#.. outside of duels. he very much does. He is undead in a way the others don't quite match (pre Zarc revival) and it's opposite to.. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spookyc · 3 years

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i'm kind of interesting in your cryptid au - what type of monster is each character?

Glad you asked and I'll be happy to answer! I'll also try to explain why I chose each cryptid for each character.

Alright let's start with our protagonist, Hajime, this one is pretty simple, he is a shapeshifter. This is one is pretty self explanatory, as it's meant to represent Izuru possessing every talent where as here Izuru has the ability to possess the forms of his fellow freakshows. He is one of the most anticipated acts in the freakshow, but constantly transforming his body everyday for the audience does a number on his psyche, eventually bringing Izuru out.

Nagito: As I revealed in an earlier post, was a vampire. I chose this due to his general appearance and also his condition of being sickly. I also chose it to form an interesting dynamic for Nagito. See, as a vampire, Nagito needs to drink blood but a vampire's powers increase when they are hungry, so hope's peak intentionally starves him for his shows. So, nagito grows more unhinged from starvation, and starts thinking of feeding off the freakshows. But he still has his hope complex and worships the freakshows. So he's caught in a struggle of his body and his will.

Chiaki: Now she isn't exactly a cryptid but I like what I decided for her. So she's a TV head, which I chose due to her gaming fixation but also because she was an AI, which is sort of the same here, albeit more of a kiibo situation where she is an AI in a physical body. Her shows aren't as elaborate as the others, mostly consisting of her showing emotions through the swapping of channels and playing videos games in her mind which is portrayed on her TV screen. She doesn't have as severe issues as some of the others but she faces her own problems as an AI among humans.

Ultimate Imposter: Simple enough, he's a doppelganger. This is of course referring to him being the ultimate imposter, the only real change being that his true form is that of a gray amorphous blob. His shows consist of him copying the other freakshows, though it differs from Hajime tho, as UI can only morph into people and is restricted to morphing into those he knows whereas Hajime can shapeshift into anything, even things he has not seen.

Teruteru: So, quite an odd choice, but one I'm quite pleased with. So Teruteru is a basan, or a japanese fire-breathing chicken. As for a human form, he doesn't have one, he's just a fire-breathing chicken who's a great cook, the jokes make themselves. He's still a perve but less so simply due to most of the forms the freakshows take, only really having his eye on Peko and Sonia who are both very capable of killing him with a single strike so he keeps his cards to his chest as it were. His acts of course consist of feats of fire breathing and dual acts with akane.

Peko, my beloved: So Peko is a gorgon, in the sense that she has the bottom half of a snake. I chose this because Peko reminds of a snake in the best way possible. She's fierce and mysterious with piercing eyes that cut through your soul. As for abilities, she does possess the stone vision of gorgons, but she can control when she uses it, and she doesn't like having to use it. Just because she doesn't use her stone vision doesn't mean she should be underestimated tho, she still is a pro swordswoman and is arguably more adept than she would have been with legs. She has a dual act with Fuyuhiko, more specifically an arena type duel. Of course they don't fight to the death but any injury they sustain is fair game. Peko of course always objects to this but pushing hope's peaks buttons risks detainment for a freakshow, ultimately, she doesn't have a choice.

Mahiru: Okay so, she was really hard but I decided on making her a nymph. This is because I imagined that being able to blend with nature would be able to help capture people in their most natural state, in regards to her photography of course. Her acts are also not the most eventful, just her blending with different natural surroundings. That's honestly about it, wish I had more but Mahiru has always been a blank slate for me.

Ibuki: Ibuki! So, ibuki is a Siren, this is pretty obvious, as I chose this due to her being the ultimate musician. However, I do have an interesting dynamic with her and her ability. So, since sirens usually have melodious voices and show their victims what they desire most, I wanted to flip that on its head. So, since Ibuki doesn't exactly have a melodious voice, (a great voice, yes but not melodious nonetheless) her power doesn't show those what they desire but instead their deepest fears. This causes Ibuki to hide her singing, excluding her acts, and to grow self-conscious of her aspiration for music. Her acts consist mostly of water tricks and of course her singing, which audience members say they get a thrill and a since of comfort being able to face their deepest fear. Ibuki thinks differently, wanting her music to encourage and inspire people rather than send fear through them. And that is her central conflict throughout this au, which I'll end off here for sake of brevity.

Hiyoko: Pretty pleased with what I decided for her. So Hiyoko is a kitsune, I chose this because of her noble lineage and I think the kitsune is a pretty noble animal, despite having some cursed elements. She was still forced into the whole dancing thing, which she mixes between her human and fox form. But, her mischievous nature fits that of the kitsune as she's still her normal abrasive self. She tries staying out of her fox form as much as possible as it reminds her of her lineage that she hates but she of course has to transform into it for her acts. These consist of fire tricks as well as a showcase of mastery swapping between forms.

Mikan: Alright so Mikan's is kinda wild but stay with me. So Mikan is a lich and here's why. So I chose this for her because I know I wanted her to be undead, because she would constantly have to patch herself up. Decided on a lich to give an air to her that something isn't quite right, that she holds more power that she let's on and simply doesn't express it. Also I have some extremely dark reasons as to how she became a lich but I won't get into that here for brevity's sake.

Nekomaru: So Nekomaru's pretty fun, he's a minotaur mainly just because I think it fits him, and he definitely gives off jovial bull vibes. Despite his appearance he still has his joyful personality and still takes pride in his talent of team leader. His acts consist of feats of strength primarily, nothing much besides that.

Gundham: So Gundman is an imp, because he definitely deserves to be a demon but he's gonna be the lowest demon there is. Cause I still want to emphasize his whole "overlord complex" despite him just being an imp. He does still have his hamsters and he takes very good care of them, the four dark devas live a fulfilling life even if their master doesn't. Gundham can perform some lesser demon abilities like changing his appearance, in terms of pigment, small fire control, and flight. Of which he showcases in his acts. Even tho he's just an mere imp he is the Supreme Overlord of Ice and he will not accept any other titles.

Fuyuhiko: Finally! We have arrived at the boy, Fuyuhiko. So, Fuyuhiko is a werewolf, because he's an angsty boy and because I like werewolves. The story plays out much the same way as before, though Peko was assigned not just to protect Fuyuhiko but also to protect him from himself. His acts consist of arena battles with Peko, of which he always intentionally loses. He's able to transform each day to a drug they inject in him before every match that forces a transformation. These drugs make him agitated and irritable, more so than usual and also causes him extreme mood swings. Even if sometimes he wishes he could be detained, he stays for Peko. He knows she wouldn't forgive herself if he was taken away, regardless of her involvement, so he stays in this condition. It isn't all bad tho, spending time with Peko outside of the area isn't so bad. He also is often found hanging out with Kazuichi, who Fuyuhiko refers to as a "fucking moron" and yet still hangs out with him most days. They've formed an unlikely friendship that the two cherish even if Fuyuhiko won't admit it. He also has a pretty good relationship with Ibuki, her being Peko's girlfriend and all.

Kazuichi: Okay, Kazuichi, so Kazuichi is a gargoyle and man how I got there is a story. So I wanted Kazuichi to be something constructed, something manmade in a way so that he could rebuild himself as well as other things. So orginally he was a golem but I just couldn't vibe with that so I ended up settling with a gargoyle. I do think it fits him in a way, not sure how, but it suits him imo. So he's got the standard gargoyle abilities, he's got wings and can fly and can also change into his stone form at will. He prefers to sleep in this form, and he often turns into this form when scared which is often. His acts consist flying around the stage and testing the endurance of his stone skin. He also has a close relationship with Fuyuhiko and of course Sonia, though he doesn't see her as often as he would like.

Sonia: So, Sonia's is very different but I really like it. So she is a basilisk, not the serpent one but the more giant chicken with a serpent tail. Her cryptid form is one that affects her in and out of her form, and both are just as deadly. So since she's a basilisk, she has lethal vision and this is active in and out of her form. So she walks around with a blindfold on, and she has yet to see any of the her fellow freakshow's faces. She also is kept within her enclosure at almost all times, she's only let out about twice a day and these outings don't last long. In her basilisk form she easily stands 20-feet tall, with a wingspan of 25 feet, her feets are huge and equipped with deadly talons. From her beak she leaks venom that is capable of causing a limb to be amputated with a single drop. Not as lethal as her vision, but enough would easily be able to cause death. She doesn't perform, merely has visitors come and visit her in her basilisk form. She's very lonely, wishing with every part of her that she wasn't cursed with her form, but she does appreciate the visitors she gets. Chiaki and Akane often come to visit her, Kazuichi also comes by often, Fuyuhiko having to drag him off when he's overstayed his welcome. She holds on to her friendships, as it's all she really has.

Lastly we have Akane, so I decided on making Akane a dragon. For one dragons are known to have a voracious appetite, and two, Nekomaru in the main story talks about Akane having untapped potential, which I think would fit her as a dragon. Yeah, so contrary to Hiyoko, Akane primarily stays in her dragon form, even when just walking around the freakshow traveling caravan. She's not a huge dragon as she still isn't fully grown, so she's only slightly bigger than the average person. This is partially her just preferring her dragon form, (doesn't have to wear clothes, can fly, can eat more), but it's also because if she's a dragon no one can objectify her. She doesn't have to deal with the male gaze if she's a dragon and she quite likes it that way. Her acts consist of typical dragon shit, flying, feats of strength and a dual act with teruteru for fire breathing, (she can't breathe fire herself so she places teruteru in her mouth like a mama croc does with her babies and he does all the work. Before you say anything, teruteru actually doesn't get any perseve enjoyment out of this, or at least he doesn't anymore, just gets an excuse to take a bath).

And that's about it! Had a lot of fun coming up with these guys and I do have a story in mind for them if you'd like to hear. I also will answer that ask about the talentswap, I know it's been a while and I apologize for that but I have an excuse to work on it now so I'll get to that. Thanks for the ask!

#danganronpa #super danganronpa goodbye despair #cryptid au #hajime hinata #nagito komaeda #chiaki nanami #ultimate imposter #teruteru hanamura #peko pekoyama #mahiru koizumi #ibuki mioda #hiyoko saionji #mikan tsumiki #nekomaru nidai #gundham tanaka #fuyuhiko kuzuryu #kazuichi soda #sonia nevermind #akane owari

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that-wizard-oki · 3 years

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if your up to rambling about it more, how would arc 3 have gone with morganthe there?

Alright anon, and all who happen to be interested in my damn theories... after 2 very long days, here are my... general... ideas on how Arc 3 might have gone with Morganthe present.

This is a long one my dudes. Grab a snack, take a seat, and if you make it to the end, thanks for reading.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Morganthe & The Wizard’s Character Foil would be the cornerstone of this arc.

Y’know how everyone talks about Zuko and Aang being one of the greatest character foils in fiction? Well, in a nutshell, I think that Khrysalis part 1 & 2 (and arguably the entire second arc) built up this wonderful relationship between Morganthe & The Wizard- one that i think could easily be just as memorable and clever as the aforementioned.

If you’re unfamiliar with my thought’s on this idea, here’s a rundown:

All throughout arc 2, Morganthe’s dialogue towards the wizard is usually focused on things they both have in common. We’re both students of Ravenwood, both have studied under Merle Ambrose directly, we were both considered prodigies, respectively. Some other characters also bring up things here and there, most notably Tse Tse Snaketail in Mirror Lake (which, by the way… mirror lake…c’mon) who claimed “she (Morganthe) knows you better than you know yourself!”

Azteca is when we really begin to see the foil between Morganthe and the Wizard start to be set in motion. Azteca itself is the first time I think our wizard is truly and utterly overwhelmed with obstacles- Between the impending doom of Xibalba, the raising of the Undead (once again, mind you), the revival of our last greatest foe, AND the fact that Morganthe, the puppet master behind this all, is always one step ahead of us the entire time.

A huge moment for the Wizard IS that we fail in Azteca. This is where our wizard has to face the sting of failure, and it runs deep. While the wizard has thus far fought against evil within the Spiral for the sake of justice and protection, NOW the wizard's motivation to go after Morganthe has shifted from the general expectation to do so, to something MUCH more personal. Our desire to ensure Morganthe is defeated, is forever tied to our own sense of self worth- if we don’t defeat her, we are a failure.

We can easily see the parallel between this and Morganthe’s motivation, which has thus far been fueled by her desire to show Merle what she’s capable of- and that she will go to the greatest length to prove so.

In Khrysalis, we see the Wizard grow into a similar mindset. They’re much more rash in how they go about pursuing Morganthe, learning ways to try and fight her more evenly when the time comes, and eventually hunting her down. It snowballs to the point where our wizard, despite several warnings, decides to release the god of chaos under the presumption that he will aid them in their goal to defeat the shadow queen. Even more alarmingly, Spider reveals to the Wizard that Morganthe was actually infused with this great power (not stolen, like the arachna had claimed), and that the arachna had groomed her into a weapon of mass destruction by design. Despite knowing that Morganthe was just a puppet on strings this whole time, our wizard still feels that defeating her is the only way to truly avenge themselves. THIS is what Old Cob was hoping for. He WANTED the wizard to be so self absorbed in the idea that Morganthe’s very existence was something that the Spiral, that the Wizard themselves needed to be cleansed of.

And we played right into the palm of his hand, and after we defeated her, Spider released his children and nightmares into the world. However, It is not gratifying relief we are met with. Instead, there is only a long, daunting, shadow, and it’s in our likeness.

This was a little watered down, but these parallels between Morganthe & The Wizard has always been so interesting to me, and when Arc 3 began, I was fully expecting Morganthe to return in SOME way and the wizard would have to go through a self-reflective journey WITH her in order to really come to terms with what they did, or that Cob was hurting them instead of helping.

Of course, that’s not what we got… but to answer your question now anon- what do i think Arc 3 should have been with Morganthe there, with all this in mind?

Obviously, Morganthe and the Wizard need to have their development & closure- but let’s take a deeper look into how that would work for the both of them.

First off, Morganthe needs a reason to return. Character wise, she has a few purposes:

She was the closest one who had been connected to Old Cob. Even if most of it was him manipulating her, they shared a connection through Morganthe’s intrigue of Shadow Magic, and perhaps she had directly communicated to him at one point.

Besides Spider himself, she probably knows more about Shadow Magic than any other being in the Spiral. She WAS the one who re-discovered the existence of Shadow Magic, after all.

To expand on this reason, I think Morganthe might have even figured out ways to connect with her own Shadow in more uh, constructive ways, than perhaps Spider and Raven (I’ll get into this later).

With these factors, I think Morganthe being present in Arc 3 means that she would have been a very valuable asset in helping the Wizard & crew go after Spider/Raven simultaneously.

Now, I think a really fun way to integrate Morganthe into Arc 3 more seamlessly, is to have a plot point that alludes to her still being alive. Otherwise, I don’t think the Wizard/anyone else would bother trying to revive or find her JUST for the sake of “maybe she would be helpful”.

Remember when, after we defeated Morganthe, Old Cob informed us that we had “absorbed too much of her power, and that it would consume us” and so we have to give it back to the land?

Well, what if when we did, that “power” held her memories, her very own Shadows? And when we returned it to the land, those Memories might’ve returned to their place in time?

Take Morganthe’s memory in Wizard City for example- the one rooted in when she accidentally lost control of her powers when attempting astral spells. This specific part of her shadow, not being able to return to a physical vessel, found its way back to its place of origin. Maybe Diego, upon training students in combat, runs into issues with a “specter” of some sort haunting the battle grounds, and reports these disturbances to Ambrose. As the game normally does, Merle would reach out to us about this problem.

I think a good time frame for this to happen is after Mirage/before Empyrea- arguably, this is the Wizard at their lowest point. Mellori has just been captured, we just found out she’s Raven’s Child, and BOTH gods are now not in our favor. That way, when we investigate the Arena in WC, and find out this ‘specter’ resembles a young Morganthe, the wizard would truly feel overwhelmed with the idea of her still being alive/out there WHILE all this is happening.

Whether we tell Merle or the Arcanum scholars first isn’t super important, but the point is that Morganthe potentially being alive is now an additional problem on top of everything else at hand. As the scholars, wizard, and perhaps Ambrose/additional characters problem solve what to do, they begin to bring up the character points I brought up earlier. I think Velma, being the shadow scholar, would mention that Morganthe WAS the shadow queen, and might be useful as a prisoner to help get information on Old Cob’s plans/biddings. I think Ione would agree, and that Morganthe could also be potentially working under him in some way, and that making sure she is a controlled variable is most important right now. The last thing the Spiral, or the wizard, needs is a wild card threat.

I think… knowing that the Wizard had just lost Mellori, and among other things, Velma would request to assist the Wizard in this task, since it is Shadow-magic related and she’s only been able to learn about this school of magic through what little has been available outside of Khrysalis. The wizard, though I think reluctant about the idea, doesn’t argue against her coming along.

If you follow my idea that Velma had gone to Ravenwood with Morganthe, and they’d been good friends there, I think Velma coming along to investigate this matter is also important- perhaps when they both return to the Duel Arena and try to confront this memory of Morganthe’s, the wizard’s first instinct is to fight it into submission, but Velma might take a more gentle approach, as she remembers the likeliness of an old friend.

The memory becomes more in control of itself; Seeing Velma, it was reminded of a pleasant part of itself- friendship, comradery amongst fellow wizards, instead of just abandonment and loss as it had been previously engrossed in.

Once calmed, the Memory can “think” more clearly, and does its best to answer the inevitable questions; what are you? How did you get to wizard city? Is the “real” Morganthe still alive? And so on... Obviously the memory has a limited understanding of what they’re asking. Eventually, they piece together that there are OTHER memories out there, and they need to be found and returned back to their physical owner- Morganthe.

I won’t go into the big details here, but they then travel to Avalon and Khrysalis, maybe even places she had been as a pirate, to find the other two missing Memories. Velma probably learns a bit more than she was expecting to, and the Wizard’s consciousness, especially when they get to the memory related to Khrysalis, starts to weigh heavy.

Any who, these three memories are collected, and being extensions of Morganthe herself, are able to help navigate the wizard, Velma, and perhaps other Arcanum members (for safety reasons because that's the literal queen of shadow right there lads) to where her physical body resides.

Using one of the ships in the Arcanum, they are led by the memories into the dark sea of space, not too far off from Khrysalis. Soon, they come across a swirl of rubble and shattered remnants. Weaving their way through, a cluster of fragmented glass paves the way to an abandoned vessel, sleeping gently, frozen in time and protected by her own demise. They’ve found Morganthe’s body.

Simply put, the memories return to her, and the wizard/Velma contains her comatose body to be brought back to the Arcanum.

Once they’ve returned with Morganthe, a lot of things could happen, and since this is all just theory of something that’s already passed, I’m just gonna list off some of those things that I think would have been interesting to see, so, here goes lol (warning, this turned out to be a lot longer than anticipated I'm SORRY lol)

Morganthe would have maintained in a comatose state for at least a bit once at the Arcanum. The main issue now is figuring out what to exactly do with her now that she is alive.

I’ve kind of enjoyed the idea that Ione/other scholars would be pushing for some sort of trial- she did technically commit genocide against the Aztecasouars, and no one but the wizard, except for MAYBE Velma since she was also retrieving her memories, knows that she was being controlled when she had done so.

I also think the idea of a trial, something rooted in judgement, would provide an interesting setting for just allllll the damn shit to be let loose. Like Morganthe would wake, finally free of the shadow that the arachna had pumped into her body, free of Cob’s very voice in her head, only to wake to find she'd murdered an entire civilization, among defiling the dead, and is being held accountable for doing so. Everyone’s obviously against her, for good reason as they think, but the Wizard’s just here like “I know this bitch was literally forced to do these things but I never told anyone about any of that because I wanted to just believe I was right, and I still have this grudge against her for making me feel like a failure, so I kind of just want to see her imprisoned or worse” and of course you have Velma, who just got her long lost friend/childhood love back, is now faced with the possibility of losing her again, and FINALLY you’ve got MERLE who’s probably just silently taking all this in as it unfolds, since he has had a very fixed perspective on the whole ordeal and doesn’t even know what to believe.

I don’t wanna spend too much time on the ins/outs of this idea, but generally, even if this wouldn’t have happened, the group learns (perhaps through Velma’s advocation, since I doubt the wizard would be doing it) more about Morganthe’s situation, maybe even that the wizard knew this whole time and never said anything- but the general consensus becomes that, since Morganthe isn’t working for Cob (she might even speak of how much she probably despises him for what he did to her), and because she’s so knowledgeable on Shadow Magic, it might actually be best for the Wizard and her to work together to try and rescue Mellori.

Obviously, both of them are reluctant about this, though I think the wizard is more so. Morganthe might actually have a soft spot for the Wizard, seeing a lot of herself in them, and also having tread on similar paths. I think it would be so, so fun to see Morganthe try to connect with the wizard, but the wizard constantly shuts her down or ignores her because they don't want to admit they’re so similar. But then you have the moments where they have to help each other. Maybe it’s when both have to go into the Nexus to get Mellori back, and Morganthe has an easier time weaving through this Shadow Plane because of her experiences with it, and the Wizard really has to trust her to help lead them through it. In turn, maybe Morganthe actually struggles when they reach Ravenwood in the Nexus because it triggers those memories of being expelled and cast out, and the wizard has to help ground her so she doesn’t slip into this un-reality. Like! That feels so powerful and moving to me- that despite being used and pitted against one another by Spider, they learn to work past those false feelings and really begin to see each other eye to eye.

Though I think it is important to bring up they are dealing with slightly different parts of their Shadows- Morganthe is a step or so ahead, having already connected with them. Now, her goal is to accept them, and while I think she has more or less accepted her three memories from earlier, the fourth one, the one of her as shadow queen, the one where she isn’t just her, but also Spider controlling her… the part she doesn’t want, but remains true. To accept her rage, her anger towards Merle that mirrored Cob’s anger about Raven- this is her true challenge for this Arc.

Remember how I said Morganthe’s motivation in Arc 2 was to prove Merle wrong and show him that she was powerful? Well, now it’s to extract revenge on Old Cob in a similar way. Logically, she knows killing him would mean the end of the Spiral, so the struggle for her is to FIGHT against that desire, the rage, accept it, acknowledge it, and convert that energy into something that can help her and others heal from the scars of the past.

Alongside Morganthe interacting and coming to terms with herself, her shadows, everything, I think the Wizard must learn to let Shadow into their own life. Shadow is not this evil thing that they think it is- it, as Spiders is as well, a necessary part of all life in the Spiral. Instead of casting it away, we have to know that the parts of ourselves we don't like aren’t what define us, but we should see and acknowledge them so they don't consume us; which i think the wizard is at risk of.

Any who… that’s a lot, but ultimately, I think when we come to the end of Arc 3, to the Husk, The Wizard & Morganthe have to make the decision to completely trust in themselves and each other. As Spider said worlds ago, we are both the Children of Light & Shadow. I know Arc 3 presents the wizards at the Scion, a balancing force between Mellori and Bat, but I’m gonna be honest, I think it would be much more compelling for BOTH the wizard & Morganthe to act as this “middle ground”- Literally thus far everything about them screams yin and yang; the wizard primarily hailed as the harbinger of light, Morganthe as the umbra queen- yet they are not completely The Light or The Dark- they both have a piece in each other, they both work together, they balance each other out.

Perhaps a stronger set up to still include Bat and Mellori is them simply realizing that they are not their parents- they do not have to do what is expected of them just because of who or what they are, they can choose to support each other as siblings, instead of taking one of their parents sides and hurting each other. They, like the wizard and Morganthe, can work together as one.

This way too, the weight of having to be the Sole Person balancing everything all the time, ISN'T put on the wizard- it can be shared by another.

ANYWHO… I know I'm rambling a bit at this point, but similarly to Arc 3’s end, they’d work past their own desire for revenge or pride, and combine their strengths to become what we originally see the wizard transform into during the fight with the Storm Titan; a Child of Light and Shadow.

Also, here’s a few side things I’d like to see happen in this Arc, as well as the final conclusion for Morganthe’s character.

Morganthe being protective of the Wizard, and the Wizard being protective of Mellori I stated earlier that Morganthe see’s a lot of herself in the wizard, and can feel responsible for them in some way. The same goes for the Wizard and Mellori- there’s this interesting domino effect they've got going on in terms of that, so i just think some dialogue reflecting this dynamic between the three would be fun.

Though once Mellori and the Bat are united, Morganthe would definitely have Some Feelings come up regarding her and her own brother. I think it would be fun for Morganthe to be extremely wary of Bat for this reason, and also because he’s the son of the God who used her power and body for his own gain. Maybe Morganthe has a sly line towards Bat, or something about her being like “I’m watching you” because she doesn’t want to see another person go through what she did with Malory.

Also…. Morganthe helplessly being unable to call Mellori “Mellori”, and instead says “Mallory” every time because That’s Baggage! Morganthe’s like, “Wizard, we gotta get Mallory from the Nexus!” or something and everyone’s like “... you mean Mellori?” and she’s like “... that’s what i said, right?” like this shit is so, so funny to me.

Also Morganthe eventually warms up to Bat, seeing him be a Good Older Brother in part 2. Ideally, it would also be nice to see her open up to him about Mallory, and they just have a Moment about shitty families, trust issues, having done bad things because What Else Can You Do?… god, that stuff hurts my soul. Let your Siblings Heal Kingsisle, i will not rest until they do lmao.

Oh yea! How could i forget the biggest thing outside of the wizard/Morganthe- Merle and Morganthe! Wow do those two need some damn closure together. I’m not stuck in a definitive way that this could happen- Generally though, I think Morganthe would be avoidant of Merle at first, as she feels that she ultimately failed to do what he cast her out to do when he banished her, which was to “find her true self” and learn to control astral magic. Not only was she unable to do that, but she was unfortunately roped into the arachna, and we know the jist of what happens from there. On the other hand, Morganthe is also angry towards Merle- if he wouldn’t have banished her, and instead been patient with her powers and helped her learn, NONE of what she had to endure in Khrysalis would have happened.

For Merle, his perception for so long was that Morganthe's endless curiosity drove her into Shadow Magic, and thus became the Shadow Queen- with this thought, his act of banishing her was justified because she was just a lost cause either way. Now, however, he’s realizing that that wasn’t the case at all- instead, she was truly trying to learn how to master astral magic and control her powers, and unfortunately others decided to take advantage of her curiosity and ability- so he’s trying to grapple with the guilt of inevitably putting her through that.

They both are understandably scared to confront each other, and I think their avoidance would carry out through to Empyrea part 1, maybe even a bit into part 2. Again, i don’t have a definitive thing in mind (since Merle isn’t super active in arc 3 anyhow), but perhaps they’ve been put into a situation where they just simply cannot avoid one another- or maybe Morganthe’s having a hard time convincing the wizard or Ione or someone on what they should do next, Merle tries to interject, “Morganthe, perhaps-”, but Morganthe snaps at him, “ and I certainly don’t want to hear what the man that caused all of this has to say about it!” … silence fills the room, Merle taken aback, Morganthe looking him dead in the eyes, meaning what she said but regretting it as the first thing she said to him. She huffs, storms out of the room...

With just a nod to the others and the wizard, Merle leaves and follows her out, maybe she’s pacing around the end of the halls, and when she sees Merle she just starts pouring her heart out in anger. “Don’t you follow me out like that, don’t you pretend to care for me now! You couldn’t possibly understand what’s at stake here, not that you would take the time to understand anything you don’t know!” she huffs, angry with him and herself, “I know I was curious and naïve and stubborn, but where were you!? Why couldn’t you help me, why, why was the only option for you to to take the only thing I had left and send me away?” this is where her anger starts to fade and she’s becomes quieter, yet still stern, “The worst of it is that I told myself I'd do what you never could, and when I did, I’d return to prove you and everyone else who looked at me and saw a failure, a monster, wrong... but I never got that far. I only got to the point where some forgotten God of chaos decided what my ‘true self’ was for me… and like the curious, stupid little girl I was, i played right into his hand-” and here she’d become overwhelmed and start talking more specifically about her anger towards what was done in Khrysalis, ending with “and through all of it, and even now, even though I’m so, so angry at you, I still wanted you to be there for me. Why weren’t you there for me?”

I like the imagery that, the whole time Morganthe has been unraveling her thoughts and emotions at him, Merle has been slowly moving closer and closer to her, and when she says this, she melts into his arms, sobbing- finally getting that comfort from him that she’s wanted all this time.

Merle, now holding her, begins to speak softly, “You don’t have to forgive me, but I am truly sorry for all that has transpired from my own failings. In all my years, turning you away has remained one of my deepest regrets.” This is getting a bit long, but the main points I think Merle would make in his apology towards Morganthe, is that ‘her true self’ is not something anyone, not even he, should define for herself, and that Merle thinks she has already found her true self, and that it’s not being Shadow Queen, it’s not being a puppet, it’s not being a failure or his apprentice or a monster, but being in tune with yourself- something she had started doing with her own Shadows/Memories.

Anywho. Sorry for the heavy dialogue but i think about these two everyday and just want them to HUG IT OUT MAN… AAAAA

Furthermore; I think a very fitting End for Morganthe’s character is that she, upon Merle’s request, would become a professor of Shadow Magic at Ravenwood, with the idea that she could properly introduce Shadow to wizards in a controlled environment, and help erase the stigma surrounding it. Not only do i think she’d make a great professor or teacher because of her enthusiasm towards magic, but i think it would be satisfying for her to help others who might have difficulties with magic/their powers since that was a core reason for her own suffering. Also, her and Velma are DATING and are cute shadow scholar lesbians together, it’s cute af, thank you, moving on.

Lastly, the Wizard would have some closure, or at least tools to eventually reach closure about the things I've talked about in this post. Hypothetically, arc 4 could have then been focused on the wizard’s self-journey to become in-tune with their shadows and memories.

SO uh… yea i think that’s the overall ideas i had about how Arc 3 might have gone if Morganthe was a factor. I haven’t actually spent a lot of time thinking about Morganthe in arc 3 though, since the arc is now finished and we’re onto arc 4, and i always enjoy trying to implement new lore, like the sewers, into these theories, and even who or what Morganthe is- bt this was fun to revisit! I do think her being in Arc 3 would have been most fitting thus far though, so i always like coming back to the what-could-have-been ideas :’D

But yea! If you’ve made it this far… Thanks for reading lol. And if you want me to go more in depth with anything i had mentioned in this post, because some things i decided to gloss over for simplicity's sake, feel free to ask :D

Anywho…. Bye oTL

#wizard101 #oki's theories #oki answers a thing #anon

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grailfinders · 4 years

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Fate and Phantasms Far Side #2: Tohno Shiki

We have another guest build today from u/Magical-Biche on Reddit! While I’ve been tackling Fate Grand Order characters, they’ve been hard at work making builds for other parts of the Nasuverse. Today, they’ve built Shiki! No, not that one. Not that one either. No, Tohno Shiki. No, the other- you know what? Forget it, I’ll let Magical-Biche take over from here. (I’ll put the level-by-level breakdown below the cut, or you can check out the spreadsheet here.)

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Now that my personal favorite is done, today we’re attacking the main protagonist of that really good *anime* that is Tsukihime, Tohno Shiki. As with the previous build, this one will contain heavy spoilers for many routes of the visual novel. Read at your own risk! Also, this build works for Nanaya Shiki, just make sure you change the alignment from neutral good to like, chaotic or neutral evil. This build is based on Tsukihime, Kagetsu Tohya and Melty Blood.

Tohno Shiki is a skilled demon slayer who fights with a knife. He’s merciless against his targets, as he falls into a trance while fighting them to tap into his latent potential. He can also use the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception.

For this build, we’re looking for 3 main things, which are :

Shiki’s bread and butter, the mystic eyes of death perception. While there is no simple way of having the MEoDP, we’ll try to maximize our damage on a single hit, on a single enemy.

Shiki might not look like it, but he’s extremely agile. While we have low health, we’re pretty hard to hit, and good at simply avoiding damage.

Shiki has a weird fighting style where he’ll fall into a trance when he’s fighting certain enemies, such as demons and undeads. We might not be able to get that as a feature, but we can easily get bonuses against our favored enemies.

Race and Background

Shiki is a plain old human, fighting with only his own limbs. And his OP Mystic Eyes, but we’ll come to that later. We’re playing the variant human, as we have little use for more than 2 stats on this build, and we’ll be using that extra feat. Shiki fits the Urchin background… okay-ish-ly. He’s an orphan, but he grew up playing outside in a gigantic mansion. However, he did know Arihiko the delinquent for a long time, which means he certainly did some illegal things once or twice. Anyway, the proficiencies are great for the build, and the bonus feature fits our role very well. We’ll be taking the alert feat so we’re better at not being surprised and pretty much always hit first. We also get a skill proficiency, and we’re going for Survival.

Stats

Going with the standard array, we are going to need a few stats for our multiclassing. However, all three classes we’ll be getting levels in are Dex based, and 2 uses wisdom heavily, so we won’t spread too much. We’ll start by getting as high Dex and Wis as possible, as those will be our main offensive stat, and main spellcasting stat. Shiki is nimble and agile, and when he’s not obsessed over a target, he makes wise decisions. As is needed for a harem protagonist, he has a decent charisma, so we should get that stat to at least 13. Next, we have our little quirk: Shiki has bad health because of “Anemia”. In truth, he’s only alive because his sister gives him half her life force, which explains why he tends to pass out. He’s actually resilient, but for the sake of fluff, we’re going to let our Con sit at 12, not bad, but not great either. Next, we’re not particularly intelligent nor are we stupid, so we’re leaving our Int at 10. Finally, we can dump our Str. Who needs strength when you can cut anything easily?

Class levels :

1. Ranger 1: We’re starting by getting our first favored enemy with a few levels of ranger. At level 1, we get our favored enemy. We are taking the Fiends. That gives us an advantage on survival checks to find them, and on intelligence checks to recall information about them. It’s not really strong, but it can always prove handy. Additionally, we can take the Abyssal language, which is common among demons, and fiends in general, to communicate with them. We also get natural explorer, which helps us move in certain environments. For the sake of flavoring, try to convince your DM to let you choose the “city“ terrain, which doesn’t exist in the rules, but simply makes a lot of sense. If they refuse, we can take Mountains, as we grew on a forest on a mountain.

You also get Str and Dex saving throws proficiency. The Dex is awesome, but we dumped Str, so that one won’t be too useful. We will keep our leather armor for now, since we might die if we are too underprotected, but we’ll get rid of it later. Also, you could play with a single knife, to stay true to the character, but let’s say that a shortsword is basically just a very long knife, or else our damage will really be pathetic. We won’t use the bow, but it doesn’t hurt to have it as an option on the side.

2. Ranger 2: We get our fighting style and our spellcasting. We’re taking the Duelist style, which makes us hit harder when we wield a single weapon. We will have plenty of use for our bonus action later, but for now, we can stick with dual wielding when the party needs more DPS. For our spells, we’re taking Hunter’s mark, which is the closest thing we have from the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception: it boosts damage and it helps us tracking our target, as if we could see its lines of death. We’re also getting Fog Cloud, which is an amazing tool for our hit and run tactics we’ll only get better at with levels.

3. Ranger 3: We finally chose our archetype, and we’re going one on one master with Monster Slayer. This archetype gives us a new spell, protection from evil and good, a great defensive spell that even works on allies. We’re also getting Hunter’s sense, which is another part of our Mystic Eyes. It lets us see a creature’s weaknesses a few times per long rest. We’re also gaining Slayer’s prey, which boosts our damage just a bit further beyond. Next, we’re getting our primeval awareness, which helps us track our arch nemesis, the fiends, and other creatures too.

The last gift level 3 gives us is a new spell to learn, so we’re getting Jump, to further boost our movement.

4. Ranger 4: Our first ASI, and we’re getting our Dex as high as possible to boost our AC and damage.

5. Ranger 5: This is why we haven’t multiclassed yet: we finally get our multiattack feature! Now, we can really start doing some big damage despite our weak weapon.

Also, we get a new spell from our archetype, Zone of truth. It’s a… niche spell, if anything. It can help with interrogations, but that’s about it. We’re also taking darkvision, which helps our poor human eyes with a LOT of encounters, because demons hunt at night, usually.

6. Monk 1: We’re taking a very short detour into the monk class. We’re here for the unarmored defense, which can give us a very high AC later on, which is great for our survivability. We should sell our leather armor at that point, as it’s no longer needed. Also, we get martial arts, which let us do an attack as a bonus action with our fists, as long as our other hand is wielding a monk weapon. Our fists now deal 1d4 damage, plus our Dex bonus, which is actually weaker than our other shortsword. However, it makes it so that we can still do three attacks, with our multiattack feature, and keep the bonus damage from dueling. In the end, the lower base damage of the fist is mitigated by the +2 of our fighting style. The multiclassing into monk only gives us proficiencies we already have, which is unfortunate.

7. Ranger 6: We get a new favored enemy, the undead. It gives us the same bonuses as before against undead, which includes vampires. Since undead don’t have a dedicated language, we’re taking undercommon as a new language, since it’s a common language enough that Undead might speak or understand it. Undercommon, undead, maybe they’re related?

We also get a new terrain for our natural explorer, so we’re getting forest or mountain (if you could deal with your DM to have the city terrain for your first level). It honestly doesn’t matter much, as we’re a city-dweller, so we should go with what our party needs there, really.

8. Rogue 1: We’re getting our final new class this level, the rogue. A level 1 rogue gets Expertise, which makes us experts at 2 skill checks. We’re taking Perception and Stealth, so we’re less likely to be surprised and more likely to surprise. That puts us, if we did take the Standard array, a whopping +10 on Stealth checks and +9 on perception checks. We also get our big boi damage with Sneak attack, which let us deal an additional 1d6 damage if we have advantage on our attack, or when we have an ally in melee range of our target. We also get the Thieves’ Cant, which we won’t use much because of our lore. We get a new skill proficiency, acrobatics, as well as a proficiency with thieves’ tools.

9. Rogue 2: We get our cunning action, our main hit-and-run tool, which lets us dodge or disengage with our bonus action. It does not sound that great, but it can really save us in some situations, we can’t forget we have that!

10. Rogue 3: We get our roguish archetype: we’re a Swashbuckler, to further our ability to challenge a single opponent. This subclass gives us Fancy footwork, which lets us play around our enemies freely, as long as we hit them. Great when combined with our multitude of extra attacks. We also get something else that’s great: Rakish audacity. This feature allows us to duel pretty much anything and still deal our absurd sneak damage. This makes it that we can always sneak attack creatures if no other enemy is near our target. We also get our charisma modifier added to our initiative, which is cool, but we already have our starting feat which gives us plus 5, so it’s nothing more than icing on the cake. Also, our sneak attack goes to 2d6.

11. Ranger 7: We do a last detour, now that we have somewhat stable damage and nice utility, to complete our Ranger build. We get our second archetype feature, Supernatural Defense, which makes us extremely resilient to our prey’s grappling and skill-check-triggering spells. We also get our last spell, which will be Silence, to help us sneak around.. You know, it’s almost like we’re a Rogue or something.

12. Ranger 8: Our last Ranger level gives us an ASI, which will go to Dex, maxing our base damage and pushing our AC to 18. We also get our last Ranger feature, Land’s stride, which is niche but helps us not to be grappled by plant monsters and plant based attacks, as well as crossing even difficult terrain really fast.

13 Rogue 4: The only thing we get this level is another ASI, which we pump into Wis, which boosts our AC and that’s it, as we have no spell which requires or triggers checks. It also helps tracking our prey, and boosts our passive perception through the roof.

14. Rogue 5: UNCANNY DODGE! Finally, we’re starting to get our survivability to the next level. Just react to halve damage, once per turn. Yes, it’s limited to enemies we can see, but just look at our perception. We just know where everybody is. We can face tank the big boss’ big hit, if it manages to even hit us, or just survive one more turn a dumb arrow who managed to hit a 20 on the dice. What’s more, we get a shiny new sneak attack dice, pushing it to 3d6.

15. Rogue 6: A new layer of expertise. We can grab expertise in Insight, which will help us find out if Arcueid really is Arcueid, or some weird theatre obsessed 500 years old vampire, and Survival, so we just won’t lose track of our prey.

16. Rogue 7: We gain another extremely useful defensive feature with Evasion. It simply allows us to completely negate incoming fireballs, most traps and a lot of other stuff by changing how we take damage from those effects. Whenever we need to make a dexterity saving throw to halve damage, we take 0 damage on success now, and half on a failure. Nothing much to say, it just is as strong as it sounds. Our sneak attack goes up to 4d6.

17. Rogue 8: Fourth ASI, we’re getting our damage even slightly higher with the martial adept feat. We gain a superiority dice we can use to trigger either the Disarming attack, to have an even greater advantage on our poor opponent, or the Precision attack, in case we’re 1 or 2 away on the dice to hit our opponent in a critical moment.

18. Rogue 9: next is our final subclass feature, Panache. It’s… not the greatest. We’re taking this level mostly because of the last feature we can grab, but using this feature can quickly become dangerous, no matter how evasive we are. It can fail, as we have low Cha, and Wis saving throws are quite frequent. We should only use it as a last resort. It can help us get our harem outside of battle though, so there’s that. Our sneak attack now deals 5d6 damage.

19. Rogue 10: ASI time! This time, we’re finishing our Wis, that goes up to 19. Our AC is high, our perception checks are even higher, and we have huge bonuses to even skill checks we aren’t proficient with, like medicine. We have a +15 bonus to our perception, so no one really can hide from us anymore, no matter how sneaky.

20. Rogue 11: Our final upgrade before going to beat the hell out of Tarasque. We’re reliably talented, which means we can’t realistically fail skill checks we’re proficient with anymore. In other words, we will always have a minimal result of 27 in Insight, perception, Stealth and survival skill checks, and a minimum of 21 in sleight of hand checks. Finally, our sneak attack dice caps at 6d6.

Pros : We’re a big damage dealer, without even using precious class resources. As long as there’s one creature at the edge of the pack, we can use our Sneak Attack as much as we want, once per turn. We have pretty good stats, excluding our Constitution, which makes us weirdly tanky. Bad dice RNG can fuck us up, but we have a way to mitigate most damage. We’re also great at escaping thanks to being a rogue with access to jump, even though a few more Monk levels would have made us an escapist expert.

Cons : We have pretty low HP thanks to only a +1 modifier on our constitution, so we’re not great at long fights. We pretty much have exactly one way of attacking, which is slashing, slashing and slashing. Investing in special enchanted weapons might be a must past a certain level. Also, our fist attacks are a bit useless outside of using them for Fancy Footwork. Finally, our damage can fall off quickly if the enemy attacks in large numbers.

#Fate and Phantasms #Tsukihime #Tohno Shiki #DnD 5e

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kogo-dogo · 3 years

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i like your skyrim stuff and i wanna know more about the funky little dudes you posted in those “sentences” lol. instead of asking for more snips

You have made a mistake. Prepare for an essay.

But, joking aside, they’re Morrowind characters. I do like Skyrim, but Morrowind is my favorite game of all time and the entire reason I got into the TES fandom years ago. I don’t talk about it much on here because everyone is here for Half-Life and HRV, but... you know what? I’mma take this opportunity. To yell.

About The Guys(tm).

So, basically, in my Personal Canon, I don’t just have a Nerevarine (i.e. Protagonist) character. I have an entire crew of people who help him get through things because it just seems... more realistic for my Extremely Flawed and Terrible Nerevarine. Also, I just had a lot of characters conjured up as a teenager and it was fun to evolve it over time so they’re all friends.

They are, as follows:

- Jo’Karsa (a.k.a. “Karsaga”). Battlemage born under the Atronach. Afflicted with Wombburn. Also the Nerevarine. He’s an abnormally large Cathay-raht who has had an unusual upbringing. He was originally an orphan plucked off the streets in Corinthe and trafficked to Morrowind where he was sold as a slave. As fate would have it, a houseman under his owner took a shine to him and stole him away when they fled to Cyrodiil to avoid political assassination. Karsaga has been raised Telvanni in Imperial territory so, despite being a mighty brute of a Khajiit, he has an extreme affinity for magic and an equally extreme disconnect from his Khajiiti roots.

He speaks like a Dunmer, carries himself like a Dunmer, and has very Telvanni sensibilities. He also has an extensive criminal record from his time spent as a bandit outside of Cheydinhal, and that is eventually how he ends up on the prison boat that sends him to Morrowind. He has a bunch of aliases and an unhealthy penchant for drink and smoke. Not a fan of skooma, though. As gruff and sarcastic as he is, he has a very silver tongue and a way of winning people over and talking himself out of trouble.

Also, “youth born under a certain sign?” Nah, this bitch is 34. And smells like a wet dog.

- Dasrazel. Altmer Nightblade and Quarra vampire. He contracted his vampiric curse while trying to save his lover from the clutches of an undead menace during the Second Era, after a life working various quasilegal oddjobs that brought shame on his noble family. In life, he was a likeable but lowkey individual, and in undeath he’s still very lowkey... but perhaps not as likeable. He has to take a low dose of a calming potion to keep the inherent, violent bloodlust of his Quarra curse at bay, and it does a lot to deaden his emotions. Combine that with hundreds of years to learn how to not give a fuck, and you have a very blunt, stoic, matter-of-fact creature who only very occasionally makes quips and usually just wants to be left alone.

He is Karsaga’s closest ally, right hand man, and platonic soulmate. They met after Karsaga robbed him blind at a bar (thinking him to just be some weird, frail elf), and Dasrazel took pity on him after Karsaga ran him through with an iron saber and panicked when it... did nothing. Their bond is one of a mutual distaste for most people and Dasrazel’s desire to have companionship again.

They’re very much bros, even if Dasrazel spends most of his time not understanding why Karsaga is the way he is.

- Neira Brenur. Dunmer Witchhunter and low-ranking member of House Redoran. She’s the daughter of a Camonna Tong member and an Ashlander woman, though her mother is dead and she spends a lot of time trying to distance herself from her racist father. She joined Redoran in hopes of atoning for the crime of just being born into a bad family, but has a really difficult time fitting in. She’s very meek and empathetic and does better in controlled duels than actual combat. The idea of actually hurting an opponent makes her sick to her stomach.

She kind of just happened to Karsaga one day, courtesy of him running afoul of her not-so-popular friend, Vandrith (we’ll get to that trainwreck later). She mainly acts as a translator for Vandrith and tries to play mediator when Karsaga starts getting too aggressive with others. She’s in good with some odd folks in Redoran and a very aggressive supporter of the Tribunal Temple, which makes it hard for her to wrap her mind around Karsaga’s existence as the Nerevarine.

Also, the fact she’s an absolute pushover means she just accepts the less-than-savory people Karsaga pals around with. She’s got a big heart and feels actual pity for his blasphemous, undead, and criminal friends. They’re good people on the inside (probably).

- Vandrith Valen. Dunmer Ordinator and conglomeration of a lot of factors coming together in the worst way possible. He is naturally “blessed by Azura” and has some degree of prophetic power, though he’s choked it down after a life of being raised Indoril. He also came to the unfortunate realization after being stationed on Vvardenfell, that he is also a descendant of House Dagoth and is haunted by the Poison Song, a “song” sent out by Dagoth Ur that warps the minds of those who are of his blood and turns them into Sleepers and Dreamers.

These two traits do not mesh well and make Vandrith more than a little unstable.

Vandrith is... prone to erratic behavior and violent outbursts and is largely under the care of his paternal uncle, Tuls Valen, the head priest of the Ald’ruhn Temple. Vandrith is also a clever and tricky bastard who has been trying to figure out how to discern Dagoth Ur’s plans from the Poison Song in order to prevent bad things from happening. Usually, he can keep things under control, but extremely bad visions, close proximity to items/places corrupted by House Dagoth, and stress can cause him to be difficult.

Beyond this, though, he’s not what you’d expect from an Ordinator. He’s very witty with a somewhat bawdy sense of humor, a very devil-may-care attitude, and he’s a huge fan of causing mischief. He forced his way into Karsaga’s social circle due to his absolute certainty that Karsaga could bring down Dagoth Ur, and Neira is his closest (and for a long time only) friend, who has figured out what all of his weird ramblings mean.

- Bashinga. Sorceress and Aundae vampire. She is an old acquaintance of Dasrazel’s who has ties to Telvanni, the Mage’s Guild, and several circles of warlocks and witches. She’s very much a self-serving sort, more interested in the acquisition of power than the wellbeing of Morrowind, but she is fiercely protective of the people she deems worthy (and she has a soft spot for Neira she can’t really explain).

Once upon a time, she was a dancer and performer with a traveling circus, and her fall into undeath and wizardry was a happy accident after being taken as cattle by rogue Aundae. She’s got a good set of vocal cords and can move with grace and ease, but she speaks very bitterly a lot of the time and is difficult to get along with.

She’s one of those people who Karsaga immediately took a shine to because they both like to sit around and bitch about people. Dasrazel and Bashinga mostly get along by the time-honored tradition of “two very gay individuals being catty at each other as a sign of affection, though outsiders would think they hate one another.”

- Jai Swift-Fly. Cathay assassin and member of the Morag Tong. She was born and raised in Elsweyr in a more tribal environment, and is an old friend of Vandrith’s (odd, considering they met because she took a grey writ to knock him off and, instead, he knocked her out). She mostly comes into the fold because Karsaga needed somebody to break into the Ministry of Truth to free Mehra Milo, and she came highly recommended (by Vandrith; Vandrith recommended her).

She’s a married mother of two, is big and strong and very proud of being big and strong, and a crack shot with a bow. She’s also deaf as hell and communicates through a series of homebrew gestures. Her decision to stick around and help Karsaga after completing the job she was hired to do stems primarily from her extreme curiosity. She has no stake in the Nerevarine Prophecy or this group of losers, but by god does she want to see what it looks like when a god dies.

Fun fact: Jai is dead by the events of Skyrim, but two of her descendants remain. Shevah and J’Rakka. They’re a brother-and-sister duo. Shevah is as much of a curious, troublemaking adventurer as her so-many-greats grandmother. J’Rakka is a werewolf who mostly hunts bounties to make a living.

- Dravyn Telvayn (no picture of him, sorry D:). Dunmer assassin and member of the Morag Tong. Former highwayman and current Berne vampire. Husband of Jai and perpetually confused, mainly over the fact he has kids with Jai and... well, every book he’s read has indicated that that should be impossible for a variety of reasons. He lives in the sewers of the Arena canton in Vivec City and is allowed work in the Morag Tong due to his efficacy at eliminating very high risk targets, though he’s basically “on his own” if he ever gets caught. They’re sure as fuck not giving him writs of execution to present to guards when the Tong could end up fucked over if their relationship with a vampire gets out.

He’s mostly in the background and tags along due to his extreme dedication to Jai. He doesn’t get along with hardly anyone but her, though he is the one who coined the term “Council of Accidents” in relation to him, Dasrazel, and Bashinga. He feels a loose kinship with them in that they’re all members of different vampire clans, but all members whose sires want nothing to do with them, rendering them outcasts. Even after the events of Morrowind, he keeps in infrequent contact with the others.

After Jai’s death, he acts as a weird “ancestral guardian” to his own descendants. As of the time of Skyrim, he spends most of his time trying to keep Shevah from getting killed. He is very tired. She is a lot.

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cadcnce-archived · 3 years

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BIG ASS CHARACTER SHEET FOR FANTASY VERSE WYLAN

I found an image while going through my files for cursed pics to send @spiritmaiden, they had the audacity to take it and fill it out for the fantasy verse of their sky-zel, so I of course have to match the effort for Wylan because I’m not about to be shown up. It’s hella involved, nobody’s getting tagged but damn if you want an exercise in hitting your character then give it a shot. Most is under the cut because of length.

Character’s Name: Zachary Reis (Born) Wylan Rechtur (Used) Character’s nicknames: Ze (by his sister) Wy (by his friends and preferred) Zephyr (mercenary name, also what you’d see on any wanted posters) Gender: Male Righty or Lefty: Righty Age: 25-26 Height: 6′-0″ Weight: ~180 lbs Eye Color: Emerald green, bright and wide filled with a mix of confidence and playfulness. Hair color: Dark brown, messy and falling to his ears. Unkempt may be a good descriptor, but he generally keeps it down flatter at the least. Distinguishing marks: His body is pocked with marks and scars from fights and other disagreements, but the ones most easily discerned are knife scars on his hands, and a short arc above his left brow. Describe physical traits in one passage: A good way to view him is concealed strength and agility. He’s toned and in good shape but doesn’t often dress or carry himself in ways that would flaunt this. His posture and pose are loose, and his expressions can be lazy and playful. So the moment he flips that switch and uses the full brunt of his power? It’s a surprise. He’s also a bit on the lanky side, his body size doesn’t fully compliment the size of his limbs.

FAMILY/ RELIGION

Parents: Mother and father were disappeared/dead when he was just a bit over 6 years old and his sister was an infant. They were involved with the church but not royalty themselves. Wylan never spent much time figuring out what. They had a life left for him and his sister that he threw away as well. His father was a gentle soul while his mother was razor sharp and firm. Siblings: Younger sister, Katelynn Reis, but goes by Lyn with her friends. Wylan calls her Kat. She’s ~5 years younger than he, and remains with the church training and working as a healer. Whereas Wylan ran away from being a Paladin, she stayed strong to become a Cleric. Significant Other: Verse dependent, Wylan typically is averse to romance and prefers casual encounters. Children: None, nor is he open to them initially in his canon. Other relatives: None remain living that he is aware of. He and his sister were raised by his grandmother on his father’s side, but she passed away shortly after he left the knight’s academy, when Wylan was roughly 16-17. Pets: None. But he does enjoy talking to cats. Friends: Wylan is the type who ‘knows a guy’, he’s close with many tavernkeeps and makes nice with the adventurer’s guilds and their members as well. His work as an informant necessitates things like this. Wylan is also the type to consider most anyone he encounters and converses with a friend, whether they like it or not. His best friend though would easily be a wandering adherent by the name of Emke. I don’t care what the thread is about in some way she’s involved in his life. They’re platonic soulmates. Enemies: As a mercenary and hunter, some others in his craft would consider Wylan to be their rival, and in many cases he would view them just the same. It’s hard to say he has any enemies outside of pointedly evil factions however! Relationships (other): His relationship with his sister is an odd one. They’re still in touch via letters and the occasional visit, and he does what he can to support her with his money, but they’re not close like conventional siblings. There’s a strange codependence between them. Wylan depends on Lyn as a ‘rock’, and she depends on him as the ‘sea’. Ethnicity: Human! His origins are mostly a mix of Germanic/Portuguese if you wanted a comparison to Earth races/ethnicities. Religion: He recognizes the existence of higher powers but his relationship with them isn’t the best. As if being rebellious to his parents wasn’t bad enough he has to be tsundere towards The Light. This is noted when he uses holy magic such as wards and smiting spells and getting rebound into his own body upon use. Superstitions: He’s incredibly wary around the undead and spirits. So catch him spreading salt when he has to camp somewhere less than lively. Also give him a moment to sharpen his silver weaponry... Diction, Accent, ETC.: His dialect is pretty clean, though this depends on who he’s speaking to, being the travelling sort he is he’s capable of lightly ‘faking’ various accents, or just being lazy with his own manner of speech. Traces back to proper speaking that was drilled into him as a child and then his own rebelliousness. SCHOOL/ WORK / HOME Education (Highest): He was well learned with the academy work that he actually accomplished. While he never finished and never put his all into his studies, it was clear to his teachers that he had a gift for learning but a problem with conviction. Degrees: None! But just so I still have something here, one of his informal titles is ‘The Gale’s Fang’. Vocation/Occupation: Jack of several trades, wrapped up best as a mercenary informant, and a monster hunter. He’s good at tracking both people and monsters and taking them down- lethally or not so much. Employment History: Wylan was fully involved with the knight’s academy from the age of 6 to 16, so for those 10 years he had his hands full dealing with that and trying to figure out himself (poorly). Upon leaving the academy after the accident, he took up arms and was given tutelage by the thieves’ guild which taught him how to use his senses and move quietly through the shadows. Wylan didn’t make a good pickpocket, but he was good at reading other people and exceptional at duels. It wasn’t long before he took the advice of the guildmaster and made better uses of his talents. Not necessarily for good, but for more profit. By the age of 22 he was an accomplished and well connected informant, bartering information as well as putting his swordwork to use headhunting and slaying monsters that made issue outside the cities in which he frequented. This continues to current/canon start of interactions. Salary: He’s affluent enough not to worry too much about his state of living, but he can be prone to splurge spending that puts him in a bind for a few weeks at a time, at least until the next job puts money back on the table. Status and money: Continuing off the above, he’s decent enough with his funds (after sending money back to help out his sister) but wouldn’t be well off enough to be considered rich compared to his modern verse. Fortunately he has enough renown that jobs aren’t too hard to come by for him. And many barkeeps and friends are willing to open a tab for him. So he’s not too desperate. Own or Rent: Wylan typically rents inn rooms when he stays in the cities, and camps when he’s out in the woods. Technically he also owns if you count helping his sister keep her own place running (thought it’s really about 30-70, with his sister funding most of it) Living Space: Wylan never stays long at the room. It’s a place to go back to and sleep. Personal belongings? Very few. Most things he owns that he wouldn’t want to lose stay back with his sister kept in a basement or separate room that he uses on the rare times he’s back in the capital/holy city from which he originally hailed. As you can imagine, this isn’t very often. Work Space: N/A! He doesn’t have one! Given his work is almost entirely in the field. Main Mode of Transportation: CATCH A RIIIIIDE. Though he’s apt to have a horse around for transport if he isn’t going too far. Long voyages for when he changes locales would probably be hitching a ride with a caravan. He also doesn’t mind voyages on foot too much. PSYCHOLOGY Fears: Externally he has an aversion to ghosts and spirits. The concept of the dead coming back to haunt you isn’t something he much cares for. Having access to light magic should mostly assuage this, and yet it can give him goosebumps anyhow. Ironically he has a fear of large mammals in his modern verse but that shit doesn’t apply here given he’s a monster hunter! Internally he fears being forgotten, not making a name for himself, and dying before he can truly feel alive. Secrets: His birth name, Zachary Reis, isn’t something he will bring up with anyone. It’s not necessarily a ‘dead name’ for him, but it’s one he threw away the same time he decided he was going to toss away his ‘fate’ as a paladin. Taking the name of Wylan was another way he took his life for himself in his mind. Despite this being a path of self destruction. His sister is also something he doesn’t often bring up unless he very much trusts that person. IQ: Surprisingly high. He picks up a lot of information doing the work he does, but you wouldn’t be blamed for not believing this. Eating Habits: They could be a lot better. He eats enough to get by, but his diet isn’t as varied as it could be. Wylan hunts small game when he can, but he isn’t an exciting cook so ALAS. This boy prefers hitting up taverns and getting basic meals like stews, jerky, sandwiches, etc etc. Sleeping Habits: Wylan is a very light sleeper. Typically if you so much as step into the room he’s sleeping in he’ll snap into awareness. It takes a loooong day of exertion to keep him sleeping deep otherwise. Frustrating is how he ‘fakes’ being asleep. So someone could come in and start rummaging and he would still breathe and move as if he were still sleeping. Up until he sits up and stares or cracks a joke. Dare you to kiss him when you think he’s asleep. Book Preferences: History tomes every now and then. Wylan doesn’t read much fiction and prefers any time he spends reading to be somewhat productive! Make up for other education he missed as part a result of running on the academy. He also reads up on magic and sorcery to work on the wind affinity he also has. Music Preferences: Wylan doesn’t play any instruments but he DOES love love love to dance and sing. He’s an entertainer at heart and loves to rally people however he may. Suffice to say he’s amusing to go drinking with. And not just because he starts bar fights to amuse himself. Groups or Alone: He’s primarily a lone fighter. Some hunts he will of course work with a team of other hunters, he’s not stupid enough to take on the larger beasts by himself, but there’s a preference for doing things on his own terms. He’s self aware enough to know that his ways and methods can be grating, but ah... how all of that clashes with his desire to show off and have an audience. Being Wylan is suffering. Leader or Follower: He’s both, but prefers to be a follower if he can help it. Let other people make the plans then nudge them this way and that to better fit your own methods. He’s a prankster and a good compliment to most parties after all, so you’d be wise to utilize him! Lest he utilize himself... but that said, he’s an anti-hero, so there’s possibility in there for him to be a leader as well and take charge. It just isn’t his default nature and he’d rather not. Planned Out or Spontaneous: Wylan is chaos incarnate. Most everything he does outside of necessity/work is spontaneous. All his mischief and plans are cobbled together and thrown out there. Sometimes he’ll do a bunch of things at once, like throwing a bundle of darts at the wall to see which ones stick. And oh my fucking god don’t get me started on being romantic he can’t plan for shit in that department. Journal Entries (Do they keep one?) Nope. Not a daily journal at least. He’ll keep notebooks and the like for jotting down intel and what have you for jobs he takes up. But most of the time he’ll just have little notes in his pocket, and not really chronicle his life. He may also make ‘fake’ entries to tease people or trick them. See what he did to Zelda the one time. Be careful what you believe... Hobbies, Recreation: Tricks!! Sleight of hand!! Cards and dice!! Part of growing up and learning with a thieves’ guild is getting involved in lots of things that make use of your hands and dexterity. He likes playing random games with folks and oh! People watching. Stalking. Not the cutest thing but Wylan makes a hobby out of ‘testing himself’ and exercising his talents. His hobby is unfortunately annoying people, to summarize. How Do They Relax: His hobbies help him to relax! Also, if you can believe it, sitting back in a group conversation and watching the conversation happen and move forward. Learning about other people is something he likes doing, which is hypocritical since he can make himself so difficult to learn by contrast. BUT THE REAL THING HE DOES.. is practice sword fighting. Slow rhythmic swings of his blade, almost like a dance. He focuses his thoughts and calms his soul when he practices. It’s like a mix of swordfighting, dancing, and yoga. Controlling himself. Feeling himself. It’s multiple things. What Excites Them?: PEOPLE. Things! Happenings! The unknown and pushing himself to new limits. Honestly one of Wy’s biggest drives is doing something or becoming something that will make him ‘Feel Alive’. Because for all of his antics and frivolity he’s very much fighting an encroaching darkness in his soul. So he’ll search out bizarre things to get involved in. It’s one of the reasons he’s bugging Zelda, because her involvement in witchcraft and his own suspicions have him interested huehue. Pet Peeves: Being ignored. Like perfectly disregarding his existence and whatever he’s getting up to. If you’re not reacting to him being him then that means he’s not being effective and he’s losing. It’s his only real weakness... Prejudices: None. He’s not the most respectful person so most everyone, royalty or important or otherwise gets subjected to similar treatment. If anything, the more important you are the more likely you are to get annoyed! Attitudes: He’s usually with a front, a mask if you will. His general attitude is curious and nosy, but that’s fronted with a playfulness and proclivity for being annoying. Don’t be fooled, he’s usually something more pensive and calculating underneath that exterior. Wylan actually quiets a fair bit once that mask is taken away, his mood swings down and his tone is a touch deeper. Stressors: Things going awry and his friends being put in danger. He absolutely does not do well with people he cares about being hurt. One of the worst things that can happen to him is his sister dying for example, and has lead to one of his most self destructive plots I’ve written, in this verse especially. Lovers? Don’t hurt them. Don’t endanger them. The idea of rivals or enemies going after people he cares about.. hoo. MAN. None of that please. He can be SO damn possessive. In relationships he’s very self conscious as well of fulfilling their needs. So if his partner remarks, regardless of how offhandedly, they’d like more of something he will TRY TO MAKE THAT HAPPEN. Obsessions: Being an absolute pain in the ass. And in cases where someone has wronged him or someone close to him? Tracking them down and getting closure/revenge. That shit takes him to the brink of killing himself. Addictions: None to the point of being problematic, but he does love eating pickles. Ambitions: To make a name for himself, to be renowned and respected. To feel alive and accomplished as a person. He’d also like to take down a dragon someday. Get some armor from its scales and a sword out of that shit. As Seen by Others: Capable and dangerous, but impossible to work with for long periods. Keep a tight lip around him lest he use that information against you and learn things you’d rather keep secret. A lecherous womanizer. As Seen by Self: A body of broken glass, encased in a shell, covered in masks. Who are you? What are you? Where are you even going? You’re lost. You’re aimless. You’re swimming and swimming and eventually you’re going to be tired, aren’t you? ASTROLOGY/PHISIOLOGY Birth Date: October 10. Time of Birth: Evening. Western Astrological Sign: Libra Traits Associated with Western Sign: Social, Clever, Unreliable, Diplomatic Traits Associated with Chinese Zodiac: N/A, seeing as I don’t age Wylan with the years this doesn’t really apply. Handwriting: Clean when he needs it to be, but otherwise a quick script with lots of pen strikes. He’s capable with drawing diagrams and the like as well! This boy can throw out monster diagrams with weak points and other ecological notes oh yes yes. Sexual History: Wylan was already exploring that sort of thing before he left the academy, so yes... as early as 16 he’d already lost the v-card. He doesn’t really do relationships and enjoys casual encounters. Many a maiden at the bar or elsewhere has taken him for a spin. Typically partners aren’t reoccurring in fantasy verse, however. He’s... well, very good in the performance category. General Health: A+ healthy aside from the sleep and subpar diet bits. Strong and good stamina. Medical History: He’s nearly died one times too many. Been stabbed, cut, poisoned, bitten, but hey he’s still alive! And that’s what he’d argue matters with this business. Allergies: SHELLFISH. Chronic Illnesses: None to speak of. Handicaps: He’s somewhat of a type B tsundere. It’s awful. OBJECTS Purse / Bag: He’s got a coin purse that he’ll carry spare gold around in for spending on what have you. Supposedly food but he’s weak to splurge purchases. Most everything else he keeps on him in his pockets and his belt. Wallet: Uhhh see above, coin purse!!! He’s got enough for the week or so!! Don’t try and pickpocket him because he will catch you and you will feel stupid. Fridge: He doesn’t keep food around. He more or less has to scavenge for everything he eats either through buying or hunting. That’s kind of the life for the vagrant he is, isn’t it? Medicine Cabinet: N/A, but he does keep bandages and salves at his room. Glove Compartment: N/A!! Junk Drawer: NNNNNN/AAAAAAA Kitchen Cabinets: Wylan get a house so I can fill this out challenge. Bedroom Hiding Place: Behind a wall panel or somesuch if he can manage. Otherwise in the floor or outside the window. Closets: His wardrobe typically includes tunics, coats, leather armor and harnesses for his weaponry! He’s got a couple swords in fantasy verse, and he’s got throwing knives and a grappling hook!! Backback: Yeah uh see above, what a question. Locker: None Desk: WYLAN KEEP ITEMS AROUND CHALLEEEEENGE. Clothes pocket: Daggers, notes, maybe a writing implement and paper so he can jot things down. He’s also got little knick knacks like a gem or a monster tooth to show off. Isn’t it cool??? Also lint.

OTHER Halloween Costumes: Werewolf!!! Get him in either just a lazy one with gloves and ears or deck him out in the whole garb. Love that idea on him. In one verse Big Bad Wolf is his nickname, and in another he flat out IS a werewolf! So yeAH. Tricks: He’s very skilled at sleight of hand!! Card flourishes and dice rolls. Cup games. Illusions and dexterity... he’s a slippery one! He’s also likely to catch you in words, using things you say against you. He gets really meta and oh how annoying that can get... Talents: SWORDPLAY- He learned from a very early age at an esteemed academy where only the best knights get trained. He mixes that style with a more ‘street’ type that he picked up with the thieves’ guild and even further as a monster hunter and mercenary. Suffice to say that all mixes together into multiple stances he can switch between depending on what he’s up against. Strong sweeping strikes, vicious stabbing and leaping, poised dueling and parrying... he’s a TOUGH fight. MAGIC: Wylan is at odds with his use of holy magic that utilizes the light to bless and heal. Until he comes to terms with himself and the power he wants to channel it’ll have ‘blowbacks’ on himself. Fingers will burn, head will ache, and his stomach will flip. But it’s still undeniably effective for where it is! Aside from that he knows some wind magic to supplement himself. He’s not known as ‘Zephyr’ for nothing after all! Gusting steps, slashing winds, REALLY BIG JUMPS!!! If you throw him he’s a fantastic projectile! And lets see- DANCING! He learned it first as part of his etiquette as a knight, but it’s something that’s evolved with him and oh does he enjoy festivals for that reason. Ballroom styles are what he’s most familiar with. Dance with him. Please dance with him. Politics: Indifferent! Doesn’t care for authority figures to begin with so in any case or kingdom with a monarchy he’s very buh about it. He’s very self-accomplished and his beliefs would push him towards meritocracy over anythign else if you ask me! Flaws: Suspicious, possessive, and very persistent. This could be a strength too but for the most part can be seen as a detriment because of how it ends up being applied. Which is in self-destructive tendencies WOO. He’s also very lustful, and can be distracted by a fine woman and let himself be swayed by his desires over time. Have I mentioned he isn’t the most reliable? He’s apt to lie to people and give intentionally wrong impressions just to make it easier for him to slip away. You gotta go up a few levels to unlock that... So yeah, sins are WRATH, LUST, and ENVY. Strengths: NONE. Okay if you earn a solid place as his friend there is almost NO limit to what he’ll do to protect you. Wylan has a ridiculous amount of determination and mental fortitude and he can and will strike down a GOD to keep those things that are precious to him. He’s also an amusing character to have around, if you are feeling bummed he is almost guaranteed to find a way to cheer you up and support you if only so he can not feel as guilty teasing as he usually does HUE. He’s got a very up beat personality! Sure, a lot of it is a mask but he WANTS it to be real and that’s what really matters if you ask me. His reckless optimism can be endearing. There’s a lot of other surprising mental qualities such as how clever and quick witted he can be. Part of that mental fortitude lets him think and fight on his feet regardless of how much pressure he’s under. It takes a LOT to dampen his thought processes. Drugs/Alcohol: He drinks frequently, but he wouldn’t be counted as a drunkard. Wylan rarely drinks to excess, and prefers to do so among friends and good company. Passwords: Uh, do ritual prayers count? Magical spells? Heh. Email Address, Home Page, Blogs, etc.: Oh if only this were for modern verse... Time and place: Medieval fantasy! Magic and creatures! I also love throwing Monster Hunter vibes in for the big monsters he goes up against. Special Places: For him? Cliffs overlooking the ocean. Abandoned temples he can just chill at. For all he enjoys being around people now and then he really appreciates quiet isolation. Special Memories: Lots of memories with his sister before they more or less split ways. There’s one in particular where he was trying to teach her swordplay when she was just a little girl, and she about stubbed his toe when the wooden practice sword fell right on it. Her panicked attempts to try and heal him were something that really stuck with him.

#musings :: about #verse :: fantasy #dash :: games hc #THIS TOOK FOREVER #but was so satisfying to write and get out there #hell fuckin yes #if you actually read this? props tbh

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mrneighbourlove · 4 years

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The Rising Sun: Ch 3. Test Your Might

Revan placed his name down as Sheik, mysterious warrior of the Sheikah tribe, ready to win the side of Luimaya’s bodyguard. In the bleachers, he didn’t know if any of his family would be here to see him, but at least he had his friends. Both Turarog and Nakeso were with him as he waited to be called out for his first fight. “You think Luimaya will be so stunned she can’t speak when I reveal myself, or burn cinders of her hair off?”

"I think this is a very, very, very," Nakeso took a breath. "Stupid idea."

"I second that, Nakeso is the smart one of her siblings." Turagor snorted. "Salen and Kuredor get into enough trouble. And you? You're diving head first into a pile of shit so deep you're never going to make it out."

“Eh. What’s life without taking crazy risks. When I win, I’ll be able to save up money so quickly protecting her royal pain in the ass.”

"You know you'll have to follow her everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. Even when she takes a dump, you got to stand outside the door." Nakeso said bluntly.

"Smell the roses, Revan."

"And she stinks, I know my sister." Turagor waved his hand around his nose. "Her farts are even deadly."

“Well, I’m pretty sure you smell like vanilla Nakeso, so no roses in site.” Revan very lightly smiled to her, tilting his head to the direction of the stage when he heard the name Sheik called out. “Got to go.” Placing his mask on, he walked backwards, gesturing at himself to his friends. “Does the mask and suit look good?”

"You look like you're going to the Night of Daourfel festival---OW! Nakeso! What was that for?"

"You're being a jerk."

"I'm telling the truth."

Out in the stage, Revan waved to the crowd. No family in sight. His feelings weren’t helped any better when he saw his first opponent. “Oh great.”

Jill was one of the three children of Kelly and Tulilad. Despite them being super old parents themselves by now, they trained their children to be near super soldiers to carry on their family legacies. The Hylian woman was decked out in a tight suit of plate armour. “Nice mask. You can use it to hide your pain from the royalty.”

“KICK THIS TWINKS ASS JILL!”, Kelly shouted from the stands.

Donoma had rushed from the Gerudo town to Hyrule. Thankfully, she made it just in time due to her dragon. Kharto'sum really was a lifesaver. Even though he cared not for the desert, he would come fetch her if she asked. Huffing and puffing, Donoma quickly took a seat beside Nakeso and Revan's uncles. Turagor had to go sit with his family and he waved when he saw Donoma rushing into the stands. His twin, on the other hand, was much less enthused. Luimaya drummed her fingers on the armrest, looking rather bored.

"Something tells me that Lui isn't too happy about this contest?" Donoma asked Nakeso. "Did I miss something?"

"Let's just say Luimaya is under the impression that she doesn't need a," Nakeso paused, making quotation marks with her fingers. "Glorified babysitter."

The bell rang, and Jill tried to crush Revan’s ribs with a war hammer. The masked warrior was nimble enough to dodge the mighty blows. Small dirt craters were made as Jill brought her weapon down. “I see you like to dance. Maybe you should be Luimaya’s Jester instead.”

Revan watched as Jill easily walked around with her hammer in a suit of armour. She had years of experience being older than Revan. And although she was mostly human, Revan wondered what part of her strength was sheer training or her Zora lineage from her mother. Speaking of, she would not stop shouting. “Good! Don’t wind yourself out! Break Sheik’s kneecaps!”

Revan drew his steel broadsword, not wanting to rely on magic, but still needing a way to parry attacks. As Jill came down on him, he dodged to his left, nimbly cutting at the side of her armour.

The shouting of instructions did not bother Tulilad. He was used to it by now, after all this time. He could even recall how ferocious Kelly was when his triplets were in school, playing on sports teams. She would have her megaphone, yelling from the bleachers. Needless to say, she was kicked out more than once. Perhaps it was a good thing that he had Biggestgoron dispose of the megaphone and play dumb when she looked for it.

"You're doing great, sweetie!" Tulilad, of course, was known as the cheesy father, holding up a poster with glittery letters reading "My daughter is kick ass". "You got this!"

Jill used the end of her war hammer to get a quick jab into Revan’s stomach. With a low swing, she sweeped him off his feet and onto his back. One foot was planted tight on his foot so he couldn’t run away. There was a no killing rule of course, but that didn’t mean that contestants could bloody each other up. Raising her war hammer, Jill decided a shattered arm would end this fight. “A clown like you doesn’t belong here. Looks like you had no real tricks.”

“Oh. I’m full of surprises.”

Taking a handle Revan quickly put it to her kneecap. With the press of a button, a blue shimmering edge of a guardian sword shot outwards, stabbing through the woman’s armour, flesh, and bone. Through one end and out the other, Revan pulled out as Jill dropped her hammer, screaming in agony. With her off his body, Revan stood tall, giving her a round house kick to the head. Her helmet flew off and Jill fell to her knees. Taking both the broadsword and guardian blade to her neck, Revan took a few deep breaths through his mask. “Yield.”

To her shame, Jill simply nodded, conceding the match to the victor.

"You don't seem too worried about Revan trying to win this thing," Nakeso was making small talk with Donoma. "I mean, I know he's a great fighter and all, but... this job is more dangerous than he thinks it is. Remember what all happened with Queen Zarazu."

"I think he sort of wants to follow in Dad's footsteps." Donoma said with a slight smile. "He's always idolized the way that our father used to be a 'guardian' of sorts. Dad and Queen Zarazu have always been very good friends, even if they did argue sometimes. Maybe he just wants to ensure his friend is going to be okay."

"You don't think Lui can watch after herself?" Nakeso arched an eyebrow.

"Oh, no! I know that Lui can fight very well too, it's just..." Donoma sighed. "Lui doesn't want to put anyone at risk. Not her friends, not her family, not even some random guard. She doesn't want to be the cause of someone getting hurt for her sake. That's one reason she really protested against this."

"Yeah, that sounds like her. But... she's got to also realize that she's the heir to the throne." Nakeso made a valid point. "Would it be better to have someone you trust watching your back?"

The rest of the tournament went rather well for Revan. A few scraps here and there, but nothing too serious. But it would be the finale would test his limit. Kelly was furious at the damage and pain he caused Jill. More so, was his final opponent, her son, John.

The man wielded two short swords, stalking back and forth on the arena. He was absolutely livid with how this Sheik beat his sister. They all knew the risks, but if the healers weren’t absolutely precise, she might never walk on that leg again.

Both waited for the King and Princess to announce the final match.

"Lui-Lui, would it kill you to smile for the citizens?"

"I'm not going to smile if I'm not happy about it."

"This is not negotiable. Your mother had a guard, and so will you."

"Uncle Malik was undead at one point."

"Then he was alive."

"Still! That man is like... made of stone or something, you can't hurt him."

"I know why you don't want a guard, and I understand, though you are the future queen of our nation. We have to ensure your safety."

"I still don't see why I can't just have Carsa'sec follow---"

"Luimaya. This is final. There is no point in arguing further."

"Urgh! Fine!" Luimaya crossed her arms and huffed, not looking at her father.

Covarog stood from his seat, addressing the crowd.

"My citizens, I thank you for your presence here today. It is a historical event and one that will continue into the future for generations to come." Covarog gestured to the two finalists. "Today marks the first contest to see who is worthy of being the future queen's bodyguard. Our final contestants are Sheik and Big John. I expect a fair and clean fight, gentlemen. May the best warrior win."

“You’ll be anything but clean after what you did to my sister.”

Revan shrugged, trying to be pleasant. “A drink on me for your family?”

“I don’t think so.”

John, like his sister, was in a full suit of armour. Only his was a black ebony. Rushing forward, he engaged Revan, as both warriors used duel weapons to spar against one another.

Revan was surprised how fast John was, given his size and armour. Were his whole family made up of super soldiers?

As both of them made another engagement, John head butted Revan so hard, it sent him flying backwards. His head slammed against the ground and he felt his world spin.

“Oh... don’t throw up.”

Revan needed to rely on feeling the metal around him as he felt his eyes flutter. Even with his head spinning, wasn’t hard to sense John out. His movements were swift and agile, letting go of his worries and simply being in the moment. John was getting aggravated. He managed to make a few cuts against him, but his opponent would lie down.

Kelly herself shouted from the stands, vocalizing the silent fury her son felt. “Gut him just once! You can do this! Avenge your sister!!!”

"Sweetie, our baby is fine, she knew what she was getting into---" Tulilad stopped when Kelly gave him a glare. "I'll shut up now."

Donoma watched her brother and winced when John gained the upper hand for a moment. Head butts were not the best choice of tactic, but could stun an opponent enough to gain a chance of surprise. It made her forehead hurt just thinking about it. She tried it once during a spar with her father and knocked herself out cold. Thankfully, Revan inherited their father's thick skull.

"Why isn't the idiot using his magic?" Nakeso scoffed. "He doesn't have anything to prove!"

"That's my brother." Donoma said dryly. "He always thinks he has something to prove."

Revan deactivated his guardian blade, surprising everyone witnessing the fight.

John didn’t ask any questions, running to taking him out.

Holding his breath, Revan focused on every step that John took towards him. The man made a clank that drowned out all other sounds with every foot step he took rushing towards him.

With a quick hurl, Revan threw his steel blade at John. The warrior simply powered on through, deflecting the weapon with a right hook of his own. And this was exactly what Revan wanted.

With his opponents’ right side open, Revan ducked low and rushed in. Activating his sword, his unsheathed his guardian blade with an uppercut. This slice made a lean cut, slicing a few fingers off John’s hand. Revan danced behind him, slicing a cut through his opponents�� backside on the lighter side of the armour. John stood still, until Revan slowly raised a fist over the hilt of blade and punched downwards. With that sound echoing, John fell downwards, moaning on the ground in pain. “Best get your stitch, least you find yourself in a ditch. Because victory is mine.”

Revan gave a playful bow to the king as the crowd cheered for his victory. He did it. Disguised and no magic.

"And he won." Nakeso blinked. "Huh. He's better than I thought."

"Revan trained with Dad all those years and it finally paid off. I hope." Donoma still sounded a little... uneasy. "I just... hope he knows what he's doing. Lui still isn't going to change her mind."

"Heh, she's stubborn just like her father and resilient like her mother."

"How do you think she's going to take this?"

"... well, I don't know about you, but I'm not sticking around to see Revan get swallowed by a volcano that appears from thin air."

‘Sheik’ made his way to bow directly in front of Luimaya and Covarog, awaiting their congratulations.

"Champion!" Covarog addressed the winner. "You have displayed excellent skills in the combat arena. Though, I must ask, why did you seek this position?"

“To protect her royal highness so that she might not stub her royal toes.”

When Luimaya raised an eyebrow, and finally clued in, Revan took his mask off. Sweat was dripping down his face, but that didn’t stop him from smiling broadly. “Hello there Princess."

Before Covarog could even speak, Luimaya launched off her chair and started her spout of rage, "I AM GOING TO FUCKING WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF OF YOUR FACE---MMMHNRRRNMHM?!?!?!"

Covarog had to hold his daughter back, putting a hand on top of her mouth.

"Would you excuse---OW stop biting me!!! Us for a moment?"

“Full disclosure, we could have saved a lot of time not doing the tournament. But hey, was a blast pushing my limits as it turns out. Oh. Luiy?” Revan shot a finger gun at her. “Look forward to working with you.”

"Revan, have you ever heard the saying of 'don't poke the Goron'? You're really poking right now." Covarog was struggling to keep his furious daughter in hold. "Why don't we continue this conversation later before Lui bites my fingers off?"

“As you wish.” Revan respectfully bowed, followed by a deep sigh. Slowly, he made his way down to the arena. Doctors were furiously fixing up John’s hand.

“You ok?”

“How about we talk when I’m not in a mood to tear your head off.”

“Fair enough.”

Revan headed to the throne room with his sister and Luimaya’s brother so the princess couldn’t outright murder him with an audience present. Revan promised the others he’d try his best to not be a total smartass.

"That was really stupid of you to show off that way. No one cares about if you used magic or not!" Donoma scoffed at Revan. "If Mom was here, she'd chew your ass out for not using magic. You really could have gotten hurt!" "You know my sister is going to definitely yell at you. Possibly set your ass on fire." Turagor reminded Revan dryly. "This isn't going to be pretty."

“Well guess what. Mom and Dad decided to not show up, so frankly sister, they’re opinion on the matter can stuff it. I did it to prove I’m more of a warrior than a wizard.” Revan took a long, deep breath after that confession. “Luimaya needs to realize that I’m her best bet for protection. Already been doing it for a year. Time to make it official. Least for a little while.”

"They're both stuck in the Gerudo town thanks to Dad." Donoma rolled her eyes. "Mom has to make sure that the women don't elect Dad as a king and have us stuck in the desert forever."

"Yikes, anti-desert much?" Nakeso asked.

"It's fine, but I have to agree with Mom. This is home. Where are family and friends are."

“Wait? King?” Before Revan could push the matter forward, King Covarog and Luimaya entered the room.

"Donoma, Turagor, please give use a moment with Revan?"

"Of course, Father. Follow me Donoma, we'll wait outside in the courtyard."

After the two exited the room, Luimaya shot Revan a dark glare, her arms crossed. Yet, she said nothing yet. "Your fight was most impressive, Revan, though I do have my daughter's assurance that you will not be a steaming pile of ash after you two discuss your new occupation as her bodyguard." Covarog gave Revan a pat on the shoulder. "Good luck. You're going to need it." He murmured in his ear before leaving the room.

"... I told you no."

“You did. I disagreed. Your father disagreed.”

"I said no for a reason, Revan!" Luimaya insisted as she poked him harshly in the chest. "I don't want you getting hurt because of me!!!"

Revan poked her back. “You or I could pull this macho crap of “I work alone” all we want, but the matter of fact is that we’re both pretty damn resilient together. We don’t have to worry about long term damage when we’re a team. There isn’t some damsel either of us has to overly worry about when we got each other’s backs. So as your bodyguard, I can look after you effectively when my client is a fire fueled tank, and as my future Queen, you don’t have to worry about replacing me due to a mortality issue when your bodyguard can take beatings most can’t.”

"I’m not queen now, Revan! When I do become queen, then I will have even more targets on my back! There's no telling what will happen!" Luimaya poked harder. "Mom and Dad are so secretive about why I need so much protection and my siblings don't. Obviously, there's something going on, or either they're that worried about me producing an heir in the future, I don't know. Still! What if they target you to get to me? Did that even go through your thick skull?!" She nearly shook him. "You're a great warrior, and I know we make a great team, but I don't want you to get killed because I can't keep an eye on everyone around me, waiting to stab me in the back!"

“So you’re ok with others lining up to die for you? It’s an inevitability Luimaya. People will get hurt serving under you. I’m just the most likely to avoid a large majority of pain while protecting your life.”

"Why does it have to be you?!"

“Well it sure as hell ain’t going to be your Aunt Rinku. Luimaya, it has so be me because I’m the best.” Revan sighed, turning his head to look out the window. Somewhere, behind all the mountains lied the desert where his father lived. “Because if I protect anyone else they’ll get hurt. But like me, I know you can take it too. It has to be me because this is all I know.”

"... you're the stubbornest person I know. More so than me." Luimaya still did not like this situation. "You better not get yourself killed. I don't want to have to be responsible for your eulogy."

Revan laughed, releasing tension from his body. “Think you can stop yourself from getting into needless fights?”

"Needless fights? For sure. Getting into fights because of your bullheadedness? That's impossible to avoid." Luimaya snickered.

“Well excuuuuuuuse me princess. Better I beat them with fists and metal than your volcano top blowing off.”

"Least I make sure my opponents can't get back up."

"Urgh, did you have to remind me?" Luimaya groaned aloud. "I don't see why Grandmama Zelda insisted on a new dress fitting every single month! Now she's got Mom doing it."

“Let’s hope you can make the old Queen proud. Come on! Can’t wait to see you complain about your hip lines.”

________________________________________________________________

Previous Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/622375165476618240/the-rising-sun-ch-2-taiyo-town

Next Ch. https://mrneighbourlove.tumblr.com/post/622576982282141697/the-rising-sun-ch-4-uncertain-future

Crossover with @ridersoftheapocalypse. Love you guys, and a Happy Canada Day!

#crossover #ridersoftheapocalypse #Klinge/Malik #Asakonigei #Revan #Gerudo #Luimaya #Donoma #shared universe

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morris-magus-merry-miller · 4 years

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Chapter 5: The Marvelous Manor of Madness

The island was to be a two-hour trip from Port Town. Enough time for me to prepare a special little spell, which if this is not the final draft will likely be on this page if it hasn’t already been expended. Sorry about that, I’ll undo the effects if you weren’t the intended target. Hope you at least have a nice nap.

Anyways, it was a quick and uneventful boat ride, until the last moments. As we approached the island, we found there was an ominous storm brewing. Blood red clouds had gathered in the sky above Gladshire’s manor. I would not blame you, dear reader, if you find this storm very similar to the roiling pink clouds which had gathered when Ulong had frozen Dualwood. Certainly, that is what we feared as we approached the island. But this proved to be a different phenomenon entirely.

We dropped anchor at the shore and made our way inland on foot. As we approached the manor, we came upon four shambling animated corpses and a foreboding looking tree.

Issac, our dear nature expert, informed us that the tree was a very dangerous undead plant called a Hangman Tree. It’s a tree…that does exactly what its name implies. It’s an insidious creature that uses spores to trick your brain into thinking it’s nothing but a normal tree, or even a friendly treant. Then when your guard is down it snags you by the neck with its vines, strangles you to death, and then eats you!

As we formulated a plan of attack, Issac warned that it wasn’t particularly flammable by normal means—but it would likely be set ablaze by a well-placed lightning bolt.

That meant it was John and Vigo’s time to shine. John called upon his goddess’ wrath and bolts of lightning rained from the heavens, striking the tree and the zombies that meandered around it.

Strange that a goddess of death would have an affinity for storms…although I suppose many people are likely killed by lightning strikes, so it’s not utterly uncalled for. It would make more sense I think for a cleric worshipping Nairon’s goddess to strike down foes with lightning. But again, I am no expert on divine magic. If a goddess of death wants to grant her followers control of the weather, who am I to say it makes it seem as though the world we live in has no internal consistency?

With the zombies weakened, Vigo followed up with a wall of lightning that blew them apart. Thus in mere seconds only the tree remained.

I began a reading to focus my companions’ minds to the task at hand, and also sent a spell at the tree to slow its movements to a snail’s pace. Even if it released its spores, I thought, it wouldn’t be able to immediately grab any victims.

Well, I was right, but that didn’t stop it from releasing said spores. As Terrance and Nairon pushed forward, intent to take advantage of the plant’s slowed state, a cloud of spores were released into the air. I saw Candy let out a gasp, breathing in the mind-altering pollen. I couldn’t allow that to happen to my friend, of course. I snapped my book shut, abruptly ending my performance. The remaining magic was channeled to Candy, clearing her lungs of the dangerous substance.

Unfortunately, in doing so I left myself open to breath in the same pollen. Things got a bit fuzzy from there. The tree actually looked quite friendly. I think I was about to run up to it, before John utterly annihilated it with another lightning strike from above. It is quite possible I owe John a life debt for that, and I will repay him in kind.

Nairon and Terrance had apparently also been taken in by the tree’s mind warping properties. They expressed discomfort with going any further after such a harrowing experience, and decided they would return to the ship and keep watch from there while we cleared out the manor.

So we parted ways, and our band continued onwards. As we approached the manor it was clear all was not well. Many of the once opulent windows had been shattered, and a quite deceased body hung out of one. Not moving, unlike the corpses that had stood vigil around the tree, thankfully.

However as we approached a voice spoke up from the body. At first it appeared a lingering spirit was calling for our aid. What we discovered, however, was that the body had one of those Stones of Farspeech on its person, and Oswald Gladshire was trying to contact us through it. The Wizard of the Stars was being held captive within his own tower by a vile necromancer—who also happened to be his grandfather. Gladshire requested our immediate aid, to clear out the monstrosities that now infested his home, and to free him from the bird cage he’d been locked within at the highest point of the tower.

We needed his guidance to save Dualwood, so we were of course going to do so regardless. Adventurers save nobles in distress because it’s the right thing to do, that is a given. That he offered to let us keep anything we picked up that could help us within his manor was, of course, a secondary concern.

He quickly dropped the call as he heard his captor approaching, but promised to keep in touch as the situation allowed.

The inside was both as extravagant and as wrecked as the outside had been. Rubble blocked a ruined staircase, necessitating us going the long way around to get to higher ground.

There were a number of rooms down the halls to both sides, many with placards denoting what the room was. Vigo stuck he head into a room labelled “WC”, which he said didn’t have anything of interest. John and I went looking into the “Horse Room”, which was a mostly barren room with a single large golden statue of a horse. Someone—Gladshire I must presume—had placed sunglasses upon the horse’s face. Quite reminiscent of Nathaniel’s usual attire, in fact, although something about the statue gave me a feeling that this horse was much older and more venerable than my own dear companion. I gave him a polite nod in greeting, as I would Nathaniel if he had been there at the time, before being on my way.

Down the next hall we came upon an imposing metal door—Gladshire confirmed over the Stone of Farspeech that it was a vault. He was fairly certain some baddies had made their way inside, and asked that we unlock it and clear it out. One itty bitty little problem stood in the way of that—the door was protected by a device that was password protected. A skull mounted above the door would spit acid at anyone who guessed the password wrong, or tried to open the door through brute force. Gladshire didn’t know the password himself, he’d had his apprentice Elena set it for him, and he hasn’t seen her since the attack. All he knew was that he’d told her to set it to ‘something you will remember’.

Clever adventurers that we are, we took the most prudent course of action. Guessing wildly. Paige confirmed that a few…admittedly rather vulgar terms were not the password. I tried Elena’s name—after all she was sure to remember that! We brainstormed other possibilities, and were about to give up when Paige tried the word ‘Something’. While the door remained closed, the skull didn’t activate.

A brilliant thought hit me—Gladshire hadn’t said the password need be only one word. Heart pounding, excitement flowing through my veins, I spoke the password.

“Something you will remember”

And voila! The skull remained inactive, and there was the sound of a lock opening. I pushed open the door.

And immediately back-peddled for Candy to take the lead, as there was a golden skeleton waiting directly within the doorway. A swift flurry of kicks was all it took to do away with that little problem. We got a number of nifty trinkets courtesy of Gladshire’s generosity, and we continued on our way to keep clearing the manor of such ghouls as that. Not literal ghouls. I don’t think we faced any literal ghouls. A few…other things, as you’ll soon find, but no ghouls.

We circled back around, finding that the next hallway led back the way we’d come, but also continued forward in the opposite direction. John found a “smoking room”, and he and Vigo took a number of seemingly enchanted cigars from there. One was as long as Vigo was tall, and smelled…just atrocious, really. I had to excuse myself, alongside Peanut whose poor sensitive bear nose must have been burning from the putrid smoke.

Next we came to a parlor. The room beyond had music coming from it. Issac decided to try to scout ahead. He transformed into an adorable little hedgehog and skittered forward to peek beyond the door.

He didn’t get far. In the next room a number of awakened skeletons waited, and they immediately spotted the tiny hedgehog that pushed his way into their midst. The music grew louder and more focused, as one of the skeletons—whom I later learned was named Georgio—began playing trumpet.

I felt a challenge had been issued, and whipped out Nathaniel’s flute to begin a tune of my own.

While Georgio and I provided background music for the skirmish, Candy had a more up close and personal fight with one of the musician’s friends. (A backup dancer perhaps…?) I threw my hat into the ring as well, so to speak, when the skeleton had some disparaging words to say about Candy. His companion may have been a fine musical talent, but a gentleman this one was not. I called up a new spell I’ve been toying with—biting words—and told him just what I thought about him speaking ill of my companions.

Between the five of us, the musician’s two companions fell quickly. Georgio didn’t seem to have much in the way of battle prowess himself, and quite frankly I felt no desire to destroy him. He was a man of true talent after all!

It would seem he had no desire for a physical confrontation anymore, either. He ceased his trumpeting and challenged me to a far more desirable duel—one not of magic or sword, but of musical might.

Unfortunately for him, he flubbed his notes rather quickly, while I was quite on point. He tipped his hat to me.

Before exploding.

…I know some people don’t handle a loss very well, but looking back that still seemed a bit excessive.

I took both his trumpet and a fiddle from the wall, which I shall play in his short lived memory.

With the skeleton band out of the way, Issac stole a peek into the next room. It was…beyond description, and even if it weren’t I fear I don’t desire to make use of words to do it justice. You shall have to fill in the gory details yourself, dear reader. Suffice to say there was a veritable horde of Fetches. They were seated at the table eating. Not food—oh no—but viscera, scraps of flesh, the last remains of many a visiting noble’s carcass...

I apologize, I did say I would not describe it, but the memory is difficult to banish.

Standing before the feasting horde was a man. Although ‘standing’ and ‘man’ are both inexact. It was more ‘floating’ and ‘ghost’.

I recognized the man from some old news I’d read some time back, while Candy realized she’d seen this man first-hand in the past. A vile fellow by the name of Count Bartholomew McLaurin. For those not in the know, he was once a count in Donmum City. However he was caught up in some dark business—human experimentation, warping creatures together, and who knows what else. All at the behest of some group called the Society of Great Enlightened Ones. He died in an explosion, a suicide bomb, I suppose to escape any punishment for his crimes.

What connection he had to this place was at first unclear. Without knowing we feared we couldn’t best him permanently—for as everyone knows, a ghost will just keep coming back if it still has unfinished business in the mortal realm.

And it would seem I was to be the one to uncover the truth. The others were rather quick to volunteer me for the task. I cannot deny I have a knack for words. I wouldn’t be an author if not! But I must say this entire situation was rather off putting. Quite frankly, I wasn’t certain that the entire room wouldn’t just mindlessly attack me. Not that all undead are mindless—as we saw from Georgio that is very much not the case, and I am well aware of the rise of awakened undead in cities across the globe. However these were…you know, eating viscera in the middle of a manor where most everyone had apparently been slaughtered…it didn’t seem like an ideal place for a chat. Georgio aside.

Still, my companions felt this was the best course of action. The fetches wouldn’t be difficult due to their pyrophobia, but we feared the ghost alone might be enough to drag one or all of us to the grave if we weren’t careful. So we hatched a plan to speak to the ghost, butter him up to learn what we could about what bound him to the mortal plane. We brainstormed possible codewords to use to call in reinforcements if things got out of hand—and settled on ‘would you like some merlot with that’, since the undead were eating. Issac also decided to come along with me—transforming into an adorable little black rabbit who helped calm my nerves tremendously. I wonder if anyone has ever told Issac he’d make an amazing therapy animal in that form?

To be quite honest with you, dear reader, I found the idea of talking to a ghost a rather frightening concept. I know we were in a haunted manor, but I didn’t expect to find a real ghost of all things!

As a wise man once said “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts”. Actually, I think maybe Vigo said that. Regardless, with a plan in place, a very fluffy bunny in hand, and a few spells cast to grant myself a…let’s say confidence boost, I strode forward into the feast of horrors.

#entry #pathfinder #pathfinder campaign #dungeons and dragons #d&d campaign #Morris 3M #a totally normal horse

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lex1nat0r · 5 years

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Rising of the Shield Hero

More like downfall of the shield zero, amirite

I have a documented history of watching absolute trash garbage. Don’t weep for me, I do it to myself. Sometimes I enjoy holding a show’s impurities up to the light. It can be especially enjoyable when a show is especially bad. At least Rising of the Shield Hero is especially bad in some interesting ways. There were times when it felt like it was based on a particularly bad experience in an MMO. If that’s the case, I hope the author had all their purple items ganked or whatever. I don’t like Rising of the Shield Hero.

And you know, sometimes I get worried that the abyss might feel lonely without anyone to gaze back at every once in a while. So come, gaze with me. Content warning for slavery and misogyny. There will be spoilers below.

I’ve heard Shield Hero described as ‘incelcore,’ which is disturbingly accurate. This show has problems with women. I think I’ll just go from the beginning.

To start off, our boy, who I will only call Shield Jerk because I don’t care about his name or him in general, reads a book and judges the princess in the book for no very good reason. This foreshadows both how the actual princess in the show is bad and also the show’s problems with women as a whole.

OUR HERO

I just want to point out that the first episode is double-length, both to appease the wretched creatures who would want a double-shot of shield hero and to make me, personally, suffer. Anyway, we roll into our basic isekai premise: guy gets summoned to another world because he’s a chosen hero, one of four. His special weapon is the shield, and the others are sword, spear, and bow.

We occasionally get POV shots from Shield Jerk that have this UI and let me just say the way this show gives everyone stats as if they were in an MMO, and makes everyone in the world aware of the concept of stats, annoys me greatly. It just raises so many questions that are never addressed. To be fair, this isn’t a problem specific to Shield Hero but it still manages to stick out on top of all this show’s other problems.

Anyway, we’re hit with the first major grossness when Shield Jerk is falsely accused of rape. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s a terrible thing to have as a plot element. If you’re here I hope you understand why this is a problem. If you don’t… look I don’t have time to explain, there’s so much other horrible ground to cover. The princess (who Shield Jerk had already pre-judged as ‘slutty’, remember) accuses him of raping her and this is when the show starts leaning hard into its persecution complex. Because in this highly fictional world everyone immediately believes the princess when she accuses Shield Jerk of raping her and he’s completely ostracized. Not actually thrown in jail of course, because they need him to help fight the demon waves he was originally summoned to deal with and because the plot just fucking loves him.

This line will be ignored for a full half of the show. I’ll point out when it actually becomes relevant to the plot again.

I don’t know why the princess does this. I mean, I know the story wants our poor Shield Jerk to be the underdog in the hopes that we will like him, but I don’t know what in-story reason the princess has for this. We will find out later that humans are prejudiced against the shield hero as a concept for no adequately explained reason (like I said, persecution complex) and maybe that has something to do with it, but otherwise it’s just there to be an example of ‘women be lying.’ Like I said, incelcore.

We then run head-on into the next truly awful thing about this show when Shield Jerk buys a child slave. See, no one will join his party for grinding with that rape accusation hanging over him, so he follows a shady guy who turns out to be a slave trader. And he buys the only slave he can afford, a waifish demi-human who he then proceeds to recklessly endanger in the pursuit of personal power. And she gets a tattoo that acts as a magical shock collar. The girl is, of course, enslaved because of fantasy racism. We’ll get back to that.

OUR HERO

Understandably, the other heroes don’t look too kindly on this. Except that slavery is apparently legal in this kingdom but also the king (you know, the king who rules in this matriarchy) looks down on it so I don’t even know. The spear hero, who has the princess in his party, challenges Shield Jerk to a duel to get him to free his slave and removes her magical tattoo. Except that by this point the girl (Raphtalia) has decided she likes being Shield Jerk’s slave. Because the plot fucking loves him. Shield Jerk wins the duel because the princess interferes, even though Shield Jerk got some outside help from some monsters he brought to the duel but that’s apparently not the same thing. And then Raphtalia levels up which means she magically turns into an adult.

WHAT

THE FUCK

In the next episode the newly-adult Raphtalia decides to get a new slave tattoo because she loves being a slave. Shield Jerk also buys an egg from the slave trader that hatches into a not-chocobo. The not-chocobo (Filo) reveals that she can turn into a little girl and she loves helping the Shield Jerk. She can turn between human and not-chocobo forms because she’s a queen not-chocobo, which is a stroke of luck I’d excuse in a different (better) anime, but this is on top of so much other stuff I can only boggle at how many breaks the shows gives Shield Jerk. Because the plot fucking loves him. Filo loves Shield Jerk so much that she also chooses to get a slave tattoo.

The show goes out of its way to point out how much she loves being useful.

The next few episodes have Shield Jerk and Friends dealing with fallout from some stuff the other heroes have done while trying to do hero things. This is where it really feels like Shield Hero is based on a bad MMO experience, with how much it keeps pointing out how dumb the other heroes are. It almost feels personal. During this, Shield Jerk’s magic shield absorbs some power from an undead dragon, which is the only explanation we’ll get for why he’s so overpowered later.

Yes actually this show does actually make me hate everything.

This is also when the show introduces the third major character in Shield Jerk’s party, the other princess of the kingdom, Melty. She’s also a fan of Shield Jerk (who is accused of raping her sister) because the plot fucking loves him. Also the kingdom (which is supposed to be a matriarchy) does have a living queen but she’s under house arrest and the king’s in charge because of reasons. Also during this time Shield Jerk points out to the other heroes everything he’s had to clean up because they’ve fucked up. Which might be something I’d appreciate, if the show wasn’t so relentlessly focused on how perfect Shield Jerk is and how he can do no wrong. Like I said, it feels personal.

This is a weird show to include a Spider-Man reference.

Then there’s a weird plotline about doctored scrying footage being shown around to make Shield Jerk seem like more of a bad guy for killing guards who were trying to take Melty back. It’s politically relevant in a way that’s disturbing when put together with everything else.

We run into more fantasy racism where we learn about Raphtalia’s backstory and they go deal with a racist noble who’s selling demi-humans into slavery. You may remember that Shield Jerk bought Raphtalia as a slave, and she’s technically still his slave. So it’s kind of hard for him to maintain the moral high ground here. It’s even more difficult when he never goes back to put the slave trader he originally bought her from out of business. But you can tell the show wants him to have the moral high ground, with how he stops Raphtalia from killing the noble. And this kind of betrays the promise of the first episode. It wanted to show off how edgy it was with the false rape accusation and the slavery, but a show that really wanted to live up to that would have actually had the heroes flat-out killing someone in the name of justice.

YOU BOUGHT A CHILD AS A SLAVE

Skipping ahead, the pope is revealed to be a bad guy who betrays all the heroes because, I don’t know, he wants the church to have all the power to stop the demon waves or something. The pope gets defeated, the queen is placed back on the throne, and the king and princess who accused Shield Jerk of raping her are both sentenced to death for their part in the pope’s attempted coup. This involves the princess getting a slave tattoo and the show makes sure to show off her getting zapped for lying. However, in his generosity, Shield Jerk spares the king and princess from being executed and instead just has their names legally changed to ‘Trash’ and ‘Bitch’. And everyone loves him for it.

This is just so unbelievably petty.

It’s astounding how far this show bends over backwards to give this fucker everything he wants. Sure, he starts at the bottom (due to gross reasons) but that lasts for all of five minutes before we’re gleefully shown how he can do no wrong.

Now the show should be over there, but it finds time to cram in an arc about the heroes all going to an island to grind where all the heroes except Shield Jerk get seasick because the plot fucking loves him. They end up fighting another demon wave, and I haven’t even gone into the waves of demons the heroes were originally summoned to fight and how they somehow tie in to other worlds that summon heroes and the heroes have to fight each other or their worlds will be destroyed in a way that’s never actually explained. There’s too much other horribleness that’s going on.

And then, to wrap it all up, we get this:

The slave trader Shield Jerk bought Raphtalia from is still fine! No one gave him so much as a stern talking-to even after that whole arc about how terrible demi-human slavery is.

There are some positive parts about Shield Hero, some things it does that I can respect. But after spending all that wordcount on its major, MAJOR, problems going over the silver lining wouldn’t accomplish much.

And most of its problems revolve around women. The female characters in the show are either obstacles who must be humiliated or are constantly fawning over Shield Jerk. There are no actual friendships between Shield Jerk and any women, or even any friendships between Shield Jerk and the male characters. The other three heroes are only shown as rivals, and incompetent ones at that. Just their to point out how much better Shield Jerk is.

Shield Hero might actually be the worst anime I’ve watched. Goblin Slayer at least had a specific problem that you could imagine removed and have a decent, if generic, fantasy series (plus I do really dig Goblin Slayer’s design). Magical Spec Ops Asuka at least tried to do something neat. It went about it in about the worst way possible, but the idea’s there. Hell, I’ve even heard that Tanya the Evil’s creator intended it to be a critique or parody of Tanya’s mindset and if that were true I’d at least place it a peg higher than this. This terrible, hateful show with the terribleness so deeply embedded in it any effort to salvage it would be wasted.

I will leave you with this image of three girls, all technically children, fawning over Shield Jerk. It nicely sums up some (SOME) of the show’s problems.

#consumed media

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renlyisright · 5 years

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Season 7 Episode 6 - Winter Wonderland

I like winter very much, but it’s nice that I can lock it out of the house for as long as I want to, and then I can go outside to like it when I want to do that.

I like the snow in its different forms, the clearness of air, how clean everything looks, the ways the sun sets, the brightness of days and the mysterious darkness of nights, the silence of forests… Having walking murderous dead there would spoil everything.

So when our fellowship walks on the lands beyond the Wall, they have some beautiful landscapes to see. It’s a nice atmosphere to talk to each other, to catch up and learn to know the new people. Jon and Tormund talk about kneeling. The Free Folk never kneel, and Mance as their leader certainly didn’t. And so they didn’t ally themselves with Stannis and were driven back from the Wall to be massacred by the dead, which was exactly what Mance fought against. In hindsight, as much as I’d like to blame Stannis and his pride, it was Mance’s pride that doomed them in the end. When faced with the exact same choice later, when Jon wanted their help in defeating the Boltons, Tormund joined him.

Jon offers the Mormont sword to Jorah. That Valyrian sword could be a matter of life and death up here, so Jon of course tries to give it to someone else. Jorah doesn’t take it. He is not here to be a Mormont.

Tormund likes to stack his odds against him, so he tells the Hound about the beauty “waiting for him” in Winterfell. Look, you are on a suicide mission, do you really want to talk about someone you want to see again? Tormund doesn’t care, he has lived this long by being tough to kill.

So have all of them. There’s Jon, who has ranged beyond the Wall five times now (I’m counting walking to Mance’s tent too), and been in mortal danger every time. He has been in a lot of fights, but he has always come back. Then there’s Beric Dondarrion, the knight who dueled in tournaments and has survived many battles, alive or dead, Thoros who fights with a drunk’s spirit, Jorah, survivor of Meereen’s arena, Gendry who hasn’t had anything to do but train and the Hound who is the Hound. They also have a couple of redshirts, because they are always useful. The greatest warriors of Westeros, all gathered here, at this time, for a purpose.

Beric doesn’t know what that purpose is, but the Lord of Light has guided them here. Or has he? He sent the Brotherhood vision “Hey, be near Eastwatch soon, big things will happen there”, but did he know what exactly that big thing will be? Jon got the idea very suddenly. And if he saw that the two people he has kept alive will go beyond the Wall, did he also see the end result of that trip? What is the Lord of Light’s endgame? I have thought that he is a “hard god making hard decisions”, and wants the humanity to survive, but doesn’t really care more than that (and that the survivors will worship him). He threw Stannis out after calling him the Chosen One for years. That still seems to be the likeliest explanation. The other is that he wants the humanity to end.

Now we get to the part of the plan called “How exactly do you plan to get just one dead with you, since they march in an army and the Walkers may well sense what all of them are doing?” Oh hey, there is one! It’s a bear. A dead bear. Which makes me think of how completely the ecosystem here has been wrecked. If the dead kill every animal they meet, have all the mammoths, sabertooth tigers, direwolves and so on gone extinct? These lands are wide, so maybe not necessarily, but big mammals must be in the brink of extinction. After all, humans were entirely capable of wiping out mammoths in our world without any help from the dead.

The dead bear is a terrifying opponent, and being dead doesn’t need any more sustainment than the rest of the army, so if I was in charge of this army I would take animals in it too. But now that I think about it, is there a reason the army is composed of only dead people and some horses? Is it that you can’t make wild animals to work formally for you, even when dead? Horses can be ridden because they were ridden when alive, and humans can do all sorts of things so they are easy to command? But while you can raise bears, the best you can do with them is set them free to kill everything they see.

After the bear, the fellowship sees a group of human dead, led by one of the Walkers. Killing the Walker makes the dead fall down, except one. They decide later that this must mean that killing the Walkers breaks the spells to the ones they raised. That simplifies things. How many Walkers are there? It can be any number between ten and a hundred. But the Night King has raised the most, killing others may remove pieces of the army but killing the king…

Oh, killing the main villain will remove the problem? That’s convenient. But it won’t solve the socioeconomics of Westeros so there’s still work to be done for Daenerys even if the apocalypse is averted.

Tyrion is worried about what can happen if and when Daenerys dies. Hopefully not before she has secured her rule, but even at that point the succession can get messy because she can’t have her own children. Daenerys doesn’t want to discuss that, the throne is top priority.

But… in case anything happens to her, Tyrion will be in big trouble. Let’s hope that the meeting next week will go well… haha, no way it will.

The fellowship ties up the wight, but either its shrieks alert the rest of the army or the Walker who raised it knew immediately what happened. The humans know so little about the rules. As far as plans go, this one wasn’t that well planned. The entire army of the dead follows them to the frozen lake and surrounds them.

Then it’s a waiting game. Thoros is the first one to lose, dying in his sleep during the night. He served the Lord of Light, he brought Beric and the Hound here, and now he’s dead? And doesn’t get any resurrections? Well how nice of the Lord.

The Night King arrives to see what they have here. Their entire army. Surrounding fewer than a ten humans. The million dragon question: Does the Night King know what he has here? It’s the King in the North. Does he know, does he care? He plays with his captives instead of sending his forces some way through the lake (later in the episode we see that fresh water is not deadly to them, so spending a few hundred wights maximum would have allowed them to overpower these humans) or throwing them with projectiles (even if the dead can’t throw anything far or use bows, the Night King himself has a strong throwing arm as we see later). They wait for an easier attack.

Meanwhile, at Winterfell it doesn’t take much to make Arya and Sansa suspicious of each other. They haven’t seen each other for years, and in each other’s eyes the other one has… maybe not changed but intensified. Arya comes back as a tough fighter who can go toe-to-toe with Brienne, and Sansa is a political player who has Littlefinger on her side.

Sansa says that Jon would have lost the battle without her, the Knights of the Vale are here because of her. Yes, that’s true, but Littlefinger talked them to it. Even if Arya can believe that Sansa is not stealing Jon’s throne, everybody knows that Littlefinger is always up for a promotion.

Sansa receives an invitation to the big meeting. Everyone seems to be invited. But Sansa doesn’t go, it smells like a trap all over and Jon has already left the North for months to the unrest of his bannermen. Her going too would make the bannermen wonder if the Starks actually want to die. So she sends Brienne.

Later she goes to check Arya’s room, and finds faces there. I don’t think that she knows what Walder Frey looked like, but someone’s face skin is never a nice find when going through someone’s bag. Arya enters to talk with her, extremely threateningly of course. Her point is that she is very dangerous, but at least for now she is loyal to Sansa, if Sansa is loyal to Jon. Yes, this certainly puts Sansa on the ease. And could someone please talk about that knife everyone swings around?

Daenerys gets the raven and rides out immediately, against Tyrion’s counsel. Nothing new in that last part. He points out that if she dies, everything is lost. That’s true. No her, no dragons, no armies who have sworn loyalty to her and her alone. Cersei will move her attention North, try everything to kill the rest of the Starks and then they all die when the dead come.

So in one corner we have Daenerys, and the other corner we have the Night King. The Queen and the King, and both are insta-win-buttons. Not very democratic.

The ice gets thick enough and the dead attack again. One of the attackers moves to free the captured dead. Why? It’s not like they are going to miss one wight. Have the Walkers figured out what they plan to do? Do they think that there are researchers of spells South of the Wall who may figure out something if they get a walking dead? How much do they know of the contemporary South?

But if they don’t like that humans captured a wight, then bringing it to the South is a good thing, right? Right?

That chinless skeleton got a lot of screentime for an undead mook. When it came back from under the lake I thought that it was going to get to kill someone or do something else memorable, but nope.

All hope seems lost, they are seconds from death, when… the death comes from the sky. Dragonfire and ruin. Three dragons in action start wrecking up the army of the dead. How do you like the song of fire?

I didn’t expect this so soon. There’s still eight episodes to go. Those three dragons could destroy the whole army in a matter of minutes. Daenerys could save the world without anyone believing she did that.

The Night King grabs a spear. Oh dear. Oooh dear. He throws it, and one-shots… Viserion? Their colors are hard to see. Anyway, a dragon is down. Okay, the dead are a threat again. Jon is left behind, Daenerys leaves before everything is lost.

This was not a good outcome. A dragon’s body amidst the army of the dead, I knew what would happen in the aftermath. Viserion’s body is raised as a flying dead. This is not good, not good at all. Can it spit fire? Can it spit ice? Anyway, now they have a flying giant creature. Do the Wall’s spells block flying dead? Can they now just melt it down? Aargh, I knew (not knew-knew but strongly predicted) that this would end badly, and I knew that the dead will get through during this season, but still.

Was losing Viserion worth it? Do they get Cersei and everybody else to listen soon enough so they can prepare for an invasion? Or will there be a big trap in King’s Landing and everything down there goes to further ruin?

Jon gets up, and faces an entire army alone. Again. But here’s the cavalry! Benjen is back! He is actually going to meet Jon again! “Here, take my horse, thanks, bye, oh, I’m dead”. Wow. In a series of quick reunions, he really wanted to get the quickest one. And so Benjen Stark is dead. He survived all these years, alone in the lands beyond the Wall, so that he could join the long line of people who have died so that Jon could live for a minute more.

He better be worth it.

He survives, once more, by a horse bringing him back. This time it’s Benjen’s horse, nice that it gets to finally return.

Jon is put on the ship and they are off. Daenerys is there to see him when he comes to. Okay, I am poor with shipping, but I still felt their conversation. And they seem like they could be a nice couple. They respect each other and know that they both want good for the world. Grading on a curve, that’s really good.

Maybe Jon’s luck will last through all the dumb things he still has time to try.

#game of thrones #renly is right #army of the dead

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zippdementia · 6 years

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Part 58 Alignment May Vary: Beginning a Battle

After the crazy events of last session, my players have some decisions to make. Nysyries is no longer under the sway of Nazragul, Lord of the Maakengorge, and so is no longer compelled to gather his soul jar and convert the dead of the upcoming battle into his minions. Furthermore, she no longer needs to feed on human men in order to keep her druidic abilities, as she is free of the Rusalka’s curse, the culmination of which was to tempt her to murder Lord Jarmaath of Brindol.

But these things also beg the question: what is her goal? For the first time in nearly the entire campaign, Nysyries is free to make her own decisions. Well, in Poseiden’s name, now that she wields his trident, but nevertheless it’s an unusual place for her to be.

After some discussion, Aldric asserts that his plans have not changed: “I’m not going to Brindol to save it,” he says, “though that may very well happen if I’m there. I have my quarry to hunt.” He is referring to the Behir Varanthian, the self styled “Mother of Dragons,” who killed his fellow Green Company and started him on the quest for revenge.

Nysyries decides to follow Aldric. “I don’t want to see this world ruined,” she says. “Not by the undead and not by the hordes of this Azor Khul, the Dragonlord. I at least owe it to my deceased companions to finish what we started. This war is mine as much as anyone’s, now.”

Planning for Battle

“You used to ride with the Green Company? I grew up hearing stories about them. It was like having a piece of my childhood torn away when I heard they had been disbanded.”

Aldric looked Delora Zann up and down, trying to guess at her age. He couldn’t be more than five years older than her. “We grew up hearing the same tales,” Aldric said. “And for a while I got to live my fantasy. But we weren’t disbanded. We were murdered, by the one calling herself the Mother of the Hoard.”

This is an interesting scene in the original module. Ostensibly it’s a chance for the players to shape the form of the battle to come. The module, obviously, can’t account for every possible outcome of this meeting, so it leaves it to DMs to pay attention and change the battle on the fly. It is also a chance to introduce the main players for the final chapter of the campaign. One problem I have with this is that these characters come in too late to have any real bearing on the plot. After all, this is the penultimate chapter! So it is a struggle to make players care about them and their little infighting and conspiracies.

I do a few things to try and combat this. For one, I add another player. These particular characters do not recognize Zennatos, from the Tomb of Haggemoth campaign, but the players do and it makes them feel that much more connected to the city when they see him on the council and find out that this is his homeland and he has returned to defend it because “someone once told me that I should spend the rest of my life doing good, if I wanted to keep it for long.”

Of course, there is also the mayor of Drellin’s Ferry and his lieutenant Delora Zann to check in with, as the players have not seen him since before their turn to evil and their failure to rescue two of his prominent citizens: Sera the Halfling and Soranna the captain of the guard. Nysyries was around for all of that, and there is a wonderfully roleplayed awkwardness to their conversations as she is forced to recall the deaths of these citizens as well as of Trakki and Tyrion, whose presence the mayor looks for. This gets even worse when the leader of the elves (also here) requests an update on Trellara. Nysyries keeps everything very vague, saying that Trakki and Tyrion fell, that they failed to rescue the citizens, and that Trellara became separated from them in a storm. None of it lies, but definitely not the whole truth.

I also try to ramp up some of the personalities here. Immerstal in particular I play as pompous and braggadocios and Aldric takes the bait, snapping back at him like a rooster that has seen its own reflection. The two are too alike to be friends, so they decide to duel in the morrow, putting them in a very intense position. See, Adlric knows that Blackrazor will try and murder Immerstal, not just knock him out. And if that happens, they are removing a major weapon from the battle to come, possibly sealing the doom of Brindol. But Aldric’s pride does not let him back down and so the duel is set.

By the end of the conference, the players have made friends with Lord Jarmaath and his warrior generals, but have failed to impress Tredora the cleric (and Jarmaath’s not-so-secret lover), Lady Kaal (directly opposed to Jarmaath), and Immerstal. For battle plans, they come up with the idea to send Aldric outside of the southern city gates with a contingent of horsemen, in case the Red Hand sends a force there. If the southern gate is clear, Aldric will ride up the flank of the main force at the Western gate and harry them as he can.

Nysyries, meanwhile, will man the Western gate with Immerstal and a number of the city’s finest defenders. They will hold as long as possible, then fall back to pre-planned locations: emptied buildings from which they will snipe and use magic to harry enemies as they advance down the streets. The streets have been turned into a long death trap by using barricades to block off huge portions of them and force the direction of the enemy march. This will eventually lead them to the final stand at the city’s grand temple, where Lord Jarmaath and the final contingent of clerics and warriors wait to defend the city to its last if the worst comes to pass and the enemy makes it that far.

Granted, there are some things that are guaranteed to happen in the battle. The gates will fall, for instance. It’s not much of a final battle scene if they don’t. But I’ve tried to let everything after that be more organic. I know the final fight is supposed to take place on the steps of the temple, but I’m okay if that doesn’t happen. I want the player actions to shape this conflict and the idea about siphoning the enemy through a maze of city streets is a solid one. The enemies, of course, have some tricks up their sleeve that aren’t in the original. We’ll get to that soon. But first, we have a duel to fight.

Well, actually, even before that, there is one more odd thing that occurs. The night before the duel, Aldric gets a vistor at the abandoned inn he’s staying at (the city has mostly evacuated). The visitor is clearly of noble birth, though he doesn’t give a name. Instead, he offers Aldric a deal: let Lord Jarmaath come to some accident during the upcoming war and Aldric will be gifted with the location of the Behir’s lair, so that he may finally avenge his fallen company.

Aldric doesn’t agree one way or the other and the noble tells him he doesn’t need to. His actions will speak louder than words. Then the noble leaves and all attempts to track him after this fail.

The Duel

“Ready to die?” Aldric asked jovially with a broad smile. Across the green field, Immerstal visibly stiffened--not an easy accomplishment, considering the man already walked around like he had an immovable rod shoved up his posterior.

“We shall see if you are worthy of your arrogance.”

“No, seriously. I mean that you will die if you fight me. This blade,” he held up Blackrazor, the dawn light sucked up in its night-sky surface, “will not let you live.”

“Then that is not the blade you should be using.” Tredora’s voice was best described as musical, her look best described as appraising. There was a harshness to the music, though, and the appraisal must have been a poor one to turn her lips down into such a frown.

Aldric met the Aasimir’s gaze evenly. “The blade is my blade, it is the only one I use.”

“That is a choice you make,” Tredora said. “Allow me to offer you another one.”

Tredora offers Aldric a magical blade to replace Blackrazor for the purposes of the duel and he accepts it, solving some of the concerns that he might kill immerstal, their ally, during this fight. Tredora is also making a point: showing him he does not need Blackrazor to fight. She is trying to rehabilitate him, but Aldric may not have much interest in that.

The duel itself is a tense fight! I use Archmage statistics for Immerstal, who creates illusions of himself and darts around the dueling field, taunting Aldric all the while, trying to incite his anger by calling into question his bravery and abilities. For his part, Aldric uses the incredible defensive abilities of the cavalier to severely limit what Immerstal can do to him. He has the ability to add to his AC, or to turn successful dexterity saves into no-damage results (instead of halved damage). He hits hard, too, even without Blackrazor, and trades blows easily with Immerstal. Immerstal doesn’t get off many hits himself, but the ones he does are massive strikes from his lightning bolt spell, at one point dealing something close to 70 damage on a single hit (this from a level 9 lightning bolt). When Aldric survives this (barely), Immerstal, exhausted and bloodied, calls the fight in Aldric’s favor.

The two actually bond over this, putting aside their differences and celebrating their bro-ness by visiting Immerstal’s pocket dimension brothel. There’s even some slight hints of romance between the two. God, but I love my group.

Nysyries, meanwhile, misses the whole fight because she’s off getting drunk with the dwarven mercenaries, arriving only at the fight’s very end to comically ask “what did she miss?”

Conversion out of Context

It’s time to talk about my conversion in some critical terms.

When I first set my sights on Red Hand of Doom as a good campaign to play, nearly two years ago, I was a much different GM. Less experienced, less willing to take risks and go off page. Yet today as we approach the end of the campaign, I look back and see how far I have drifted from the source material. I look ahead to my notes for upcoming sessions and see, too, just how much further I am going to go (hold onto your butts). The reason I bring this up is that my journey log for this particular campaign, originally conceived as a straight play test of a Red Hand conversion, no longer really is serving this purpose. I’ve made too many changes to the core story for it to work as a conversion guide any more.

This isn’t a bad thing. Rather, I would say that all of the changes made were directly based on actions and back stories of the characters which is what a good game of Dungeons & Dragons should do. I’m serving a story here, the story of these characters and their ambitions, and that is more important to me than running a pure conversion. That said, it is difficult to tell another GM how to properly restat, say, the battle of Brindol when I have adjusted everything for two players of higher-than-intended level... oh, and both of them have Legendary Weapons. Not to mention the thematic changes: I have Ulwai wielding the Rod of Storms, for instance, and I have Varanthian the Behir directly tied into the backstory of Aldric.

In short, because this game is our story, it is not your story. It can’t be, and at a certain point any statistics I post are going to be meaningless outside of that context. So while I will continue to post stats for my game, I am not going to go back as originally planned and compile them into an official conversion for Red Hand of Doom. Let these Journey Logs stand as a campaign journal, more than as a proof of concept. If you want a more or less official conversion, I recommend this one by Daniel Pryor. I’m not quite sure where to download it anymore, but some google searching can probably find the answer... if anyone does figure out a place to purchase or download, let me know and I’ll add it here! I’ve used some of these stats in my own run through and it’s a very good conversion. Maybe I’ll review it in more detail after my own adventure is completed.

That said, while I can’t say how my stats would end up in your game, I do think this journey log has offered and continues to offer good advice on how to run the module’s situations. I am going to continue that advice into the actual Battle of Brindol, which I’ll cover in my next post. Because I do think the Battle needs changes. As written in the module, it’s kind’ve.... boring. What makes it boring is highlighted by a gaming philosophy that I have developed over the last two years as a GM, something that I think can help GMs in ensuring that their games stay lively and memorable every session.

More on that next time, in the Five C’s of RPGs!

#Battle #DND 5 #Dungeons and Dragons #Red Hand of Doom

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sihaibahuang-blog · 7 years

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Shenmu (one)

Shenmu The first chapter Through the flood of the universe, the earth and the earth have been condensed. In spite of the six cycles of rebirth, there was also a day of turmoil... Ghost cemetery is located in central tian yuan, the entire cemetery in addition to the man, the strongest of all previous dynasties, burial in the heterogeneous top practitioners, the rest every tomb buried an ancient gods or demons, this is a resting place belongs to the ghost. The grass in the cemetery is green and fragrant, and if there is no stone in the forest, it cannot be called a garden. On the outskirts of the cemetery is a large snow maple, which is unique to the mausoleum and has been passed down into the spirit of death. Snow maple green lush foliage, swaying gently in the breeze, as if to reminiscing about the past glory, snow-white petals whiteness, like snowflakes long floats in the air, it is the tears of the gods, seem to say that once sadness. Day and night in the cemetery have opposite views. Dust dense here during the day, the holy light perfuse the cemetery every inch of land, can see the ghost that ancient immortal strong spirit force into the various gods, even to see angels dancing west, Oriental fairy can be heard singing, entire cemetery within a sacred atmosphere. If this is the paradise of god during the day, this is the pure land of the night. Every time the sun sets and the night falls, the dark spirit begins to surge out of the graveyard, and the moon is overshadowed by the moon. At this time, you can see the ghosts and ghosts of the legend, the evil ghost in the lingyuan, and you can hear the long and shrieking howling of the ancient evil spirit. Sacred and terror and ghost cemetery is a common worship tianyuan mainland east and west, the practitioner ShengYuan, can often see people to come to festivals during the day, even in the night also can see some special practitioners to come to mourn, such as: the corpse of the east, west undead mage... The cemetery was the most peaceful of The Times, and the whole cemetery was quiet and there was no sound. Another day of the fall, and the time of the difference between the gods and the gods, yu hui of the yue hui will render the tomb of the enchanted garden in a strange and strange way. Each tomb is well managed and filled with flowers in front of each grave. Beside the tall ghost tombs have a low small grave, small grave without compelling, no tombstone, no flower, almost with a simple little topped the flush. As the years wore on, the unmarked grave was forgotten in the corner. The tomb of the gods in the sunset was even bigger, and the tomb of the unknown was much less remarkable. At this moment, however, the little tomb was changed, the small tomb slowly cracked, and the mound on the top began to roll down. A pale hand stretched to come out from the grave, followed by another, two palms forcibly FenYan steak live, a young man of the color of the grave with a clueless look on his face, slowly climb up, shaggy hair covered in dirt, broken clothes tightly in the body. In addition to being very pale, the young man looked very ordinary, the kind of character that was absolutely unnoticeable in the crowd. Where is this? Why am I here? The young man muttered to himself as he looked at the grave. Suddenly he was deeply attracted by a tomb inscriptions beside, to look at this time, if someone see that youth is absorbed on the tombstone of ancient writing, will get a shock, because the ancient text even the ancient culture of the old scholars research alliance can only shake head to sigh. At the moment of the inscription, the young man looked so dramatic that he exclaimed: "this is the tomb of the god of the east." Is this true? This is really the sixth avenue of the year, the legendary figure who was the most powerful man in the world. Don't... And god will die, too? Another tall tomb next to him once again struck him as the tomb of the western god of war, Caesar? Is it the western god who wears golden armor and holds a golden holy sword? He seemed to think of something, and turned his head to the outside, and stood out in the setting sun. Oriental cultivate immortality peony fairy's tomb, the tomb of western wisdom goddess Nancy, the tomb of eastern Wu Xianli changfeng, Oriental magic is the tomb of the proud heaven, the tomb of the big western Lord lucifer... Oh, my god! What's wrong with the world? Don't... The gods were dead, all... Buried here? The look of the young man's face was strange. But... The gods of the Oriental fairy land and the western magic continent... How to be buried together? Suddenly, the young man noticed at the foot of the grave, he suddenly froze, cold sweat soaked his broken clothes, he is like falling ice cellar was cold. I... I am from the grave... Climbing out... His eyes were blank, and his soul seemed to be drawn away from the body. I am chennan, I have... Dead, but... I'm resurrected... After a long time, there was a little bit of anger in the south's empty eyes, and finally a look of shock: oh my god! What's the matter? Now that I am dead, why do I get out of the grave again? ! Does god let me, the useless man, go on with his laborious life? ! After the shock, the face of chennan's face was more than a blank. He closed his eyes and put his arms around his head. He remembered clearly that he had been defeated in a duel, but now... The last act of the past is floating in the heart of the past, that which was gone, the eternal... Too many regrets in his heart! Heaven and earth are still vast, and the flowers and plants are still fragrant, but his heart is empty and there is no trace of it. It took Chen south for a long time to slowly start to climb from the ground, his eyes began to free inside the cemetery, he finally determined this is a belong to the tombs of ghost, after the shock, he gradually calmed down. Most hard diamond rock tomb have obvious carved on the years vicissitudes of life, this probably need to thousands of years, things change, thousands of years long time, hey hey... What a dream! "Chennan sighed. Looking at that stone, he was filled with doubts. The tomb of xiao zhen, the tomb of the three morons, the tomb of the sacred beam, the act of otto the knight of god. In addition to the demons, it appears that there are some strong men and a few foreign refiners. What happened 10,000 years ago? Why did the demon of immortality die? Why are the gods of the enchanted land and the enchanted continent buried together? Why am I buried here? The wind blew lightly, and his long, dirty hair was blown, and his lonely heart was blown away. Chennan shouted: who can tell me what happened? No one answered him. In the distance, the towering snow maple trees fluttered in the sky, floating in the air, falling like tears, and the dead spirit was crying! God is dead, he's gone, I'm alive... Why do you let me climb out of the grave? Where am I going? On the other side of the mountain, the sunset was red and red, and the red cloud of the sky was set on the Taoist temple. Chennan picked up the lost feelings. He knew that there were some things that were impossible to choose. He carefully filled the little graves under his feet and went outside to the cemetery. He couldn't help but feel as he walked through the spirit of the snow maple. He had never seen trees with such a strong aura. Was it a new tree in his long sleep, he wondered? When the whiteness of the petals fall down and fly in front of the Chen south, his eyes a blur, dusty memory is slowly opened, it is also a fallen petal season... He thought of the woman in his heart... The world is a sea of dust... Alas! Chennan shook his head and strode to the outside. When he walked out of the snow in maple, and as the sun goes down to the west, quiet and ghost cemetery is not quiet, dark magic gas since rising in the cemetery, the endless darkness over the whole cemetery. Chennan had heard a faint roar from the rear, but he didn't mind. He thought that after the day the beast began to haunt him. He stretched himself and said to himself, "for a thousand years, the body is not rusty. He knew his efforts were not good, but he should have no problem dealing with the normal beast. Snow in maple appeared three hut not far ahead, a skinny old man in the door, the old man weigh all best, engraved a weather-beaten wrinkles on her face. There was a strange feeling in the heart of chennan, the first person he had seen since he was a man, a touch of kindness, a sense of loss, a sense of confusion... He was born ten thousand years ago in front of his parents, and when he was born ten thousand years later, he faced such an old man. How can I connect my parents with this old man? He laughed at himself. The old man, leaning on a crutch, was walking towards him, and he was so frightened that he could be blown down by a gust of wind. Chen south rushed forward to hold the old man and the old man waved and motioned for him to loosen, with the tone of blame for he spoke a few words, but Chen south did not understand a word. The dense Ming voice made his heart a burst of cold, he suddenly wake up, have been in the past ten thousand years, his era of Chinese language has been abandoned by the history. He had hoped to learn about the world through the old man, but his words didn't make his hopes. The old man saw his eyes glaze over, complexion is not tempered, tone has become peace, but to see him or the color of with a clueless look on his face, the old man couldn't help but frowned, then pull up his hand toward the hut. The old man's instinct told him that the old man had no malice to him, but he could only play dumb because of his words. The old man took him to the hut, pointed to the wooden pail on the ground and pointed to a well, not far away, and then entered the room. Let me get the water? Does he want me to be a slave here? "He wondered. When the old man once again appeared in front of him, he know what wrong about the old man, those skinny hand hands over a half new garment unlined upper garment, the old man is obviously want him to change it. Looking at the faint smile on the old man's face, his face was not red, and he was in rags, dishevelled and dirty. There was a gloom in his heart, and he had been so embarrassed that he had made a silent mention of the barrel to the well. He worked his way through the body, and with a little effort, his broken clothes broke down and fell to the ground. This is the god silkworm treasure of the year! Time is the most relentless, the fire and fire and the invulnerable treasure clothes can't afford the erosion of thousands of years! The cold well water scoured his dirt, but he could not wash away the trouble of his heart. What should I do? I can't communicate with people without knowing the language of the mainland, so how can I survive in this world? Chennan dressed the old man for his clothes and went to the hut and smiled at the old man. A gust of rice came, and the old man walked slowly to the hearth and beckoned to him. At the end of the day, the old man handed him a bowl of porridge, and said to him: 10,000 years, I didn't think I was able to sit at the table. He is so empty that he should not eat greasy food. A bowl of porridge is fitting. After dinner, the sky was already dark, and chennan entered the room with the old man, and the old man lit a candle, and the light of the candle lighted the hut with a warm, warm color. The decoration in the room is simple, a wooden bed, a chair, a desk. With more than a dozen book desk is spotless, tidy put above, but the words on the cover, south don't know, after thousands of years the text on the mainland has long been beyond recognition, a lost his heart. When the old man walked to the other room, chennan lay in the chair with his thoughts, but there was no joy. Thousands of years ago, although he has a prominent family, but itself is unattractive, living in such a circle, he bear too much pressure, always suffered agonies of pain. He had grown tired of that kind of life, and it was not a relief for him to die if he had not been able to hold on to it. He managed to come back to life after ten thousand years, and although he had gotten rid of the heavy stress, everything changed... Chen south feel bitter, relatives, friends already in a dim, confidante also early to return in the loess ridge, now only he a person lonely to live in this in this world, he felt that have no life. Did I get rid of history, or was it abandoned by history? The candle dried up, the spark finally flicker, and the room plunged into darkness. The night was very quiet, but chennan was tossing and turning in bed, unable to sleep. He forces himself to sit still and work his family's work. He wants to see if his strength is still there after all. The true gas was a trickle that swam in his body, and his powers did not change in the past. Because running XuanGong painstakingly, he senses immediately became more acute, if he hidden if not hear the depressing sorrow roar from the direction of the cemetery, creepy. There are so many beasts? This old man is so old, a man is at his grave here. What a danger! The south don't know, at this moment the old man had entered the ghost cemetery, he was carrying a basket of flowers in his hand, filled with fragrant snow maple. The old man turned a blind eye to the ghosts and ghosts, and he placed a few white and white petals on each front of the curtain. Chennan's home, the low small grave, which sank after a hollow hollow, was almost gone, only slightly higher than the surface of the earth. The old man shivered and walked over and sighed: alas! You have no tombstone, I am afraid that you will disappear from the memory of the world. It is better to be less glorified, more prosaic, clear and undisturbed. Where are you going? Where are you going? Then the old man crouched down, stretched out his hands, and scattered the raised turrets carefully, and the grave disappeared completely. A dozen petals floated down from the air, leaving a fragrant fragrance. As a ray of sunshine in the morning from the window into the house, the south opened my blurred eyes, said to himself: strange, father today how did not practise to send someone to push me, yes, he has fast into the fairy wu, which still have trouble tube I. Suddenly he noticed the house simple furnishings, fiercely sat up, he was for a long time before he murmured: so this is all true, and the thousands of years has been in a hurry! He gently pushed open the door of the hut to the courtyard, and the fresh air, with the fragrance of the flowers and flowers, came on, and it was refreshing. A faint mist of mist swirled around the forest, slowly moving, and the birds were not surprised, jumping up and down in the tree, and singing. Chennan closed his eyes and felt the harmonious poetry. Are you awake? The old man's voice came from behind him. Chennan couldn't understand the old man's words, so he responded with a smile. After eating breakfast, he stood up and pointed to the path to the distance and waved goodbye to the old man. He bowed deeply to the old man before he left. One hour later, he came to a small town. Because of his plain appearance and the clothes he wears, he is not noticed by anyone. It was the beginning of his new life, and he didn't understand the language on the mainland. South was amazed to see that, in addition to like him in a small town people with dark hair and dark eyes, and the residents of the blonde, black and red blue eyes, blue eyes... It seems that this 10,000 years has happened so much that I have to get into the society as soon as possible. Chennan suddenly felt cold in his back, a cold in his heart, and he knew that a master was staring at him. A legendary old monk not far behind him shake head to sigh a way: strange, I just feel this young people to have an aura of eccentric, under carefully explore how can have no? When the old monk went away, chennan could not look back, but he saw only one shadow, and the dust was in the air. Chen south remembered his father said to him: south you want to remember, to be able to see through our family XuanGong turnover rate are not simple, not a real martial arts masters, monks is born, you should take care all the more! He is a workman! Aren't these people rarely walk on earth? Chennan was deeply aware of the terrible things of such people, and was not afraid to be an enemy to the advanced martial arts masters. His father's words were in the ear:... To reframe the body and solidify the god of the earth, to the point of the moon and the moon, this is the ultimate goal of the monasticism, which is the realm of the fairy tao. And we observe that the way to go is the fate of cultivate one's morality, so as to achieve the legendary fairy wu, in most people's eyes, he walked by the road than originally, but... His father did not continue, but the south already understand, practitioners are not monks and nuns resist, because itself is a good example of his father, even if the order only after the successful man saw him with peers LunJiao. At the thought of this, chennan had no idea whether his father had finally entered the country of the fairies, if so... Perhaps there was a father and son. But at the thought of the tomb of the magic stone in the cemetery, he was in a panic. If my father had stepped into the realm of immortals, I feared that... He was in the dark. The people in the streets coming and going, that buys, the cacophony, noisy, but the south is very lonely, he felt that he is the world's outcast, ruthless abandoned by the history. I am a mediocre man, and since I have died, why have I come out of the tomb after a long time? There was a large cloud in the sky, and the sky was darkened. boom After a loud thunder, the shops are closed on both sides of the street, pedestrians on the street in a hurry, not in a few minutes on the street was nearly deserted, he was left alone to stand in the middle of the road. After the thunder and lightning, heavy rain, the cold rain drenched the south clothes, he felt a cold, however, cooler is his heart, his heart in the darkness. The world is big, where is my house? Between heaven and earth a rain curtain, a lonely figure walking on the street, leaving behind the chaos of the rain. Ten thousand years ago, chennan came from a family of martial arts, and had a very high talent for repairing wu. But then a nightmare began, and his family's work was too much to go back, and it fell from the second day to the middle of the first. At that time, his father was already standing in the peak of the martial arts, a family that had to be watched in all directions. In the dark days of the day, cold, ironic, ironic... The pressure from all sides was overwhelming. However, one person always believed that he would be able to shine. Thinking of that she, chennan had a sombre and unutterable pain. The rain, you know? What I regret most is that I didn't say the three words to you at the time: I love you. Shaohua is easy to die. It is the sorrow of his life that the rain is the everlasting pain in his heart. Chennan didn't know the direction, stumbled and ran into an alley. He felt the chest pain, a bloody smell coming up from the abdomen. wow He spat a mouthful of blood and fell into the mud. Rain jasmine... His eyes were black and he was unconscious. ―――――――――――――――――― It is necessary to mention that in the first chapter, there is a passage: beside the tall ghost tombs have a low tomb, a small grave without compelling, no tombstone, no flower, almost with a simple little topped the flush. As the years wore on, the unmarked grave was forgotten in the corner. See from here the small grave and other grave, ghost cemetery in addition to buried in the human to the strong, the heterogeneous top practitioners, the rest every tomb buried an ancient god or demon. But before the hero's death, it was a quiet place to be buried. I mention it because several of the book friends have asked me why the main character is raised from the tomb of the enchanted cemetery, but it is not so good. Well, there is an answer, and now that I have arrived, the question is no longer answered. Moreover, the hardest of the stone gravestones have been carved into the years, which may take more than a thousand years. Chennan was judging how long the past was, and two of the bookmates asked me this question, so mention it. PS:Ok, the first chapter is finished, please look forward to the next chapter

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