thehobbblog

[thehobbblog]

Entry #27

Maybe I should have kept watch We were infiltrated in the night, by some tortured form. A half-man, half television hybrid. It looked kind of cool, you ever see Videodrome? Metal cords going into flesh, and a remote fused to a hand. It wasn’t carrying a weapon, but it almost killed Lucas. It did some mind-control buisiness, and got Lucas to belive that he was in a happy land of everything being fine, and convinced him to eat a novelty oversized lolipop.  In reality, Lucas was being confused into sucking on his own sword, and cut himself up really bad. Avram took care of it, and neither of them seemed to want to talk about it after. There was a lot of blood. I decided it would be best to kick the corpse around a bit, and we packed up. We have a long day ahead of us. Weylinn was still totally out of it, so I guess I’ll have to wait to yell at him.  We travel, for just as long as it took our feet to hurt and reach the Jewel. Everyone’s gathered in the main square, as Rialto has killed the hero hunter. He was absolutely radiant, and was too busy shouting at Solar over his cell phone (Paladins have cell phones now) to notice us. When we finally did get his attention, he was apprehensive as always. We were informed that someone finally found what King was up to. A sorcerer found him, saved him from his assailant, King returned the favour by being baited with a set of wind chimes, and trapped in a mask. So now we need to track down this sorcerer, and take his lunch money. Just find the guy who can capture a genie for fun, and try and overpower him. Should be impossible. We didn’t have time to argue the point, really. We thanked Rialto for the information, and a sandstorm swept into town. We protected our stuff, and huddled off to a sort of shelter for the afternoon. It was dank, dark and sullen. Everyone crowded together and looked sad for a good long time. It wasn’t that we were miserable, just bored. Everyone was there, or at least anyone without a home. We just didn’t have anything to talk about. Now, we could have been in there for hours, or up to a day. So naturally I claimed a seat at the only table, by laying out a blanket, and working on my carving. I’ve been meaning to make a set of Liar’s Dice. Just a memory of home. I like games, and I like people. So having a game anyone can play, and anyone can wager on would be beneficial. I wanted them to be special, so I’ve come up with an Underground sort of way to distinguish the numbers. It was calming.  I needed to be calmed, really. Weylinn was lead into a corner and sat down, still in shock. Every time I looked up at him, I flared with rage again, and every time I looked to Stuart, I felt elated. It was a weird mixture of emotions. The silence was broken by Anna, who wanted to buy a brewery. That somehow lead into a conversation about Jules wetting the bed. Anna asked how Jules can even wet the bed, if she’s a doll and Jules responded in her classic childish way. It felt normal. I dunno, she felt normal. Like, despite everything that’s happened, and she’s been through. There’s still a child in there. There’s still someone’s innocent little girl in that doll, and she likes the same things she always liked.  But she’s also a kid. Which means she’s got to be scared. I mean, that was absolutely abhorrent what Weylinn did, and now he’s totally unresponsive. She’s gotta be blaming herself, or just confused. I don’t know what to say, so I put away the dice and started working on something for her. This part of her, that we found used to be The Tar. Basically, the part of Jules that liked superheros and anime became a force for justice, just like in her cartoons. That was why Weylinn could so easily get her to sign up to be a... whatever you call it. By saying she could fight for justice, be a Magical girl. and that’s the story she latched on to. Trying to convince her she isn’t a magical girl will get us nowhere, and it could be more useful enforcing it. Weylinn can’t use her to do anything hurtful, if she believe she’s a force for good. So I decided to encourage it, with a custom made Sailor Moon wand. It shouldn’t be too hard, I pulled up a reference and got to work. Asked her what her favourite colour was, to try and get a feeling as to who’s wand it was supposed to be. Her favourite colour’s pink, of course. Which lead to a discussion where everyone gave up their favourite colours. Suicide’s was White, which is interesting. He and Jules had an argument about it for a while. 

Goldie loves Yellow, Anna loves Purple, I’m partial to red. So I started preparing for a Sailor Mars wand, as red was all I could do. Goldie got me good on that one. Pulled out all the stops, to hurt my feelings. Asked me to like his roots, because my shit taste makes good fertilizer. I need to stress again how weird it is having a real conversation with people, like how friends act. Not talking about strategy, or how we’re going to die. Just “Fuck you, your favourite colour is terrible.” I like it. Lucas even did something nice. He heard me complain that Stuart didn’t have a leash, and made one out of silk. It was nice, to help me out like that. It’s just too bad I couldn’t get the guy to wear it. He just won’t be restrained. I guess I spoil him. After getting a couple scratches from him, I decided to back off. Stuart was still riled up, and decided to take it out of Lucas. He mightily took a stance, and charged off the end of the table at Lucas, but didn’t quite stick the jump and tumbled onto his belly. Lucas responded with belly rubs, and it sort of worked it self out. That guy’s going to be dangerous one day.  Both of them are The Pathfinder mummy came in from the sandstorm, and Anna went to go speak with him. I finished the base of the wand, and spotted Hoodie hiding in a corner. I don’t know anything about what he does, but I know he has a hand in everything magical around here. So I confirmed he knew what Weylinn was up to, and I got him to look into the sorcerer we’re after, and sat down again. Anna went and talked to the Pathfinder, who told us to go see the plasma skeletons. So I guess we’re going to go find Cortez, I’ll be honest, I was mostly focused on the wand. The head came together, it was sanded well. I built it sturdy, because there’s no way she wouldn’t use it as an excuse to hit people. I even managed to stain it, with the berry win. Of course, now it smells like alcohol, but I hope that airs out. It needed some bedazzling, to fit into theme. I cut out some silk strips from my veil, and tied them to the head of the wand, and asked around for glitter. Turns out, Suicide had glitter. He carried it to see how far drops go, since it’s useful. Never really thought of it that way, but it works out. It was funny to think about, suicide jumping off a cliff while holding craft supplies. He seemed to get some enjoyment out of it. We bonded over how silly it would be to turn to dust, and be covered in glitter. Anna stepped in, to remind us that suicide is bad and Suicide shouldn’t have done it. Suicide started back into his “Well I want to kill myself��� routine, It was going somewhere bad pretty quickly. I had to turn it around, and quickly. We had such a chill going on, and now we were going to ruin it. So, I improvised. I looked Suicide right in the (Closed) eyes and told him to watch something undeniably good happen, as a result of him being around. And I gave the glittery, twirly, sturdy wand to the nine year old girl. She was ecstatic, truly happy. It was probably the most uncomplicated, joyful thing any of us have seen in a long time. It even made Suicide smile. Jules struck a pose, to show it off and I managed to grab a picture. It was heartwarming, we all felt a little better. Nobody had anything to say until the end of the sandstorm, and we all filed back out into the Jewel. I exchanged my carving tools for a better set, and met the party back at the wagon. Weylinn had come to, and was settling into his new life as a... whatever you call him. I had planned to rip him a new one, but after the touching moment with Jules I just wanted a break from everything. I started to work on my liar’s dice, to keep calm. But Weylinn wasn’t very interested in keeping me calm. He started a conversation, to clear his head. He apologized to me. He told me he knew how I felt about losing Paladin status, and that he was sorry he ignored me earlier. I’m not totally proud of how I handle the situation from her one out, but he was making a solid effort to piss me off in new and exotic ways. He promised to come clean about what he heard from the Ghul, and gave a shit excuse in under a paragraph as to how bad we should feel for him. I wasn’t having any of it. I was livid. It wasn’t a blind rage, or a hot fury. It was pure, cold anger. I need Weylinn to understand how badly he’d fucked up, and I needed him to hurt for it. So, I walked him through what had happened. I walked him through how he lied to us, for no reason. How something good came out of it, with Suicide joining us. I made sure to insult his intelligence a bunch. I never gave him what he wanted. I just made him sit there, burning up. While I walk him through each sin he made, one by one. SO that he clearly understands he is a bad person. Anna was actually getting upset with me. Just a few hours ago she called me a nice person, and now she was upset with how I was handling Weylinn. I carried on, to stuff he forgot to mention. Like how the scarf came from the Ghul, and how we don’t know what Violence did in his head. Weylinn started lashing out, with frustration. I made him start yelling at me, in the square.  I guess this is the most anybody’s questioned him, for a long time. It didn’t take much. I just denied him “We did good enough”, and he fell apart. I robbed the only excuse he had, and it angered him. We go through what it means for Jules to be a servent, or whatever she is. Basically, she’s connected to the negative plane, and can use that to travel to any plane for spells. Weylinn doesn’t have to do his own magic anymore, he can just ask Jules to risk her lfie stealing magic from an entity in another plane, and bring it back. Fucking great. Really, throughout it all I just pissed him off again and again. My goal was just to hurt him, because he was already vulnerable. As long as he understood what he did was a bad thing, I could feel better. And he did. Anna defended him, said he was only doing what he thought was right. And he corrected her. He admitted what he did was selfish It was a brekthrough, a moment of vulnerability. And I capitalized on it "Your situation is that you're a bad person. Given a second chance by an equally bad person." "You put all of us at risk, and tied a nine year old's soul to darkness for person gain." "And boo hoo, it cost the heavy price of being reminded what a shitty person you were." "or are, considering this is the second time you've used Jules for your own gain."  "Don't fucking tell me you know how I feel.” It’s probably the meanest I’ve been to anyone in a long time. And then communication broke apart. We both yelled at eachother for a while, and then Weylinn did the thing where you pretend to have the moral high ground by ending a conversation early, and walking away. We all felt bitter about the exchange, but I don’t know what to tell you.  

[thehobbblog]

Entry #26

I’m not entirely sure what happened today. We stumble upon an oasis, which was nice. It’s good to see oasises exist down here. We could have pushed past it, with our water supplies filled. We decided to stop in and check it out regardless. It was pretty, very serene. A pool of pretty clean water, surrounded by palm trees. Shellers were wandering around, and one giant Dungeon Breaker was lording over it.  The palm trees had coconuts, but they were huge. Like, you could fit two people in there for an incredibly uncomfortable bath. Anna went up to fetch one, but it felt a bit like stealing. You know how like in Aladdin they have the cave where everything’s free, but if you touch any of it you all die? I don’t know, I just felt like someone would have claimed this oasis by now. Maybe someone who had a big dungeon breaker pet, or a druid.  It didn’t bother Anna, who knocked three coconuts down. It didn’t bother Avram when he punched a hole in one with his bare hand. It didn’t bother Weylinn as he started looking for bottles to keep the milk cold--the pitch black sickly sweet milk--and it bothered the Devily as the nearby sand dunes began to move. A group of purple skeletons popped out of the dunes, and began swinging implements of battle. Lucas screamed that he saw them before, when I got the cloth. The Devily hopped on to the Burnt to engage them. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, and I couldn’t tell you why I don’t regret it. But I ran back to the cart, to try and come at them from the side. And in the free time that I had, I took the scarf out and tied it around my face. I can come up with reasons now that it’s over. The best one I can come up with was that I was reaching for the linen mask and missed. I’m pretty sure I made the decision consciously. Undead in the desert are a real risk, and after last night I was in no mood to lose anyone else. I was in even less of a mood to let Weylinn let the Devily die. Getting yourself killed is still killing yourself. I don’t know. I was confused, I was stupid, I was jealous. All of those things quickly gave way to anger. I was so mad, indescribably furious. Everything happened so fast. I saw the Devily taking damage he didn’t need to, and it made me upset. I saw Anna hanging on a top of a tree, and I was incensed. Weylinn used an armour spell he should have already had up, and I was fucking enraged. The skeletons were laughing at me, I could see blood, but there wasn’t any. Stuart chirped in distress, he wanted to help. I didn’t see Avram, because I stopped seeing anyone. I was completely beside myself And I was enraged  I don’t know how to describe it. I don’t think the skeletons deserved it. Every breath through the bandanna brought another wave of Violence into my mind, and I was breathing heavily. Images of the mangled bones, torn flesh, glorious battle. Nothing was dead, that’s too good. But it was hurting. And I was hurting a lot. If I seem oddly clinical, it’s because I’m not sure what of this is my memory, and what isn’t. Because I don’t really remember anything past putting on the cloth. I get flashes, images. I think I screamed a lot, because my throat was hoarse. I caused a lot of pain, very quickly. I saw blood, I saw pain, there was screaming, there was crying. I saw you, and I saw your face. LBG 16B3. Beautiful music rang through the air, or bones were breaking. I can’t tell. The scarf whispered sweet affirmation, and I followed it’s instructions. I wasn’t aiming at skulls, or whatever kills skeletons. I wasn’t even aiming at skeletons. There were no skeletons. There was everyone I’ve ever failed. Or maybe it was me. Everything I hated was currently in front of me, and I wanted it in pain long before I would let it die. Slashes flew faster and faster, unnaturally accurate and painful. I think the only reason I was still holding the shield was because I couldn’t bear to release the fist. Vision blurred, and I saw Evil. Just like I was when I was a Paladin. I can’t answer questions about it, because I don’t know what happened. But it felt fantastic. And I woke up in the sand, with everyone clambering over me. Weylinn wanted to talk about it, but my throat was so dry. There were a lot of dead skeletons. I’m told one of them caught fire, I’m pretty burnt. I don’t remember that. I remember the screaming. Apparently I started screaming, and collapsed when they were dead. Everyone tried to get the scarf off but it wouldn’t let go. It did, I guess. I hope I didn’t scare anyone, but I need to understand what happened. Maybe I should have one of them video tape it next time, if I learn what caused it. The scarf was off, and I put it away.  I know how much grief I gave Alice for trying to control the scarf, so I’m probably a fool as well. But maybe I can make use of it, for good. Maybe I should get rid of it. I want one of the cigarettes so bad. The Devily was almost dead, bleeding into the sand. It’s dust was already disappearing. Everyone spent their healing spells healing the living, but I was too tired to be mad anymore. He didn’t die, as much as he wanted to. I split my water with him, in apology.  Some of the dorks do magic, and find that the skeletons work for Cortez. Cortez wants fire, so that’s good. I wanted to light them all in a funeral pyre, and the rest of my friends stopped me. It bothered me regardless. I was already getting angry again. The group decided to beat a name out of the Devily, who didn’t want one. The also didn’t want to use his number, 48601. They called him Suicide, and the Burnt will be Bitter. It’s kind of cute. We had a lot of time to chat, and think while we rested a bit. I took some hits in the fight, it seems. I don’t remember any of it. Stuart still loved me, and that’s the most important thing. He showed me how good he was at intimidating the various shellers, and then fell into a coconut. I didn’t tell anyone about his bath, but he’s still sticky. We eventually load up and leave. Nobody questioned me on what happened, and I don’t care to bring it up.  I wonder if I can do it again. We go north, and eventually stumble on to whatever business Weylinn wanted us to take him to. I don’t mind the trip, we met the Devily and I got to work out some anger. But he very specifically told me to stay behind, while he does something with Jules. He wanted to do “The thing”. Where Jules becomes a magical girl. I have no idea what he’s playing at, but I hate it. Weylinn was going on and talking on about how delicate this situation is, and how only he’s qualified to talk to the whatever it is. I guess he forgot that every time he’s ever tried to be diplomatic with anyone it fell in the dirt, the idiot.  “Trust me on this one” he says. Just let him take Jules, and go do something secret with the most powerful thing we’ve seen.  I gave him what he wanted. I didn’t care anymore. If I came with him, as some sort of intimidation measure I’d just speak up and get us all killed. It’s much easier to make him pay for his sins later. I hope whatever he does isn’t irreversible. The thing he was meeting was a pink Devily, but I’m told it’s a Ghul. So like, a super powerful genie. The last time we did business with a genie it was horrible, but I guess it’s out of my hands now. Weylinn opened his mouth and addressed them by the wrong title, and I’m really surprised she didn’t remove him from reality that instant. He gave her two gifts, and she talked for a long while. I couldn’t make out everything, either the wind or my fury was drowning it out. I definitely caught what she wanted me to hear. She was the one who gave me the scarf, on Violence’s request. I’m marked. Jules was tainted, but not as tainted as she could be. Weylinn wanted to make her some kind of slave. Weylinn isn’t Weylinn, he’s Theron. He kidnapped Jules for some money, and did everything else terrible you can do. Then he stole Weylinn’s name and lost his memory. Theron is neck deep in Violence’s plan, this Weylinn thing is just some amusement while they do what they want. And Weylinn is a selfish son of a bitch, who deserves the worst despite what he tells everyone around him. I was fuming, I was beyond livid. I was ready to crack his skull open in the desert sun, if it weren’t for Jules.  Weylinn gets to live for now. Have it known I’m going to execute Theron on sight. Weylinn even got the easy way out. He got to be catatonic, and silent for over a day. Couldn’t handle it. The big baby couldn’t handle being told what a monster he was. And is. He kidnapped Jules for some coin, and demands to be forgiven because he forgot he did it. A bump on the head doesn’t absolve him, it only delays the sentence. We eventually make camp, and talk about whatever we can that isn’t how Weylinn just enslaved the soul of the girl that we’re trying to save, who he stole. We come to the aftermath of the Butchery, and it turns out Anna's negotiations also ended with all the fish people being genocides. We talk about how terrifying the dust is. And we talk about the Darkness. Nobody wanted first watch, so I took it. I didn’t watch, just looked over Grandpa’s letters. I felt peaceful actually. Stuart has cute little snores, he doesn’t have to deal with complex moral issues. I guess if you’re as stubborn as Anna, or stupid as Weylinn you get to ignore them as well. I envy them.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #25

It’s gotta be getting on a month right?

 Twenty five of these, generally I do them every night. Sometimes two in a day, but other times I forget to do them at all. Things got confusing in the halls, and I’m not good at math. I can’t even judge time by facial hair now that I’m cleaning up.

 It has to be about a month at this time. Shouldn’t I have seen something from my parents? An email asking how I am, or a Facebook post about a reward for finding me? Fuck, a news article that they died in a plane crashing coming to get me but something.

 Who am I kidding? We both know why Mom and Dad wouldn’t want to talk to me anyway. This extended vacation of mine is probably a relief to them, the longer the better. Who gives a shit?

This isn’t like me, I used to be the chill one. Voice of reason, very type B. Ending conflicts, mediating things. Not starting shit and passing judgment. Now I’m finding shit to be mad at, and I can’t tell you why. I’m just so irritable all the time.

 I don’t know what it is. Maybe this is just who Hobbs is when he stops getting his way. I like to think I’m not that type, but the evidence is stacking up against me. I don’t know how many more confrontations Weylinn and I have, before I finally break his nose. After that, I can’t be the good guy either. I’m just a bully who broke the Mage’s face because he’s too stupid to talk through a dispute.

 I could use “the excuse”. The same line every abusive parent, angry drunk and shitty boyfriend feeds to their loved ones. “No, it can’t be me. It’s not my fault. I’m a good guy, it’s just this shitty world.”

  I’m working really hard to be above “the excuse”.

 This is what I was ruminating on for most of the day. We made money giving the hammer to the blacksmith, and I spent my share getting my sword a bigger handle. It’s odd how mundane that sentence is, I almost forgot that I’m a fucking swordsman. People train years to do the shit I do, and I can see why, it’s really fun.

After getting it back, and practicing it’s not too much different. It takes a little more muscle to move around, but it hurts more. I’ll feel better if I can just make the bad guys hurt more.

In addition, Weylinn had time to tell us about what he wanted to do next. Stuart had time to practice intimidating the shellers. His choice of time wasting was more fun.

 Weylinn was trying very carefully to choose his words in such a way to get us to agree with something we obviously wouldn’t want to. He was talking about a “Lead” he had, where they would meet “Someone” in the direction of “Somewhere north”. Any attempt to get him to elaborate was met with very hostile demands of “What, do you have a better idea?”

The guy fancies himself a dark horse, but he’s a fucking idiot. You realize if you just told us “I want to go meet with someone shady in the desert, you want to come?” we probably would have agreed. We’re all for helping him do mage stuff, it keeps us alive. It’s like he’s going through extra effort to get us paranoid.

 He also told Geheim not to tell us anything. I don’t know that for a fact, but thanks to Anna I know the face Jules makes when she’s dieing to tell you something, and can’t. So yeah, I’m not happy with him. Whatever he’s doing, he should be honest about it. We’re supposed to be a team. The only reason he has to not tell us is if he thinks we’d get upset with him.

 If he’s hiding things out of fear, that means I might be getting to him. He’s still doing cowardly, probably terrible shit. But he’s understanding that there are consequences to his actions. Doesn’t seem to be helping, and I’m not sure it’s what I want. This team isn’t going to work if we all fear and distrust each other. I don’t know what to do about it.

 We get our things, and leave the Jewel again. The same heat, the same sweat, the same canteen and the same sand in my mouth. Maybe I’ll get used to this. Deserts were always cool, Lawrence of Arabia was a great movie. It’s fucking hot, but I don’t mind a little sweat. Stuart seems fine out here. It’s nice.

 We were marching for quite some time, and the night came. Just as the starflowers go over the horizon, you get a few hours of dim light. You can see without squinting, it’s not too hot. I like it, if not for the shifting shadows of possible dust things. It was about this time, where we were setting up camp. I don’t remember who saw him first, but we found the depressed Devily.

 He was just staring at something, and it was too dark to see what he was looking at. I start rushing to catch up with him. Say hi and all, and Weylinn stops me. He wants to check the area for traps and deception. I let him do his magic tricks, and he reconfirms that there’s nothing to worry about.

So with his permission to do exactly what we wanted to do earlier, we approach the Devily. Who starts reciting poetry. A lonely little thing, about traveling the desert. The narrator meets a beast, who greets him as a friend. The beast is eating his heart, and is oddly complacent about it. That’s more or less the poem.

 I thought I recognized it at the time, but I read so much poetry in school it was hard to remember. A quick Google search “Heat, bitter, eating poem.” and it confirms I’d read it before. Stephen Crane, an American realist wrote it ages ago. I’ll save you the lit-crit, but it’s a touching little thing. Either about how God sees man abusing their free will, or how the rational part of your brain confronts the rest of you or whatever else you put into it. I don’t know how the Devily got his hands on a relatively low-key American poet, but I like having other people down here that care for arts.

 The reason he was out doing poetry night in the middle of the fucking desert, was shivering in front of him. A Devily had burned, and laid amongst the wreckage of a raided caravan.

There’s no way of knowing who it is, or why it happened. Maybe the caravan’s owner had been raided and left for dead. Maybe a raider was ashamed of what they did to the caravan owner. Maybe some Devily ran away from all their responsibilities, and almost starved to death. Either way, it left a shivering, naked wretch crouched alone in the sand. Which is I guess what prompted the Devily to remember the verse.

 We talked about it for a while, what it meant to burn and what to do from here. Some of the group began searching for bits of mitral armour or a bow, but I’m fairly sure it couldn’t be Alice. If Alice was going to be consumed with her sins, it would have happened with the Butchery, or sacrificing Caramel’s dad or even just carrying around Violence. We might find her, insane and sinful. But her greatest flaw was not her conscience.

  Sorry I’m having a hard time staying on topic today. I’ve got my brain all scrambled.

 The Devily is deadpanning, as normal. Says he had been standing there, for quite some time. Just thinking of what to do with “her”. Leave her in the desert, to starve. Take her to the nearest town, to waste. Maybe just try to put her out of her misery so he can die doing something technically noble. I don’t know what his plan was.

 Living like that, it can’t be fun. Like, clearly they’re in pain. They have half a head and energy bursting out of satanic symbols burned in their skin. They’re stuck halfway between being a mindless beast and a living gravestone; because every time they are seen, people start theorizing. Oh, I wonder who that was. I wonder what they did. I wonder what they feel like. I wonder what happened to make them burn.

 They don’t have the sense to know they’re being treated like this. At least we think. They’re either reliving whatever made them burn, or just reacting on instinct. I dunno. Just looking at her makes me uncomfortable. Apparently, they do this when the sins of the world are just too much, and they can’t take it anymore. The Devily made it sound almost voluntary. Which makes him a bit of an oddity. If he’s depressed enough to kill himself, shouldn’t there be a similar thing? Maybe the reason he hasn’t killed himself is the same reason keeping him Devily. It’s hard to tell. Anyway, we just watched the thing for a while and the Devily asked us for our opinion. Immidiently fucking Anna turned the question around and asked him for his input. He did the sassing for me on that. We talked about the philosophy on it, and I gave the standard answer. “Life is always protected!” and all that. That’s what I’m supposed to say right? A Paladin—ex Paladin— who lost a loved one to suicide. I’m supposed to wage a war on the concept of depression or something.Star touring schools and talking about how therapy is the best. Fuck it. I don’t even know whose expectations I’m trying to live up anymore. I’m actually glad I’m keeping my own log, so I don’t have to rely on King telling my story. I am curious to what he’s saying. I wonder if I’m as much of a bitch in his story as I am in mine. I wonder if we’re going to see the Berry Golem, and I wonder what I can squeeze out of him in exchange for all the events that happen in his absence. He’s gonna want to see this. Anyway, eventually the Devily makes up his mind to guide the burnt one. He then asks to join us. Well of course he’s going to fucking join us. We’re down someone, we need the extra hands and we fucking owe it to this guy. You don’t get to have someone’s spouse killed and then deny them anything. Weylinn didn’t see it that way. He wasn’t sure if we could trust the Devily. The guy with nothing left to fight for, who cannot sin or deceive us. Weylinn thought he couldn’t trust him. Avram pointed out that he can’t be trusted because he looks like the devil, which is probably racist. Either way, Avram has a demon inside of him, so he’s not exactly in the best position to pass judgment. Anna agreed that we should take him on, and I’m glad I’m not the odd one out. I guilted Weylinn, because of the conversation we had earlier. Geheim promised to make sure he acts more nobly, so I dared him to go report to Geheim that he wanted to turn these two away. Over mistrust. Honestly, the only reason he has to slit our throats is pure spite for having his wife killed, and at that point we kind of deserve it. It’s decided he’d join us, myself and Anna taking the blame if he turns evil on us. He begins to order the burnt one around, and she followed them. I don’t know if all Devilys have this power, or just him. I do remember the Enforcer in the Daredevily settlement took care of burnt ones. They sit by the fire and had something to eat. I didn’t sit by the fire, I didn’t care to. I could see it from where I was sitting. I was happy on my dune, looking out over the sand. I’ve brought it up before, but I’m probably going to die here. I guess if I’m going to have a choice about it, I should get around to deciding how I want to go. Things would have been better, if I died a Paladin-in-training that everyone liked. Now if I die I’ll be a failed jerk, bulling everyone around and giving lectures. I don’t think I want to die fast, and I don’t think I was die easily. I wouldn’t mind dieing painfully if it meant doing something cool. So yeah, I cried a bit. I can claim sand got in my eye, or whatever. I just don’t understand what’s happening, or why any of it is happening. I’m being told on all sides what’s happening is out of my control and doesn’t matter. But then I get blamed personally for what happens, and the consequences are unbearable. I’m just trying to do good out here, but either I’m not a good person, or we’re all not good people. I have to double down on making everyone be better, but I have to do it without being a bully. I can’t stop the headache. I tried writing some songs down, but it didn’t help. This whole situation is pain. I gave up and started rummaging through my bag, and found the bunch of letters from Papa’s. They made me feel significantly better, and it’s hard to explain. Just comforting, you know? I miss him already. Stuart got too hungry to wait any longer, and got bored of intimidating the sun back over the horizon. So he came over to see me. He chirped, I chirped back and we chirped at each other until he got frustrated and tackled me. We both fell off the back of the dune, and tumbled into a pile on the other side. I tried to tickle him, he tried to slobber on me. My idiot bug and I have a great time. I hope I can go a while longer without seeing him bloodied. He’s too good for it. Edit: Addendum The night went absolutely horribly, by the way. A sandstorm moved in, and we had to bundle up very quickly. IN addition to normal sand problems, the sandstorm was full of dust ghosts, moaning and bumping into the caravan. Stuart and I bundled up in wool and sweat through the night, but we made it out. Nobody seemed to get infected, and now I’m even more pissed off about whatever Weylinn is bringing us out here for.

 In the morning, we didn’t speak much. Avram lost the fucking ring in the sandstorm, like an idiot. The Devily and the burnt one were kicking, and helped us set off. We move on.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #24

My watch lasted until morning. No more dust monsters, or skeletons or mysterious benefactors. Just the sun rising over the desert. Not the sun, but a chain reaction of flowers and fungus to release sun like rays. But if I’m never going to see the fucking sun again, it works for me.  I had to fight with myself all night not to light up, it’s been so long. Momma always said not to take candy from strangers, but she didn’t know about the underground dystopia either. I’ll save them for a special occasion. In the meantime, I got to watch Stuart wake up. He has this little routine where he cracks each joint in all of his legs individually. I guess it’s growing pains. Remind me to feed him more Iron Rice, if he accepts it. In any case, I’ve been trying to get him to do it on a rhythm, out of sheer boredom but it won’t take. He did his chirp purr thing, and nuzzled me some. We split breakfast, and he toddled off to go intimidate the sand and the sun. I fucking love my idiot bug. I was actually worried, you know? I’d get back to the cart and he’d be gone. Because Paladin stuff. I guess he’s too stubborn for something like that. I need to put a better effort into training him, if he’s gonna be like that. He’s going to need to learn to fight, that’s what his species does. But I also don’t want to see him getting hurt. Everyone else started waking up, and preparing to leave. Weylinn and Geheim started talking about whatever concerns them, mostly Geheim giving him “Hero Lessons”. Weylinn might actually have been a father, before losing his memory. We ate, I groomed. We put out the fire, and left. Another day on the road, another ridiculous scenario. I feel like the longer we’re out here, the worse people we are. Like, if I died on the plane to St Bernard, I’d be a good young man who died too soon. If I died on a mountaintop, I’d be a hero in training, taken before his time. If I died today, I’d be a failed Paladin fulfilling my expectation. I wonder who I’d be if I died tomorrow? I’m still me, but there’s beauty in innocence. Before this week, everyone could dream of the potential I had. Now everyone knows what I’m capable of, and what I’m not. If I’ve learned anything down here, it’s that nobody gives a shit and I should move on. So we move on, to the Jewel. We remember, just before entering that just having Violence’s scarf on us might cost someone their hand. Whoever got it from Rialto, probably stole it. Which means we’re implicated in that. Luckily, Paladins can sense evil, and if we flatly tell him we didn’t steal it, he’d know we’re telling the truth. That’s what Lucas thought, anyway. He blurted out the whole story to anyone who would listen. It seemed to work, actually. We were let off. However, they blamed the skeletons. I wanted to explain that seeing a skeleton in the beginning of the night doesn’t mean it was a skeleton who planted the scarf, but everyone had already moved on. As long as we don’t start a race war It’ll work out. The Jewel was currently all gathered around a single fight. The Blacksmith--a Devily Enforcer-- was beating the shit out of a lizard man. It seems the Enforcer bought a barely legal hammer, possessed by an earth spirit. The lizardman, was charmed by the hammer (Or the mage) and threw the hammer into a well. Then the Enforcer kicked the shit out of the lizardman, until the Lizardman had to be dragged away. Rialto was fighting to regain control of his market, and everything was still in chaos. Weylinn discussed what occured with Hoodie, and the Enforcer offered to pay us to go find the hammer wherever it washed up. I took the opportunity to exploit the situation. The Blacksmith’s merchant friend would be out of business for the day, and would be very interested in having our market prediction. I sold it for half a grand and a favour.  We all meet up back in the front of the city, and trace the hammer’s most probable location to a flooded bath house. I left all my paper, electronic and dry objects in the cart, and we were off. The bath house smelled like a fucking sewer, but not sewage. Like, there was clearly some shit in there at some point, but it wasn’t bog water. I guess enough fresh water pours through it to keep it relatively clean. Didn’t stop the water from being stupidly freezing. And I was wearing lead boots. Stuart splashed around in the water, not having a good time. I guess these guys don’t like to swim. I tried to pick him up and carry him as much as I could, but he can be squirmy. We stumble around in the dark and the cold, and eventually get rushed by the denziens of the bath house. Two terrifyingly large centipedes came rushing through the water, and started taking bites out of us. Between the dark and the cramped hallways, fighting was a mess. We all couldn’t hit the centipedes, and they couldn’t hit us. Eventually, they were felled and we could take stock of what was happening. Wey and Lucas were bit, and it was kind of festering. I was bit too, but I was fine. They seemed to be poisoned, and it was spreading fast. By the time we had finished arguing about what to do, they were already starting to have seizures. I don’t know anything about poison, but I knew that was bad. We decided to hurry and then find medical attention afterward. Chances are these centipedes were nothing more than a nuisance, and they’d be fine. We explored some more, got attacked some more. Weylinn found out why this place was called a “Bath House”, when he fell into one of the titular baths. It wasn’t a total waste, as I prompted him to search the bath for valuables. He found another IOU from King, which was great. Geheim decided to start hanging out on my shoulder, because she hates taking baths.  We stumble around in the dark again, and fight two more centipedes. Anna scared the shit out of everyone by shapeshifting into one of them. Like, Animorphs shapeshifting. Or Beat Boy. Like, fucking. She was Anna, and then she was a centipede. And it didn’t hurt or anything. Nobody cared. NOBODY FUCKING CARED ABOUT OUR ALLY JUST BECOMING A BUG AND IT’S ALL COOL HOBBS DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT.  It was at this point, Weylinn and Lucas chickened out. Their muscles were constantly having fits, and their breathing became labored. It’s like the babies never dealt with a little nerve toxin before.  Weylinn had the light, and decided we were leaving no matter what anyone thought. Nobody else was staying in this place without a light, so we followed. Anna--in centipede form--volunteered to stay behind and scout the bath house for the hammer. I considered staying behind to give her backup, but Weylinn and Lucas were seizing every ten minutes, and might need to be carried. We all went back to the Jewel. By the time we got there, Rialto had regained control of his market. Weylinn and Lucas collapsed, face down into the sand. Turning them around, Weylinn’s face was stuck in a frozen scream, and Lucas was still wearing the mask. I entrusted their care to Avram, and ran off to find Rialto. Rialto confirmed that the centipedes were no more than a nuisance, and that Weylinn and Lucas would be fine Of course, in between their current state and being fine was about nine more hours of pain, followed by a lot of uncomfortable bowel movements. We couldn’t really afford to wait that long, but we started keeping the two of them watered until then. He also took the time to explain his process of retribution for the market assault, and how when you’re charmed you’re still responsible for your actions. He spouted a few lessons, and offered to make me his apprentice in the future.  I don’t have the heart to admit I fucked this up. Save his mentorship for someone who deserves it. Anna came back from the bath house, having apparently found a couple places the hammer could be. She casually mentioned something about the centipedes getting handsy, and then started tending to her plants on Goldie. Our flower golem, informed us that there was a good reason we hadn’t seen Alice yet. She’d ran off. She left without her heal rock, and I still had VIolence’s Scarf. No idea where she went, or why. Anna didn’t seem to care. Her best friend runs off, and Anna was more interested in her failing botany project. There’s a really good chance we’ll never see her again, now that as a Devily she’d turn to dust if she gets herself killed. She came close pretty often, and now she doesn’t have anyone to heal her. I gave Anna shit for this, and she deflected it as always. Here we have her best friend gone, and two of her other friends twisted in pain on the ground, and she’s puzzling over how she fucked up planting seeds on a golem. Not a word of concern, or a Druid remedy. I saw her Magic a dust monster out of her body, and she couldn’t help her friends, or grow a tomato. I don’t know what’s up with her. Eventually, I guilted her into helping Weylinn while I worked on Lucas. I got his permission to move his mask while I gave him water, and I absolutely stole a look at his real face. I mean, if I’m going to die defending someone, I should know who I’m dieing for. It wasn’t as impressive as I had been led to believe. Laying his mask ajar on his face,  we start the watering process, and Avram wanders off. He meets with a Hidden One, and finds out there’s a herbal purgative that can get them on their feet quicker. I end up shelling out for it--as Avram can’t sell the Sage’s ring--, and we take both our sick party members and the remedy outside of the walls. What happens next is indescribable horror. True, gruesome human suffering. You haven’t seen someone scream pure elemental pain through their stomach acid, and you definitely don’t know what happens on the other end.  None of us met eyes with anyone else for a good long time after that. We take turns kicking sand over the disaster area, and try our best to get everyone presentable before entering the Jewel again. Where it seems Anna has been busy. One of the plant people had been in the Jewel, and Anna had gotten their help planting the seeds on Goldie’s golem. That’s all she told us. We learned from Geheim that the plant person also revealed that the plants hate us and don’t want our help. They’re raising money to fight the Jajini, and want no help from ‘mercenaries’ like us. I honestly don’t think I can blame them for that. We’re not good people. I can’t blame me either, I didn’t know what I was doing. Everything I did in the name of getting to the plant people faster is moot, because they didn’t ask for it. I’m not even a Paladin anymore, and I’m finding new and exotic ways I fucked it up.  Specifically, they’re not above hiring mercenaries. They’re above hiring us. Caramel actually kind of hates us, and given the resources might have us put to death. Which would have been real fucking nice to know this whole time. If you ask me. She’s totally right to hate us as well. I don’t hold it against her! Anna killed Caramel’s Dad Worse than that, she fucking sacrificed him. She named herself negotiator on the plant’s behalf, as a druid. In some nebulous “Negotiations” that I hadn’t even heard about until now, Anna used Caramel’s dad as a bargaining chip, and fucking sacrificed him. Oh, but Hobbs. “It’s not my fault!” she says. She has a whole list of reasons why she can’t technically be blamed. “I couldn’t get a word in” “He wanted it” “It was done before I could say anything.” “Have you ever argued with A-Devil-Thing?” I mean FUCK how weak is that? I mean, my two main objections were plainly obvious. YOU’RE THE FUCKING NEGOTIATOR: It is your JOB to get a word in. It is your DUTY to save lives. You gotta be fucking Mr. Smith goes to Washington and FILIBUSTER until they fucking listen to you! I DON’T GIVE A SHIT IF HE “WANTED” IT He was out of his mind, he was depressed. He wanted to give up. It doesn’t fucking matter what you SAY he was feeling like. We don’t sacrifice lives. We don’t let innocent men be put to death. We’re supposed to be better than that. We’re held to higher standards. You can’t give up on those people. Even if it makes your life easier, even if they seem to want it. People have free will, they have a right to die. But you can’t use their misery to your own advances. And you do NOT have permission to forgive yourself for it. So yeah, I don’t blame Caramel. I’m fucking pissed just hearing about it. This impotent happy-go-lucky human wanders into their conflict, volunteers to solve it and then KILLS HER DAD AND DEMANDS TO BE FORGIVEN. I’m so fucking MAD right now. Weylinn was no help either. “You weren’t there!”. “How can you judge anybody?” Taking the moral fucking high ground on me. Making it PERSONAL. The asshole accuses me of never even having the potential for being a Paladin. Forgetting I suppose that it was his cowardly plan that got it removed in the first place. He accused me of having nothing to work towards, when I’m the one in this conversation trying to make sure the party is HELPING people. Not killing people’s father’s because it’s less hassle than public speaking. FUCK I’m just trying to be better. I need to do better. I can’t hide behind my fear, and my reasoning. I can’t sit back after I’ve done something wrong and willingly convince myself that I was totally in the right to do wrong. It just doesn’t work. We need to be held accountable for our actions. If we’re going to walk around and muscle our will onto others, we gotta make sure what we’re doing is the right thing.  If Anna wants to take the easy way out, and plug her ears so nobody gets to inform her of the consequences. She’s the worse for it. If Weylinn wants to comfort her, and tell her it’s OK. Tell her she doesn’t have to to think of the big scary real world consequences for taking responsibilities you can’t handle, he’s the worse for it. If Lucas wants to tell me that it does no good for Anna to be upset of her sins. He’s the worse for it. I can’t be worse for this. No, it doesn’t do anything practical for Anna to feel guilty for what she’s done. No, telling someone they should feel more bad for what they’ve done never works. But somebody has to say these things. Somebody has to remind everyone that this isn’t normal.  They’re not allowed to not cry about this. They aren’t allowed to stare into the eyes of the Devily who’s wife they killed, and forgive themselves. They do not get to admire to beauty of a sunrise, without thinking of everyone who can’t. They don’t have the privilege to determine the fates of others, and then ignore the consequences. “I didn’t know any better” “I couldn’t do any better.” These aren’t excuses.  They used to be my excuses. They don’t get to forgive themselves, because I don’t get to forgive myself. I don’t get to look over the desert, and not flash back to park benches or family dinners. I don’t get to clean my things and not remember our household chores. I don’t even get to see a tiled room, without seeing your blood splattered around it.

We finished the argument, and everyone thinks I’m a dick. I don’t care, as long as they feel bad about something, I feel better. Weylinn challenged me to knock his teeth in, but between Geheim, Rialto and him asking for it I just didn’t. He’d been through enough pain today, anything I could do would be muted, I can’t tell you why I wanted to hurt him. He didn’t even do anything wrong. He just challenged me. Anna was the one I was mad at, and even then making a girl half my size cry isn’t something I want to do. I don’t know why I’m so angry all the time. This headache is killing me. We--Weylinn Anna and I-- put aside our differences and go retrieve the hammer from the bath house. We met a twisted thing, who spoke in some sort of tongue. Anna and Weylinn stared speaking back in the same tongue, cheerfully telling me that I only needed to speak backwards. But did they mean say all the words in reverse order? Say the syllables in reverse order? Swap all the words around and then pronounce them as new words? I needed a paper to work on for that. I eventually just resorted to speaking in palindromes until we could leave. We return to the Jewel, return the hammer. I stop by at the general merchant for more stuff. He sells me alcohol, and a “Vision root”. I’m thinking I just need to chill out, and that’s the fastest way to do so. I also get some woodcutting utensils, to keep my hands busy on the road. I forgot to get Stuart a leash, but he’s pretty good about listening to me. I don’t know where to go from here.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #23

It struck me, staring at the fire tonight. It’s the same thought I’ve already had a hundred times. There was just something about seeing Geheim--Jules-- by the fire that put it back in there. We’re not the good guys. We can’t be the good guys. You want a run down? You’re getting one. I’m looking around at annoyingly chipper faces, and the horrifying darkness. We’re all a different face of survivorship, but I don’t take that as an excuse. Let’s start with Anna. The slightly vapid young woman conjuring water in the desert, like it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t doubt her capacity to do good. If a poor soul wandered out of the desert, and into our camp; Anna would be pretty quick to offer them a drink, or a place by the fire. I just don’t think she cares about doing good. She’s completely unconcerned with the morals of what we’re doing. Guide the plant people? Sure, that’s a fine thing to do. Plant people are running to death? Ah, well can’t save everybody right? Help the slime people fight back the forest druid? Yeah, this murder is justified! The druid repays you with a vision quest? Ah, sure can’t hurt; as long as I don’t have to change my mindset. I mean, you’d think the “Druid” would give a shit what happens to the plants she puts under her care right? Feel some ethical responsibility? I don’t get it. She took and tore the Devily’s suicide papers because “It was the right thing to do” but it didn’t really “do” anything. I don’t get it, and her increasingly apathetic attitude is starting to get to me. Maybe that’s just how you survive down here. A healthy dose of double think. Let’s move on to Alice, since she’s no stranger to the spotlight. A true mercenary if I’ve ever seen one, let me tell you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Alice do something for the greater good. The first words out of her mouth upon hearing someone’s plight are about what the reward is going to be. Despite this, she never has enough cash on her. She’s always needing a loan, or a spot for the next big project she’s never actually going to accomplish. So why is she here? I haven’t heard much about it, but these two were apparently from St Bernard. They came down here looking for Jules, who got lost. So if she’s truly a mercenary, why’d she be selfless? I dunno, but here she is working on her bow and ranting about Violence. Apparently, she took Violence's scarf without asking--probably because Violence was bored and wanted to start a feud-- and now has dreams of renaming the scarf and ending Violence’s smug grin. She sounds like a fucking psycho when she starts about what she’s going to do to him with that knife.  Maybe asking “Where is my next dinner coming from” every day is a good way to survive. Calling mercenary behavior “Heroic” is just incorrect. She’s not one of the good guys, but she’s capable of it. And you know what pisses me off about both of them? The Butchery. I didn’t hear shit about the butchery from them. I had to hear about it from everyone else. A group of plants killing and butchering Devilys for food, with special knives designed to keep bodies from dusting. Who fucking knows how they do that? Maybe they’re all named “Meat” and by stabbing someone they make them “Meat” and keep them from turning to dust. The point is, they were a central player in this. They were right there, in the trenches. And they don’t talk about it. This was the worst even in many people’s lives, people only tangentially connected to it. And here are Anna and Alice, arguing about payment, and loot. Carrying one of the freaking knives. Isn’t that like if we found a skeleton wielding a piece of rebar from 9/11? Or a gun from the Manson murder spree? Fuck me man, put that away.  Alright, well maybe they’re bad examples. They’ve been down here too long, been turned into just survivors. Let’s move on.  Avram Jovinsky is an oddly smug penis that walks like a man. That was crass actually, let me start again. Avram is largely greed driven, and self interested. I’ve watched him berate a child over an impossibly large sum of money. I’ve seen him break all his shit and make it our problem. It’s not rare for him to fuck off after battles, taking his medical knowledge with him for a nap in the cart. He even risked all our lives for that fucking armour he wears around, and then demands I stand in front of him anyway. The guy’s fucking possessed by a demon. Did you know that? Asshole got shot a bunch, and got resurrected with a demon. A demon that’s growing stronger. It’s made pretty fucking clear in my holy book, that the domain of life is God’s responsibility. Every second he lives under protection of that actual fucking demon is a separate sin. And he still finds the time to give me shit for my faith, call himself a true follower. We have no idea how any of this shit works, and I hope it doesn’t work like he says it. The guy’s lost an arm, his agency and his soul, and I honestly can’t pin why he’s still here. When I first met Avram, he used my life as a bargaining chip. I’m not certain he ever stopped. So, Weylinn then. I’ve talked well about him before. He’s a good guy. Well this judgment wasn’t mine to give. Weylinn tries to be a voice of reason. He tries to mediate, to see the other side. Play devil’s advocate, hedge his bets. He doesn’t take risks, and he’s invested in surviving more than anything else. Yeah, he’s pretty set of getting Geheim back together--much more than the two people actually here to save Jules-- but if you ask me, he’s almost more comfortable with Geheim being a cute little doll friend than an actual screaming, crying little girl. He’s always got a good reason not to do things, and so do I. We found comradere in cowardace, and that needs to end. I’ve seen how he acts, all laughing and wit. But I’ve also seen him when shit hits the fan. I’ve seen the look in his eyes when Moloch charged him down. I saw his frown when the plants were tearing us apart, and I saw him volunteer to leave us behind on that journey. I’ve also seen him volunteer to stay behind to “Keep watch” at the tower. Weylinn’s #1 priority is ensuring Weylinn survives another day. And nobody can say that isn’t fair. I just don’t think it’s right.  And then Lucas. The enigma. The other. Guy shows up in a mask, and spends the first few days coldly passing judgment on us.    But he’s warmed up. He got a pet, we learned about his brother and by extension his father. He’s an ok shot. A really lackluster lasso... person. Lassoier? Lossoer? Lassie? He keeps himself groomed well, he’s concerned with keeping everyone moving forward and he really cared about getting his pet fed. His slime, Lux eats corpses. Which is horrific. I’ll be honest, I can’t get a read on Lucas. The mask doesn’t help. What I know about him, is that’ he’s curious. He isn’t afraid to ask questions, like how Anna and Alice will just ignore quandaries, Also, the Hero Hunter wanted him more than anyone. Regardless of how I feel, Lucas is the best of us. and I need to respect that.  And when the best of us is a cannibal, what hope is there? That’s my problem. I’m smart enough to realize that. This narrative doesn’t work as I’ve explained it. As I see it, nobody has a reason to be here. Not the careless, nor the mercenary, nor the cunt or the coward have a reason to be out in the desert facing death and disease for the plant people and the girl. So I’ve gotta be wrong about this. I gotta be misjudging, or not understanding. But I can’t help it. I see the faces, and the grimaces. I hear the groans and the complaining. And it’s made clear. If we’re the good guys, then there isn’t a whole lot of hope for the Underground. I’m just worried for the girl. She’s got a voice now, and with that a new outlook. This means something now, and we need to take responsibility for it. We need to take responsibility for a lot of things, actually. There’s no more dancing around it. You’ve probably caught on, but I haven’t said it yet. I fucked it up. I was given the chance of a lifetime here, and I fucked it up. I’m not a Paladin anymore.  I took Weylinn’s advice in the Divide, and that was too much. The headache got worse, and all the powers left. The healing, the aura, the good feeling. It’s all gone. As far as I can tell, it’s not coming back. I was really thrown a softball with this one. “Hey”, said the universe, “You’re a good guy, with no direction. Here’s some storybook powers, go out there and do good!” And I could have done good. I could have left this group at the fair, and wandered around solving problems. I could have left after the Halls, riding Stuart around from settlement to settlement around the Exiled lands and help people. Fuck, I could have stopped at any point, and carved a name for myself. I didn’t do any of that. I failed time after time, and someone finally had enough. There’s no arguing about it. What we did in that Dao’s home, was bad. If it was anything but very evil, I’d still have a chance. But I don’t. I don’t know if there’s any getting them back. I don’t know if I deserve them back. I think I just lost my ticket to the boy’s club of Sakko, Rialto and friends. As well as random kindnesses for being a good guy. Alice got her freedom, the Sage got his knowledge Weylinn gets his safe deal. And all it cost them was my self worth. I’m not proud of how I acted when reaching the surface, but I was so angry. The headache didn’t let up, and Weylinn was wandering around complaining about something he lost. I was about to give him a lecture in what it feels like to lose things, when he ran off. The asshole misplaced Geheim, left her to run off on her own. What the fuck kind of guardian does he think he is? At least Stuart can defend himself. I tried to have a fucking conversation about what had just happened, and what it meant. And he tried to talk me down. Tried to make it sound like it wasn’t a big deal. Like he didn’t care. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to hit someone more than I did in that moment. I could do it too, I’ve felt that glass jaw crumple before. But Geheim was on his shoulder, and she was very vocal.  So I hit him where it would hurt more. Geheim wanted to show everyone what a hero she was. I made it viscerally clear to both her and Weylinn that he isn’t a hero. That he’s incapable of becoming a hero. If Weylinn was to change himself to be more heroic, he’d stop being Weylinn. I layed hands on him, threatened to cave his eye socket in, threw him kind of gruffly. But I didn’t hurt him. I wanted to hurt him. Avram, the two hundred pound sack of shit in gaudy armour tried to calm me down. Specifically, he tried to explain that his faith is the correct one, and that because he has HIS powers, everything’s fine and will continue to be fine. I was about to bury my fist in his nose cavity for his care, but the asshole hides behind half a foot of steel and gold at all time. I had to step down. I didn’t want to hurt him, as much as I wanted to watch him in pain. Geheim promised me she’d make Weylinn behave with more honor from now on, and I stormed off. This headache was killing me, and I just wanted to see Stuart again. It’s over, I fucked up. And nobody cares. Because they don’t care about anything. They’d care if I lit all our shit on fire, but that’s only until they walk back to town and stumble into a new cart full of supplies. Stuart was just pleased to see me again. We split jerky and sort of watched the horizon pass by for a while.  We met with the Sage, and returned his intelligence. He repaid us with a quick mediation session, and a piece of paper. The paper is a prediction of tomorrow's market changes, and could make anyone with the capital to invest a fortune. The meditation session had me re-live some painful memories and then he asked to be thanked. Avram badgered the guy for the ring we brought the intelligence in, and we left.  Which leads us back here. Sleeping in the desert. Waiting to be rushed by dust creatures. I’ve repurposed a modesty veil to function as a sort of bandana, or gas mask. Hopefully dust has a hard time making it through a filter of silk and water.  Weylinn brought wood this time, which was nice. No dust monsters came, but we did hear a skeleton around in the dark. My watch was third, and Alice got up to watch with me, apparently concerned with how well I’d watch the darkness with my habit of listening to music, or getting lost in thought. Serves her right, because I was the only one to notice something get into our cart. I checked up on Stuart, in his box (he sleeps like an invertebrate angel) and then found what was tampered with. Some benefactor left me a present. I know it was for me, because it was cigarettes, Nobody else smokes, I’d be able to tell if they were an addict. I don’t share this information with people, except for the other day. I asked in the Jewel if anyone had seen someone selling tobacco. That was it. But here they were. A mostly empty pack of “Robust Gold��� cigarettes. They smell just wonderful, and the package seems to use real gold. Knowing how the Underground works, it means they use real Robust too. I’m keeping them with me, in a leather sack to keep the water out. I want to light up, but I shouldn’t. Not until I need to.  The cigarettes weren’t the only thing. There was a scrap of cloth and a note. The cloth, is Violence’s. Or the cloth is Violence. I’m still unclear ont hat. The note said “I’m exited” I don’t understand what it all means, but I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to. I mean, I’ve been getting handsy, yeah. I can’t seem to get a point to these people unless I grab them, or push them about. Yeah, hurting things feels good. But that’s just how this works. Drawing blood is nice, it’s visceral. Everyone knows that. It’s not weird. But whoever dropped this off, they’re trying to say something. They’re doing it based off knowledge they couldn’t possibly know, short of mind reading or spying. Alice isn’t getting Violence’s cloth back. I’ve decided that. If she cared about it, she would have got it before we left the city. And I didn’t nearly die for this damn cloth if she doesn’t even care for it. But, I’m not wearing it. I shouldn’t, right? It’s bad, it’s sinful. It’s an item steeped in blood and horror. I don’t need my paladin abilities to know this is a bad idea. But it’s here, and it’s in y hands. And someone seems to think it’s a good thing. I wonder if it’s Fate. Rialto is going to be furious when he sees me not only not a paladin, but carrying this thing. I don’t give a shit.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #22

The plants were supposed to be in the market. They weren’t. The Paladin Solar would be here too. He wasn’t. We’d go see the Hermit, for a quick adventure. It wasn’t. And I’d prove to the others I’m actually ready for these Paladin responsibilities. I wasn’t. It was hot as shit, and we all walked while the hooded guy sat on the cart. Avram dozed the fuck off in the back of it, with Anna doing her druidic mediating crap. I really didn’t care. We move into the city, “The Jewel” and checked our cart (Along with those two) into some sort of corral specifically for this purpose. Cost way too much money, but it’s better than being raided. Consider it a tax, or something. I almost took the fee out of Avram’s fund, to spite him. He’s getting really comfortable with me doing him a favor like this, using me keeping a share for him as a guarantee. I’m going to start being generous for him, if he doesn’t smarten up We all move into the market, but I stayed behind. Someone was tending to a crazily big Dungeon Breaker, and Stuart and I just sort of admired it for a while. Apparently, Stuart will stay this size if I don’t feed him, but he’ll also eat basically anything. I won’t have him eating corpses like Lucas’ nightmarish friend, but it’s good to know anyway. The big Dungeon Breaker didn’t care much for my hatchling, and Stuart didn’t appreciate me having to carry him everywhere. I should get a leash. We enter the market, and buy things. This was less of a flea market, and more of a, whatever you call it. The thing from Aladdin. A Bazarr, Wey tells me. Well, I’ve seen documentaries on this kind of stuff, read stories about how things are done in this environment. Basically, everyone’s expected to be cheap. If you’re selling something, it’s gotta bet the best of the best, and the price raise is only to represent the QUALITY and CRAFTSMANSHIP, and that kind of crap. If you’re buying anything, you have to be a weary traveler, spending his last dollars in the best store, and needing the discount to survive. It’s actually rude not to barter. If you walk up to a stall, and pay the asking price you’re both denying the store owner friendly conversation, and tacitly saying that you believe them to be a beggar. So you gotta play along.  So I did, got some great deals on stuff I needed. Got a veil, that’s super light in one layer, but folder over a few times I can make a makeshift mask, to breath through. Even if it doesn’t keep the dust things out of my lungs, it will keep the desert sand out of my mouth. The blacksmith had a Devily enforcer working on weapons and stuff, he says he’ll make me plate armour if I pay him a small fortune, and promise to live nearby for about a quarter of a year. I’ve got commitment issues and no money, so we decided to talk about it later. We eventually stumble into The Inquisitor. Everyone’s been telling us how there’s no sinners in The Jewel, no thiefs or miscreants. Because this Inquisitor senses all wrongdoings and punishes them swiftly. No crime, no unhappiness. There is no war in Ba Sing Se, you know. Well, we meet the guy. He’s nice enough, for a ruthless Inquisitor. Nearly took Alice’s head off, to take Violence’s cloth from her. Don’t want to be on his bad side. He won’t let us chase the plant people, because he can’t let us charge into death. A lot like the thing Violence told us, in Sakko’s armour. I’d be suspicious, but it isn’t like a comedian to use the same gag twice.  He’s waiting for the Hero Hunter to attack the city, so we’re not allowed to anything heroic until that happens. Or if we do, we need to stay nearby. Solar, is nowhere to be found and is apparently both too tired to speak to us and in fighting shape enough to take on the Hero Hunter by himself. I didn’t know we were that much of a pain. Halfway through the conversation, Anna vomited a dust monster and he had to smite it. Made us promise to stop vomiting in his town after Anna went to wash the taste out in the communal well.  So we might be that much of a pain after all.  He gives us holy water to cure the plague, and tells us to get comfortable while we wait for the Hero Hunter to come kill everyone. I thought he was being kind of a dick, for no reason. My insecurities acted up, and I apologized to him for basically no reason. I couldn’t explain to you why, it was stressful. He says I ought not to worry about everything, like everyone else says I should do. He says it’s ok to mess up, but it’s not ok to do nothing. Just act, go with your gut. Your gut can’t be wrong, because you’re a Paladin. Your gut’s always right. That sort of thing. But I’ve acted on my gut before. I’ve made decisions based on what occurs first. People get hurt. I’m not a good person, on the first try. It only hit me on our way out, but if this really is a desert town out of a storybook, there should be somebody selling Hookah stuff right? I aint seen where to get a pack of smokes down here, and I could really use it. Don’t feel the craving or anything, probably responsible to the Paladin stuff.  Probably shouldn’t overdo my immunity to drug addictions though, but I will purchase some more alcohol next time we’re in. We gather our narcoleptic friend out of the cart, and set back out into the desert. We have a limited amount of time to offer our help to the hermit guy, or we might be sold off. Weylinn stops us, to literally chat about the weather. Like, literally stops us on the way out of the gates to talk about what a great weather-predictor he is. So fucking glad you took an amateur meteorology course, man. How’s your knot-tieing and cookie sales? Wanna tell us about how much fun you had in Space Camp? Fuck, I mean. He’s a good guy, I think. But we got shit to do. Nobody seems to care what we’re doing here. We have a bunch of plant people running directly to a place, which happens to contain a second part of Jules. But nobody seems to care. “There’s a tornado of fire in the way, guess the’re all dead. Go spend money in my town’s market, by the way.” I’m pissed off about it. It’s not helping that everyone seems content shopping and discussing how great their cumulo-nimbus location skills are. Fuck me man, you think a genocide and the loss of a child would get at least one of these people riled up. Now I’m the dick for being upset about it. I swear, I’m actually dead and this whole underground adventure is an elaborate purgatory to get me to learn to let go of things. We head out into the desert, and follow the rock. The hermit isn’t hard to find. We were going to approach the situation carefully. We need to having him let us help him, but can’t give away why. If we let on that a Dao put us up to assisting him, he won’t let us. Anna started the conversation with delivering a NAME DROP of the Dao to the hermit. I had to do the quick thinking, it was on me to charm our way past his defenses. Explain that while the Dao had us find him, we were actually there for a different reason. He only believed me because of the Paladin stuff. I think it’s getting stronger, and I’m getting more used to it. It could work out. He says he’s the “Sage of Amnesia” and he’s forgotten something. A Dao used underhanded language to steal his intelligence away, which distressed the sage to no end. He used to be a mathematical wizard, and now he’s a simpleton. Avram thought it would be funny to ask him some simple math questions. Watched him struggle with it, almost gleeful. He needs to start minding his manners.  We agree to help him, and he gives us the location of the Dao that took his knowledge. If we bargain with him, using wits and a relic he gave us we can walk out of there with his math knowledge, and he would be grateful. It’d be simple. It wasn’t. We travel as fast as the Shellers would go, to make it to where we needed to be. They tried to explain it, how the Dao come from... somewhere else. And sometimes the world opens into that somewhere else, but only for a bit. I just stand where I need to. We go to the designated location, and wait. Sure feel heroic, laying around. The Dao that put us up to this whole event found us, and gave us three smooth sandstones, for traveling along ground while in the Great Dismal Divide, which I assume is where we were going. Eventually, the ground opens up. Sand starts pouring into the earth, and us with it. We suffocate. And wake up, in a very dark place of earth and misery (Presumably). We stumble into two... look what’s going on in this Divide is beyond my vocabulary. You play Pokemon? The First one? Imagine, like. Tangela. The little ball of vines with a face in the middle. But replace the vines with Sandshrew’s scales. That’s what these guys were. Little balls of armour with a face that looked hard to hit.  They wanted all our metal, and I was kind of reluctant to fight them. The last thing I wanted was for one of them to take a bite out of my kickass new sword. They wanted five million gold pieces, so I handed them five gold pieces and told them it was five million. That and some smooth talking got them to agree to not eat all our metal, and eventually they got scared off. Scared off by a Dao, and a dust man. They’ve been negotiating with the same Dao we’re after, and are upset with how good at math he’s suddenly become. We explain our situation, after nearly being beaten to death and are told that if we threaten to report him to “The Great Khan” he might see things our way. Or attack us. You might ask why I’m deliberately leaving the Dao’s name out of this, it’s because I think it’s bad luck to be name dropping powerful spirits on a blog. Also, that fucker’s mine. We continue forward, and get jumped by a dust thing. Avram has the idea to summon a Dust Devily, which runs down the hall. I won’t describe what happened as it happens, because we couldn’t see shit. What happened in the dark however, is that this Dust Devily apparently ate all the dust monsters, turned them into one big dust monster and died.  And of course, the dust monster hit me. I didn’t get any in my lungs, luckily. The Dao’s guards explain to us that they’re thankful for our help in stopping the dust monsters, as they’re becoming a nuisance in the recent months. I’ve got thirty gold coins on whatever causing those dust monsters to exist becoming our problem to solve within a month. We’re allowed to go into the Dao’s chamber, to speak with him about getting back the Hermit’s math knowledge. And Weylinn sells me the fuck out. Thirteen seconds after getting in there, Weylinn makes the call that not only are we going to negotiate, he’s gonna make me do it. I was furious, but I tempered myself. He might not be the best tutor, but Violence taught a valuable lesson back on that mountain top. If I were to use the opportunity to start the fight, if I were to risk everyone’s lives to be “above” their decision, then everything would end. We wouldn’t trust eachother. We would die. So I talked to the Dao, tried everything I could to get him to give up the Hermit’s knowledge. Nothing worked. Either I’m really bad at negotiating with genies, or that genie was incredibly overconfident in his ability to murder us all. I was getting dizzy, after a while. Something was wrong. We shouldn’t be doing this, I know that we shouldn’t be doing this. We’re about to do anything this asshole wants, just so that we can get away without having to get our hands dirty. What kind of fucking lesson is it teaching, to have this guy get away with all the terrible shit he did? Because we’re cowards. Weylinn saw my hesitation and took over. Negotiated the Dao down from “I’ll just kill you” to “Hand me the Hermit’s relic, and 200 gold and I’ll give you the knowledge”. But that wasn’t enough. Now Weylinn was doing business with him, and I was being complacent. I was wracking my mind. I’ve learned so many lessons down here. This had to be a test.  Don’t kill the Dao, listen to you group. Don’t give mercy to those who don’t deserve it. Sometimes, you gotta do what you feel is right. Even the Son of God flipped tables, and whipped merchants. Draw your sword, talk him down, throw the holy water, save your resources. I had so many voices, telling me so many things. And all I could think about was how hard my brain was hurting. It’s like, not only was the situation driving me crazy, but my own complacency, and my confliction was making it worse. I couldn’t think straight. I tried to use my Paladin powers, and they didn’t come.  It’s simple, just put the metal thing in the bad guy. Thieves get their hands removed, this guy is a thief. Don’t betray Weylinn’s trust. This is the Smite, use it wisely Shedding blood isn’t ever good I close my eyes, and it doesn’t help. I can feel this sense of dread, overpowered only by a stinging migraine. I needed to act. My hand was on my sword. We needed to end this. And Weylinn calmed me down. The money was already in his hands. Everyone had agreed, we all decided it was wise to do business. You can’t let him get away with this. We can’t just leave, right? More advice in my head. Thoughts that aren’t mine. “Value your group above all, Regardless of circumstances” I don’t know if I made a conscious decision, it was already decided for me. And we were already out the door. And we were already sitting in the place to return home. And we were being lifted back to our world. And it was over. It’s all over.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #21

Nobody’s told me what the fuck a desert’s doing down here. No word on what exactly is blowing sand in my eyes, or what this fucking heat is coming from.  Been told the “Sand” is Dust--thus the “Dust Desert” thing-- which means it’s less sand, and more granulated corpses blowing in my eyes. That’s fun. Not as many bugs as I’d expect either. And whatever Sakko was going on about, how “Fate” roams this place. Aint seen that either. Just fucking sand. And my lead-ass boots. We sat and had an argument before setting off, because if we do anything the easy way it’s not worth doing. Weylinn wanted to enchant his new Spear, King didn’t want him to ruin it. I was trying to get Lucas to submit his rope for enchanting, but apparently he doesn’t want to be Wonder Woman. I thought it would be cool, anyway. The “Star flowers” or whatever they are mimic the sun in this place. So rather than a blazing star beating down on our necks, we have a blazing cluster of flowers. That’s kind of neat at least. They give you sunburn, like the sun. Make you sweat, like the sun. But they aint the sun. I miss the sun, is my point. We trundled into the desert, and imminently Avram starts panting. I was about to start asking where he keeps his Insulin, before I remembered we were in a fucking desert, and this guy was wearing a full suit of blazing hot metal. I mean, so was I. But I’m aware of my limits. It’s kind of uncomfortable, lugging the chainmail around but it’s a lot less uncomfortable than being stabbed. Actually, Violence tore the shit out of it, and it’s kind of breezy for that reason.  So, walking in a straight line. Alice starts bitching about the heat, Anna’s still wandering around with no real shirt on. Weylinn’s smug in his wizard-spell armour thing. No real bugs, which is nice. I bought extra water, which was nicer. Stuart’s doing fine, but I’m not sure if he would even show me if he’s uncomfortable. And keeping with the theme of discomfort, we met a college philosophy class doing their “Thought circle” thing. I kid, it was a circle consisting of King, King’s brother Nacre, Some alien-looking guy I was pretty hyped about. Some purly black crystal guy I was considerably less hyped about. A twisted up alien, and a new Masked One. I’m really not great with this mind magic thing. I’m still upset about having Latin put in my brain without permission, and even less OK with having my personality split apart in that Halls experiment. This Masked one--Pierogi-- communicates entirely through it, I think. He just sort of sits there, and staring at him you naturally come to the conclusion he wants you to. He looks nice enough, dresses sharp, seems friendly. But my brain’s having a hard enough time without people mucking around in there. He makes me uncomfortable, regardless of the demeanor.  But I’m sure he knows that. Anyway, philosophy. They were clustered around a big rock. A stupidly large, pure black rock with symbols scratched all over it. Weylinn translated it as “How can any man born of earth claim to divine the true purposes of the gods.” According to King, these guys gather from time to time to do their thinking circle, and whatever goes along with that. I always hated that shit, in college I mean. Philosophy majors always had this “Smarter than thou” attitude about fucking everything. Like being able to theorize about living as a brain in a jar made them better than everyone. Like by nature of their major, they’re just better thinkers by default. I didn’t really want to get involved with that attitude multiplied by King’s regular attitude. But, it was kind of funny. An art project, almost. Performance acting. If you want me to read into it, I think it has more to do with the medium than the message. We’re in the middle of a fucking desert, and one defiant structure reaches to the heavens. This desert is literally made of dusted corpses, and the heavens are literally a facade. It’s absurdist in nature,  A cluster of earth--like mortal man-- standing atop a mountain of those that feel before him, crying to a heaven that doesn’t exist for answers he won’t get. And that moment was left in stone for anyone else to stumble across. Between the monument, and the desert I may as well have just started quoting Ozymandias. But anyway, the circle began it’s meaning. Weylinn decided he was on the intellectual level of the immortal beings int he circle, and hopped in. Avram thought his holy book could bring some new light on their musings, and filled in as well. I was debating whether or not I really cared. I thought it was funny, how quickly King made the conversation about humans. This guy was berating us not minutes ago, for being foolish mortals who couldn’t possibly keep up with the likes of him. No, let’s have King sit there and talk loudly about what insights he’s making. King--who I’m told was originally a mortal man born from earth-- would sit and divine the purposes of the gods for us. It was priceless, really. Real dramatic irony. The philosophers went around in a circle like that, agreeing with each other and disagreeing with individual points. All very civil and hum-drum. At around the point where Weylinn excitedly gibbered on about literally nothing I put my headphones in and tuned out. I’m not even sorry. Less than eight hours ago I had King trying to explain to Weylinn all about how all realities work, and how none of it matters. Now all of a sudden nothing matters, but this rock does. Weylinn thinks it matters so much, he’s willing to sit at the big boys table and speak in circles until he gets an “Atta boy” and a gold star. I’ve got enough responsibilities, I don’t need their judgment on my shoulders as well. Fuck it’s hot out here. They finished, Avram apparently impressed everyone with his wisdom. Weylinn was dismissed as a sycophant, but not punished. Avram even turned down his reward, which was weird. We all got back to the wagon, and head off. I let Stuart out into the sand to walk with us for a while. He got thirsty pretty fast. We all did, by the time it was dark, and settled down to camp. The starflowers were setting, and we were tired. And then we remembered we didn’t buy fucking firewood. Wisdom for the ages, impress immortal beings with how in tune with everything you are. Forgot fucking firewood. We’re halfway through freezing to death when King steps in to give us magic fire. We’re putting firewood on the list for our next shopping stop. That’s if we fucking make it there, actually. We were ambushed in the middle of the night. The dust was collecting, like in a dust devil. But it grew human features, and screamed at us. Which is considerably less cool than dust devils. Then, about twenty five more dust creatures popped out of the freaking woodwork to come get a peice of us. They didn’t hurt, but they had a bad habit of getting inside your mouth. And once they’re in there, they don’t come out. I didn’t notice it at the time, but Alice made a friend int he fight. A huge turbaned ghost thing, who murdered a whole bunch of the dust monsters for us, in exchange for all of us helping out a friend of his. If we don’t go find his friend, and help him within a week one or all of us are going to be super enslaved. In the meantime, we all have “The Plague” for having contacted the dust things, and can expect to die shortly. Fucking A.  We were given a rock, to lead us to the guy we’re supposed to help out. Shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Dao only said we needed to offer help to him, so we can weasle out of it. But we didn’t sleep easy. Aside from the mouth drying disease, being handed a death sentance, and a slave sentance isn’t a great bedtime story. Stuart was just happy for dinner. We took off the next morning, pretty silent. Shellers got fed, Stuart got fed. We moved on. We made it a good hike, and ran into another curiosity. Some punk in a hoodie. He’s some bug time mage person, going it alone. Bought a whole lot of our junk, rubbed his mage powers in Weylinn’s face for a while. Did you know wizard people are supposed to have spellbooks? Weylinn doesn’t have one. Didn’t know he needed one. He’s like the kid who never brought his pencil to class, and wondered why he still failed the test at the end. Anyway, I’m getting pretty good at telling if people are threats with the evild etection, and I caught that this guy was going to magic us to help him out if we refused to. But we didn’t and gave him a ride. He’s hiding his face, and name. But he’s got a good sense of humor. Whatever floats your boat I guess.  He told us about the next city, and how we can cure this disease. Thank God. My turn to lead the shellers, signing off or whatever.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #20

We checked our damn cart with the fantasy custom agent These Devilys have a bureau of suicide, so I’m not surprised they’re a sticker for smuggling. He says it will take all day, and I’m just itching thinking about those plant people. They would have been held up for a day too. We could have made it. If we had less rests in the Halls, if we sped up the Shellers. I don’t know. It pisses me off. But Paladin’s don’t get pissed off. We forgive. Or we don’t, but we do? Fucking Sakko and, augh. I’m just so antsy. We get into the main area, and there’s a path to some sort of market. The group pesters a working devil-thing-but-not-A-Devil-Thing for everything they could buy in the aforementioned market. After bothering him for long enough, they finally got the clue and started going to the market. Anna met with the head slime from the earlier druid fight, who gave her a bowl of grey mold. Anna fucking ate this bowl of rotted... matter. And passed the fuck out, feverish and sweating. What the hell am I doing keeping these people alive, if they’re just going to put everything in their mouths? Anyway, she woke up. Didn’t want to talk about her vision quest. I’m not saying I would like a taste of her bowl, but I had to get ripped the fuck apart for my life lesson. You think she’d be grateful to be thrown an easy one on this. Whatever it got her, it was probably worth it. We enter the market, and it felt familiar. Just people selling things, haggling, arguing. It was like a flea market, really. I took Stuart down, to get something for us to drink.  We get to the market, and scatter. Alice goes looking for new archer stuff, despite being much more into the stabbing stuff. Anna meets up with our robot friend, from the Halls. Apparently it’s just roaming the Underground, having a good time. Good for it. I stumbled into a magic item shop, where everything is cursed. The Hidden One apprentice only really knows how to enchant things, if they’re also cursed. Healing potions that hurt you a bunch, but the heal the hurting and then some. I wasn’t really interested. I lost track of Lucas, in all the shopping. Wey and I had a spat, about his magic again. Then he felt the need to call King in, and have a long conversation about reality. Realities. How there’s many of them, and they get destroyed and reformed all the time for like, no reason. I didn’t really care to be told that nothing matters and nobody cares. I was emotional as it was, and having King and Wey nonchalantly discuss the other realities King and this Broken one have ended was just not what I needed to hear. I gave Weylinn a piece of my mind, and the Apprentice heard the argument. Apparently, neither of them mind how everything and all-when could just end, at any moment. This doesn’t scare them. In fact, they think I’m a blubbering baby for being concerned about it. They called me petty, even. I went out for a drink. It’d be nice if I could find a pack of smokes in this place, but Paladins aren’t supposed to have drug habits, I think. Maybe drinking is ok. I needed to calm down, the energy was making Stuart squirm. I was at the vending machine, when Lucas’ friend came up to me. The little slime guy kept yelling at me, so I gave it something to drink. Then I watered myself and my bug. The suicidal Devily was there, enjoying some slime of his own.  The guy knew a bunch about slime biology. Probably would have been a lesson better spent on Lucas, or Anna. I can’t really look at the living puss bubble and keep a straight face.  He declined my offer of helping him with whatever he needs help with, which is fine. He’s looking for a new purpose, or an easy way to kill himself. Whichever comes first. I don’t feel like informing him about our party member’s gun. Any case, A-Devil_Thing was also down here, and I got a chance to speak with him. Didn’t bring up the thing about contacting my family. Did tell him about the ally of his raising an army in a time of peace. He didn’t care for it. Alice wandered around, trying to sell her emerald. Apparently not understanding that nobody was here to buy things like that. It was second-hand embarrassing watching her go from stall to stall. I eventually found my way to the sword stall, and fell in love. There was a slime merchant, who had turned sharp items into a thing of beauty. You wouldn’t believe how incredibly fucking sharp things could get. Like a sucker, I bought the fanciest, sharpest most intricate sword he had on offer. I’ve named it Dare, because it was certainly a risk as far as investments go. And also the lettering on it (In whatever language it’s supposed to be) kind of looks like the word. I know if Lucas had bought one of their slime katanas or such, I’d be making fun of him. But I feel good about the purchase. After spending too much money, Stuart and I sat down to eat. The guy got distracted, and scared off a slime shopper for fun. I wanted to scold him, but he looked so cute and proud of himself. A Devily enforcer told me all about how they’re supposed to be kept, which was helpful to write down. Apparently his companion is all about Dungeon Breakers, which was convenient for me. What was also convenient, was the stall selling wagon parts that all happened to fit our wagon just fine. So we bought a set of wagon parts to get us through the desert easier. What we didn’t get, was anything fucking useful like firewood, but more on that later. I confronted Anna about her hatred of birds,a nd she denied it. We gathered our things, had a laugh and moved on. We left the market, all of our things in tow. Got the cart back from the customs person, nothing missing. We looked out over the desert, and the sun rose. Or rather, a series of sunlight-mockery flowers lit up in a sequence to mimic a sunrise. I liked it, either way.

We set out, into the desert. And I’m wearing like four layers, one of them being a metal suit.  Fuck me, man.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #19

Things got a little heated with Violence around.  although we decided to go to bed, not all of us could sleep. I’m so glad I have my phone, I’d go mad if it weren’t for my music. You know that old Twenty One pilots song?  “ I ponder of something terrifying 'Cause this time there's no sound to hide behind “ I need this, and I don’t thinkt he others would understand. Everythings OK when I have my headphones. I can shut up. I need to find an outlet soon. I came back out to the fire to find Anna poking some coals. We put some more tinder on and got it bright enough we could see eachother’s faces. Neither of them were too happy. It’s strange, really. We’ve been fighting together for a while, but we don’t know much about eachother. You figure you’d know someone’s favourite colour, or favourite food before you find out what sound they make when they lose a tooth. So we had a chat. She’s nice, wants to go see the UK. Doesn’t really have plans. Apparently, she’s not always been a druid. Been doing her magic stuff for a couple months now. That’s gotta be neat, huh? Waking up one day, and finding out you control plants and stuff. She seemed nonchalant about it. Apparently, this all becomes normal eventually.  I’m not sure I believe that, really. But we’ll see. She’s gotta go meet that head slime dude, and that furthers her druid-ing. I honestly wonder if she even wants to get back to the surface, if it means losing her toys. I don’t really care about sword swinging, or the healing. But it’s not like I was doing anything better up there. The me’s were right. I might be better off down here. But my parents aren’t better off losing me like this. Weylinn was woken from his place, and came to sit with the two of us by the fire. Apparently, he and Lucas were having a conversation, but Lucas was dozing off. We got to know him a little better as well. He’s strange, you know? Some magic using, spear-swinging amnesiac. It’s weird to think I might know more about him than he does. The conversation grew silent, and eventually I had to ask the question. Anna tore up the suicidal Devily’s papers in some grand gesture. It’s really only an inconvenience, and pretty rude. If someone wants to die, the Underground can oblige them a number of ways. Why’d she do it? She didn’t know either. She feels guilty about having the guy’s companion killed. She doesn’t want to have a suicide on her conscience. As a druid she’s obligated to protect life. Plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations covering her completely vacant reasoning. I guess with how fictional things can get down here, she thought if you perform a sufficient movie moment things go your way. Things don’t go you way, and people die regardless. Weylinn had never seen someone try to kill them-self either. He just said whatever he thought would help. I guess nobody told him that’s the least helpful thing you can do. That chances are, they’ve heard it all before, and it didn’t help them then either. He seems content if the Devily kills himself, having done his part. I guess that’s just it, eh? We did all we could, and he didn’t die on a cliff at least. I could really go for a fucking dart right about now, just thinking about it. We turned the conversation back to Wey’s memory. He wants it back. I tried to express that maybe it’s not the best idea, uncovering a lost personality all buck wild. You know how in movies they have those people, whoa re fine but then one day they SNAP into a murderer? If Weylinn has two minds, two identities fighting to be Weylinn, I don’t wanna be around. I like this one anyway.  Conversations all turn into staring into the fire. We fed it some more fuel, and thought of things to say. I finally got say what’s been on my mind. I’m scared out of my fucking mind down here. Like, I get it I’m supposed to be all high and mighty knight and Paladins don’t show fear and stuff. But fuck me, I didn’t even get to say goodbye. I got parents that are looking for me by now, I got friends all confused why I’d do this. I know it’s stupid to say, but I got debts I’m not paying while I’m down here, so my credit rating is shot. Anna hadn’t even thought about her parents before now. Weylinn can’t remember if he’d ever had parents, a wife or kids. I mean, I guess I have it well off. I’m at least aware people above ground love me. It’s just driving me insane how I can’t fucking speak to any of them. Let them know I’m doing alright. There’s gotta be a way.  Weylinn revealed he hates working in groups, but he likes us. I’m flattered, really. I like these guys. They’re not the best, and they’re not healthy. But fuck me, it’s just nice to have other intelligences I can read. I can’t understand half the things down here, but people I know. I gotta know people, so they gotta like me. Conversation died again, I can’t have that. And then I told them about you. I don’t know why, but someone’s gotta know right? Fuck, it’s not like you get a say in it anyway. My job down here is to take the damage that the others can’t. Which means I’m going to die first. Someone’s gotta know. We got past it, and we hit the topic of Valker. Now, I know Valker as an old guy, a legend. A great doctor. I saw his signed paperwork dated decades ago. These guys know Valker as “The Darkness”, and the father of Lucas and crap. I don’t get it, the timeline’s all messed up here. Maybe I’m already dead, you know? This doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t have to. Maybe time doesn’t work down here like it does above ground. But they showed a tape recorder, and it was way too young a voice to be Valker. They also had no fucking clue what was ont he tape recorder when they played it. They claim he can edit notes, and material things. That’s why the tape recorder was different. I think they’re idiots. Speaking of making everyone feel like idiots, King came in. He finished Weylinn’s new spear. I feel kind of uncomfortable with him using Dungeon Breaker parts as a weapon, with Stuart around. But that’s how it goes. We learned about another Masked One, one without a name. Invented cowboys in all realities. That was pretty cool. I wonder if he has anything to do with my sheriff badge. Anna forgot that we live in a space-time with cell phones, and I could just tell her the time whenever.  I asked Weylinn about fixing my jacket, I like my jacket. He used it as an excuse to tell everyone about how much more work his magic is compared to everyone else’s. He didn’t end up fixing the jacket, and we all ended up going to bed again. I slept poorly, on a cave floor. Stuart woke me up by breathing in my nose. I didn’t expect insects to have a great breath, but fucking hell I gotta get this guy some more scent pleasing jerky. I gave the goober a good scratching, and started the pre chewing routine.  By the time he was fed, and satiated everyone was getting ready to leave. Alice was taking apart the firepit, and Weylinn was lecturing her about VIolence. Great, let’s just start the day with extra bitching. Alice thinks Violence will keep harrasing us until we’re all dead, and when we have the upper hand we should end his tyranny. Weylinn thinks VIolence is just toying with us, and it’s worth the effort to see what he’s getting at. I think that if Violence is going to meet with us, has already has two escape plans and three contingencies figured out before hand. The arguments are irrelevant, because we’re not going to see VIolence, unless Violence wants to see us. Nobody changed anyone elses minds, and we got the shellers ready for another day of travel.   Once again, travel is fraught with distractions. We found a cluster of nothings fighting a scarecrow. Like, literally the absence of light, was gathering clusters and attacking some talking scarecrow. We stepped in to help, got a little beat up in the process. The shadows clustered around targets, but were pretty squishy. They routed after a few bouts. The others blame Janus, being “The Darkness”. Apparently this scarecrow’s been in danger before, and they’ve saved him before. He was off again, before we really knew what was up. All we really got was that there’s a bridge, across the desert. A skeleton collects things, and protects the bridge. We don’t know what he collects, or why. So it’s not like we can plan. I dunno man, I couldn’t wait to get on the road again. Pretty quickly, we came to a settlement. Specifically, the one where the Slime Samurai guy came from. “The Shogonate” was the best ticket into the desert, and we had to go through fucking customs to be allowed in. I have thirty gold pieces on Avram getting “Randomly” searched.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #18

We had a nice time today. No dieing, or entire chunks of me getting ripped out. You know, despite Alice’s best efforts. Day started with friendly banter. Stuart didn’t like his first bath, it turns out. The promise of a meat/rice paste wasn’t enough to get him to sit still. Thinking about it, maybe these guys take dust baths, like rabbits. Or maybe he’s just a little shit. Weylinn’s actually committed to that beatneck beard he has. Didn’t take kindly to me suggesting he shave it. We all had a good laugh about it, and Lucas wasn’t even a dick about everyone using his soap. It was a good time. The Underground didn’t let us boost our own egos for too long though, we wandered into another Masked One. You know how King’s got this snotty art student attitude about like, everything? Turns out they’re not all like that. We met an Ursa masked one, who was all about martial arts and discipline.  The two of them actually get along, so there’s gotta be more to this Masked business than I’m understanding. Anyway, this Ursa says that he teachings are free to those pure of heart. Despite being in a death sprint to save plant people, we decided to stop for some Kung-Fu lessons. Apparently, being a Paladin doesn’t make me “Pure of heart” or whatever she wanted, but being a virgin does.  Well, shit you know? Kinda fucked that one up in advanced. I tried my best to learn her twisting “Kill yourself to murder better” thing, but it just wasn’t catching. Everyone got a real kick out of the Paladin being one of the sinners. Lucas especially, you could almost feel his shit eating grin come from behind the mask. No fucking shit he’s a virgin. And Anna’s this sweet little cinnamon roll who could very well detonate at the word “Penis”. Weylinn, Alice and I gave up after a while to go hang out in the “Cool kids who get laid” club. Bunch of nerds. We thank Ursa for her time, I thank the training dummy for his time. The three virgins assure us that their new John Woo powers are worth the delay. I’m not jealous, shut up.  Pressing forward, we run right into another distraction. Two giant undeads--a skellington and a ghoul-- with baseball gloves. Want payment to throw us over a ravine that we can’t otherwise cross. If we want the cart to cross over, we gotta go fetch their friend.  We agree to, because these guys--the Chucksters-- seem like cool dudes and run right into a cardboard cutout of Violence. Alice begins foaming at the mouth, and rips the cardboard figure’s head off. This isn’t healthy for her. From what I know about Develies, they Burn if exposed to sins, and go Daredevily if they sin themselves. I’d figure all this unbound rage would be cause for the latter, and the scarf of constant Sin wave would count for the former. Maybe she’s still regular because the Underground hasn’t decided which category she falls into yet. Remind me to ask someone what happens in a Devily burns and goes daredevily up at the same time. Well, the cutout warns us that “It” hunt heroes. Whatever “It” is. Well, we didn’t have to think about that long. These Chucksters had huge ass doors that it took four of us to open them. On the other side of these doors was an incredibly kickass entertainment center, and another door. We didn’t really get to explore much. From the earth--and I mean fucking bedrock-- came a huge Power Rangers fucking metal death robot. Like, a fucking ridiculously sized blender-handed death robot. I didn’t like the way it stared at me. I’m told now it’s a Hero Hunter. It seeks out the most noble, heroic adventures and ends their existence. It reeked of evil, and the tunnel it dug led straight to something eviler. The damned thing looked us all over, and made a decision. It was going to fight Lucas. Like I said, no ego boosting today. Here I am, supposed to be some great knight, a Paladin. Fighting for justice and shit.  We both know, I don’t know what I’m fighting for. I don’t think it’s important. You didn’t have to have a fucking reason, I shouldn’t either.  I shouldn’t fucking be here, this isn’t me. I’m not the hero, I’m not the warrior. I’m not good at this battling thing, and I’m less good at the heroics. This was you--some time ago-- but now it’s gotta be me.  This Hero Hunter, it didn’t want me regardless. It wanted Lucas. Lucas heroically screamed like a child and hid under a beanbag. We can’t fight this thing, we run. We get to the door and try to slam it open. I had to open for two, our party being scattered. Legs screaming with the effort, I got it open and Lucas stumbles through the doorway as soon as he can. The great hero, who out nobled me began gibbering in the next room, for us to open the doors for him again. But we didn’t, we all got in the room and waited. The Hero Hunter left. And we all stared at Lucas. Apparently, I’m not good enough. Maybe I’m just selfish. The point is, I don’t know what I want.  I’m going to do what you wanted do. We get it sorted out. Call the Chucksters to explain the property damage. We get their ghost friend and get over the chasm. Back on the road, one lesson wearier. We make it to a good place to camp, and sit down. Stuart gets his dinner, everyone gets warmth. We start to talk, and Violence shows up. Alice is imminently in arms. Avram has his weapons and sits up. I don’t move. If Violence wanted me dead, I’d be dead right now. I don’t think he changed his mind in the last two days.  He sat down by the fire, Alice antagonized him. Threatened to burn his scarf, throwing words around. Despite her best efforts, Violence kept his cool and started with his prerehearsed speech. Apparently the guy knows Janus, and is working on something big. He won’t tell us what it is, because he fancies himself a Handsome Jack, and a great manipulator. I don’t really give a shit at this point. He says the Darkness is a pure elemental lie. The guy’s put so much effort into speech giving, I couldn’t take it seriously. When he finally left we had time to chat.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #17

So, enter the grove. Slime-samurai Slimerai Slim-sliming sword guy He was fighting bushes, who were incredibly mean. The nicest looking flower spit acid, and you know I never thought I’d be acid-ed twice in one week. The plants hurt, a whole lot. They stripped the Slime-warrior of... slime. And stripped me of flesh. I’m getting oddly used to how parts of my body are just getting removed and put back so frequently. I hope I don’t make a habit of it, but I will.

The acid flower caught fire incredibly easy--thanks Anna-- and the other ones responded well to being hacked apart.  The Slime Samurai wasn’t here for the same reason we were. He had civilian slimes to rescue, and return to “The shogonate” I swear you could See Lucas’ eye light up through the mask of his. Slimes, Samurais, Heroism and everything else anime always promised him. I’m glad, actually. As bitter as I’m getting, it’s nice to see genuine happiness from time to time. We agree to help eachother, at least until the Slime guy gets to the people he’s protecting. It doesn’t feel like he actually needs our help, but we like to feel useful. The bush monsters had berries on them, pretty tasty. King had like, thirty.Someone suggested turning them into a salve, Avram immidiently took that as somebody trying to enslave him. Because something something racism. You know the guy called us fascists before? Like fuck, I get it man. You’re Jewish. But I’m trying really hard not to only see you as your race, and all you wanna talk about is how much money we’re not making, how everyone’s a fascist and now how slavery is always on the tips of everyone’s tongues. Like, fuck. I’m trying here. On a lighter note, King and I shared a moment of genius surrounding the creation of a golum out of berries, and I wonder what will come of that.  We moved on. The damned acid spitting flowers are everywhere, the thorn bushes are more common. We all took a pretty bad beating, but to be honest it’s nice to just smell oxygenated air. Nothing of particular note happens in the next couple battles. Avram bitched about me taking a moment to heal up, when his ass is covered in an unreasonable amount of solid metal. Let him take a few punches which I fix myself up. He’s really stingy with the first aid. We were all hurting actually, and asked to rest. But the Slime warrior couldn’t waste a moment. We all pressed on. Lucas showed a moment of ingenuity, kicking a fallen log into plants. The Slime guy did some crazy ninja shit and cut through an incredible amount of bushes really quickly. Would have been nice if he did that earlier. Either way, we found our way tot he slime civilians. And because I’m too nice for my own good, I let Lucas take a healing over me. Almost got me killed. The Slime Samurai left, and it was just us and the druid causing all this trouble left in the grove. And a few more asshole bushes, hiding in larger bushes. That we’re not allowed to burn because ecosystem, or something. I’ll say it again, I don’t get druids. Avram did that terrifying thing again where that demon hoo-sit dribbles out of him and into something else. Anna got an incredibly kickass staff, and Lucas got harrased. Seriously, Avram stopped the whole party to have a fight about whether we can trust Lucas. I mean, the guy seems cool. If he wanted us harm, he would have done harm by now. But Avram’s on some sort of kick that everything’s a spy, or everyone is out to get him. I think he’s spending too much time listening to this demon in his head. Issue was settled with a round of detecting evil, and we were all on the level. Well, Alice still has that terrible sinning scarf, Lucas wasn’t taking kidnly to insults and Avram is fucking possessed, but we’re all pretty much on the level. Hurting, angry and moping, we trundle into the Druid’s lair.  And moments later, I remembered how much of a bad idea it is to attack a Druid in the forest they created. Vines grasped at out legs, acid flowers are spitting everywhere. Thorn bushes are trying to rip us to shreds. We were going to die, and be plant food. The druid himself, looked familiar. You play Majora’s Mask? He had the dancing masked nature person going for him. Like the first boss from that game, in the poisoned forest. With the deku guys.  Well, I was entangled, everyone was busy doing things that weren’t dealing with the druid. We’d pretty much accepted that we screwed this up And then Alice got lucky. There was this fruit, a beating heart of a fruit. Alice shot it, and killed the vines. I charged forward, engaged the druid one on one. He chanted a spell that seemed familiar. “Microwave the Paladin” being a common choice for spellcasting nerds and ritual hippies. Rest in Peace me. But Alice gets lucky again, and explodes the heart fruit, killing mostly everything. I stab the druid, and Miss Licky bites his throat out. The fight is over. And the strangest thing happened; as he bled into the forest, the forest bled into him. Literally, the damn trees started turning into blood, and pooling in the... whatever you called it. Didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would. King came in, explained who this guy was. We just killed the first guy to kill King. Lucas’ damn slime ate the body as King explaine dhow grateful he was, but not grateful enough to pay us anything. We moved on. We said our piece to the head slime guy, for whatever that was worth. Received a thank you for saving their ecosystem. Anna received a promise of being trained or something. Why anyone would dedicate their lives to boogermancy is beyond me. Back by the cart, we had a good night’s sleep. Stuart had a rice bath (And then a proper bath, and a proper meal). We all had a good bath, with Lucas’ soap. And we’re off the next morning. This on the job stuff is getting routine. I just don’t like cutting it that close to death.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #16

You know what sucks? Hiking. What sucks harder? Hiking in full fucking chainmail, lead boots and no radio. But we’re doing it. And we got bigger strides than the plant people. Hopefully, we’ll make it up to them within a few days. However, we’re not exactly on a proper route here. This isn’t uncharted territory, but nobody’s keeping these roads in order. We quickly came upon a bridge, that was out of order. A Devily was there, staring off into the cavern the bridge was supposed to cross. Said we’d never get the wagon across without extending the full bridge. There’s a tower nearby, which is supposed to control it. And he wants to be left alone. Everyone started argueing about how to proceed, how much time we could spend in the tower and who should go vs stay with our belongings. I wasn’t so interested in that. I’ve always been good at reading body language, or at least I think I am. This Devily was almost dangling himself off this cliff. So I asked him what’s up. People don’t tend to spend hours staring down a chasm, unless they’ve lost something. A loved one, an heirloom or the will to live. And I was right. Guy wanted to kill himself. That got them fucking started. Nobody gave a shit what the Devily was up to, but I get the word “Suicide” out of him and everyone’s “Hero” status lights up. Weylinn tries to go full diplomat. Anna rips up the guy’s suicide documents. It’s like they forget how we have to fight to stay alive out here. No high school counselor is going to save this Devily, and no mind games either. If he wants to die, this Underground is more than happy to oblige. There’s gorgeous places to die, and there’s painless ways to do it. There aint nothing you can do when someone’s made their mind up. I learned that much.   Turns out Alice and Anna are responsible for the guy’s companion dieing, which is fucked. And somehow, Alice found a way to blame Avram from being upset by that. So great, now this guy’s pain is entirely our fault. But don’t Develies “burn” when things get too much? I don’t understand. I gave the guy my lighter, told him he could kill himself if he wanted but he didn’t get to kill himself and pretend that it didn’t mean anything. I stopped Weylinn’s flow of motivational horseshit, and chewed out Anna for being ridiculous, and we were off. The tower felt almost, familiar. Like any office building in any city. There was nothing interesting in reception, so we moved on. Moved a golem out of the way, and into a storage room. I had Stuart with me, I needed someone to hug after the suicide thing. However, I did let him run around. He helped bump over the Golem, and felt very proud. After taking my eyes off of him for like a second the little guy found his way into a paper box Weylinn opened. I figured he was safe there for a while. I was right, because Avram stumbled into some of those Jajini things. It was a quick fight, but upsetting. These little doll things move so quick, and they’re LOUD.  And, when they fell it’s not like in movies. You know how in films when the doll that comes to life gets hurt, it stops moving? It turns back into a doll, or is supposed to. These guys twitch, and cry and spasm. The ones that burned burned super fast. Like they were just existing faster than the rest of us. It almost felt good. Watching them fade I mean. Weylinn, the sick fuck dissected one. Alive. “Parts for Geheim” or something. Yeah, that’s what Jules wants when we put her together. A fucking mass of dead Jajini stapled to her sense of.... Look, I just don’t like it. We found the control room, and in there be skeletons. But like, dead people skeletons. Not living, “Fuck off, non-skeleton” skeletons. I felt an itch from my pocket. There’s not a whole lot of humans in this place, and those that do exist are migratory. But here were a couple human sized, human skeletons. Just doing business and stuff. With lame coffee mugs and fantasy baseball leagues. We didn’t bury them, or anything. We just sort of bumbled around. We failed to hack into a computer, and Avram broke his fucking mace trying to bash open a safe. Idiot We didn’t get into the safe, but we did get the bridge extended. On the way out, I gathered Stuart from the paper box. He’d tore most of the contents with his sharp legs, and was chirping happily. He has a future as an office paper shredder, I suppose. I actually had to carry the box out to the wagon to get him to climb out of it. I guess he likes it, so he can keep it. I need a bed anyway. Still feeding him jerky and stuff. Not sure if I should be. Stuart doesn’t complain. We got out of the tower, and the Devily was gone. King assured us he left over the bridge, and not into the chasm. I wonder if we’ll see him again. Another few hours travel, another bridge. Covered in fucking slimes. Like, I’ve seen a few of them now. But there were like twenty. And this ridiculously large frog, vomiting water. I have no earthly idea why, but the group decided to go into the nearby cave and bother the slime that seemed in charge. I took the cart across the bridge and went inside after them. It turns out King speaks slime, and has been waiting to show it off. Because of course he does. The head slime explains that we’re to leave as soon as possible because it’s not safe. And because we’re fearless adventurers we insist to help solve whatever his issue is.  There’s a druid nearby, who’s trying to terraform the area. It’s supposed to be all marshy, and good for mold, slimes and diseases to thrive. This jerk had the gall to come in and start growing trees, and planting bushes and shit. Yeah, how dare he? The truth is, I don’t get druids. Isn’t it more “Natural” to let the stronger ecosystem win? Or is it “Natural” to not do anything? I mean, Anna suggested we just burn the guy’s forest down, so who fucking knows. The point is, now we gotta go murder a druid, because another druid told us to because something something ecosystem. And these fucking slimes hurt my brain. They keep... Cracking, with energy. I don’t like it. I’m leaving Stuart in the cart for this one, I hope we’re back in time for lunch.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #15

Sakko took me training, it was super hard. The guy has twenty feet of man to protect, and only two arms. You’d think it’d be possible to hit him. But even when I hit him, it didn’t hit. We worked all day. He continued with the lessons, taught me about names and how he defeated his own nature. I won’t betray his trust in a public manor. Eventually, I learned something concrete. How to Smite. Like, straight up use holy light to empower my sword. Unfortunately, it uses my Lay on Hands to do so, and I kind of need that to fix myself and others. Maybe I ought to focus more on defense, than strict damage.  Either way, we had a good time. He told me of the next Paladin to seek, Solar. And the egg hatched. Just, while I was walking. Almost in my arms. This cute little guy came out, and started chirping like a bird. He had this disgusting little mouth, and this cute little voice. His name is Stuart and he likes meat. We’re gonna be good friends I got back to camp, and the shopping had been done. Weylinn bought food, Alice bought bow parts. I got a new shield and stuff. We had a good time. Stuart got showered in attention, Sakko talked at length about how much he likes rice. Weylinn also talked about how much he likes rice. I also like rice. Goldie did a kickflip, Geheim tried to compliment it. I wonder if the secret to Geheim talking is sweet skateboard tricks. Make a note to do more radical stunts in the presence of the doll. Stuart wanted a share of everything I put in my mouth, which was annoying. I mean, I love the guy, but his stomach is only so big. I think, anyway. He showed an affinity for knocking my fucking backpack over. Always chirping at me for a reward for it. I’ve never had a pet before, and maybe this was why. We eventually got set up, and took off. The plant people were heading into the desert, to go see a great tree. What was actually going to happen is they’d make it mostly to the tree, and get ripped apart.  We should probably hurry. We make it back out into the Exiled, pass the halls of dread. Make it to the Daredevily settlement pretty easily. And then it hit me, we brought exactly enough food to last us the trip. Not enough food to last us the trip and bribe our way through crimetown.  We’re fucking idiots. Of course, we get stopped. Of course, we get shaken down. It’s fine, we can scavenge more food. Worst case scenario, I can still do that thing.  Like, I don’t want to become a skeleton. But also, they don’t need to eat. If it means saving the plant people, I mean. Anyway, we get shaken down. Weylinn acts like he’s never been robbed before. We let the guy have some food, in exchange for nobody robbing us anyway. Of course, the underhanded shit stole extra food but what can you do? We’re the jackasses that wandered into “Poorer Detroit” with a wagon full of supplies, and no protection. The Daredevily wasn’t totally shitheaded, he answered some questions. Taught Alice about how that blasted scarf works. Apparently, the scarf is Violence, and the Daredevily Violence is just the latest thing to carry the scarf. The scarf gets passed from murderer to murderer, each taking the name. Alice having the scarf means Violence will do anything to torture us, and take it back. Which means the whole mountain thing is because Alice stole a fucking fashion statement. I wasn’t impressed. For a number of reasons. Weylinn and Alice felt the need to insult the Daredevily like, every forty seconds. He wasn’t even being a dick about it. Just giving genuinely helpful advice, and being shit on for it. I almost don’t mind that he stole extra food when Weylinn and Alice took off to go shopping, leaving him alone with the cart. Maybe it’d teach them to try and make friends from time to time. Yeah, we went shopping at some sort of Moth Bazaar. They traded non magic items for magic items. Avram got a fucking gun out of it. Alice got rid of the belt. It was all pretty neat. Alice traded a pen King really wanted for a blade she didn’t use.  We left the shop, dealt with the Daredevily guide and left town. Why do we overcomplicate everything? That wasn’t the only thing we did today. We met a Hidden One apprentice on the road. He was crying, and offering a crazy amount of gold for help. We agree to help because what kind of adventurers would we be if we turned down a crying child? The kid fucked up making a golem, Weylinn had an extra golem blank laying around. Avram grilled the kid on exactly how much gold we’d get for helping him. Now I’m not really comfortable with the magic thing, but here’s what I understand. The Hidden Ones don’t share secrets, they share how to discover eachother’s secrets. Sometimes. To facilitate this, they do intense training. Involving a grown man beating a child, for like no reason. Everything about me screamed to put an end to it, but I didn’t. It wasn’t my house. I hope that child’s ok. Anyway, kid fucked up a golem. Golem only works if it’s touching a living thing. Golem will crush anything not plant matter. You would be surprised how long it took for us to put together that we could solve this child’s problem by putting out living plant friend inside of the golem. We did figure it out though. We also met a cat person, who was weird. Said “Nyaa” a lot. Apparently Lucas’ living-book anime waifu thing from the Halls of Dread is just, out and about in this world. She was helping a young blind Hidden One, which I thought was cute. Avram grilled the kid really hard on a monetary reward. I can’t even give him shit for it, because calling the Jew a cheapskate isn’t becoming of a Paldadin. Neither is letting a child get beat, is it? I’m a fucking idiot. On the subject of idiots, Lucas had a good day. He met a real live cat girl, received a pet slime and had his big secret spilled. He’s the brother of Roman, the son of Valker. Nobody’s telling me what that really means. Isn’t Valker like, seventy? Then how old is Lucas? I dunno, I keep thinking about that kid. I’m tired.

[thehobbblog]

Entry #14

AIR SWEET AIR SWEET FRESH fucking underground bullshit air But at least it’s moving. As usual, the Underground as a whole is unimpressed with our actions. Life goes on, no matter what happened to the Moloch, or how silly we looked down there. All that matters is that we remember it, and we got some stuff. There was a nice example of how little anyone gives a shit, just outside. A Devily lady, on her way back from Exile. Said her “Companion” was a Daredevily. This made the party suspect, and the idiots got all in her face and berated her for like, six minutes. Apparently, Daredevelies are a thing that exist. They’re like Develies, but they get off on sinning. Or something. Or maybe they sinned so much that they’re mind and body changed. I dunno. The party seems to think they’re serious business, and Alice is still livid to the Violence one. I don’t think I wanna ask. In addition to existing, they have a settlement nearby. That if we were to go any further into the Exile, we’d have to pass through. So you know, windows up and don’t stop I guess. This Devily lady had a companion in the settlement, and made us swear not to kill him. We have no way of knowing which one is him, so I guess we’ll just not kill anyone. Regardless of Alice's whining. Anyway, we quit antagonizing the civilian, and she left. Avram finally got reception on his PAI, which buzzed to life. It’s cute, really. I like robots, and this was a tiny little AI. Promised to help. Avram installed Devily Google on the thing, and then we googled basically nothing important. And Anna hates birds, which is weird for a druid. Weylinn tried to embarrass me in front of the new guy, by calling me paranoid about not trusting the Sakko we saw at the camp. And then gallantly led the party in the wrong fucking direction back to Sakko’s camp. Where I was totally fucking right. Everyone’s gone, except Goldie and Geheim. Sakko wasn’t Sakko, it was VIolence. ANd now all the plants are tearing ass across the Underground, and we gotta get them. Because I missed the damn “Detect evil dudes” or whatever this bullshit I’m supposed to do. I fucking hate everything. Fortunately, real Sakko was there. To further embarrass us that we ever thought that Violence was Sakko; the guy’s like, twenty feet on each side. Carries a sword that’s just a sharpened chunk of mountain. I’m not fucking around, it’s like some childhood hero wandered out of storybook and started giving us orders. He’s giving us a cart, and lobsters. Lobsters that can carry the cart int he desert we’re about to go into. Desert lobsters, if you will. King was present, apparently he and Sakko know each other. King took responsibility for Alice’s curse, as well as Avram’s. Which is fucking curious, because not a day ago King had no earthly idea what Alice's curse belt did. Sakko tried to remove them both, but only got Alice’s curse cured. Which is fair, Avram sort of deserved his. But, enough fucking around. Sakko hadn’t forgotten why this all happened. He asked for apprentices on the radio, and I showed up. There were lessons I had to learn, and redemption with the plant people had to wait.  True to his storybook nature, the task was needlessly complicated, but presented straightforward. I was to make my way--alone-- to a group of Hidden Ones, and offer my assistance. Climb a mountain, get a Phoenix egg and come back. Putting aside for a moment that fucking phoenixes exist, and are apparently just like a thing that you can stumble into, how the fuck am I supposed to climb back down the mountain with a flaming egg? Nobody said this Paladin shit was supposed to be easy, but fuck me, you know? Well, I was off. Made it to the cliffside, met the Hidden Ones. Apparently their bugs were getting upset, and rhythmically pounding on their mountain side. Said that if I were to remove the phoenix egg, they’d stop. Sounds cool, right? I get a Phoenix egg, and they get to not have a mountain fall on them? Fucking scary they have bugs that can knock over a mountain, and they just raise those bitches. But you know I’m not one to judge. I am absolutely one to judge. Stupid fucking bug farmers and thier big ass murder bugs gonna have to learn to solve their own problems. Or at least act grateful when I solve their stuff.

One of them looked alright actually. There was a lonely bat dude staring off the cliffside, sort of lost. Introduced myself, told him that if he hears me screaming not to fret, Paladins being a pillar of strength and all. And then I climbed the fucking cliff in full fucking armor. I’m glad I didn’t bring the Corbin, because it sucked super hard. On the other hand, I scaled a fucking cliff in full fucking armour, so that was cool.  The murder bugs were on top of the cliff. Like I was told, they didn’t attack because I kept eye contact. However, these bugs were familiar. You remember the Dungeon Breaker bug, that scared the shit out of us in the Halls? They were like, bigger ones of those. Didn’t wanna fuck with it, so I left. Got to the top of the mountain, found the egg. Luckily it wasn’t on fire or anything, unluckily I wasn’t the first one to the egg. There was a Devily there, waiting. Unlike most Develys, this one was smiling. Had one horn. Had a pure vacume of all moral radiation, a whole lot like what I got off the fake Sakko. “Great” I thought “I’mma bout to die to give Alice a less petty reason to chase this fucker.” Well, no sense going out like a hero in his company. If nobody’s around I’d rather go out like a bitch, honestly. We stood around for a while, and had a discussion about how much pain one would ‘hypothetically’ be in if they were thrown off the mountain, and how pretty it would be to die there. I tried to get the guy to yodel for me, actually. He was using the shit excuse of being a Devily who’s really into mountains so I tried to roll with that. Ended up just annoying him. Like, to the point he was clenching his teeth and shivering. I guess Paladins aren’t supposed to fuck about when they get the chance to be the big hero. In his plan, I supposed to declare him a sinner and smite him like a hero, or pick up the egg and get pushed off a cliff like an idiot. I guess he didn’t know me very well. He eventually broke character, and we got to talk honestly for a bit. He made me two promises. 1. He was going to beat the everloving shit out of me 2. I was going to die I asked if he’d reconsider throwing me off the mountain, but he was a little more interesting in the “tearing my entrails out” thing. And the fight began. He popped a potion, whatever that does. And I stabbed him. He was pretty impressed, actually. Apparently he took me for some sort of bitch who lets everyone solve his problems for him. I’m not that kid anymore. I stabbed him a second time, Deeper.  I’m such a fucking idiot right? “Just stab the bad guy, Hobbs. It isn’t hard.” And it wasn’t. He scratched my face, chest and arms in a flurry of strikes. I smiled, I laughed and I bled. He was invigorated by this, taunting me and my hopelessness. I stabbed him a third time. Twisted the blade. I get it. I’m a fucking idiot. I get that I overthink things. And I get that I can’t hide behind indecision forever. I can’t fuck around and pretend that thinking about problems is the morally right thing to do. People are in danger, and I’m responsible for them. I decided Violence was going to learn one thing today: what it means for me to carry my sister’s name. And then he ripped my throat out. The leathery bastard just kept speeding up. He had such a flair for the dramatic, I could always strike him, but the asshole could just move so much in so little time. Without a shield, or neck armor I was an open book. Claws cut flesh, and I choked on blood. I backed up, used the Paladin power to heal myself. I needed to breath if I were to hit this guy. My heels were at the edge of the cliffside. And Violence tore into me again. Promising that if I could just survive, he’d let me go. How gracious.  And I didn’t die. So he kept his word. This Violence guy, he means what he says. He said he was going to kick the shit out of me, and he did. He said he’d let me go if I put up a fight, and he did.  He gave me advice. I’m not sure I should be listening. But I did. I took it to heart, and for that reason I won’t share it. You didn’t earn it like I did. Fuck it’s beautiful up here. I got a picture actually, I’ll upload it when I figure it out.  I think I could live here. Wake up every day to this. Well, the bat people would mind. Maybe I could just die here. Fall asleep, staring at the open expanse of what could have been. All of it equally possible, nobody blames me for not doing it. I didn’t die up there. But I almost wish I did. After a good long sit, I got up. I wasn’t missing anything important anymore, and I was alone with the egg. The egg that wasn’t a phoenix egg, because Violence had planned this. The egg that was planted there by the bat people, as a Maguffin to have me killed. The egg I was taking anyway, because I fucking earned it. The daydreamer bat showed up, actually. Explained the whole thing. He assured me that it wasn’t personal, that his people needed the money Violence gave them for this stunt. And I really didn’t care. I didn’t care if I died, and I didn’t care I was still here. I had a job to do, and he needed forgiveness. I gave him the forgiveness, and he showed me the way down without climbing the mountain.  I got to camp, everyone was fine. Only Sakko cared about how it went. Alice got riled up about Violence being there, and started her “I’m really the good one here” shit. Sakko healed me up, and taught me a proper lesson. He taught me that patience is a virtue, and one not to be wasted. That forgiving the bat people was a mistake, and if I were to forgive Violence I’d be a fool. But I really only had enough energy for one lesson today. .

[thehobbblog]

Halls of Dread: Final Thoughts

The robots lined up, leading us out. It’s kind of hard to tell if they were giving us a hero’s exit, or just making sure we didn’t steal anything. King said a whole bunch of stuff, but I was so tired. He’s keeping the child safe in his ring, and we’re off on the next leg of our journey. I’m just really confused, or concerned even as to what the point of this all was. So, like. I hope you all don’t mind that I start theorizing here. Get my head straight. Traps: The dungeon had many traps, but they weren’t really great at keeping us out. In fact, as far as I can tell they were more focused on making fools out of us than stopping us from getting further. Let’s do a quick list of the designed traps I can remember. 1. Heat Metal/Magnet room: Hurt a lot, played to the robot’s strengths really well. Nearly broke my phone. Made me feel like an idiot for running in there, but with teamwork we prevailed. 2. Incinerator room: Probably would hurt as well. Consisted of the exact opposite of the previous room’s trap, where acting rash would get you killed. Avram nearly got turned to ash, and then momentarily forgot he was Jewish. 3. Mannequin fun: Hid a chest from us, had us stumbling around a room bumping into things and punching ourselves for a while. I still think the mannequin me had more charisma than Lucas.  4. Acid pit: Had a teamwork based solution, that we screwed up. King thought it was hilarious. Anna thought it was less so. 5. Ghost Weapons: I don’t even really know, Avram’s weapons sort of came to life. Meant we had to attack solid metal and chase it around the room some. 6. Body-Swap room: Really roundabout way of killing intruders, and would only work once. We were put in robot bodies and forced to fight robot cores. Weylinn learned a lot about what it meant to be a robot, and was nicer to the workers after that. 7. Indiana-Jones ball: A big crystal ball with a goody inside, used our pop-culture knowledge to taunt us into releasing a slime. Alice ate the whole thing like a maniac which was neat. 8. Spring floor: A floor designed to fling us on our butts if we didn’t know something we couldn’t possibly know. I’m sure someone out there got a kick out of our pain.  9. Exploding drones: essentially a mine field. Just waiting for someone to do something stupid and punish us for it.  10, Table of personality.... thing: I already did a whole thing on this.  11: Heart room: Not a real trap, but a curious--helpful--way to share pain between party members placed suspiciously close to the big fight. 12. Fake walls: The walls all around the dungeon had an equal chance of being fake. King was kind enough to tell us about that feature quite a time after it would have started being useful.  That’s about it for real traps. Do you see a theme there? They’re mostly concerned with demoralizing us. Making us look like idiots. When they’re not doing that, they’re helping us come together as a group, and make some memories. I wonder who benefits most from that sort of stuff. There were the robots, which were neat. Let’s do a rundown of robot activity. 1. Robots didn’t really care for our presence, they mostly just didn’t want us touching stuff we weren’t supposed to.  2. Robots didn’t care that we had killed robots, in fact they got more tolerant to our presence the more we killed. 3. The robots are built on to small cores, of which nobody but King seemed knowledgeable of. And he was very knowledgeable of them. 4. Robots could be repaired from death, which was weird.  5. Robots definitely didn’t like the bugs. That leads to bugs actually, there were some anomalies in the Halls we should mention. 1. There was Moloch. That was terrifying. I have no idea how it got down there, or why. What possesses that thing to run out into the land of exile, but then stop running in the land of exile to run into an underground... thing and live there for a while, as robots attack it. 2. The bugs were weird. There was the empty room, with a large insect in it. An insect too large to have gotten in there on it’s own. As well as the larger empty room, with the larger insane insect that couldn’t have gotten there on it’s own. 3. Lucas: He just showed up with a gift to buy our trust, and then sat around looking annoyed at us for not solving thigns faster. He’s identifying with the Masked Ones, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. 3. There was a dead Hidden One, with a golem. The poor guy didn’t have a chance it looked like, but the golem had claimed the room he was in as his tomb, and didn’t want to be disturbed. The robots didn’t mind him living there. We did get stuff. Which leads us to loot, there was lots of loot. And all of it was King’s. Well, ok. I don’t know that. But it’s suspicious.  Golden armour, with a specific enchantment to fit itself Cursed belt, that was surely a funny prank Ioun stones with no explanation A big book, of King’s own prototype An I.O.U of King’s, which he played a fun haggling game with us over. Scrolls that called our our Wizard and Cleric Everything that needed an explanation, King knew without looking at it. He knew everything about everything we had found, before we’d even shown it to him.  Everything else, was King’s he’d conveniently “Forgotten” about before we got there. Now, I understand that he’s some sort of timeless creature. Like his whole business is to know shit we couldn’t and then lording it over us. The way he’d know everything in a loot pile and what it did before we had finished looking at them is suspicious to me. Do you see what I’m getting at? The halls themselves were designed to make us act out an entertaining story. The robots seemed to only be interested in keeping the Halls in a state of order. One that would best allow for adventuring.  The anomalies seemed just as confused as we were to be there. Like there was no purpose but to lure in adventurers and reward them. The loot deposits piled nicely as rewards after challenges. And our all too helpful guide knowing everything about them, almost like he’d checked this place out before we were there, or even piled the treasure there to begin with. It’s really not Paladin like to be this paranoid, huh? I don’t know. If there were science machine scattered around I could call it a lab. If there were cameras I could call it an old game show. If there were notes talking about “How much I hate that King guy and why I collect his stuff entry: XIIV” I could pass this. But it’s not adding up. I’m just so certain that cheeky genie knows more about this than he’s letting on. I’d like to keep my face, so I’ll keep quiet. As quiet as one can be, complaining about it on his blog.

[thehobbblog]

12.

We fucking did it I didn’t die down here. We uhh. We did it. We saved the kid. Spoilers I guess. I’m actually really tired. Let’s start at where I left off last time. Nobody gave a shit that I was just forced to have an existentialist crisis in front of them. Weylinn and Anna were actually pretty nonplussed, I can only assume they’ve seen it before. Avram decided to throw a small tantrum and threw the food everywhere. Lucas is watching, like he always is. I don’t like it. I think he’s not telling us things. And Alice was angry that I stood up, and cut one of the me’s off. One of the me’s didn’t like Alice wearing the belt of gender changing, and he didn’t say why. I’ve tried asking myself what it meant, but I’m not saying anything more. Like I said, I’m tired. So, Avram found Moloch. So the first thing we did was go in the other direction. Some rooms, some robots. Many invisible walls, and a room with two empty drones. Like, they were devoid of armour and stuff. They were just blank. King came in and told us he would build us a drone, if we let him have one. Where that guy learned to build robots is beyond me. Weylinn thought he was too smart to be swindled, and told King that he was going to build both robots and keep them for himself.  One of the robots is now scrap on the dungeon floor. But we got one of the robots functioning. That was nice. We went over to when Moloch is trapped, and found another trap room. It’s honestly frightening how dull this gets. People just walked into the room and started poking things, out of sheer impatience. Essentially, the room had a series of crystals in the shape of a heart, and a chest in the middle. I’ll just go through what happened in order. 1. Anna’s pet mimic licked a crystal 2. Weylinn began pulling on a crystal, like a confused neanderthal. 3. Avram sulked that whatever was in the chest was not something he could have 4. The drone we built found a way to get to the chest and made everyone feel stupid 5. Anna opened the chest, and put money in it. We were supposed to do that apparently, because Weylinn got a heart over his head.  6. Anna commands her new thral to do a silly dance for her amusement 7. Weylinn did no such thing 8. I suggested that Weylinn was now taking hits for Anna 9. Lucas punched Anna, hurting Weylinn 10. Weylinn asked me to hit him 11. Weylinn complained that I hit him too hard 12. Avram asked if he was allowed to hit Anna now And then the fight started The monster was huge. What was once a solid metal statue of a bull, was now a very active and angry statue of a bull, piloted with a horrible stinking slime. It was screaming, constantly. Like a tortured soul. It probably was. The robots were present, they seemed only to care to kill the child. She was floating in the slime’s belly, and as such was open to being stabbed, shot and otherwise hurt.  The fight was chaotic. The robots were determined to slay the child at all costs, the party argued about whether the robots or the bull were more important. Moloch, was happy to gore anything that came within range. It had clearly been fighting for a long period of time, there were dead robots everywhere. Scrap metal and crystal shards made the floor unstable, and sharp. Amoungst it, were segments of removed slime and a disturbing amount of child blood.  The robots fell, and the bull was enraged. It became a hurtling mass of brass and pain. It was all we could do to stay out of the way, fighting back was out of the question. Lucas started playing war games, moving around people with his lasso. I do believed it saved Weylinn’s life, which means now I can’t give Lucas shit for carrying that lasso anymore. That is until he tried to lasso the Moloch like a regular bull, which means I can give him shit for being a moron. Anna was trying to get spells off, as she was treating Weylinn taking her damage as an excuse to act like she had a fucking Mario star. Avram started running around, leaving fire trails and screaming. I can’t adequately paint this picture with words. The large man, with a full beard and shining golden armour suddenly went Super Sonic.  Moloch kept this dance for a while. Alice and I passed it’s aggro between eachother, it all came to a head, while Anna threw her mimic into the Moloch. And within seconds, the Moloch was digested. Girl girl, Miss Lickey. The child was saved from the slime, and we healed her. Avram began eating dead slime mass off of the ground with his bare hands. Weylinn called King, who informed us that the child has been relived of her personality. Specifically, her personality has been shattered, and spread around. Weylinn’s pet doll, Geheim may very well be one of them. He was vaugue, as always and we really don’t have a plan until we get Geheim back. Which we might not do, because we left her with the cunt that’s been following us. And Avram’s arm exploded. But he had a new one so it’s cool. I’m so tired, I’m hurting. This place is giving me a headache. I’m going to bed. Goodnight all.

[thehobbblog]

11.

I am quite upset. I think upset is the word. I’m really trying to hold it together. It says right there int he Paladin papers I got, Paladins are a pillar of strength. How are you supposed to just take it? And these people, they’re so nonchalant. So, the robots built a table. A feast even. What do you do at a feast? Well if you’re Alice or Wey you start grabbing handfuls of the food and walking around stuffing your face. I had a seat, and waited for the host. But guess what?  I was the host. All six of me.  This fucking place, and it’s mindgames. I sit down to eat, and many “mes” appear around the tables. Some handsomer than others, some more lively than others. Apparently, I wanted to have a chat with me. Did you see “Inside Out”. I know you didn’t, but it’s like that. They claim there’s like, six of them in my head. And they dictate how I am.  There’s a lazy me, who controls my apathy A rational me, who controls my decisions A smartass me, who’s my humor center An aggressive me who lets me fight And a mercenary me, who doesn’t talk much as long as he gets paid. And, they were cross. You see, it’s becoming apparent in these entries and the events I won’t talk about that I’m becoming more weight than benefit. I’m so worried all the time. It’s freezing me up. I’m so terrified of screwing up, of disappointing people and of dieing I don’t do anything. I let the party waste the IOU, I left without a phone charger because I didn’t want to ask. I mean, fuck we left the settlers and our friends with a guy who’s. I’ll get to him later. Anyway, all of me are angry at me. I was aware of this, I hate myself too. But specifically Lazy me was upset that I’m claiming to be apathetic, but still going around and doing things. He says that’s dishonest. I was looking at him, covered in food and lieing on the floor. And he still had the moral upper hand, because he was being true to himself. It disgusted me, because I disgust me. I got to step up. Rational me is disappointed with how I’ve been using him. I’ve been using pragmatism as an excuse to be a coward, and he’s not happy with me lieing to myself about that. He has a point, I’ve been told my whole life “You’re so smart, you’re too good. Why do you waste your time with all of this”. If I’m going to pretend like I’m the voice of reason, I better start thinking things through. Smart ass me is happy go lucky, but he thinks I should lighten up. He’s seen my entries, like you. He says I’m too hard on my friends, and on myself. Here I am, fighting monsters, saving lives and living an adventure. An adventure that a genie is writing about to tell to everyone forever. Yet, I still find time to be a sourpuss. It’s demoralizing, and it’s not who I am.   Aggressive me is furious, he says I can kiss my fighting and my ass goodbye if I don’t man up. And he’s right. I can’t keep cowering like this. It feels GOOD. I can’t deny that. I feel a crunch at the end of the hammer’s shaft, I see a sword shaped hole fill with blood or I’ll rip pieces of robot off with a flick of the wrist. I’m almost ashamed at how it feels. You didn’t say it’d be like this. Mercenary me didn’t have a whole lot to say. My attitude of “Stay alive, get things” is pleasing to them. Really pissed me off. And that’s the lesson. All of the mes find things to hate in other mes. But that’s no excuse to mope. If I can find a way to be, despite what everyone says I’ll be happy. If I find a cause I can fight for, I can have all the mes fall in line. I should have learned this earlier. Much earlier. Oh, yeah. Sakko. So remember earlier when I was offered apprenticeship by a paladin named Sakko? Well, I mean. He wasn’t very big, and he wasn’t very Paladin. I was unsure, but he didn’t seem evil. I guess he was evil. I’ve been throwing around ideas, and it occurs that there’s no way the dare devil person got into this dungeon and back out without us seeing him. Unless we were seeing a dare devil sized suit of armour. I’m ashamed we left innocent plants with a murderer. Let’s go get them quickly. Maybe we can do it before I meet the real Sakko so I don’t have to embarrass myself further. Don’t be mad Oh, the rest of my friends didn’t really react to the bunch of mes. They were kind of nonchalant. Avram thought I was wasting time, but beyond messing with the table didn’t really do much. We were told that if they killed any of the mes that part of me would die. Imagine throttling the lazy person in me until I did something with my life. Or don’t. We did some traps, explored some rooms. Wey built a robot healing drone. He’s a really smart guy, for how oblivious he can be. I’m kind of envious, but we all have our strengths. Anna helped him, she’s a smart cookie as well. I want to get along with these people, I’m kind of afraid I lost my chance. I can’t get caught up on how much of an asshole I can be, because then I start acting like an asshole again.  I’d continue to the fight with Moloch, but this entry has gone on pretty long. I don’t know