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2027: Wizards of the Coast and the American Psychological Association collaborate on the D&DSM, 6th Edition, widely regarded as the worst thing ever published

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I was thinking about how you'd go about adapting for the Nein show with regard to the alluded-to D-plot following whatever Essek was up to with his Assembly contacts prior to the Nein showing up given that the general sense I get is that the cast does hope to adapt campaign 3 as well, and Ludinus was his main point of contact. If he is not the eventual villain, it isn't tight enough for that format (which is super limited in comparison!) if you don't alter that, since that just ends up feeling like a loose end.

Personally, if I was doing the adapting, I'd probably switch Essek's contact to one of the other collaborators that he listed. Trent seems like the obvious first choice, since it does later tie him to Caleb, but I think you run into trouble there, because it becomes too personal in a way that's harder to reconcile, especially in the time the show allots. It's certainly doable, but I'd personally think it causes more problems than it solves. It would also require threading a needle in terms of his willingness to collaborate with Trent; you could go the A:TLA season 1 route and set him up to be an obviously much worse person, but I think that makes it too clean cut. That's very sensible for a kid's show where you do have an antagonistic teenager who you want the audience to sympathize with, but you can make the dynamic more complex than that in adult media.

Which brings us to the final candidate: Vess Derogna. It took me a minute to think this one through, but this is actually brilliant. You sprinkle her in from the get-go, rather than only vaguely alluding to her through Cree up until Felderwin, and you don't run into nearly as much complication in eventually settling Caleb's distrust of Essek as you would if he had mainly been working with Trent, nor do you risk defanging Essek by juxtaposing him against a blatantly horrific guy. You also ratchet up the horror of Lucien killing her, because she will have been such an uneasily menacing contact for so long, so the audience if not the Nein fully understand how powerful she is and how much influence she has, and he just waltzes in and offs her. That is already pretty powerful in the campaign just by knowing that she's a member of the Assembly, but it hits harder when this person has been an imposition for four seasons straight.

And most importantly, it takes the "What happened to Vess Derogna?" exchange up from funny to fucking hysterical.

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them <333

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Kink isn’t shameful because of the weird sex stuff. That part’s rad. It’s shameful because it is technically improv. 

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I hope that they cast someone super famous in the mighty nein animated series specifically to play the pit npc the nein nuked which Matt then ripped up the character sheet of.

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the m9 are so FUCKING good at being irreverent and threatening and disrespectful and rude and insolent WHILE SOMEHOW ALSO maintaining a certain degree of plausible deniability?? and most of the time they’re not even necessarily trying to be like. manipulative??? that’s just how they are???? most of them hold things close to the chest as a default position, they obfuscate, they’re all hesitant to commit the group to a course of action, they keep their options open and their paths for retreat clear At All Times, and they give NO SHITS about how they’re perceived beyond wanting to give the impression to possible threats that they are Not To Be Fucked With.

which leads to cool shit like the fact that they made essek feel safe and not-lonely because he saw them as kindred spirits and knew their affection was genuine, or when all of them kept sitting in eadwulf’s chair before he could, or when they all grouped tight around Caleb and projected Pure Concentrated Righteous Anger when Trent saw him again for the first time, or when they got banned from Pirate Island by the Pirate King within 24 hours of landing there NOT because they DIDN’T fuck up and blow up a bunch of shit but because someone ELSE fucked up WORSE and so they got to live and leave while Avantika got her head smooshed.

and it is so *chef’s kiss* when they’re with people like trent or obann or whatever noble they’ve pissed off this week, but it’s WAY FUNNIER when they’re with Lucien who is in fact trying to be demeaning and manipulative to them on purpose and they’re just… not acknowledging it. and they’re meeting him volley for volley. but he’s being very intentional in trying to dance the right steps, finding the right buttons to push, and the Nein one time stole a whole-ass pirate ship and sailed into the ocean by… accident. they wouldn’t know intentionality if it bumped into them in the sewers and dropped an ancient religious relic into their bag of holding.

so lucien is trying to unnerve him by being there when cad wakes up, and cad responds by being 100% genuine when he asks Lucien to watch the sunrise and tells him that he needs perspective. jester really does probably want to domesticate unicorns? Caleb did let them sleep in his warm cat tower in exchange for seeing the fucked up book. Veth tried to kill Otis and they’re just. Not talking about it. Either of them. Lucien is scrying on them all the time. They know it. He knows they know. The scrying continues. the Nein throw up middle fingers until the scry orb vanishes so they can have like. ten minutes to plot before another pops up. Lucien knows they’re probably plotting. They know he knows. The plotting continues. Jester turns herself and Lucien into cats so they can slide through the cat tunnels. She reads his Tarot. He pulls Death. She tells him it’s an omen of Rebirth. Caleb surrounds him with the trappings and memories of Mollymauk. Lucien continues to act as though Molly was some meaningless scrap of floating consciousness. The Nein don’t believe that. He knows. He’s not interested in re-examining his opinions on the matter. The Nein keep pushing the Molly buttons. They keep going north together. Beau tells him about the cults they’ve destroyed. Lucien dispels their Polymorphs to force them to face the fire elementals down on the lava beside him. Caleb and Cad can emergency-teleport them out. Eiselcross doesn’t like teleportation energy. They’re the only ones who can stop the Somnovum. Lucien proves his mortality by getting them lost two days in a row. An old enemy finds them. They reach out to Essek. He’s waiting. Aeor. North. Caleb and Beau dream. They could be compromised. They can’t tell if Lucien knows. He’s always acting like he knows everything, and of course none of them would risk asking and giving him more information.

So they dance. But Lucien learned this dance by choice. His movements are quick and smooth, but they don’t flow naturally, not like the Nein’s. They first learned this dance out of necessity, and perfected it under threat of punishment, pain, and death. They’ve spent the last year learning how each other move, learning how to adjust and make room. It’s easy to let Fjord take the lead in negotiation, and to back off when he steps in to mediate. Beau and Caleb don’t have to talk to know each others’ priorities, and when Caleb marches over with clear intent, Beau follows quickly behind to provide silent support, and to step in to take some of the heat in case Caleb needs it. Cad and Jester are so effortlessly effective, offen without even realizing it, but it’s second-nature now to jump ship to whatever new tone or topic one of the clerics brings to the conversation. Veth is similar, though her skill lies more in her ability to aggressively redirect. She can cannonball into any smoothly flowing river of conversation, disrupting things significantly enough that whatever conversation had been happening, it’s at least going to be a very different one than what’s happening now. Yasha is the opposite - she always steps lightly, gently making comments or asking quiet questions, and if Veth is good at making waves, Yasha has a gift for settling things back down, bringing everyone’s energy levels down closer to her own.

and so Lucien is left on the outskirts of an intricate social dance that he can't hope to penetrate, because he refuses to allow himself to know the Nein. He refuses to accept that the part of him that is Molly used to flit and spin and flourish amongst them as though he belonged. Because he did. He does.

and so they keep walking north, with full knowledge that none of them trust each other even a little bit, and that both groups are waiting for one moment of weakness, one stumble, one missed step in the dance to give them a moment to strike. but the tentative peace is dependent on none of them acknowledging that the "peace" is simply the silence of a forest when an apex predator is stalking its prey. at this point, they're all just waiting to see who'll be the hunter, and who will be the hunted.

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I understand the impulse to clown on Essek for walking around in Vasselheim with his recognizable voice with the Bright Queen's spearhead commander, and of course we could turn to the metatextual elements (the necessity of signposting the world for players on the part of the GM, the ease of using a familiar ally to introduce a relevant NPC and new point of contact) to dismiss this if we wanted, but I think it's more interesting—and funnier, as you'll see—to imagine this as simply an extension of the laws and logic that dictate the Mighty Nein as a narrative entity.

Fundamentally, the Mighty Nein within their campaign pursue personal and collective agency, often at the expense or in denial of political power. Where they do interact with more political forms of power, they evade its grasp upon them, most notably in their interactions with the war, but also while they engage with the Cerberus Assembly, the Cobalt Soul, and even the Revelry. The way they pursue agency, on the other hand, has far more to do with their own support of one another and their own individual power, especially where there is magic involved, and manifests in having the freedom to move and act as they wish in the world.

The culmination of this, as we know, is the mechanical ability in their final battle against Lucien and the Somnovem to manipulate the terrain of the battle map to their advantage with only imagination. At the same time, Jester and Caduceus can both call in free favors from their gods, one of whom is unlimited by the Divine Gate and in fact is far more governed by fey logic. Fjord has made three different divine pacts and is virtually unrestricted by any of them. Caleb's hallmark is an almost infinitely malleable home that almost literally seems to operate as a hammerspace, with a pinnacle dedicated to the potentiality of the universe, the application of which is one of his signature spells—against all odds successful in his initial goal, no longer fueled by guilt and grief, of bending reality to his will. It's narratively and thematically cogent that this be the calling card of the party as a whole.

The Mighty Nein are, in effect, dictated by Looney Tunes logic, and nothing else. They have been so successful in their pursuit of their own freedom that they no longer abide by the cosmic laws of Exandria, let alone the laws of physics or sense. So yes, from an external point of view, it does look exceedingly foolish for Essek to be traipsing around in Vasselheim under the Bright Queen's nose, but it's far more entertaining to argue that being a member of the Mighty Nein in fact simply confers the capability of ignoring the laws of reality without consequence when it's narratively convenient, characteristically interesting—or just really fucking funny.

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Im new to tumblr hello guys!!

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do u guuys remember how huge lovebug was. back in ye days.

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Grumpy little guy just sitting there

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is this anything?

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The Question

The Answer

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I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet but... Jace, while still alive, is probably going to jail, which leaves Aguefort without a Sorcery teacher for next September.

Do you know who: 1. just came to town, 2. is staying for at least a year, 3. seemingly has innate spellcasting, and 4. has actual experience taking care of and stewarding teenagers?

Picture it: First day of Senior Year, Gorgug Thistlespring walks through the halls, a rockstar drummer, pioneer of the Barbificer multiclass, and four time savior of the world. He's feeling great, this is gonna be a good year. Then he turns a corner and sees him.

There he is, in all of his High Elven glory, trying desperately to wrap his head around his to whom new students are referring to when mention this "chat" person. Professor Telemaine Lomenelda, Aguefort’s newest Sorcery teacher.

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local crime boss expresses tenderness thanks to the teen girl piloting him

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oh we are SO BACK BABY

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Gorgug in a shirt saying "I'm best friends with my sleep paralysis demon" which is partially a joke, partially promo for the fig and the cig figs new album

I like to imagine, now that fig is spending so much time in hell writing music, that she'll just randomly appear in gorgug's doorway when she has a new song they need to record. Like he's full sleeping and she just pops into existence scaring him and he flails so much it breaks his bedframe again. This happens at least once a week

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People who get sick from radiation exposure are faking it for attention, radiation is literally the divine light of creation and it nourishes those who are pure of spirit