Trying Out New RPGs

I did it! I wrote fiction!

Sorta.

Kinda.

As I mentioned last week, one of my birthday gifts was a hand-bound journal and a copy of the rulebook for Sigils in the Dark by Kurt Potts. We waited until my birthday before playing. Well, we actually waited until Sunday, because Hubby's journal didn't arrive until Saturday, but we had Omnibladestrike over (who will be known as dragnime from now on because that's his handle everywhere else...), so the three of us worked on a different game instead, that I'll talk about in a bit.

Anyway. Sunday night Hubby and I FINALLY got around to playing Sigils.... and quickly realized we SUCK at solo RPGs....

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See, as counter-intuitive as it may be for an author, I just... I work a LOT better if I build off of others. My existing characters that feel real and fleshed out? Lia? Willow? Trish? Jolene? Kriv? These were characters I got to play for extended periods of time. They were kind of Generic Archetype characters until I played off of people. Saw how they interpreted the character, and then either leaned heavily into it, or purposefully fought back against it, or found some happy medium ground. Their voices formed as I talked more with the other players. The more social - or anti-social - I was able to make the character, the more alive they felt.

Solo RPG? Eeeeeeeeh....


I get it. A LOT of people probably love that freedom. They have complete control, as if it were a story, and can do whatever they like with the character without having to build off of whatever the other characters are doing. As people who do not yet have a good grip on who these characters are? Without any real concrete structure for the game? Well.... Hubby and I struggled.

On the first page of the journal, right out of the gate, it is suggested that we include information important for future owners of the grimoire to know. Typically, this would be the name of the mage creating the tome - so the character you're playing as - and a location, and why the mage is searching for this dark power to begin with. Their Need, which translates to the game's end-goal. Will the mage reach it, die trying, or give up once the costs become too much?

Hubby and I were stuck here for a looooong time. We both wanted to be careful with the names we picked and the locations we'd give. Hubby wanted this tome to be something he could potentially use for a campaign later, so he wanted everything to sound like it would fit in a standard D&D campaign.

Me? I wanted vagueness. I wanted to be able to use the tome, like my husband, in a potential future D&D campaign. Or in a random other RPG or LARP I might join/create. Or use it as inspiration for a future story. But the trick is that I also wanted it as a potential inspirational prop for an urban or modern fantasy story as well. So I wanted something that sounded Real World/Modern, but also something that would fit in a standard High Fantasy setting.

In the end I went for "Don't include a location quite yet, but know it's 'vague city'" and I decided to tap into my fanfiction author side of my brain.

Hey, Miraculous Ladybug happens to have a thick spellbook. Hey, there happens to be a villain who uses magic to try to get a particular Need fulfilled, and is getting quickly corrupted by that drive. Hey, what if the character whose head I hop into were Hawkmoth's?

I then paused for a moment. A LOT of people probably equate "dark mage" and "creator of a grimoire" with male characters. I'm female, why should I crossplay? Why can't I have a woman delve into dark magics to create an evil spellbook?

What if it was Gabriel who is dead or magically comatose or whatever it is that happened to Adrien's mom? What if Emilie had become Hawkmoth? Or... whatever her Peacock-themed name would have been.

As I said before, I wanted this journal to be a prop for future campaigns or even original stories, so I clearly couldn't just straight up go with "Emilie Agreste" as my character name, but she would be my inspiration. And, truthfully, the name I ended up with wasn't too far off...

Meet Emelia Agraise. Through mysterious means not yet explained in the tome for future owners, Emelia's husband is "no longer with her." Did he die? Did he fall into a coma (just as Emilie did... or... whatever it was that happened)? Did he just walk out on her; fallen out of love with her?

If I'm going the Emelia is Female Gabe route, then it's safe to say that her husband is either teetering on the edge of Life and Death, or he's already dead, but we'll see how it goes.

I do wish I wasn't itching quite so badly to start the game, however, because my excitement poured out as my standard handwriting, and I really regret not taking better care to slow down and write more elegantly and neatly for the first page.... Oh well. I guess what's done is done.

 I, personally, wasn't a fan of just listing the character's name, location, and end-goal in the front of the journal like it was my elementary school books or something: "if found, please return to..." It didn't feel organic. It felt a bit meta; the character KNOWING this journal was going to eventually find its way into other hands, and/or that the character KNEW it was going to be a future prop.

Instead, I went with something that felt more organic, a super-mini diary entry and napkin-style contract.

In case you can't read the page, here's what I wrote as my character introduction:

The whispers are stronger now that I have this book. Their promises more believable; achievable with this tome. I do not know what I must do to have my beloved returned to me, but I am prepared to pay any cost.

I, Emelia Agraise, hereby vow to the whispering darkness to follow its direction in order to gain the power I desire. In exchange, I will be taught in the ways of the occult so my sweet husband can return to my side.

I realized the redundancy of that final sentence after I wrote it, but, as I mentioned above with regards to my handwriting, what's done is done. So screw it. I'm running with it.

Hubby ended up making, basically, Hans from Frozen: the youngest in a long line of princes, who is fed up with not having any say on how his country is run, and who is never truly taken seriously with anything he says. His desire is to prove that he is just as valid a leader as his older brothers, and perhaps even MORE worthy to lead than any of them. He wants to be taken seriously finally.

Okay, so our characters are now made up. Kept us an hour or so to come up with them, but worth it. That should be the hardest part, right?

Weeeelllllllllllll....

Next was creating our first spell. It was enjoyable enough. There's a chart of 20 line segments, each with a unique design. These are the "connectors" our characters are taught by The Darkness. We use them to connect either 3, 5, or 7 points placed on a circle. We roll on said chart in order to figure out which connectors we will be using in our circle. Then we roll on a separate chart to figure out which out of 20 effects the connecting line creates.

This is the example given in the rulebook:

For this example, the player rolled a 1 on the Segment chart, and so they drew in that squiggly line with dots as their first connector within their circle. They then rolled on the Effect chart, and got the effect Bind. So now that squiggly line segment will always have the effect of Bind. Every future time that segment is used as a connector within a spell circle, one of the spell elements will include a binding of some sort.

While it was a bit tricky to try to replicate those line segments in such a manner that we could then recreate them again for future spells, it was still fun to build up our spell circles. Also fun to link each segment to an effect.

Once that part was done, we had to roll onto ANOTHER 20-point chart for different symbols that would be used as the subject of our spells. We were instructed to draw the symbol we rolled inside the connecting line segments; signifying that the subject of the spell is trapped by those segments. Easy enough. Much like the line segments, trying to recreate the symbols was a touch tricky, but we both feel like we did a passable job. Next was to assign an object to the symbol so we would then know what the subject of the spell would be.

Here's the rulebook's example of a completed spell circle.

Easy enough. Fun to do. Requires a bit of artistic talent, but simple enough that it's not crucial that you are artistically inclined. And it was exciting to see what each segment and symbol would end up representing.

Then the hard part kicked in.

Now that you know what your spell can do and what it can target it's time to name the spell and describe it in your spellbook.... Once you have your Magic Circle completed roll a d6 on the cost table.... Once you have your cost add it to the spell page with a few notes on how to acquire the cost and any problems acquiring that cost may have caused your wizard.

Doesn't sound too rough, right? Especially when you look at the sample page posted to the game's website.

Image provided by kurtpotts.itch.io/sigils-in-the-dark

Oh. Okay. Easy enough. The Bring Forth connector and the Spirit object are easy enough to deduce: it summons spirits. Bind clearly controls the spirit. Influence is that line of "They will do what you tell them." Super simple to figure out how those components come together for a spell, and what the spell does. Then it's just a matter of coming up with a spell name. Spectral Conjuring. Sounds good. Sounds like a legit spell you'd hear in a show or movie, or read in a book or comic, or find in an RPG rulebook. It also feels powerful enough to entice the character to keep going, but not SO powerful that they don't need any more power.

That was a good starter spell, and seemed easy enough to create. The trickiest part would be to figure out the cost of "A lie; believed" and how that would affect the player character. Oh, it means to use a tear-soaked letter as a sort of conduit of that cost. Okay. I see what they did there. I can do the same. Right?

Weeeeellllllll....

Let's take a look at mine. Hubby and I both did our starter spells in pencil so we can tweak the line segments and symbols if need be, because we both knew we were NOT good enough to copy them down on a first go. So, sorry if my spell page is a touch hard to see.

So, first and foremost, apparently I can't evenly spread out three points on a circle. Look at all that empty space on the bottom. That horizontal line segment might as well be the equator on a globe.

Hacker GirlFacebook sticker
by Birdman Inc

Crappy artwork aside, look at the effects I rolled into! Influence, Transmute, and Grow? What am I supposed to do with those as one cohesive spell? Worse yet, originally I had the effect "Find" instead of "Influence" and I REALLY couldn't figure out what to do with those seemingly unrelated elements. After about an hour or so of trying to figure how what on earth I could do with those elements, and both Hubby and I searching for online forums of other players talking about their spells and maybe suggesting what different effect combinations could be, spell wise, we called a mulligan. I rerolled the "Find" effect and switched it to the new "Influence" effect.

And the fact that my subject is just vaguely "Matter" didn't help one lick. Especially when more specific "matter" is also listed on the object chart: Element, Flesh, Animal, Plant, Machine, Small Item, or Gem/Metal. So now I have to try to figure out what a spell subject of "matter" could be that ISN'T one of those categories????

Hubby's effects were a LOT more straight forward: Move, Redirect, and Send Away. Gee, I wonder what HIS spell does...

The real snag for him, however, is the equally vague object: Plane.

Other options on the object chart includes: Location, Energy, Time, and again Element. If it were a simple teleportation spell, then Location should have been the object, right? Time travel would use Time as the object. Moving the ground itself, "earthbending" essentially, would have used Element as the object. Like, what else would you interpret Plane as?

So I joked that while I'm unofficially using Hawkmoth and the Miraculous as my base, Hubby unintentionally created a Magic: The Gathering Planeswalker, and their Spark ignited as their first spell. Fitting.

However, Hubby's "cost" is also "a pail of fresh-fallen snow." Okay. Something relatively easy to get like that seems fitting for the first spell. Far better than "a family heirloom; taken" because either my character is going to run out of heirlooms, the spell inevitably becomes more difficult to perform as she has to start stealing other people's family heirlooms, or she just can't cast the spell anymore. The real problem is that Hubby decided the effects of his spell all sound like banishing words: move, redirect, SEND AWAY. He couldn't really figure out how to move a plane, redirect a plan, or send away a plane (all of which we just interpreted as "plane of existence") so instead he decided the spell effect is that it's a banishing spell. Sending TO the plane. Having the plane be the subject of the spell by manipulating the plane in order to banish TO it. Fold the plane around the desired object, if you will. To which, Hubby sadly proclaimed, "well, looks like my grimoire is done. If I can just send my older brothers to another plane with something as simple as snow, then I can just get rid of my competition until they have no choice but to put me in charge..."

Whoops. Kiiiinda wish they had playtested this a touch more in order to figure out how to prevent such seemingly over-powered spells from being created your first go, let alone created with such a small cost. Hubby thinks the objects, and maybe even the effects were ranked like the costs were, and you had to build up to the stronger magic the same way you added to the cost of the spell. Either that, or not use such vague objects as "matter" and "plane." Especially when they are basically "catch-all" terms for a lot of objects already on the chart.

Hubby and I might need to workshop a bit. Maybe house-rule different objects instead of the two we rolled and try again.

Alternatively, we'd have to put a LOT more "off-screen" roleplaying into effect. For instance, I told Hubby that, say he has 9 brothers, perhaps the issue he comes across is that people start to become wise to his banishing scheme after the 3rd or 4th brother goes missing. He still has a long line to work through, but now he's wanted for treason and still needs to learn spells in order to finish off the rest of his family and protect himself from the royal army.

Or, he's a prince of a desert kingdom, and it's trickier to get fresh-fallen snow than face value suggests. Maybe he can't use the spell against his brothers because he can never get a full pail back to his kingdom, or he has to come up with another spell in order to keep the snow from melting first.

Or, the spell isn't as powerful as he thinks. It's just a small portal; not nearly large enough to fit a full person. I was thinking of the Fetches from the Trollhunters show on Netflix.

Sorry for the minor spoilers here.

So, like I said, we're still workshopping.

And I still need to figure out more to my first spell's effect than "can manipulate matter" as well as figure out how I paid the cost of "a family heirloom; taken." Does my character sacrifice the heirloom, using it as the matter being manipulated? If so, does that mean she can only create with as much matter as the heirloom provides? For instance, she can't use a necklace to create a gun turret. For that she'd have to use something like a grandfather clock or a statue or whatever.

Or, much like in the game example, does she need to use some sort of physical conduit for the pain a stolen heirloom would create?

The vagueness of the game is great for getting your creative juices flowing and giving you free rein, but both Hubby and I need a bit more... structured storytelling guidance at the moment. So we might have to put Sigils in the Dark on the backburner for a bit. Either that, or, as I mentioned, retool it slightly with some house rules to help us a bit more.

So, instead, let's head on over to the OTHER RPG that Hubby just picked up. The one we worked on with Dragnime on Saturday instead of starting our journey into Sigils, or watching anime together as we normally do on Saturdays.

That RPG was the strongly suggested Blades in the Dark by John Harper and published by Evil Hat Productions (we seem to be playing a lot of "in the dark" games right now...).

Hubby finally got his copy of the rulebook - which, by the way, is a lot more detailed than I was expecting considering it's roughly the same size and thickness as a standard novel - and he was itching to jump into the game.

Dragnime, Hubby, and I all created characters Saturday night, and started the basics of creating our criminal crew.

This time, I'd like to introduce you to Mara Basran. She is a native to the main city setting of Doskvol, but she doesn't have the fair skin typically associated with the island's native Akorosi. She's 2nd generation, descended from immigrants; much like how my mother is IRL. Three out of Mara's four grandparents were refugees from the island of Iruvia. To be frank, I picked it because of the island's description: a land of black deserts, obsidian mountains, and raging volcanoes. Can you say "sounds like Lia's paradise"?

The natives are "generally amber-skinned and dark-haired." In other words, they're supposed to have a North-African/Middle-Eastern look to them, which is where I'm going with Mara's look... whose name I TOTALLY didn't pick from the game's suggested names table because it was dangerously close to "Amara"....

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by Hanasake Pictures Inc

Anyway, for flavor, I decided Mara's father was going to be only half-Iruvian. The other parent would be an immigrant from The Dagger Isles. It's "a tropical archipelago covered in dense jungle growth; now turned dark and twisted from the strange magic of the cataclysm" that happens to be just off the coast of Iruvia. Native Islanders "are generally copper-skinned and dark-haired" so Mara's overall look wouldn't have to shift too much to include this quarter of her heritage.

The more I thought about what I wanted to do with Mara, and realized how I was seated while picturing her - a very powerful, forward leaning, devil-may-care pose - the more I pictured her as the surprisingly (but not really) controversial character design for Abby from The Last of Us Part II.

For reference for those who might not know, this is Abby.

Photo courtesy of the fandom wiki

So, picture Mara with that more muscular body tone, but with darker skin and black hair. I also gave her shoulder-length hair with an undercut so it's easier to maintain, but can still be left down for a more elegant look in case she needs to infiltrate a high-class party or something.

Mara was originally a member of the Bluecoats - the local law enforcement - but, after about 6 years on the force, she got a bit too cozy with an informant. I'm not sure yet if that's just a tight friendship, sexual rendezvous, or if they dated. Either way, it was frowned upon by her precinct, and she realized being a criminal was more fun anyway. So she was dishonorably discharged from the force, and she hit the streets doing petty crimes for about 2 years before meeting up with Hubby's character Ashlyn and Drag's character Syra. Quarthix is coming over today to come up with his character, but for now, Mara's cohorts are those two, and the trio decided to form an official crew. They're all Shadows; basically thieves and spies. They can take on other types of jobs, such as smuggling, selling fenced goods, or assassinations, but basic burglary, robbery, espionage, and sabotage is our crew's wheelhouse.

Another part of character creation for this game is to come up with "Deadly Friends." Each character archetype - of which I'm the Hound, a deadly sharpshooter and tracker - has a list of five NPCs. For the Hound, these characters include Steiner, an assassin, Celene, a sentinel, Melvir, a physicker (doctor), Veleris, a spy, and Casta, a bounty hunter. Out of your character's list of five NPCs, you are to choose one to be a close ally and another to be your greatest rival. For me, I went with Melvir the physicker as my ally, because it's always good to have someone who could patch me or my crew up. As for my rival? I went with Casta the bounty hunter. Figured Casta, whom I'm picturing as a male for whatever reason (probably because I'm picturing Michael Kosta from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah), had always been a bit of a thorn in Mara's side. First, he would bring in bounties and tease that he could bring in "the bad guys" better than I could. Now that I'm on the criminal side of the law, I'm picturing Casta and I going after the same bounties, and possibly evolve to him trying to bring ME in, if the bounty gets high enough.

So there you have it. Not much by way of actual stories to share with you fine folks, but two characters created and some of their opening life stories. As well as an unofficial review of the game Sigils in the Dark.

I did manage to get some fanfiction reading in this week - including rereading a bunch of my own stories to get back into the mindset of a writer - but this post is LOOOOOONG as is, so I'll have to wait until next week, I think.

Until then!

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(Or... at least have as good of one as 2020 will allow...)

Creating an Oral Story

A couple days ago I was asked how I manage to keep myself writing.

I'm going to be honest: I don't.

I'm sure you can see where this blog post is going to go.

Nope. No writing this week. Last Tuesday I worked and didn't make it home until about 7pm. I then quickly had dinner, and turned around and did laundry. I didn't finally have some downtime until a little after 10pm. I wasn't about to start writing anything then. Wednesday I worked, and then dinner, and then I fought with my laptop for about an hour while Wolfhearted and Omnibladestrike were finishing up their new character builds with Hubby. Then we all hung out for about an hour before the return of The Magicians on SYFY channel. By the time the episode was done, it was 11pm. Thursday was once again work, then dinner, then D&D until 11pm.

Friday I finally had a day off after a 10-day work week. I spent the morning paying bills, balancing my finances, and all that other fun Adulting stuff. I also tried out the ocarina my mom got me for Christmas while there was no one around to annoy. I got started on some of my chore backlog, but that was interrupted by my father-in-law popping in. My momentum killed, I fetched Hubby from work, did a load of dishes, watched a 45min YouTube video by one of the channels I follow, and promptly passed out for nearly 2hrs. Guess I needed to catch up on sleep too, huh? I then walked Hubby to his Friday Night Magic pre-release tournament a little before 6pm, and hung out at the store for a touch. When I got home I MEANT to either get back to cleaning, or maybe work on some writing.

Instead I spent pretty much the entire evening - all four hours of it - playing video games, because I haven't really done that hobby in a while. I then showered, quickly made up a picnicked dinner for Hubby's midnight tournament - something he wasn't sure he was staying for at first; there were two tournament options for the pre-release weekend - walked it down to him, hung out for a tick again, and then went home to finally crash.

Saturday I also had the day off; a rare 2 days in a row, and even rarer Saturday off. While I let Hubby sleep in - I think he got home about 4am? - I had breakfast, and finally took down our Christmas tree. It may seem pathetic that it kept me until January 18th to do so, but I didn't decorate the darn thing until Christmas Eve, and last year I didn't take the tree down until Easter... so having it "up" for less than a month, and down in January, is quite the improvement, I think.

The whole thing is so tedious too since we have to use a fake tree; Hubby being horribly allergic to evergreen trees and all. Between taking down the ornaments, packing them away, collapsing the branches, dismantling the tree, and vacuuming up all the plastic needles that STILL manage to fall off this thing like it's a real tree, the whole project kept me over 2hrs. I then got some dishes done, some more vacuuming, and then I made lunch for Hubby and I after waking him up.

We then had a fairly quick pop-in from some friends to FINALLY exchange Christmas gifts. After they left, I braved the snow to head back out to Walmart to try to find a tote large enough for our dang tree since the box it is normally stored in finally fell apart. The tree itself is over a decade old, after all. Navigating the bad roads, and Walmart, and trying to find a tote that would fit the tree AND my car, and then wandering Walmart trying to find my dang glove that fell out of my pocket was quite the exhausting trip. I made it home with just enough time to trim and shape my now horribly chipped nails before Omni and Goob came over for our normal Anime Night.

Sunday I was back at work, but not for terribly long: the store is only open 5hrs. I took advantage of the later start of the work day by casually watching some YouTube videos while getting ready for work and having something small to eat. Then work. Then I took Hubby to work, and watched the American football championship games. I enjoyed being able to watch the second half of the AFC championship game, but I actually found the NFC game a bit boring with how one-sided it was, also the Packers just weren't playing to their normal standard, I didn't think.

Still, I DID watch the games; casually. While doing so, I COULD have folded laundry or other such chore that I could have brought in front of the TV. Or I could have worked on writing since I was only half-paying attention to the games anyway. Instead, I turned my mind off, and played video games pretty much the entire time.

I had the place to myself. The 6:30 game wasn't terribly entertaining to me. I could have done just about ANYTHING else uninterrupted. I played video games. I win at life.

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Ironically, it was while I was avoiding even really thinking about anything that I was asked how I get myself to keep writing.

Yep. You saw right. I was asked how I get myself to keep writing while I was actively avoiding it.... Oh, Irony....

Memed image from
Ouran High School Host Club

The entire week was pretty much me just... not writing. I've stopped trying to force it. My brain needs to recoup from the franticness of the past few months. I don't want to burn myself out already, so soon into the new year. So, I just don't push it.

I am focused on cleaning my apartment so I'm not so stressed and de-moralized whenever I come home. Yesterday was Bedroom Day. I now (mostly) have a floor. I still have some baskets to sort through - one for clothes to see if they still fit, one of towels and wash cloths to be put away in the kitchen and bathroom, one of clothes to but away in the closet after I re-iron them, and one of socks I need to find the mates to - but I no longer have to climb in and out of bed via the foot of the mattress. We can also access our dresser drawers again after I re-organized them so they can properly close/open once more. Also... more dusting and vacuuming....

It's amazing how much stress is lifted with the simplest things, like, oh, I dunno, seeing your floor again!

Knives from the Scott Pilgrim comic books
by Bryan Lee O'Malley

The bedroom - plus a couple of breaks for meals and cleaning dishes - took up a large chunk of my day, but I feel productive, and less stressed. So why try to push it by also forcing myself to get some narrative writing in as well? I'm not doing this professionally yet, and once I am, writing would be my normal work day, wouldn't it? I mean, I'd have time specifically set aside for little to no distractions whilst I write.

Right now, though? Right now writing is my escape. It is my de-stressor. It is my passion. If I'm not feeling any of that, then what's the point? Why turn writing into a chore? I think part of my problem in the past was pushing myself too hard. I might not be pushing hard enough right now, and I DO need to produce SOMETHING soon because I AM going a bit stir crazy, but I'm also still recovering from the holidays.

So, I will continue to de-stress in other ways, such as FINALLY getting my apartment back in order so it's a calming space for me again. Or by FINALLY playing video games, since I truly do enjoy them and rarely prioritize time for them. Or just by napping, because I went from virtually NEVER drinking coffee to both drinking many cups a day AND drinking 5-Hour Energy shots while at work and can't make coffee. I'm all caffeined up, and it's probably not the healthiest thing. Naps are probably better.... That and going to bed before midnight if I'm trying to be up by 7am each day.

Besides, if I'm being entirely truthful here, it's not like I COMPLETELY took a hiatus from writing.

I actually got a bit TOO involved in Kriv's ode to Cutter.

Yes, Tuesday I was training the new employees, so I didn't have the downtime to write at work then. Wednesday, however, I tried to crank out the Epic of Cutter Von Richtor so I had it in time for our next D&D session. I managed to sort through the soft role play that Wolfhearted and I did of Cutter and Kriv just chatting, and created a sort of bullet-pointed list of Cutter Facts that Kriv potentially knew. I also found a free download for a modern translation of Beowulf, and started reading through that to help inspire me for how I might want to format Kriv's homage.

Side Note: the modern translation I downloaded on Wednesday, and therefore the one I was originally referencing, was this one by Thomas Meyer that you can actually download for free, legally, from the publisher. However, while working on this blog post, I could not remember where I found that free version of Beowulf. I wanted to link to it, so I hit up Google to try to retrace my steps in finding it in the first place. In so doing, I discovered another modern translation that is also free to download via Project Gutenburg. This version, by Ernest J. B. Kirtlan, is written in prose in order to simplify the story even further, whereas Meyer's version tries to keep the epic poem in its original formatting and cadence. You have a variety of options to download Kirtlan's version - I downloaded it for the Kindle - but I never was a fan of the Kindle formatting, which is why I'm still waiting for Ali Luke to release paperback versions of Dominion and Not So Imaginary even though I do own both as ebooks. Anyway, my point is that there is an HTML version of Kirtlan's translation for you to simply read online, and I'll most likely stick to that one for future Beowulf prose telling re-reads.

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Wednesday, as I stated, was spent re-reading Beowulf for formatting research, and I tried to plot out Cutter's Life As Known By Kriv. I didn't get much farther than that at work.

Thursday I again attempted to get Kriv's Ode to Cutter done in time for game, but things did not go to plan. Instead, I read through more of Beowulf. Even with the modern translation, the poetry formatting throws me off, so it's a bit harder for me to absorb and retain. I more-or-less knew the story from reading it in high school, watching the movie when it came out in 2007, and refreshing my memory via Red's recap over on Overly Sarcastic Productions. Still, trying to get the FEEL of what makes a story easily told and retold orally was tricky.

As I studied Beowulf, and pondered how to make my own story easily orated, I also thought back to my one friend's mom, and how she used to tell the story of Rindercella. Now, Rindercella is a spoonerism retelling of Cinderella that is most commonly remembered as a skit by Archie Campbell on the Hee Haw television show in the 1970s. It could have earlier origins, and Campbell himself could have either heard it from someone else or simply recited it from a script. Either way, it was so fun to listen to and repeat - plus the skit itself says to learn the story and retell it - that many people started recreating the skit, much like the Who's on First skit by Abbott and Costello. Anyway, the skit eventually became a campfire staple with the Boy Scouts, I guess. That's where my friend's mom heard it - she was a den mother - and she memorized it, and brought it to our Girl Scout campfires. It became a tradition there too, and my friend ended up memorizing it to tell her campers when she was a counselor, as well as telling it to the younger Girl Scouts when she became an assistant troop leader.

In truth, it wasn't until college or so did I realize my friend's mom didn't actually come up with Rindercella herself, and that, my friends, is how oral stories work. They are fun to listen to, fun to tell, and fairly easy to remember, both from an audience standpoint as well as a presenter's. It's also a bit tricky to try to find the originator of the tale; we can only really trace it back to Campbell thanks to it being recorded on TV and archived.

Kriv, of course, would want his name to travel with his story of Cutter, so I'll have to work his name into his Ode somehow, but in the end, yeah, I have to make it as fun as Rindercella, or as memorable and intriguing as Beowulf. It should probably be a bit trickier to remember, like Beowulf, in order to make Kriv's retelling of it special, since only those who have studied the epic can properly remember it, whereas those who hear it will only remember highlights.

Kind of like those Super Fans who can recite the entirety of a movie vs the casual viewers/fans who could tell you the characters, basic plot, some key one-liners, but little else.

So, yeah, all of that style research kind of took over, and I didn't really get anywhere with my actual writing.

Buuuut, that's probably a good thing now that there's a major monkey wrench in what Kriv's story SHOULD have been. As I mentioned last week, Cutter and Faelyth were left behind when the rest of the party were teleported out of the hidden basement lair. Then Cutter died when he was crushed under the collapsed stone ceiling, and further smooshed under the stone block used as a trap door for the lair. Kriv, of course, was not around to witness any of this, and Faelyth ran away before telling anyone. So my glorious idiot of a dragonborn has to somehow figure out what happened himself. Either that, or Solf or Hakkim need to figure it out and relay that info to Kriv.

The party did indeed return to the last place they saw Faelyth and Cutter - with Faelyth's older sister Kiatha in tow - and tried to search for their lost companions. However, the guards hadn't had the personnel available to excavate the caved in stairs yet, and the party were all too weak (read: failed our rolls) to move the heavy stones. So Cutter's body is still under a stone block, and the debris was too dense for anyone to see any potentially still-whole limbs sticking out for identification. The only clue was the trail of blood Faelyth left behind when she fled.

It was deduced that at least ONE of the lost duo had gotten out, while covered in blood. It was unknown if it is their own blood or someone/something else's. Kriv did note that only ONE set of tracks was found, so perhaps the other partymate was still in the rubble. The rest of the party quickly dismissed these concerns, stating that the one set of tracks doesn't mean anything; perhaps the other just didn't have any blood dripping off them, or perhaps Cutter was carrying Faelyth.

Now, please know that I TRIED to have Kriv figure it out. I did. The rest of the party dismissed any "ah-ha" moments Kriv might have had. Instead, Kriv did what he does best: wove a grand tale. I personally blame all of my years watching Castle for this: tell a great story despite the lack of facts, and just tweak it once new evidence comes to light.

Cutter was surprisingly empathetic, especially towards meek Faelyth. The more Kriv unknowingly made Faelyth uncomfortable, or the more Faelyth proved herself a competent companion, the more Cutter stuck by her and was protective of her. Kriv, of course, misread this as Cutter having romantic affections for Faelyth. It probably didn't help that Cutter had a ruddy complexion, and so he always looked either sunburnt or - as Kriv probably thought - always blushing. Add in that Faelyth seemed the most comfortable around Cutter, ya know, because he wasn't putting her in peril or trying to push her into the limelight like Kriv. To the hyperactive imagination of my bard, Faelyth's seemingly uncharacteristic calm with Cutter proved she returned his romantic feelings. The fact that Cutter wouldn't play along with Kriv's playful flirtations only solidified that the gladiator's heart was only for one person.

Cutter had also grumbled about being forced into a marriage contract in order to keep his main patron happy. That's when Kriv first thought of Cutter and Faelyth as "star-crossed lovers."

Now that the duo could not be find after "conveniently" being left behind, Kriv is convinced the two eloped. The way he sees the events is as follows:

         During their brief time on the beach, wandering the dense jungle, and the many trials of the ziggurat, Cutter's and Faelyth's unconventional love sparked. It blossomed on the ride back into the city, but the duo knew they had to keep their newfound affections secret. For at his home, in the very city they were returning to, Cutter had a very wealthy and demanding patron. This Elf of high-standing was so fond of the gladiator that he wished Cutter join his family by way of marrying the Elf's daughter. Should the patron catch wind that Cutter preferred another, let alone a Drow - a hated "inferior" by Elven standards - all funding would cease, and Cutter might even become an enemy of the elite. Due to his loyalty to his owner/boss/father-figure, the dwarf Frinan who owned and ran the gladiatorial arena, Cutter would never do anything that might affect profits for the fighters' pit. Beyond that, neither Cutter nor Faelyth wished to have an Elf's vengeance sent upon her.
          It was painful for the two lovers to keep their feelings secret and chaste, but they persevered. Then, as if Fate itself wished them to be together, they were left wholly alone in the basement lair. No one would know what happened to them. They could run away. They could be together!
          "No," said Cutter, "For I am betrothed, and still shackled to be a gladiator. We shall be hunted down should we flee." So instead, he devised a great plan. He was a man of strength and endurance. He had neared Death before, and snarled at it each time. He was too stubborn to allow Death to take him before he was ready. He also knew from experience what parts of the body bled the most, and how long one could survive such wounds. Studying the stairs they had descended before, he began hacking away at the stone in order to cause a terrible cave in, leaving just enough space for the duo to sneak through. He then cut himself in order to pool his blood among the debris, and had the unsoiled Faelyth move the last bits of debris into place to hide the hole they escaped through. It would look as if there was a terrible accident trapping them inside, and they would be thought dead. Perhaps the lovers even concocted a plan to hide the fact that their bodies were no longer inside.
          Forgetting his wounds, Cutter walked away from his past life, his future one draped along his side. Likewise, Faelyth no longer needed to fear or flee, for her bravery and home had her tightly wrapped within his arms. Pausing only long enough for Faelyth to finally tend to Cutter's bleeding, the couple fled the city, to start anew elsewhere, leaving their old identities behind.

Kriv is too much of a hopeless romantic to be deterred from this headcanon of his ship finally sailing. Even when Faelyth's older sister Kiatha mentioned that Faelyth "doesn't like men" Kriv simply responded:

"That just makes them an even more unlikely couple! To think that Cutter is the one man to manage to work his way into Faelyth's heart!"

Like I said before, I can't keep my characters from The Stupid.... Kriv will bend facts to meet his headcanon, reality be damned, apparently.

So... uh.... I guess, instead of an In Memorium, Kriv is now writing a sort of Romeo & Juliet about Cutter and Faelyth, but with a happy ending???

Regardless, I still needed to lock down what highlights of Cutter's life would be included, so Friday was back to plotting that out. I had all of the backstory that Kriv should know about Cutter already ironed out. Now was time to work through the highlights of the campaign. I had a bit of practice during session as the new characters asked about Faelyth and "what happened to her?"

Of course, Solf instantly knew that was entirely the wrong question to state within earshot of Kriv. Instead of a simple "we were investigating this thing at this underground lair, and we got separated; we're not sure what happened next" the whole group was regaled - sorta - by Kriv's tell of EVERYTHING that happened since first meeting Faelyth and Cutter.

In truth, I was going to just start the tale in such a grand manner that it was obvious what Kriv was doing, and then I was going to "fade to black" as it were, and then "cut" to the last bit where the party was separated. However, Quarthix wasn't there for the first four sessions, and I had handwaved over a lot of that first arc when Kriv originally told the tale in the tavern upon meeting Solf. When Quarthix expressed interest in actually hearing the tale, I leaned hard into it. By the time I got to the part where the party met Solf, and therefore all players knew exactly what happened, everyone seemed so into my overly dramatic retelling that I just sort of... continued to run with it? The whole thing probably took a good ten or twenty minutes. To be fair, though, that's still a fairly decent recap for... what... seven sessions averaging roughly 4hrs each?

Anyway, I had realized upon my impromptu retelling that I didn't quite remember the ziggurat dungeon dive all that well. I still haven't taken a moment to look back on the map that Hubby drew - which will likely refresh my memory - nor have I talked through the events with Hubby, Omni, and/or Wolf to try to better recall the highlights in proper order. I wish Hubby had notes, but since the dungeon was supposed to be a one-off, he just used a random generator, and I don't think he has that info anymore. I'll have to check....

Regardless, I haven't touched my campaign recap since Friday. I already told you what I had done the past three days which took priority.

Now I'm on the fence between "Well, Kriv doesn't think they're dead, so no need to rush through this story; focus on the Miraculous Ladybug Valentine's stories" and "Now that Kriv thinks there's an epic love story to tell, I should probably come up with something for next game; plus it gives me something new that was written this month since I haven't shared anything since Christmas."

We'll see which side prevails next week.

In the meantime, Hubby and I haven't had much time TOGETHER and ALONE in a while, so we're off to a double-header movie date.

OH! Two more things, though, before I go. This first one I meant to share a while ago.

Long-time readers of this blog might remember how, in 2018, I talked about a story called Mr. Lucky and the Cat by fanfiction writer HariWrites. I really enjoyed the non-magical/con-man/thief AU that she had created. Instead of superheroes, Marinette was a cat-themed burglar a la Catwoman, and Adrien was a con-artist who used his wealth and model status to weasel his way into expensive homes and closed events showcasing unique riches. In both cases, our nontraditional heroes were more-or-less Robin-Hooding; stealing previously stolen items from "evil" elites. There was also a parallel plot where Tikki was the lead detective for the string of robberies, and Plagg was the main investigator for the company that had insured nearly everything that had been stolen. There was a lot of mystery and suspense as you tried to figure out who to trust out of a cast of characters you know to be good in the show's continuity. Also, of course there was a sort of forbidden romance between Marinette and Adrien, and who wouldn't fall for that?

Well, seeing how popular her story was, and realizing that there was really very little connecting her story to actual ML canon - just the character names, vague relationships between them, and Easter Eggs nodding to the show via the things being stolen - Hari decided to try her hand at reworking the story into an original work.

And on January 6th that original rework of the story was published!

I haven't had a chance to read my copy yet, but if it's close to the fanfic I already read, then I highly recommend. Best part is that it comes with both an e-book AND paperback option. Yay, physical books!

Promotional image from HariSinclair.com

Thief by Night

By day, Bonnie Duncan is a social media manager, by night, she steals from high society. A consummate multi-tasker, she balances her double-life with ease; bossing it in the boardroom and behind the mask. Until, mid-diamond-heist, she discovers another thief taking the same gem she was ordered to lift and has to take decisive measures. To complicate matters, she soon discovers that she knows the other thief and, worse, he’s handsome and charming. Can she keep her secrets while she uncovers his? Can she resist his charms and stay focused on the job?

You can either request your library get a copy of this story, or you can pick up your own via Amazon.

As for the other thing, well, you know that NaNoWriMo project that Cyhyr asked me to beta read? Well, her edits on that first chapter are done, and she posted it to AO3 late last night/early this morning.

Displaced by Time

Vesper Scienta wanted nothing more out of life than to make sure her charge and best friend, Prince Aster Amicitia, was happy. She would follow him, always, and keep him safe, as her appointment as Shield dictates she must. She was happy. They were happy.

Then they found the Messengers.

Now she's flitting through time itself, racing against the weakening pulse of the Crystal. It's been almost nineteen years since the Dawn Returned, and the world needs saving again. Vesper just doesn't understand why it has to be her, or why the Messengers separated her and Aster, or why they paired her with the daughter of the Marshal and the son of the King of Light - both from different times.

Time's running out. The star will burn. Raise the dawn, become the night, restore the Crystal.

Vesper just wants to be with Aster again.

I am not even much of a Final Fantasy fan, and I've never played nor really saw any game footage of FFXV. All I know of these characters I either learned from Cyhyr talking about them, from the posts Cy reblogs on her Tumblr, or from the short-format fanfics Cy has written within this fandom. In other words, I'm going in fairly blind. Which means you can probably trust me when I say you don't need any prior knowledge to enjoy this story. You just feel the intensity of the situation as you follow Vesper. You feel how much she cares for Aster, you become confused and disoriented beside her, you become as frustrated as she does, and you also want to see Aster again. The visceral storytelling and mystery were enough to draw me in, for sure.

So, there you have it: one free read, and a fairly cheap-to-buy one. Hopefully they can tide you over until I can get my own act together.

Maybe I SHOULD force myself to keep writing....

Might be something to reconsider and re-calibrate in time for this Saturday's Lunar New Year.

Free use image from PublicDomainPictures.net

Fantasy Story Epics

This past week has been... interesting.

Tuesday, the 7th, was my last day off, and I don't get another one until Friday, the 17th, so the work-week craziness hasn't let up yet. I do get two days off in a row, though, and my second Saturday off in a single month! I usually only get Saturdays off if I specifically request them, and even then it's only about 4 all year. I don't know if I'll figure out what to do with myself with a "weekend" off like this! Especially since I'll work my normal 5.5hr work day on Sunday, and then have Monday and next Tuesday off as well! It will almost be like a mini-vacation! I'll probably need it at that point.

Tanuki Facebook sticker
by Yanare Ku

What grand plans will I be able to knock out? Especially since Hubby will be at work Friday, and at the local gaming store for the latest MTG pre-release. There's usually a midnight pre-release tournament, which means Hubby will probably sleep in pretty late Saturday. I might have the morning to myself, as well as pretty much all of Friday. Oh, the possibilities are swirling through my mind right now....

This past Wednesday was my first day helping out the store about 45minutes away. It actually wasn't that bad of an experience over-all. The ladies I was training seemed excited to learn, which is a fantastic shift from past employees I've attempted to train. There was a decent amount of customer traffic, but not so bad that it was overwhelming, which was also nice. Honestly, the only time I cursed my fate about having to go out there was the drive home. We were having major snow squalls all day - and of course we've been having gorgeous springtime weather ever since - and those squalls were not letting up. I hit up the same highway I drove off of when I drove home from visiting my mom and sister for Thanksgiving. I was much farther east than where I drove off the road, but that was always in my head as I attempted my trip home.

The road didn't have enough snow on it for the plows, due to the wind brushing it off, and yet there was enough on it to be slippery. The roads were also icing over, so the majority of my trip home was with my hazards on as I drove about 40mph (~64kph) in a 65mph (~105kph) zone. Any faster, and I started to slide, or the wind would push me. It was darn near terrifying whenever a big rig (lorry) billowed past me. But I kept my pace, I white-knuckled my way down the highway, and I made it home safely; even if it did take me nearly an extra 10min to do so.

I didn't do much else Wednesday night. I simply snuggled my husband and binged Netflix.

Tuesday night Hubby wanted a breather from his re-watch binge of the American The Office. So, since we were intrigued anyway, and Netflix had been bombarding us with ads for it, we caved and finally started up The Witcher. Wednesday we finished the first season: 4 episodes Tuesday; other 4 on Wednesday. I must say, the show was great advertisement in and of itself. I'm now intrigued enough to want to play the games and read the novels the whole fandom is based off of.

It's been a while since I've had a computer that I could really play games on, though, and I don't know if my laptop is capable. Anyone know if there are console ports for the first two games? At the very least, Hubby can get the third game for the PS4. I saw recommendations to stick with a Windows platform, such as a computer or Xbox One, but again, I don't know how well my laptop will hold up, and our Xbox is a 360.

I'll touch back on The Witcher series on Netflix towards the end of this post. First I want to finish recapping my week.

Thursday was the return of our D&D sessions. We made the mistake of separating the party again. This time it wasn't intentional though. Also, our party was nearly wiped by a friggen magical Rug of Smothering!

Rug of Smothering as depicted
in D&D 5e rule books

Something that looked like an area rug version of Aladdin's carpet from the Disney animated movie, and acted like Dr. Strange's cloak in the Marvel movie, nearly killed us all off. We're good like that.

The story gets a touch long, so I'm going to finish my weekly recap first, and then I'll circle back to this.

Friday, I was once again at work, and then I did some much-needed shopping at Walmart - I had been avoiding it for a while - before coming home to talk D&D with Hubby and Wolfhearted. After an hour or two, Wolf headed home, and Hubby and I again cuddled as we talked about our day.

Saturday I pulled a minor whoopsie.

Remember back in November when I was singing Cyhyr's praises for doing so well during NaNoWriMo? Well, on January 2nd she asked me if I'd be willing to beta the first chapter for her. I warned her it might be a bit before I had time to beta; she was cool with that since she had two other sets of eyes also checking it.

This past Saturday I finally found time to read and beta her chapter.... and apparently proceeded to give the poor thing a minor heart attack.

Generated by Bitmoji

Those other two sets of eyes that are also beta reading for her? One is her bestie, the other is her husband. Both beta read and commented that first weekend of the year. I don't know how many comments Cy resolved before I got to the document, but I only recall seeing about two or three from each of them. The story's a fanfic, so the bestie was mostly pointing out errors with canon facts, and Ronoxym was mostly commenting about overall flow and feel of the story.

But, see, Cy asked me to look at her story with a "critical eye"... and I took that request super seriously.... aaaaaaaand I left her like 100 comments on a 21pg/6600+ word chapter. Most of the comments were either positive reactions to her writing, or questioning whether or not she missed a comma. Some were questions to clear up things the fans would inherently know, but were confusing for a non-fan. Some comments were asking about continuity or foreshadowing and the like. All-in-all, I tried to keep my comments even between both the praise and critique categories.

Cy has since told me that she appreciates the critical eye I put to her work, and she did thank me quite frequently for my comments. But... yeah... I can only imagine what it was like to have gotten a notification that I was editing her work... and there were 100 comments to sift through! I'd probably have a heart attack as well.

Sorry for the added stress right out the gate! My bad!

Generated by Bitmoji

I do have to admit that I got quite the chuckle out of one of Cy's comment replies in particular. My final comment on her chapter was a simple "More, please?" to help encourage her because oh my goodness am I intrigued!

Her reply?

Cyhyr: Maybe if SOMEONE didn't leave ~100 comments on the first chapter, I'd have the second one available for y'all sooner than feb 1st lol

HAHA. Fair. She did follow up with basically a "for reals though, thanks for the comments. I want this to be the best I can make it" so, yay for that.

After terrorizing poor Cy, I spent the evening watching anime with Hubby, Omnibladestrike, and Goob.

Minor tangent: Omni has changed most of his handles to either his given name or to dragnime. So... Omni, if you're reading this and would prefer I use dragnime for your name here, please let me know.

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Sunday was a fairly slow day, so I tried to utilize some of the time wisely: I started drafting up this post. I did have major edits left to do come Monday, but I still had a decent chunk churned out already. Super helpful since, ya know, I'm at work right now, and clearly couldn't get the post done and published at my normal time if I had waited until this morning to start.

Look at me, actually getting this thing pre-written, edited, and scheduled to publish "on time."

Sunday evening, while Hubby was at work, and I had the American football playoffs on in the background, I had every intention to finish my draft of this blog, or possibly work on some fictional writing.

Instead I spent HOURS trying to catch up on that social media backlog I keep commenting about. I really should just wave the white flag and resolve myself to the idea that everything that happened on Tumblr the last week of December/first week of January is long gone and forever lost to me....

I did also balance my bank book, and buy new long-sleeve shirts for work... so... there's that.

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As I already mentioned, yesterday was mostly spent finishing up this blog post so it would be good and golden for today's update. I also did some roleplaying with Wolfhearted - Kriv and Cutter just having a chat - but I'm not sure how "canonical" I should consider it. We were roleplaying a quiet moment from, like 4 play sessions ago, and Kriv didn't really act "appropriately" in a later session given the knowledge he now supposedly had. It may be a fun AU session between us....

Anyway, now that we're all caught up, let's backtrack to that D&D session on Thursday, and how that relates to both my current fiction writing inspiration, as well as The Witcher series.

Fair warning, this is going to be a bit long, so if you don't particularly care about the details you can go ahead and just scroll down. I'll signal when I'm done chatting about this, and I'll recap the main details so you won't be lost. Also, for those reading my full summary, there will be blood and character death mention, just FYI.

Or rather, let me chat at you
Generated by Bitmoji

Anyway, leading into this session, the party discovered - in a very unfortunate manner - that a smithy was unintentionally selling items made out of cursed metal. Said metal items - typically sold as expensive pieces of jewelry such as necklaces - inflicted insanity upon the wearer, and was causing murder and mayhem within the city. The party had tracked down the warehouse where the metal was supposedly previously stored by a small rebel collaboration of Thieves Guild members. Said thieves were allegedly trying to work their way through the social ranks in order to become one of the elites; even-footing with nobles in the area.

We closed out the previous session by discovering one of the shipping crates in the warehouse was actually a solid block of stone merely painted to look like a crate; expertly painted, but still. Said stone block was fixed to the stone floor via grooves, and pushing the block along the grooves revealed stairs to a secret basement hidden beneath it.

Thursday's session started with the party searching the hidden basement. This is where we encountered the Rug of Smothering - or Murder Rug, as Kriv started calling it. The battle was probably way harder than it should have been, especially when we gave up fighting the thing for a few rounds, instead opting to try to pull the dang rug off of our allies. It went from smothering Cutter to suffocating Kriv... all with just one simple hit point left. We would have been fine if ANYONE hit it just once more, instead of attempting to wrestle the blasted thing!

We were far more depleted and beaten up than Hubby expected we'd be, considering it was the ENTIRE PARTY against this SINGLE RUG; NO OTHER ENEMIES. So, after confirming that the coast was clear, Cutter muscled that stone block door back closed. Feeling secure, the rest of the party voted to take a Long Rest in order to recover.

The D&D rule books define a "Long Rest" as:

...a period of extended downtime, at least 8 hours long, during which a character sleeps or performs light activity: reading, talking, eating, or standing watch for no more than 2 hours. If the rest is interrupted by a period of strenuous activity—at least 1 hour of walking, fighting, casting Spells, or similar Adventuring activity—the characters must begin the rest again to gain any benefit from it.

Since we could still take watch, we each offered to do so, but Cutter was too paranoid about the group resting in an enemy's lair with only one presumed entrance/exit. He refused to rest - health points be damned - and had Cutter take sole watch. No skin off the rest of our noses... supposedly. After our rest was completed with no incident, our newest party member Solf - or, more accurately, Kriv after watching Solf eye up one of the lair walls - discovered a false-wall that led to a large storage room of gems. Cutter was still on edge and all sorts of "Oh, hell no!" about the gems; refusing to touch anything within the Thieves Den we had stumbled upon. The rest of the group grabbed handfuls. Kriv opened his backpack and just swiped his arm along the shelf to knock as many gems into the pack as possible.

Then we had to roll saving throws.

Kriv, Solf, and our NPC partymate Hakkim all vanished as we touched the jewels. Omni's character Faelyth passed her throws, so she stayed behind with Cutter. This was the beginning of the end.

Turns out the gems were how the thieves normally left their den; they were all transportation spells, similar to a portkey from the Harry Potter franchise. If Faelyth and/or Cutter grabbed just one gemstone each, Hubby would have instantly teleported them as well, but he first wanted to see the party's reaction.

Faelyth and Cutter decided to jet the heck out of that room once the other three disappeared. Cutter attempted to re-open the door he had closed behind the group; not knowing that the thieves used the gemstone teleportation specifically because the stone "door" is designed to lock into place once closed, and cannot be opened from inside. After a few fails, Hubby wanted the duo to go back to the gems and be teleported. However, Cutter is a laser focused man who was more-or-less weaponized since he was a child. He goes after a single task, and doesn't waver unless aimed at or otherwise directed towards a different goal.

Cutter's goal was to get the heck out of that basement lair, and he couldn't think of any option other than through that door. So he started hacking away at the stone to try to carve their way out. Hubby made sure to give Wolfhearted plenty of warning signs - mainly dust falling on top of Cutter and the roof above him shaking - to stop what he was doing and change his plan of attack. Cutter isn't that kind of man, and Faelyth is too socially anxious to pipe up and say anything to the hulking man. Sooooo Cutter chopped away enough for the stone to slip through the doorway... and... onto him.

The real ironic part is that, since Cutter did manage to dodge, and therefore only had part of his body crushed, he would have been able to survive the incident had he rested earlier and recovered all his health - or healed his earlier wounds if we aren't being meta about it. Instead, poor Cutter was still too beaten up from THE DAMN MURDER RUG and succumbed to his injuries.

Panicked, Faelyth tried to climb over the rock to get through the newly opened door and out of the warehouse. She slipped on all of Cutter's blood, smashed hard against the stone block, nearly died as well from basically impaling herself on the corner of the stone, and crawled her way to safety... after accidentally pushing hard enough on the stone to shift it and further flatten poor Cutter's corpse.

While Omni had fun running Faelyth, she no longer has ties to the party, has no clue where her other partymates are, is a Drow covered in blood - which is never good - and is a painfully introverted  monk that does NOT like being in a city to begin with. So he's going to have her Flight instincts kick in, and she's going to jet. Omni's going to bring in a new character instead of continuing to play as Faelyth, but since she is still alive, there is a chance of potentially running into her again in the future.

In the meantime, though, Faelyth not even attempting to look for her missing partymates before skipping town also means it will be super hard for Kriv, Solf, and Hakkim to find out what happened to their left-behind friends. They may never find out about Cutter's death, and if they do, they may not realize that Faelyth is still out there somewhere.

This is of course assuming that the trio will survive their own ordeal. The gemstones teleported them into the thieves' treasure room. They each filled as many pockets and pouches and sacks as they could, then snuck out of the room. They figured out that the "thieves" are actually cultists worshiping a... demon, I think? Kriv expertly found and dismantled a bell alarm on the exit door, only to discover six cultists praying on the other side... and proceeded to use Thunderwave to attack them... which slams the targets with a powerful air wave, buuuuut also booms out a THUNDEROUS clap that can be heard up to 300ft (~91m) away. Good thing you dismantled that bell alarm there, Kriv....

I really can't control any of my characters from doing The Stupid. Buuuut, Wolfhearted is clearly the same way, hence poor Cutter's death. At least Kriv's trio survived their encounter thus far, and stopped the blood pool from making a demonic summoning circle. Also, Hubby fully supports players not meta-gaming, by following the character's lead instead of re-directing them using player-only knowledge or foresight. Given his characterization thus far in the campaign, Cutter absolutely would have kept hacking away at that stone, believing his 23 year-old self too indestructible for the roof caving in to actually be a problem. Wolf played him that way, damn the results, so Wolf has bonuses for his new character's creation as a reward for such play.

Wolfhearted does seem excited for his new character, as is Omni for his. Wolf was over Friday night starting his build of the new character, and Hubby's trying to get Omni over tonight to work on his.

Anyway, it will be cool to see how these new characters interact with Kriv, whom I could have sworn I was going to lose on Thursday, and I would have been so devastated! I've grown really attached to this kid! I believe he is officially the second-longest D&D character I've played as, and is closing in on Jolene for longest-running character.

Not too shabby for a randomly thrown together character for a "one-shot" game....

Also, yes, Kriv is totally a "kid" still. He may technically be considered an adult by Dragonborn standards, and may have the same physical build as an adult human, but he's still only 16. So I'm very much trying to play him like a modern-day 20 year old human: an adult but still so green to the whole Adulting thing that he might as well be a kid.

That said, due to Kriv's confusion about the term "seed money," he's spending most of the 800 gold coins he swiped from the treasure room on a bunch of large pots and soil. Then Hakkim - who was born over 200 years prior, but due to his Wild Magic constantly shifting his age is effectively now 20 - will plant his own coins in an attempt to grow "money trees." Honestly, Kriv isn't THAT intelligent, but he does have - barely - "above average" intelligence, and really should know better than to believe you could grow "money trees" by planting "seed money." To be fair, though, he did also witness Hakkim's Wild Magic sprout a tree that had fresh baked loaves of bread as "fruit." So now, to Kriv, all things are possible if Hakkim's Wild Magic is involved.

Hubby even rolled for the likelihood of Hakkim's magic sprouting plant life from the gold coins, AND FRIGGEN PASSED WITH A ROLL OF LIKE 97! So, assuming the trio manages to get out of the cultists' den, and survive until Kriv can buy the pots and soil, and assuming the planted coins are not disturbed, golden trees will start to sprout in 3 years, and will be fully matured "money trees" - growing precious gems instead of fruit, and having sheets of emeralds for leaves - in about 14 years.

And Solf wanted none of our nonsense, so he doesn't get a copper of any of our profit!

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Soooooo, yeah. That was Thursday!

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OKAY! FOR ANY WHO SCROLLED PAST THAT EPIC ABOUT OUR LATEST D&D SESSION, YOU CAN STOP NOW! I'M DONE!

The quick recap for those who skipped the breakdown:

      The party explored a hidden basement lair that was believed to house thieves trying to topple the social elites by way of cursed metal jewelry inflicting murderous insanity among them. There was no one in the lair aside from an enchanted Rug of Smothering, which nearly killed off the party by strangling Cutter, and then Kriv, while also beating away the other three.
      After taking a rest, which Cutter refused to participate in since he was on-edge about camping within the Thieves' Den, everyone else was healed and had recovered their mana (spell slots, if you're being meta about it). The party discovered a hidden stock room of gems, and while greedily grabbing them - something Cutter again refused to participate in - Kriv, Solf, and NPC partymate Hakkim managed to grab gems that were secretly teleportation spells. They vanished, and in a panic Cutter and Faelyth attempted to go back through the entrance they had used to descended into the lair in the first place, except when Cutter closed the door behind them earlier he accidentally locked them inside.
      Laser focused on his task to get them out, and confident he could take any damage that came his way, Cutter carved at the door across the top of the stairs, and ended up having the roof collapse on him, causing him to bleed out and die - although, his injuries would have been survivable if he had rested and recovered with everyone else. Hubby still rewarded Wolfhearted for his playing of Cutter because it was in character to a fault, and that dedication to characterization over survivability should always be praised. Faelyth, terrified of everything she witnessed, just ran away. We may see her again in future sessions, but in the meantime Omni is bringing in a new character as well.
      Meanwhile, the trio of Kriv, Solf, and Hakkim discovered that they were teleported into a treasure room, and quickly looted it before escaping the room. They realized they are hunting down demon worshipers, not rebellious thieves. While trying to escape the cultists' den, Kriv used Thunderwave to surprise attack six cultists praying in the next room. He didn't think about the fact that such an attack would alert others just as well as the bell alarm he had JUST disarmed.
      The trio survived the cultists - barely - but are now unsure if they will be going up against another wave of them. In the meantime, Kriv and Hakkim made a plan to use the 800 gold pieces they each swiped from the treasure room as literal "seed money" in hopes that Hakkim's chaotic Wild Magic will take hold and cause the gold to sprout into literal "money trees." Hubby rolled, and assuming we survive to plant the money, and it doesn't get disturbed, we WILL have literal money trees sprouting.

Now, since Kriv didn't witness poor Cutter's demise, and who knows if he'll run into Faelyth to hear tell of it, I don't know if he'll ever find out that Cutter died, as I mentioned in the more in-depth summary. Presumably, the local guards will EVENTUALLY come upon the destroyed hidden opening to the den - or the trio will lead the guards back to it - and find Cutter's body there, and it will still be recognizable enough to know that it was him crushed under the stone flooring. Someone has to tell Cutter's owner/boss/adoptive father over at the gladiatorial stadium. Perhaps Kriv will find out that way if he isn't part of the discovery of Cutter's corpse.

Either way, I already have grand plans of Kriv writing up a Beowulf-style epic in honor of Cutter. However, because it's Kriv and because Cutter wasn't very forthcoming with personal info - Monday's questionably-canon soft roleplay with Wolfhearted notwithstanding - I'm guessing Kriv's epic might not end up being terribly accurate....

None of this will happen until Kriv finds out about Cutter's death, however, so I have some time to work on it.

I already have plans. Lots of wonderful, glorious, hyperbolic plans.

And this finally brings me back to The Witcher on Netflix. In the series, there is a bard by the name of Jaskier. Now, apparently the name Jaskier is Polish - the language the books were originally written in - for "yellow flower" or "buttercup" and thus his name was translated to "Dandelion" in the books and games, but kept as Jaskier for the Netflix series. Also, in fairness, Jaskier/Dandelion is simply his stage name, if you will. If we're being technical, the bard's name is Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, a noble turned bard upon completing his studies and becoming bored with teaching.

Anyway, he has become a beloved side character, and is responsible for probably the most popular and obsessively played/shared/covered song from the Netflix series: "Toss a Coin to Your Witcher," a ballad to try to positively rebrand the otherwise ostracized Geralt of Rivia and his other Witcher brethren.

I really do love this song, and I get all of the hype it's received. Give it a listen, if you haven't already by now. The show has been out for nearly a month, after all....

Anyway, while there is really no way I could ever make Kriv nearly as epic and/or masterful as Jaskier, I now have a new "mentor" as it were. I doubt I could write anything as catchy as "Toss a Coin..." but that's the goal I have for Kriv and his epic retellings of himself and his friends. There's a reason I created Kriv as more of an acting bard than a songsmith though.... Again, Cutter's getting an epic written about him that is more akin to Beowulf's poem, or the Odyssey, or Trials of Hercules and the like rather than a song. I'm excited to get this figured out.

Any sort of work on my ML fanfiction - either OatS or prepping for my February projects - are most likely put on hold until I get this dedication to Cutter ironed out. I need to make sure it's good to go for whenever Kriv discovers his friend's fate.

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I'm aiming to have it done by next Tuesday's update, if not the week after. However, if this epic DOES take more than this week to write, I AM hurting my chances to hit my OatS writing prep goal, as well as my Valentine's Day story prepwork. So I'm pushing to get this epic done THIS WEEK.

I want to give you fine readers something new to read so bad!

Until next week.

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