the Ninth and Tenth Floors were the realm of the gods—in other words, the home base of Ainz Ooal Gown, which had ranked among the top ten of YGGDRASIL’s thousands of guilds. In the Tenth Floor there were a few hidden areas, although only one was regularly used—The Hidden Tower.

The entrance was hidden in the Throne Room. It was a tower built by Lumière, Blue Planet, and Amanomahitotsu as a hidden level. Not that it mattered since the only raid that came close to it was stopped in the Throne Room.

The tower had five levels, the first three dedicated as testing areas for Nazarick’s lead Researcher, Jack. The fourth floor was a luxurious library with a big fireplace, and lots of comfy spots to lounge in. At the top of the floor was Lumière’s room.

Upon entering the tower Lumière stopped before the Tower Guardian, Cheshire.

In a game like YGGDRASIL, guilds enjoyed several benefits if they possessed a guild base of castle tier or higher. The NPCs that the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick could field were undead monsters. These automatically spawning NPCs—or “pop monsters”—had a maximum level of thirty. Even if they were destroyed, after a while they would respawn on their own, at no cost to the guild. However, players could not customize the AI and appearances of these “pop” NPCs. They were hardly useful in deterring intruders, who were universally players.

There was also another type of NPC; the ones designed from the ground up to their makers’ satisfaction. If a guild possessed a castle-grade guild base, the owning guild would be allowed nine hundred levels to be distributed between any number of NPCs they wanted.

Because the highest level in YGGDRASIL was one hundred, by those stipulations, a guild could make seven level one hundred NPCs and four level fifty NPCs, or any combination thereof.

When designing an original NPC, one could customize weaponry and other equipment in addition to clothing and appearances. As a result, one could create NPCs that were far stronger than the automatic spawns and place them in key locations. Of course, not every NPC had to be designed for battle. A certain guild which called themselves the “Kitty Kingdom” fielded no NPCs other than cats or cat-related creatures.

It was a nice guild to visit.

Cheshire was one of those specially crafted NPCs. It was a shapeshifting fairy created by Lumière. Its default form was that of a dark cat with stripes and an eerie smile that showed several rows of sharp teeth. It was heavily inspired by the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, albeit with a more malicious mindset. It was designed to use “illusions” to trick players when entering such as changing what they see on screen to something else, or swapping what keys did what and so on.

Cheshire always floated down to whoever entered the tower. Its default setting would be to greet whoever came. It had a special message tailored for all the Supreme Beings.

“Welcome back, Mistress!” greeted Cheshire. As Lumière was its creator, she designed it to greet her as mistress, or my dearest lady. She gave the same order to her other creation, Jack.

Jack was stationed at the first floor of the tower. He was near some desks in the lab designed to look like a mad scientist laboratory. Lumière made up his character, leaning into an assassin-lich trope. She almost went with the skeletal appearance, but Bukubukuchagama talked her out of it. Bukubukuchagama bemoaned how there were already plenty of other “scary” monsters in the guild. She tried to bribe Lumière to make Jack a genderswap like her Dark Elves, but Lumière resisted. She compromised as a bishie. Or at least as much of a bishie as an undead could get.

Not that anyone could see it since Jack wore a mask.

That way he could appear as a “scary” monster to befit the evil lab, but in actuality, he was a pretty boy underneath which satisfied Bukubukuchagama. A happy Bukubukuchagama meant free visual novels for Lumière which in turn made for a happy Lumière.

Win-win all around.

Lumière brushed past both of her creations, stepping in to the laboratory and looking around.

Well, it is the last day, she thought as she glanced over at her creations.

“Come with me,” she ordered both of them.

Neither responded, both simply stepping closer to her. Er, well, Jack stepped forward while Cheshire hovered closer. She guided them up the tower to her favorite spot in Nazarick; the cozy little library.

With a wave of her hand she turned the fire place on and took a seat on the lush, red couch in front of it. She let out a slow sigh as she stared at the flickering flames.

[23:55:48]

She hadn’t even realized so much time had passed, she had zoned out watching the flames dance. That had been happening with greater frequency the past couple of weeks. Lumière’s body in reality wasn’t in good condition. It was a struggle to even get out of bed, her lungs slowly filling with fluid each day. She’d need another draining surgery in a month.

Her fatigue caused her mind to drift away, not quite falling asleep but close to.

What will I do when they shut the game down?

It was a question that had occurred to her several times, but she never found an answer. It wasn’t that YGGDRASIL was the only game she ever played--Civilizaiton CXI and Warhammer were nice ways to pass time, but YGGDRASIL was special to her. Ainz Ooal Gown was a place she finally had proper friends.

[23:59:58, 59—]

Lumière closed her eyes. What a shame.

[0:00:00...1,2,3]

?

Lumière knew something was immediately wrong when the first breath she took was not one hampered. She reflexively breathed deeper and found that it did not incite a fit of coughing. Her eyes shot open and she abruptly stood up from her seat.

Even the movement came with ease.

What in the?

[0:00:38]

Lumière twisted her body one way to another, breathing in the scents of--

Scents?! YGGDRASIL couldn’t mimic smells.

But lo and behold Lumière could distinctly smell the fire. It had a odd woodsy scent to it, as if it were scented logs burning inside. Lumière had never gone camping before, nor had she experienced fire first hand in her life. She marveled over the odd smell it emitted, sniffing delicately at it.

I quite like this smell, she thought.

“My dearest lady?”

Lumière twitched in surprise, looking over at Jack. The NPC had approached Lumière, a hand placed over his chest where his heart would have been had he not been undead. Jack, like all of Nazarick’s NPCS, had two default outfits: battle and casual. The battle would originally have only been triggered during a raid, so he currently wore his casual.

Lumière had been pretty huge into Sherlock and anime at the time of his design, so he was heavily inspired by an anime version of Jack the Ripper.

He had a black ulster coat with the collar flipped up. Underneath was a white button up shirt, and black and red suit vest. He had the classic dark white gloves, and black slacks to complete the look.

Oh, and of course the famous top hat. Could never, ever, forget the top hat for someone inspired by Jack the Ripper.

Lumière opened her mouth to say something but rapidly closed it. She placed a hand over her chest, breathing.

I can breathe easy. I have a sense of smell and touch. Is it--did I die?

Isekais were rather popular. Given her sickly body it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to say she passed away and had no memory of it.

The end result was still the same: she was in her avatar’s body. A body strengthened by a hundred levels and not plagued by illness or frailty. A smile curled her lips and she said, “Jack, how are you today?”

A question that an NPC could never answer unless specifically programmed for. Lumière had never given such line to Jack which meant that if he answered--

“Lovely now that I can gaze upon you,” he answered, stepping closer.

A surge of embarrassed adrenaline shot through Lumière at his intensely warm tone. Ah, wait--

She had almost forgotten how she programmed Jack’s personality. Leaning into the guild’s theme of “monsters” and “evil” she pushed on with his serial killer design. Cruel, sadistic, obsessive, and dangerously smart. She went all out, using a character design sheet Tabula put together. Lumière wasn’t as inventive or imaginative in the edgy department so she asked Ulbert to help. Ulbert had already made a pretty evil demon, Demiurge, and was delighted to try his hand at an evil undead serial killer.

At the end of the design she, as giggling joke with Peroroncino she added that he was a yandere for her.

Ahahahaha… I’m sure it’ll be okay.

「Message from Momonga」 Lumière?

Uwa! Momonga’s here?

「Message to Momonga」 Momonga! You came here too?

「Message from Momonga」 Came here… you’re really in the game, too?

「Message to Momonga」 It looks like it. I can breathe without trouble.

「Message from Momonga」 Ah. I’m happy for you. I’m going to conduct some tests to make sure I can cast more spells. Do you want to meet up in the arena?

「Message from Momonga」 Yeah, I’ll meet you there.

“Cheshire,” Lumière said, raising her hands up. “Come here.”

The fairy disguised as a monster cat floated over with a wide smiles. “Yes, Mistress?”

She reached out and the monstrous feline leaned into her palm. She felt his fur, his warmth, and beneath it all a heartbeat.

Jack responded with an answer on his own, Cheshire is warm and has a heartbeat, I can move freely… I’m here. This is real. They’re real.

Lumière smiled shyly, taking Cheshire into her arms. He was fluffy and warm. “We’re going to the arena to meet with Momonga.”

“As you wish, my lady,” demurred Jack while Cheshire flicked his tail.

[bluejaytaco]

What up? it DND wit Jay!

(We return to the realm where we are standing in front of a giant gold gate. There's a dwarf standing in front of it with a clip board in their hand, just flipping through.)

Alabaster: (walks up) H-Hail and well met, my friend.

Dwarf: Names?

Alabaster: Oh! Um, I'm fine.

Dwarf, flipping through his clipboard: Fine.... Fine.... Nope, not seeing any "fine" here.

Art: (Walks up)....What about Ebony?

Dwarf, flipping through: Uh, yeah. We got an "ebony".... He's an orc. And considering none of you are Orcs, I doubt any of you are Ebony.

Art: Uh, that's racist.

Theodora:... Quite a detailed guest list...

Koejin: (Walks up and points at a random name) That's me.

Dwarf, looks down at the name: Your Grenadine Ceriph? High priestess in Calor? (Context: Calor is a Tiefling city. Koejin is human... well... was)

Koejin: Yeah, that's me.

Dwarf, getting sick of us: Look, I don't have tie for you people messing... (looks up at Koejin and goes silent).... You're not supposed to be here. This isn't your realm.

Koejin: Uhhh... Well, I have business with the man in charge.

Dwarf: I'm gonna have to call Pelor.

The entire group: (various ways of saying, "You do that" From "yes, please do" to "yeah, get that fucking bitch here! I wanna speak to the manager!")

Dwarf, mumbling into a sending stone before looking back at us: Is one of you named Theodora?

Theodora: Uhh.... Yeah.

Dwarf: You guys can go in. That's all I needed because now I know your names. But thanks for lying to me!

(The gates open and we all walk through. It's less blinding, but only slightly less on the other side of the gate. We see people walking around and just enjoying their afterlife. In the far off distance, there is a silhouette of a giant castle. We can also see the opening to a large garden where Pelor is standing with his arms crossed. Some of us see Alabaster's daughter, Eris, stomping on the flowers.)

Pelor, voice booming towards us: Everyone, front and center!

(All of us go with different levels of reluctance. Hennessy leads the way while Art and Jaquine kinda trail back.)

Pelor: So, what is it you need from me? (He's still standing over us while Eris continues to stamp through the flowers.)

(For a moment, we're all silent.)

Theodora: We want to speak to Thia.

Pelor: Thia is not in a place to speak. She is in my castle now, practicing her abilities for the Cleanse.

Hennessy: Is she okay? You don't have her locked up somewhere, hurt, right?

Pelor: Hennessy, my dear boy. Would you lock up a tiger in a small cage? No, you would respect the animal. Thia is in a place of comfort and has free reign.

Hennessy: She's got free reign? So she can go smoke in every room of the castle?! Even your room?!

Pelor: uhh....yes...

Hennessy: Ohh that just won't do. That smell of recreational drugs gets into the fibers and it can be a bitch to get out.

Pelor, suddenly giving off the impression he would like to hurry this along so he could go clean: It doesn't matter. She is my key to cleansing the world and making it all light. And I can save you all, if you kneel before me and accept me as your true god.

(No one kneels but Hennessy does raise an eyebrow at the "kneel" comment.)

Koejin: So how do you promise our safety.

Pelor: Well, you are excluded from this. Your friends, however, are protected because my followers will all survive.

Art: Don't you need the dark to have the light?

Pelor:... You would think that. Ticket Master would have you think that. And you, specifically, reek of him.

Art: Uh, rude?

Pelor: You know what he wants, don't you? He wants me dead so he can be the god of light. His best friend being the god of darkness would mean the two of them would take over everything. The two of them would rule all.

(Art was trying really hard to not say how he didn't see this as a bad thing, considering his bias. But somehow, as everyone was arguing against the cleanse, it was returned to the subject of Art and Ticket Master.)

Pelor: I think we've had quite enough of this talk.

Art: Yeah, let's stop talking about Ticket Master and the guy who may or may not have had sex with him.

(Pelor reacted in disgust which just turned into Art shouting "Sex with Ticket Master!" at the god of light. The tiefling was really aiming to make the god throw up.)

Koejin, joining in: There were definitely tentacles involved!

Art: Lots of tentacles! Sooooo many tentacles!!!

Pelor: Enough! All of you! (grabs Eris by the hair) If none of you will take this seriously, there is no longer a reason to speak with you.

Eris, punching at the hand: Let go! (turns to Alabaster) Daddy! I don't wanna go!

(They walk through a wall made of marble that Hennessy tries to reach through to grab for Eris. He just barely pulls his hand back before the wall solidifies again and he loses his hand.)

Vincent, rushing up to Hennessy: What did you think you were doing?!

Hennessy: The girl didn't want to go with the man! And when the girl doesn't wanna go, you don't let her go!

Vincent: You're gonna make such a great dad!

(behind the garden and before the castle there was a massive labyrinth. We walked up to see two different entrances. Koejin ends up smelling something familiar but can't really pick where it's coming from.)

Art: Hmmm (turns to Red) think you can turn into a dragon and fly up? maybe we can see where to go.

Red, not all that enthused by the idea: Uhh, yeah, I guess. Step back.

(Everyone stands back to give her enough room to transform. She flies up to the edge of the maze, but once her talons hit the edge, they shoot up another hundred feet and knock her back down.)

Red, turns back into her base form and glares at everyone: Well, that didn't help!

Art: (shrugging) well, my plans aren't ever without fault.

(Hennessy casts detect magic and, aside from nearly having his brain explode from all the god magic around, he discovers on direction is dark magic while the other is light.

We end up going towards the dark side because we figure that's where Thia might be hiding.)

(First stop is a room with a sword in a stone. Hennessy can sense that the magic is dark, but it isn't the source.)

Koejin: (climbs up and pulls the sword from the stone and holds it up in the air. She then hears the sounds of us screaming in agony.)

What we see: Koejin pulling the sword out and standing with it like she's posing.

Art: Uhhh.... what is happening?

Theodora: Koejin? You okay?

Koejin vision! Art: (melting away and falling apart) You killed us!!!!

Koejin vision! Theodora: (Also melting) You let us dieeeee!!!!

Koejin, turning to see all this: No! No, I saved Art's life so many times! (Turns to Theodora) I'm sorry! I'm sorry!

Art: Koejin.... we're fine!

Koejin: (runs up to start trying to put Art's face back together. To everyone else, she'd just smooshing his face while still holding the sword.)

Theodora: (dispels the magic from the sword and a little imp pops free)

Koejin: (can now see that everyone's okay and it still just kinda groping Art's face.)

Art:....uh, Koejin?

Koejin: Yeah.... sorry. You were melting just now.

(We talk to the little imp briefly to find that he is a prisoner in the maze. He asks if he's free to go but as soon as he does, he's struck by lightning.)

(We continue down the path for a little bit before Koejin figures out that we're going the wrong way because she can no longer smell the "smelly smell that smells." In that time, Hennessy incinerated some talking furniture which the DM disappointedly let us know that we wouldn't be seeing the IKEA Lich. I have a feeling the IKEA Lich might pop up in a future one shot.

But also, we got this exchange.)

Theodora: (casts a spell in attempt to sober Koejin.)

Koejin: (starts screaming as her skin starts to burn) Stop!

Theodora: (stops immediately) I... I was just trying to help..

Koejin: I'm the God of intemperance, Theodora! You can't just sober me up!

Theodora: What?!

(This starts into a fight about how this isn't the weirdest thing we've been through while she continues to talk about how she wasn't expecting to hear her daughter was a god.)

Red: If I may, I can see where Theodora is coming from here. Be it the weirdest thing or not, finding out your child is involved in some affair with the gods can be surprising. (Shoots a look at Art) Like your son being intimately involved with a tentacle monster god.

Art:.... you weren't supposed to know about that....

Red: You were shouting about it just before while I was standing there.

Art:... right..... forgot you were there....

Red: Either way; something for us to talk about later, Sweetie.

Art rolling his eyes, sarcastically: But Mother, I love him.

((Koejin's Player: And I have to remember to write proper notes about what everyone knows and doesn't know.

DM: Eh, it's all out now))

(We head from the dark part to the light part and find ourselves walking down a hall for hours. It gets to the point where Mrs. Red starts to complain.)

Red: Ugh... when is this fucking thing going to end? Doesn't anyone have a way to move this along faster?

Art: It's going to feel like longer if you keep bitching.

Red: I don't even wanna be here!

Theodora: None of us want to be here!

Art, agreeing: Yeah, and yet, here we are! So, how about you shut your mouth for a bit while we figure out how to get home and make sure there's even a "home" to go back to!

Red:.... Actually, Art. Considering that, I think this might be a good time for you and I to talk....

(Art is pulled off to the side by Mrs. Red, Reita following. Theodora tries to usher everyone a respectful distance away to try and ensure privacy. She does her best, but pretty much everyone is still eavesdropping.)

Red: I know I haven't been the best mother... In fact, I might be the worst... But know that I will try to make this all better and I'm just looking for your forgiveness.

Art:.... you might remember us as a nice, happy little family, but let me tell you what I remember.

Koejin: You tell her, Art!

Art, ignoring her and pretending he doesn't know people are listening: ....you slicing off Reita's face, blowing up Thia's bar, threatening the lives of my friends, destroying the lives of countless different people; I could go on! You barely get to claim the title "mother!"

Red: I did what I thought was best!

Art: You entrusted your children to the God of Death and Deceit!

Red: I didn't do that! (long pause)....I did do that.

Art: Yeah, you did. So, this is how things are gonna go. We're going to go through here and make sure there's a world to get back to, we're going to go to Calor and you are going to fix this. Then we can talk about forgiveness.

Red: ....That's another thing I wanted to talk to you about. I would love... to return to our people. I know I'm a tiefling, but I still feel the rage... of a red dragon. Someone would need to take care of our people.

Art:.... the people that treated me like a pariah....

Vincent, butting in: Like Hell I'm gonna let that happen! (storms over to them and looks at Art) Look Art, I'm willing to admit you are not evil. But do you really think you can run Calor? As soon as everything gets hard you run away! Hell, you abandoned your own sister-

Reita, with a surprising amount of clarity: He didn't... abandon me. He thought I was dead.

(The remaining three tieflings turn and look at her.)

Reita: And you're not exactly one to talk; you created weapons for a tyrant and turned a blind eye to the problems in Calor. We've all done things we regret, but we learn and grow from them. How can you stand there and judge him from running from a bad situation when he was a kid? Hypocrite (shoves a slug into her mouth)

Art, smiling and a little misty-eyed: I'm so proud of you! (hugs Reita)

Reita: Uhhh, yeah. Sure.... (doesn't push him away, though)

Red:.... You're not supposed to be talking like that... how are you doing that?

Art, pulling away: Yeah, that was going to be the next part. You feeling okay?

Reita, shrugging: I feel good.... Like, really good.

Red: (grabs Reita and rips open the back of her cloak to see the stone in her spine is not glowing) This.... this isn't working. It should be working.

Art:....We should keep moving. Put a pin in this for now.

(We keep moving ahead with different twists and turns leading into random encounters. One of which is a growing garden gnome that we put Wreybar on top of so she could see over the walls. She tries to say what she sees, but speaks in a way only Wreybar understands.)

Theodora: Okay, but now how are we gonna get her down?

Red: I could probably fly up an-

Wreybar, jumping: Catch me!

Hennessy: (rushes to cast feather fall on her.)

(She floats down and lands nicely on the ground as we hear Thia's booming voice "Giant garden gnome? Goodbye giant garden gnome!" And the gnome just vanishes.)

(Wreybar starts talking in her gibberish and Koejin asks for a translator. Reita steps in and kneels down to her, nodding along by what she's saying.)

Reita: Wreybar says there's a latter coming out of a hole on the other side. It's right next to the castle. How do you guys not get that, she was speaking clearly.

Theodora: Maybe to you. Not all of us can speak Wreybar.

(We ended up getting into a few more shannanigans. At one point, Art attempted to use mislead in attempt to move through faster only to have Reita get impatient and run ahead. Art and Reita had a quick little spat about that along the lines of "by the time we find her, she'll have destroyed everything already!" "We can't find her at all if we're dead! No running ahead!" There was also a bit with Hennessy and Koejin teleporting out of the maze where they met a murder horse and a weird inky blob creature.

At that point the latter was the literally the next turn. But possibly the worst moment.)

DM: You guys come to a dead end. The smell is still coming from over it.

Koejin: Shit....

(We all check the wall to find no traps. But then... Alabaster touches it and a had grabs hold of him. It pulls itself out with his resistance and Alabaster is looking at a marble version of... himself.)

Alabaster: O-oh! Hail and well met... uh, me!

M! Alabaster: Oh! Hail and Well Met! How are you, my fine friend?

Alabaster: I'm quite well, thank you! How... who are you?

M! Alabaster: Oh, I am what remains of you. The you left behind when you left the Pelor faith!

Alabaster: Oh, I see.

M!Alabaster: Have you killed your daughter?

Alabaster: oh, no. That is.... no longer apart of the plan.

M! Alabaster: (grabs hold of Alabaster) I will do it then. I will kill your daughter. She is born of darkness, thus she must die!

(Everyone around him tenses up, but he somehow knows if he looks away, the creature will fade from his sight and go to kill Eris. He can only stare at it to hold it in place.)

Alabaster: (puts his hand to the copy's mouth and uses Create or Destroy Water)

M!Alabaster: (starts to crack and burst under the pressure. The amount of water forced inside kills the creature.)

((Create or destroy water has been a running gag in the campaign. It's been used a few times, but nothing really dark. Not like this.))

Alabaster:....(Still holding his marble copy with a stunned look.)

Art:....(walks up and pats him on the arm) You did what you had to do... Eris is safe now.

Theodora, nodding: Think of it as... you made the right choice.

Alabaster: (nods to both of them and closes the creatures eyes)

Koejin:.... we should destroy it. Just in case.

(They then proceed to break the thing into dust and we continued on our way.)

( We found the latter that brought us up to the castle. As we walk around to the entrance, Pelor stands by the door with his arms crossed.)

Pelor:.... what are you trying to accomplish here? Do you really think you can stop any of this?

Theodora: We're here to talk to Thia. Where's Thia?

Pelor, sighing: Look, last chance before I wipe you out of existence; kneel before me or leave my land and accept your fates.

Red, arms crossed(as is usual for her): Yeah, I'm not one for bowing to people. People bow to me.

Pelor: This goes for all for all of you?

(All of us agree. There will be no bowing.)

Pelor:....then so be it.

(Before he can move in to fight us, he is turned inside out and sucked into a little stone. Thia then drifts down, takes the stone, and crushes it.)

Art: ....hi, Thia....

Thia, glaring: Shut up, Art.

Art, nodding: Hmmm, mhm.

Thia: (turns to Theodora) Go home, Theodora.

(for a moment, her powers work on Theodora, but all of us stop her. This turns into a conversation about why the wipe is unnecessary. Koejin leads the conversation, then turned and asked for someone more "charisma based" to lead.

Art couldn't speak. Probably for the best. He and Thia have never really gotten along.)

Theodora: If you wipe out all existence, we won't be learning from our mistakes. Everything will end up being repeated! The war will be repeated!

Thia: Not if I don't allow free will.

Theodora: And then what is life? that's not a world; that's a simulation.

Thia:... better that than allowing a kid to grow up in the woods all alone.

Theodora:.... Thia, we can make this world better. Create a place where something like that doesn't happen. But this.... this isn't the way.

Thia:....Do all of you agree? Should I.... give up my power?

(This was a major turning point in the story. Because this is where the end boss was decided. And we told Thia to give up her power.)

Thia, nodding: Alright... let's go back home. No reason to strand ourselves here. (she opens a portal)

(We walk through to find ourselves in the tavern Thia owns. She wills away her power, but it's no big ta-do.)

Koejin: Did it work?

Thia:.... I don't know.... Art, give me some money.

Art:..... no....

Koejin: It worked!

(We all celebrate before we all notice the portal hasn't closed. When we turn and look, we see Pelor's face.... on Ticket Master's body. He throws it away like a mask and grins at us.)

Ticket Master: Guess who's the new God of Light? (smiles and waves as the portal closes)

(Outside, we hear loud banging. When we run out, we can see darkness and light bouncing off of each other before they begin to swirl and spread. They head for us.)

Theodora: (hears the voice of Bahamut and an open blue portal) Everyone! We have to go!

(Everyone dives into the portal. Art takes a moment before diving in with the group.)

(There will be one last session and we can all really feel it now. I'm kinda sad that Ticket Master is now the BBEG, but we all saw that coming. There's just a lot to figure out here.)

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima VII: The Black Gate (1992)

Ultima 7 was pretty much my introduction to RPGs, and I could not have asked for a better pair of games to ignite a lifelong passion into that genre. There is a real reason why this is still considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

While Ultima 7 is often discussed as a singular entity, it is actually two separate full-length games with one expansion each. For this post I will focus on the first one, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, as well as its expansion: Forge of Virtue.

I recommend playing the game using Exult, which adds some quality of life features (such as a feeding hotkey and a “use all keys” hotkey) as well as the option to use higher quality audio packs, implement bug fixes, and change the font into something easier on the eyes.

Summary

The protagonist of the Ultima series is “the Avatar”, a blank slate isekai protagonist from our world who has previously travelled to the world of Britannia several times and saved it from many threats, also becoming the shining paragon of the virtues meant to guide its people.

In this game, you once again cross the portal to Britannia to save it from a new and mysterious extradimensional threat. As soon as you arrive, you immediately discover two things:

1- A violent ritualistic murder has just taken place.

2- There is suspicious new organization called “The Fellowship” gaining adherents throughout the land.

It is up to you to investigate these developments.

Freedom

In terms of freedom, the Black Gate has plenty overall but there are areas where it is not quite there.

Once you can manage to get the password to get out of the locked-down town of Trinsic you are free to go nearly anywhere in the game right away and have multiple means of transportation to accomplish this, such as moongates or ships.

And there are some very real rewards to exploring like this as well, such as various treasure caches and other interesting findings. 

The world is actually very small by modern standards, especially when settlements occupy so much of it, but both the towns and the wilderness areas are dense with content.

Notably, the game also allows you to perform various activities. From stealing to making a honest living by baking bread (which is something you can do thanks to how interactive the environment is) or gathering eggs at a farm.

Where it falls short is in terms of having multiple possible solutions for quests. Generally there is only one correct option for how to complete them.

That said, there is a bad ending you might be able to find in addition to the canonical good ending.

Character Creation/Customization

This is one of the big minuses of the game. While you can select your name and gender (and with Exult also have a wider selection of portraits) that is about it for character creation.

All characters will start with the same stats and there are no character classes. You can develop your stats through training and specialize through your choice of equipment, but by the end of the Forge of Virtue expansion you will have maxed stats and the best weapon in the game (a sword) regardless, and you will definitely need to cast a few spells to progress the main quest as well.

This can make every playthrough feel much like the last, as there isn’t that much of a way to vary how your character develops or what abilities they’ll end up having. You will always be a master of absolutely everything in the end unless you go out of your way to avoid doing the Forge of Virtue expansion.

Story/Setting

While the game is a bit too obvious and heavy-handed about its villains, there are still many interesting storylines in the game that deal with mature subjects that remain relevant today, such as cults, drug abuse, workplace exploitation, and xenophobia.

However, the setting as a whole is greater than any individual storyline taking place within. With the exception of most guards and bandits, every single NPC in the game is an individual with a name, schedule, living space, and defined personality. This was not the norm in 1992 and even today there’s not many games that really implement this well. The world is also very detailed in terms of things like the services available to you, the general interactivity of the game world, and the sheer amount of things that populate every corner of it.

The initial murder is not only a strong hook for investigation but also a shocking scene in its own right. The Guardian also proves to have a significant presence as a villain, using a mental link to remotely taunt you based on the context of what is happening. For example, if your companions die he may offer you some exaggerated, mocking pity.

Immersion

There is something very interesting and comfortable about just watching the various inhabitants of a town just go about their daily lives. They work during the day, eat at certain times (either at home or at one of the many taverns in the land), and sleep at night. They don’t just strangely repeat one single action during the day either, they may do things like open windows when the weather is nice or turn candles and streetlamps on at night.

In terms of immersion, Ultima 7 is my primary example of a game that does an excellent job of it even if there’s some weirdness going on with the setting. Even after having played so many more games throughout my life, only a few are on the same level as either part of Ultima 7 when it comes to immersion.

Gameplay

There are three broad aspects to the gameplay here that I want to discuss.

The first is combat. It is actually simple enough that you can call it almost entirely automatic. You simply enable combat mode by pressing C and your party will automatically go and fight nearby hostile enemies based on whatever combat orders you have selected for them (by default, attacking the closest enemy).

This is certainly better than having an outright bad or annoying combat system as the whole process is simple and painless, but I still wish there was more depth to it. Your stats, and especially your equipment, still play a role but other than things like pausing to use items or cast spells the whole process is very uninvolved.

I kind of wish there was more depth to it, but at least the other two areas of the gameplay are reasonably good.

The next aspect of gameplay is dialogue, which uses dialogue trees for the first time in the series. Previously, it required typing in keywords, which are retained but as dialogue options you can just click on rather than remember and type.

While the keywords are not really written as natural language most of the time (requiring some imagination to determine the specifics of your dialogue), the system is very easy to use regardless. It definitely lacks depth compared to something like Fallout: New Vegas, but so do most games.

The third and most notable thing is the way you interact with the world in general. It is both extremely simple and very immersive at the same time.

Ultima 7 is a game that can be played entirely with the mouse (though keyboard hotkeys make everything much more comfortable). You can right click a space to walk there, you can left click something to identify what it is, and you can use double left click to interact.

For example, double left click over an NPC to talk to them (or attack them, if combat mode is enabled), double left click a door to open it, double left click a loaf of bread to feed it to someone, and so on.

But there is more. By holding your click over an item and dragging it, you can move it. This has various applications beyond just being how you pick things up and add them to your inventory. For example, sometimes objects may be hidden beneath other objects, or objects may need to be placed in a specific location.

There are some downsides to this system. Particularly, the issue that keeping your inventory organized can be time-consuming when it has to be done by manually dragging objects around, and this can also make looting relatively slow.

Despite this, I think this kind of interaction system has a lot of potential. It just has some clunky aspects to be ironed out.

Aesthetics

Ultima 7 was very good-looking for its time, and although modern players will not be very impressed by how it looks or sounds, it still remains easily legible in a way that some other old games are not. That, and the ability to identify anything with just a left click, makes this a very easy game to make out at the very least.

Some of the music of this game is very distinctive too, and will likely stay with you after a full playthrough.

In terms of style, the Black Gate does have a bit of an identity while still having a very familiar medieval fantasy setting with things like trolls, animated skeletons, dragons, and liches. While there are aspects that help the setting distinguish itself a bit, they are relatively subtle.

If I had to describe the feeling of playing this, I’d call it “open and laid back”. While the main quest deals with a looming threat to the entire world, the game does not follow this overly closely at first, letting you deal with it at your own pace and without having your exploration options limited by the story.

In fact, when I was young I often just ignored that and went to live in a creepy ruin in the swamp.

(Don’t expect many pictures in these reviews, but have one of my “childhood home.”)

I’d say that Ultima 7′s second part (Serpent Isle) has a much stronger and also darker and more isolating atmosphere overall and that has a lot of appeal to me in particular, but the Black Gate is definitely more open and less linear, and I also appreciate that.

Accessibility

It pleases me to say that Ultima 7 remains extremely easy to pick up and play. Even setting up Exult is not complicated in the least.

The gameplay is intuitive and simple, the UI is minimal, stats are basic (and not even that important), and the combat is automatic. I expect that this is not only the easiest point of entry into the Ultima series as a whole but also likely even easier to get into than many modern RPGs!

It does have some aspects that may be a bit clunky, like all the inventory-related dragging, but it’s definitely not obscure or complicated even to someone who has not read the manual (though I’d still recommend doing that). I literally played this game as a tiny child who could barely read or understand English and still got really into it.

The one thing I’d like to point out is that the game uses a type of copy protection where at a couple of story points (including an extremely early one to leave the first town) you will be asked some questions that require using the manual and external map to answer. You can just google the answers for these.

Conclusion

As I write more of these reviews there will be many games that are interesting, but deeply flawed. Games that are worth trying out but maybe not finishing, as well as games that had interesting ideas but that I can’t entirely recommend due to serious problems that will easily put people off.

But I do not think the Black Gate is such a game. I can easily recommend it with no qualifiers despite the fact that it is almost 30 years old. This is really a game that all RPG fans should at the very least try for a few hours, and not only for its historical significance. It is genuinely a good game worthy of its praise.

I will review its sequel, Ultima VII Part 2: Serpent Isle, next.

[iknikblackstonevarrick]

Red Lightning (Part 3)

(Part 1) (Part 2)

---

Lucretia looked through the bars at her friend with grim contemplation.

She had disarmed Lup and moved her from the floor to the thin mattress provided inside her cell, and was now simply waiting for her to wake up, and considering what she would do when she did.

Giving her a similar position to Davenport was out of the question. Redacted or not, the boys would notice the woman’s striking similarity to Taako. She could find something for her in the bowels of the facility, out of sight of the Reclaimers, but even then, the risk-

“Hey?”

Lucretia jumped and struck her staff on the ground in surprise. Lup had risen to her elbows while still prone on the bed, and was looking at Lucretia with decreasing grogginess.

“Are you- in charge here?” she asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, “Cause whatever I did to get in here- okay, I was /definitely/ framed, first of all, and also like super drunk. Like I don’t even remember anything that happened…” she looked to the side, “Basically ever, right now? I must have partied /real/ hard last night but anyways, the point is I’m innocent and also I don’t think you can legally keep me here without telling me what I’m in for.”

Lup was about a foot in front of the bars now, holding her hands out in front of her where she’d been gesturing. Lucretia stared at her.

“You can talk,” she got out flatly.

Lup blinked at her, then snorted. “I- Yeah??” She looked around herself. “Why- Was I that out of it whenever- whatever happened?”

Lucretia stood there, marveling at how she could have taken so much from their Captain unintentionally whilst not inflicting the same on her friend when she intentionally tried to erase her existence. It was a relief, obviously- she hadn’t wanted to reduce Lup to the sound of her own name, but she had expected it, accepted it as a necessity, and planned around it. Now-

She checked the lock on her cell to make sure she hadn’t left it open in her indecision. There would be no moving her from this spot now that she still had her wits about her. As much as it pained Lucretia, she could not allow her friend to roam free if there was any possibility she might resume interfering with her mission.

“What’s happening?” she asked, looking worriedly at Lucretia’s hand as she secured the padlock and then tapped her staff to the ground, reinforcing the magical barriers around the cell as well. “You- you have to tell me what you think I did.”

Lucretia looked levelly into her eyes. “You have done something- horrible. Unspeakable. Even if you… didn’t mean for it to be. What’s done is still done. And you will remain here until- Until I decide those crimes have been repented for.”

Lup opened her mouth to argue. Then, before she could, Lucretia saw some unknown thought enter her eyes, and then some of the light dimmed from them.

She waited, watching the grim, zoned-out look on her friend’s face for only a moment longer before she turned on heel and exited into the elevator.

*

“Taako?”

Lup blinked, turning to the source of the voice- a halfling man, poking his small head through the bars of the cell next to hers to get a look.

“Nope,” she said flatly.

“Oh, sorry,” the halfling said. “I could have sworn he has that skirt.” He tilted his head. “And that face?”

She sighed. “It’s Lup,” she introduced herself curtly, hoping it would change the subject. She didn’t know who this ‘Taako’ person was, but getting mistaken for a man was one of the few things that could make today worse.

“Oooohh, sorry sorry sorry, cool cool cool,” the halfling man said, nodding. “My name’s Robbie, but my old roommates called me Pringles.”

“Why?” she asked.

Pringles tugged on his shirt collar. “I have a deficiency.”

Lup pursed her lips and let her head fall back onto the stiff pillow. She didn’t know how long she’d been in the pokey, but it couldn’t have been too long, because everything in the room seemed brand new and unused.

“So what’re you in for, Pringles?” she asked.

“Uuh,” he drawled, “Espionage, I guess? Except I didn’t do it, like, intentionally. Maybe an accessory to espionage? A vessel?”

“Huh,” she said. “So you like, accidentally let in a spy?”

“I… guess it was something like that,” he said. “I don’t actually remember most of it. What about you?”

Lup stared at the gray-blue ceiling of her cell.

“I think I killed someone,” she said, still not looking at her cellmate.

“Oh,” Pringles answered, sounding unimpressed. “Well, that’s kinda like, the adventuring MO. Not your fault you ran amok of someone with arrest powers.”

She didn’t even catch his comment about the moon. She continued staring hard at the silvery blue of her cell.

“I think I killed someone I loved.”

Pringles blinked a few times. Then most of his face was no longer visible, it seemed like he’d changed the stance he was standing at.

“Oh,” was all he said. It was a long few moments before she heard him pad quietly over to the bed of his cell and hop on with a creak.

*

Lup had the same dream every night.

No matter what she did, how she ate, when she slept, however many of her limited options she explored, it was always the same. If she tried trancing, the memory would still play through her head relentlessly, almost more real than if she just went to sleep. If it weren’t for the companionship of her odd but chill jail-mate, she might think she was living the same day over again.

She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was a memory. The only memory she had of anywhere outside this cell. Anywhere /outside/ at all. She wouldn’t know what the sky looked like, blinding blue with puffy white clouds and streaming golden light, without this memory.

She doesn't know why, but she’d expected it to look different.

*

You were in the sky. The clouds around you were close enough to touch, and the green below you was so, so distant. You could only see it over the silver rails of this- ship. You were on a ship, a boat, by the looks of it. Why was it in the sky?

Every time, before you had the chance to wonder this any further, you locked eyes with the figure sitting on the railing. No, you realized. He wasn’t sitting. He was bent over it at an odd angle, half of him dangling off the edge like he’d just been blown to that point by force.

He was wearing glasses. They were cracked.

You had no idea who this man was, but when you felt his gaze, saw his weathered human face, looked over his faded old blue jeans, you felt like you were home. You felt safe, and loved, and warm.

That warmth boiled over into the heat of panic when you noticed the blood pouring from this man’s stomach. Suddenly it felt like the world was burning around you, and you wanted to go to him, but you couldn’t. Your body felt frozen, your mind felt like it was full of cotton. No. Of static.

You met the man’s gaze again because that’s all you could do. You felt your knees going weak.

The man smiled at you with love and sorrow and-

He fell. He fell all the way over the railing, and you felt yourself moving, felt something warm and wet on your cheek-

And you wake up, gasping, and touch the tears streaming down your face. Every morning. You call it morning because you do not go back to sleep after this, but the fantasy fluorescent lights of your cell have not yet come up.

Every morning, without reprieve, as you lower your hand from your tear-streaked face, you see the smallest strokes of red lightning glowing between your fingers in the darkness.

***

“Where is she?”

Barry Bluejeans looked down at his three best friends in their red nullsuits. He had come here to warn them- to use the cosmoscope this kid had created, to try to explain with visuals instead of words and see if that could get through to them.

But there were only three of them. For whatever reason, Lup hadn’t come along on this mission. At first, he’d assumed she was a part of the party they said they’d been separated from, but now they were reunited, and still no Lup.

He probably should have waited to ask. There was probably a fine explanation- maybe Lucretia had wanted to keep a reclaimer in reserve for if this place went up in crystal? Sure, that made enough sense. He almost moved on to another question, but his nonexistent stomach dropped when he got his answer.

“Who?”

“Taako-” he’d be furrowing his brow if he could. It was immediately apparent to him that this wasn’t a goof. He knew Taako well enough for that.

“Taako, your-” dread was welling up in him. “Your sister. Your sister, Lup, Taako, where is she?”

“Oof,” Taako tilted his head. “Don’t got one of those, buddy. You must have the wrong T-a-a-ko.”

“No,” he said. He floated closer, and Taako raised-

The umbrella. He had Lup’s Umbrastaff with him.

“You have to know,” he said, and he could feel necrotic energy arcing off of him like electricity. “You have to know where- you have to know who she is. She only erases people when they’re-”

And suddenly, his energy calmed. He floated placidly in front of Taako, wide-eyed and weapon drawn.

He felt relieved. And then guilty for it. If Lucretia had erased her, that meant she was dead. But that also meant she was out here somewhere as a lich. Memories intact. Finally.

He melted away from the crystal laboratory and resumed time as he reappeared in his cave. He pulled out a drawer to his desk and filled up an old scrying bowl he used to use to keep tabs on everyone when he didn’t feel safe enough to go outside.

When the image in the bowl came into view, there was no phantasmal, resplendent figure of light and magic. Instead, there was a living mortal figure lying on a bed, sleeping restlessly, what he recognized as energy from her lich form arcing out through her hands in response to whatever Emotion was enveloping her dream.

“Oh,” he said aloud. Not disappointed. Determined.

Zooming out, he could see the bars of a cell, and even further, the outline of the floating headquarters of the Bureau of Balance. He shut the drawer and turned towards the map he had laid out on the desk itself.

The body cooking in his pod wasn't quite done yet. That was fine. He’d prefer not to burn it now, anyways. He’d find his own way up to the Bureau again, holy symbol be damned.

[pricechecktranslations]

E.A.T. Prologue; Scene 6

E.A.T. Prologue pages 20-34

“—The parallel world we visited first, the ‘World of Giants and Beastmen’…There, we were subject to the situation where all of the residents of the manor excluding myself and Fry were murdered. …Though well, Ron has a deathless body, so he revived again immediately afterwards.”

Ron scratched his head as he listened to Lich’s story, his mood a touch complicated.

Miserably enough, he’d been the first one to get cut down by the traitor Jarre.

But as Lich said he was revived quickly, and after that under Lich’s orders he had given his undivided attention to maintaining the “Fat Man” that powered the mansion’s movement, it having become unsteady.

Lich’s explanation continued.

“Fortunately, aside from Ron the residents of this manor were already souls to begin with. I had made them bodies out of a special mud, and it was these that they were all dwelling inside. The ‘Soul Archives’ we have packed into the ship…Inside them is the data that forms the basis of each soul. In other words, as long as the ‘Soul Archives’ are not destroyed, then we can be resurrected as many times as needed, even if our bodies are destroyed.”

However.

There was a problem with that.

They could come back if they had bodies, but the reverse was also true—without a body, they would remain souls, unable to be revived.

“There wasn’t any of the ‘mud’ suitable for use in creating new bodies in the ‘World of Giants and Beastmen’.”

So then, Lich had been forced to use different bodies instead.

The only thing he was able to come up with in those circumstances were the ones who had attacked the manor—

The corpses of the bunny hero Jarre and his friends.

“For everyone other than Lady Banica, the bodies and souls were successfully compatible. However—”

Ron made a guess on seeing Lich’s clouded expression. “They didn’t work for Lady Banica. Why is that?”

After casting his eyes down for a moment, Lich looked up and replied, “—The only thing I can think of is a difference in the quality of her soul.”

“…? What does that mean?”

“Arte, Pollo, myself, and Eater…Seth as well I suppose—the quality of our souls is a little bit different from that of the average human. To put it in a way that you would understand, Mr. Ron…Basically, ours are souls are closer in nature to that of ‘gods’.”

“…”

Ron felt that he really didn’t actually understand that at all, but he could grasp the part about them not being “average humans” at least.

“However, Lady Banica…was originally a normal human being.”

That was true.

If she hadn’t been set upon and bewitched by a demon…she would have led her life as a normal person, and died that way.

“Through her contract with Vlad—with the demon, her soul had gained some particular properties; but that contract was broken before we set out on this journey. The demon did not come with us, opting instead to remain in our original world, and so at present it’s impossible to renew that contract.”

“So then…now we can’t resurrect Lady Banica?”

Lich replied, looking over at Ron as he pressed him for answers, “…We have several methods. The first is to search for ‘mud’ suitable for making her a new body. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll be able to find any hereafter in the course of our journey.”

“…What if we returned to our original world? There would be mud to make a body with there, surely?”

But Lich shook his head.

“That would be difficult. There’s an obstacle to it.”

“An obstacle?”

“A ‘ghost’. You recall that some trouble occurred the first time we shifted to a new plane, yes?”

“Yeah, I remember…Some trouble with an unknown cause put us on the verge of crashing—”

“Through my investigations afterward, I have determined that the cause was the ‘Ma Ghost’.”

“What…in the world is that?”

“A ‘pure evil’ that was responsible for our world being destroyed…You could call it an amalgamated entity. Though as of yet I’m not that clear on the specifics. Whatever the case, what is certain is that it’s a being that tries to destroy everything that comes in or out of that world.”

Lich advised that going back would be too dangerous until they’d found some method of dealing with it.

“So then, the other option available to us is…to find Lady Banica’s ‘alter ego’.”

“…I’m not smart like you are. I’d appreciate it if you could try to avoid using such specialized terminology when possible.”

“To put it simply, it’s a being that has Lady Banica’s ‘alternate self’. There’s a chance of one existing in every parallel world. Well…truthfully this is outside of my area of expertise…All this is assuming you believe what Seth has told us.”

“Shall I explain in more depth?” Seth cut in.

But Lich firmly shook his head.

“That’s enough. I’m certain that if we go on for too much longer you’ll just start rambling on contents entirely inconsequential to myself and Mr. Ron.”

“I suppose. I just thought this would finally be a good opportunity to talk about my advanced theory, so that’s unfortunate.”

Ron pondered over the current discussion and then concluded, trying to help himself understand in his own way, “So you’re saying we need to find this ‘alter-ego’…this alternate Lady Banica that might be in this parallel world?”

“That’s basically it. In the majority of cases the alter-ego will be different from Lady Banica in appearance, personality, and even name and identity. However, the soul will be of the same quality as Lady Banica’s…To put it another way, the body that the soul dwells inside has a high probability of being compatible with Lady Banica.”

And there, Ron recalled something.

The girl that Lich had brought over earlier.

“Could it be…that that girl with the horn is Lady Banica’s—”

“Yes. She is, without a doubt, Lady Banica’s ‘alter-ego’ that exists here in this ‘World of Angels and Demons’.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“Through analysis of the Akashic Record.”

“Sigh. I’ve no idea whatsoever what this ‘Akashic Record’ is…but if you say so, then it must be right.” Ron then said, adopting a more depressed attitude, “…Are you going to kill the girl?”

“I suppose I’ll have to. Only one soul can dwell in a single body. I don’t know what the risk is of forcibly pushing a second one in.”

“Do we…have the right to do that? To steal a person’s life for our own gain.”

But Lich calmly replied, not even pretending to look unsettled in the least, “Of course we do.”

“…Hmph, that’s right. You are all ‘beings close to gods’, of course. But…I’m not. Even if I’ve become like this, I was originally a normal human. I…can’t accept you doing such a thing.”

“Then what are you saying we should do? The way things are now, Lady Banica will forever be a disembodied soul. Are you alright with that?”

“…”

“To resurrect Lady Banica, we need to kill her alter-ego and obtain her body—Right now, that’s the only choice we have.”

He said that, but Ron still wasn’t convinced.

--When Banica had made her contract with the demon, Ron had already become one of the living dead, and so had no way to stop her.

He’d been unable to stop her falling to ‘evil’.

He couldn’t let the same thing happen again.

…Before, there had been another option available for Ron.

To follow the will of the gods and pass through that ‘gate’, carrying out his reincarnation.

But with his soul bound to a physical body, Ron hadn’t known…what would happen to him when he entered that ‘gate’.

Maybe his curse would have been lifted.

But he had no proof that it would.

In short, it was a sink-or-swim situation.

Some of Ron’s former family had been among the souls who’d passed through the ‘gate’.

But Ron felt that too much time had passed to earnestly rejoice in reuniting with them.

And apparently these family members would have ultimately had their memories erased as soon as they went through the ‘gate’ anyway.

He wasn’t afraid of that in itself.

Whether he died or was erased, it was all the same.

Rather, Ron had always wished before that his curse could be lifted so he could finally die.

“All people…die someday. People all fear death while they’re alive. But…I also know the suffering of being unable to die!” Ron shouted, full of emotion.

But Lich merely chuckled at that, and said back, “Hahah. That’s true. You wandered the world as a living dead man for centuries. It certainly must have been painful. But those are after all just your personal feelings. It has nothing to do with Lady Banica.”

“Perhaps so…But that’s not for you to decide on your own.”

As a tense atmosphere flowed between the two of them, Seth’s voice cut in once more.

“Ah--…It sounds like there’s solid reasoning in both of your arguments from what I’m hearing.”

“Shut your yap, Seth.”

“Now now Lich, don’t be so cruel. In times like these, I think it’s best…to let the person herself decide, don’t you think?”

“…? What do you mean?”

“—Come out now, kitty,” Seth called.

That very moment.

A cat suddenly raced out from below the chair Lich was sitting in.

“A cat…What’s a cat doing here?”

Ron gazed upon the cat with confusion.

On the other hand, Lich…was clearly disturbed.

And then he started shouting at the mask on the wall.

“Seth! You bastard…You’ve taken too much of a liberty!”

Then, after the cat jumped up to Lich’s knees, it descended upon his face.

And started quickly scratching at his cheeks with its claws.

“Ow!?”

Lich tumbled backwards out of his chair while the cat landed calmly on the ground, giving him a side-eye.

Looking up at him, the red-furred cat said—

--Yes, the cat…emitted a human voice.

It was the third time he’d witnessed such a scene today alone, so that in itself was naturally not all that surprising to Ron.

The problem was, this voice was unmistakably that of Banica Conchita herself.

“Calm down, Lich…And you too, Ron.”

“L-Lady Banica!?”

Ron’s eyes opened wide, and he peered down at the cat before him.

“Ha ha ha!” He could hear Seth’s loud laughter from the mask. “I felt sorry for Banica, having to stay as a soul until we found the alter-ego. Prodigy that I am, I prepared a temporary body for her! …Though, well, it’s just a simple animate plushy, a replica of something that I made long ago for a different purpose.”

“I see…Or, that’s what I’d like to say. Hah. Truly, there’s never a dull moment with you all around.” After heaving a great sigh, Ron started speaking to Banica. “It may be temporary, but thank goodness that you had a body prepared for you, Lady Banica…In any case, doesn’t this solve the problem?”

“What are you talking about. This body can only drink milk.”

“Oh, you can drink milk.”

“I’ll dry up if I don’t take in moisture.”

It was plainly evident that this was a little bit different from a normal plushy. In terms of its properties it seemed to be similar to the mud bodies that Lich made.

“Lady Banica…What do you intend to do now? Will you make your alter-ego’s body your own after all—”

“Hmm…I’m not sure.” Banica hopped into the chair that Lich had been sitting in a few moments before. “I caught a glance of her earlier…Her looks aren’t too bad. Though I’m a little concerned about that horn on her forehead. There’s a bigger problem than that, though…”

Banica looked up at Lich as he finally stood.

“Lich, that girl…seems to be blind.”

“Yes, you are correct. …Let me explain a little bit on her.”

Lich drew up to the front-most monitor in the cockpit and flicked its switch.

What came up to the screen was something that looked like a map and several pieces of information.

“First, about this world that we’re in now…This place is nicknamed the ‘World of Angels and Demons’. Needless to say, it’s another parallel world of the Third Period. In terms of climate, chemical configuration, and various other factors it greatly resembles the world of Evillious where we used to live…The biggest difference is in the species that dominates this world.”

Banica replied to Lich’s explanation, “The world we were in before was ruled by giants and beastmen. Is this place along similar lines?”

“Yes. The beings that govern this world…Or to be more accurate, used to govern it—was a species called ‘demons’.”

“Demons…Huh. Those were in our world too.”

“The ‘demons’ of this world are vastly different from the like of the ‘Demon of Deadly Sin’ that you once contracted with, Lady Banica. The ‘Demons of Deadly Sin’ were beings that could be said to share kinship with gods; the ‘demons’ of this world are…It would probably be best to just think of them as a kind of race. In other words, little more than a variety of demi-humans.”

“Moving on then…You just said that they ‘used’ to govern this world. So then…you’re saying they don’t anymore.”

Lich nodded.

“That’s right. Unfortunately, this world is already in a state of ruin. A race called ‘angels’ who didn’t like the existence of demons had waged war upon them.”

Apparently Lich couldn’t find out many of the particulars on these ‘angels’ even after some investigation.

“At present, at least, they don’t exist in this world any longer. Either they’ve already gone extinct, or else they’ve taken refuge somewhere where we can’t sense them with the mansion’s devices…”

Assuming that was even possible, Lich amended.

“What we do know is that those ‘angels’ were a race of humanoids that had wings on their back.”

“How do you know that?”

“That girl…Baum, she said so. She heard the sound of my wings flapping and mistakenly thought that I was an angel.”

There, Ron raised his hand and asked Lich, “I hate to butt in, but…When you brought that girl here, Sir Lich, you had changed form into a black bird. As far as I know…you didn’t have an ability like that before.”

“Ah…About that…While I was shifting Pollo and the others’ souls into the beastmen bodies, I quickly did something of an ‘experiment’ using my own body, just to be sure. To check to see that it wouldn’t be rejected or anything.”

A side effect had occurred with Lich’s body as a result…Before he knew it, he had gained that power of transformation.

“…You take unnecessary risks, you know.”

“Well, it’s thanks to this ability I was able to gain her trust and quickly bring her here.”

“…Wait just a second. There’s something odd in what you’ve just said, isn’t there?” This time it was Banica who asked Lich a question. “From what you’ve told us, this girl is a ‘demon’, right? Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then if she’s convinced you’re an ‘angel’, a group that opposed hers…Why would that make her trust you?”

“I didn’t know that she thought I was an ‘angel’ when we first met, so I just normally offered her help. I said I would take her to a safe place, given that she’d lost her sight and was injured. It probably…left a deep impression on her, to hear those words coming from an ‘angel’, who should have been her enemy. There is that proverb after all, ‘Yesterday’s enemies could be today’s friends’. Naturally, you could also say that I pulled it off with my natural charisma, haha.”

Banica replied to Lich’s boasting with an unamused expression. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”

“Ha ha, of course not. …I’m positive she came with me intending to kill me when I was asleep.”

Ron looked imploringly up to the heavens in astonishment. “Have you forgotten what caused this entire situation, Lich?”

“It won’t turn out like with Jarre, Ron. The other ‘demons’ are all but wiped out, and she herself doesn’t have any particular abilities. I’m sure we can deal with her.”

“Are you really so sure?”

Ron didn’t seem convinced, but Banica on the other hand let out a relaxed laugh.

“Haha, you worry too much, Ron.”

“But…”

“For now at least let’s listen to Lich’s full explanation…Please, continue.”

Taking Banica’s invitation, Lich cleared his throat and resumed his speech.

“—About that girl in particular…Her name is Baum Kuren. She was the imperial princess of the ‘Prasino Empire’, which used to rule over the demons. The Prasino Empire struggled against the angels to the very end, but my investigation tells me that all but Baum were killed off by the angels.”

On hearing that, Banica made a sound of pity.

“Oh my…She must be brimming with thoughts of revenge.”

“Baum herself lost her eyes after being burned by the angels. I said this earlier, but I am completely certain that she is your alter-ego, Lady Banica. …Though, naturally, I intend to do another inspection after this.” Lich once more turned to Banica, and said with a resolute demeanor, “Lady Banica. Please give me permission to kill Baum Kuren. I’ll make sure not to do any harm to the body itself. Once it’s all finished, you will be able to obtain a body that you can freely take meals in again. You wouldn’t be stuck in such a useless cat body as—”

Banica leaped at Lich and scratched his face once more.

“Who are you to call your master useless?”

“Ouch, ow…No, I didn’t mean it like that…”

“…Alright. You’ll need to do something about her eyes first. There’s no way I’m going to be blind when I return to a regular body.”

“Right, never fear on that front. With my skills I should have little trouble restoring her eyes.”

Seth had been silent for a while now, but there he opened his mouth to speak.

…Or rather, given that he didn’t currently have a mouth, it was more that they simply heard his voice.

“Going to reconstruct her eyeballs, hm? You certainly have the ability…but where are you going to get the materials?”

“I don’t have any mud, but I do have the beastmen corpses. I’ll look for someone among them who has suitable eyes.”

“I doubt that’ll work out. Beastmen and demons…Have you forgotten that these are races from two different worlds?”

“I’ll manage. You shut up, Seth.”

“Right…Well, I’ll just pray that you putting beastman genes into your body didn’t make you stupid as a side effect.”

Banica jumped from Lich’s head back down to the ground.

“Well, at any rate we’ll have to postpone this discussion until her eyes are fixed.”

“Yes…That shouldn’t take me long to do.”

“Hmm. I’m counting on you, Lich.”

“Yes my lady. Now then…I’d like to start making preparations for my work right away,” Lich said, rushing out of the cockpit.

“…Lady Banica.” Ron walked up to the red cat and began speaking to her. “Do you really intend to take that girl’s body for your own?”

“Well, maybe, maybe not…What would you think if it was you, Ron?”

“Huh? If what were me?”

“Your alter-ego, another you from a different world. If such a person appeared before you.”

“…I don’t know.”

“As for me…I’m quite excited over the whole thing!”

To Ron it looked like the cat’s eyes were sparkling.

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