#i havent even played her campaign yet but drawing her has made me love her just that much more | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

getallemeralds · 3 years

Text

Explorers of Arvus: uhhhh / 3.23.21

today's notes are different from usual bc. well. you'll see

LAST TIME ON EXPLORERS OF ARVUS i broke my sleep schedule and am barely existing so this is fine. we went back to camp vengeance an uhhhhhhhhhhhh we are now going to fuck off into the forest to die or prove a very important point

oh god we forgot to level up

[mgd voice] BOOSTING NYX TO MAXIMUM LEVEL

im so fuckin tired. what on earth am i doing. how do i level again

k is not here this time but instead we've got mae+nii bonking their heads together to simulate 2 braincells and so far it is not working. i might just have to like fuckin, drop out n zzz partway thru or somethin. would be fun to see how chaotic michael makes charlie in my absensce

oh wait i can do d&dbeyond i think. how do i work this again. will i ever remember i have shield

what level am i. level 6? pog. oh shit i think i have a new thing

. new spell

. 3 total 3rd level spell slots

. bend luck! i can now screw people over on purpose (and will probably use my sorcery points FINALLY)

michael is leveling charlie up bc my brain is apple sos

ASDXFKLJFH I FEEL CALLED OUT zec rb'd my most recent art of MaX with "all i know about xem is that leo likes xem a lot that's the extent of my knowledge" THANK U FOR SUPPORTIN ME ANYWAY

there will be less blaseball distractions than last time bc blaseball is now on siesta. however i will still have MaX brainrot in the background bc i was drawing xem

wyatt mason my beloved

OKAY I GOTTA MUTE THE TACO STAND FOR THE ENTIRETY OF D&D i cannot and will not get distracted. we can do this. we

nintendo wii

we havent even started yet and im already incoherent

ok i have made a decision and that decision is that i do not have the brainpower to play. however i do have the brianpower to take notes hopefully! so ill just like. vibe. this will be a first

oh man im gonan pick up Blink. charlie is gonna be a fucking menace to herself and others

oh my god its not concentration so charlie may continue teleporting while unconscious. thorne is going to hate this

[charlie gets her soul eaten by a ring] [charlie singing dragonston din tei at halvkWAIT JORB HAS A PRIZE

jorb got a thing! an evil genius thing! figure man. fugrine. figuring. help

GREEN HAS DIAGNOSED ME AS TIGREX MONSTERHUNTER i love this

my notes are a disaster. this is so sucks

serotonin is stored in the wiggly zoomy jorb camera

jorb: his pinky is the size of the rest of his fingers

leo: he has a disease

jorb: he has a disease.

jorb: that disease is male pattern baldness

leo: [reduced to tearful giggling for mysterious reasons]

LAST TIME, ON EXPLORERS OF ARVUS: we've returned to camp vengeance! taure is still unconscious, which is not very great. camp vengeance is doin better tho!

michael, as part of the recap: ingrid is getting railed by her new girlfriend,

first dice roll of the day is michael rolled a 1. good start

OH THORNE IS AN ARTIFICER NOW thorne took a level in artificer!

"...it's like figuring out the right mathematical equation to summon a gun."

group is gonna go check out the statue that we passed by now that we're not WHAT DO YOU MEAN PONK AND GEORGE CANONICALLY HAVE IBS thats it im not looking at 772 anymore

im doing a bad job of paying attention but at least im Present

SIERON LEARNED FLY AND USED IT ON CHARLIE

michael: what do you want to do with your new flying powers?

leo: how many problems can i cause in 10 minutes

guard 1: ...why is the halfling flying?

guard 2: [rolls a 3 on intelligence] i think they can just do that

groundhogs, the real scourge of the campaign

silje and sieron are gonna hunt a big elk. they got distracted and sieron is putting grass on silje's head. i think

WAIT WE'RE ON WATCH NOW FUCK

we have discovered kali's tragic backstory whoops

update i am. too sleepy for this. good nigh everyone

[ and then leo went and somewhat took a nap! solar, normally playing thorne, started playing charlie in my stead. @jorbs-palace, local hero, started taking shitpost notes in my stead. ]

jorb's ghostwritten notes for leo:

help solar is immediately doing a cursed voice for charlie. charlie can do so many crimes

congratulations, charlie is now temporarily immortal!

dwarves can hit things with their beard

kali wants to know if she's legally allowed to bail

she'd feel really bad if she had to loot our corpses for payment if we died.

we have entered the Tree Zone

one of the corpses is now a flamingo (has one leg)

silje has decided to stab the ground. take that, dirt

kali was large size for a second there but then she remembered to not be a giant

"you accidentally deleted my cat?!"

silje has learned naruto cloning jutsu

be gone, thot

oh boy, making an int check to look at a statue! 11! silje is dumb apparently.

hmm. the statue has divination magic. it's also affecting silje.

SILJE LEARNED A 6TH LEVEL SPELL? its only single use but still

you solved my statue riddllllleeeee

thorne forgot to have eyes

its a shame mac and cheese doesnt exist in the d&d universe

wizards are just math criminals (the criminal part is setting people on fire)

sieron crit fails a check but it was still a 9 because of having +8

thorne is looking for what's weird!

uh oh music got scary, never a good sign

hmm. those leaves over there weren't dead a moment ago.

UNDEAD TROLL TIME! rolling initiative

"it's ok, im a wizard, it's my duty to be correct." "wow! waow!"

woooah here he comes

IT JUST DID HALF SIERON'S HEALTH AS A PASSIVE END OF TURN EFFECT?

thorne backed up and cast eldri- oh, ray of enfeeblement. character development continues

charlie is going to just blink out of existence for a minute.

big chungus has grabbed silje and sieron. BIG CHUNGUS HAS THROWN SILJE AND SIERON.

sieron is using hit and run tactics! isn't good at his extra attack yet though

silje is activating bid bid blood blood blood

thorne uses beam of skipping your leg day. troll's legs are now skipped.

michael is trying to determine what a 'clavicle' is

"does that mean the star trek kind, or the bdsm kind?"

charlie wants to cast magic missile.

charlie has vanished back into the ethereal plane mid-taunt

silje has decided to not get bitten today

silje may or may not have stats.

oh, right, trolls are weak to fire! and also we forgot to upgrade sieron's firebolt. so it actually hurts now!

silje is full of knives and blades and does 31 damage in one turn!

charlie shouts words of encouragement from the ethereal plane. a nearby ghost vibes with this.

🎉 eldritch blast 🎉

kali remembered she hates the sun

silje is enthuasiatic about charlie saying "get him cat boy!"

charlie contemplating using fireball to nuke the troll and also the entire stonehenge

charlie has decided to use magic missile instead, probably for the best

the troll bit at charlie SO POORLY it broke some of its teeth on the ground

charlie is too small to hit

accidentally rolled advantage on a firebolt, so got to learn it WOULD have done 29 damage with a crit but instead it missed because it was not actually with advantage

silje has just sliced open its entire back and made a spray of frozen blood! radical. big boy is down!

we have burned the body because we are not stupid. well, we ARE stupid, but not stupid in the way of leaving a body full of necrotic magic around

[dr coomer voice] i think it's good that he died!

we're also doing a funeral pyre for the other corpses that were around. just to be sure.

our loot is: the satisfaction of a job well done

thorne is cosplaying as charlie

charlie has located the direction troll came from! she found the 'the way to sweet loot' sign

thorne is apparently better at survival checks than our hired guide? wack

we found a viking house! it has: mead, a shield, gravestones,

found a gold coin in the mead! maybe it was thirsty

oh theres a LOT Of coins in there actually. 60 gold and 120 silver!

have successfully pointed out a hole in the DM's logic :)

there was a raven! it cawed and left. ok bye buddy

and that's where we leave it! heading back to camp vengeance next time.

someone rated this session a 7.2 out of 10, which is very specific

good night mr coconut

#leo chirps #ttrpg #explorers of arvus #jorb #thank u based jorb

4 notes · View notes

brisbanecollection-blog · 6 years

Text

Why are there peacocks roaming the streets of Canberra?

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size The first time it happened, I assumed I was hallucinating. We were 38 degrees and five hours into the move to our new apartment in Canberra, and the day was already running at the corners. But the second time, I pulled over the car. The peacock who had caught my attention watched me suspiciously from the footpath as I dialled the RSPCA. That's when a man stuck his head over a nearby fence. "Don't worry, darling," he laughed. "They're locals." It's the mystery that's long prowled the streets of Canberra's south - just where did the rogue peacock pride of Red Hill and Narrabundah come from? In the decades the birds have roamed wild, attracting admirers and vexing rangers, theories about their origins have come thick and fast: The peafowl were released when an old zoo closed down on Mugga Lane.They escaped from an embassy after an unknown diplomatic incident.They were the star acts of a travelling circus that came to town.They're the only surviving offspring of a crack team of tactical peacocks that defected from Russia during the height of the Cold War.* According to the Canberra Ornithologists Group, Indian peafowl are an introduced "escapee" rarely sighted in the ACT, yet reported as far afield as Pialligo and the National Library in Parkes. This year, the birds drew international attention after the ACT government proposed (and then quickly dumped) a management plan designed to get rid of them. And I decided it was time to get to know my neighbours a little better. Andrew, Second of his Name Susannah still cries when she talks about the first peacock. He was known as Andrew (after the politician) and Henry up on Brockman Street but to Susannah, a long-time Narrabundah local, he was Harry.

Harry was well-known in Narrabundah for many years before he was killed in a hit-and-run. Photo: Supplied. Her son Rowan found him on their doorstep one afternoon in 1992 after school. The family rang the ACT government, the RSPCA, even the embassies down the road. No one knew where he had come from. So they took him in. "He lived in our backyard for years until we got a dog, then he moved into the front yard and from there he sort of became the whole street's," Susannah says. After the 2003 Canberra bushfires, a juvenile male and two females moved into the area. There were rumours that a little clutch of peafowl was also frequenting a nursery in Pialligo. "Then it happened; not long after the other birds came" Susannah says. "A carload of youths came tearing down the road one day, they lined Harry up in their sights, mounted the curb and they killed him." A neighbour who witnessed it all buried the bird, still with his full train of feathers, in his backyard and thestreet held a wake in Harry's honour. Loading "We wore peacock colours," Susannah remembers. "A local artist had taken a video of Harry mating with a female that same morning he was killed. He waited all that time to mate, he was always calling, honking, for a partner." That Christmas, when a little brood of chicks appeared on the street for the first time, Susannah knew Harry's line of Narrabundah peafowl had begun. Fowl play So where did Harry come from? And was he really the first peacock? Local birdwatcher Geoffrey Dabb thinks not. A few months before Harry appeared, he'd spotted another peacock on Green Street and tracked the bird back to Marymead's children's centre, which kept animals at the time. Though the charity says peafowl haven't been seen at its Narrabundah site for many years now, Geoffrey says in the '90s the bird would often abscond from the centre in search of food from generous locals. "It would return to Marymead but it always escaped again," he says.

Some locals complain about the Narrabundah peafowl's noisy breeding season. This image will appear in Canberra artist Mick Ashley's 2019 calendar. Photo: Supplied Locals recall how Harry, who was not believed to have come from Marymead, and the Green Street bird would honk at each other, sometimes streets apart, as they made house calls in the neighbourhood. It was also around that time that Geoffrey spied more birds in the gardens of a caravan park on Narrabundah Lane, before dogs chased them deeper into the suburb. The zoo theory But the most common theory about the peafowl, told by locals, the RSPCA and even the ACT government, places them in town and at large even earlier still. Transport Canberra and City Services said it was most likely the birds escaped (or were set free) when the old Mugga Lane Zoo closed in Symonston in the late '80s, though a spokeswoman admitted the evidence was anecdotal.

There have been several attempts to get rid of the peacocks. Photo: Melissa Adams I tracked down the former owner of the Mugga Lane Zoo, Terry Thomas, who tells a different story. While he confirmed he kept peafowl at the zoo, he said the birds were already loose in Narrabundah by the time the zoo eventually closed (under different management). "I was asked to see if I could catch a couple of them, in about 1982," he said. He didn't have any luck but admits he's always wondered what happened to the animals at the park, which he sold in 1989. A diplomatic incident? Back in Narrabundah, sunset is now "peacock hour" for Lyn Smith, who has lived in the suburb for almost 50 years. Each evening, when the light sinks down behind the hills, the birds will appear suddenly on footpaths and in gardens. "They definitely didn't come from the Mugga Lane zoo, they were around from the late '70s," Lyn says. "And it wasn't a circus either, the ones that came to town back then never had peacocks."

Geoffrey Dab tells the story of a rare white peahen (pictured) known as "White-ney Houston" who became something of a local celebrity before being killed by a fox. Photo: Geoffrey Dabb Other long-time locals who spoke to The Canberra Times agreed. If there was once,on an otherwise quiet Canberra afternoon, a daring peafowl break-out from the daily grind of circus performing, I havent found a record of it so far. But Lyn has her own story to tell me. Back when she was in her first decade of life in Narrabundah, there was a rumour about one of her neighbours. He was a diplomat on a posting from a country Lyn can't remember now, and he was known to own a brood of peacocks. When he left, the local legend goes, he released the birds into the neighbourhood. I call embassies in the area. Many have since moved but no one remembers keeping peafowl. Associate Professor Phillip Cassey at the University of Adelaide, who has researched feral peafowl populations on Kangaroo Island, says he wouldn't be surprised if the diplomat story was true.

A peacock grazes on the lawns of St Aidan's Court. Photo: Melissa Adams "These are very charismatic birds, associated with elegance, they're almost a curiosity," he says. "We often see them, perhaps more as backyard animals than pets, but that's where they come from, or zoological gardens and rural properties." These are very charismatic birds, associated with elegance, they're almost a curiosity. Associate Professor Phillip Cassey The trail starts to go cold. I call Tim DeWan, a long-time Narrabundah local and the architect of the social media campaign to stop a peafowl cull. "It's just so Canberra, isn't it?" He laughs. "Peacocks in the suburbs. Maybe we'll never know." 'Majestic disco chickens' While their history remains cloaked in mystery, this year the birds' future looked almost as murky. In April, the ACT governmentput out plans to rehome or euthanise the peafowl colonies, citing concerns they would spread to the nearby Red Hill reserve as well as long-standing complaints about their noise, "temper" and even - ahem - droppings. The draft plan considered everything from shooting the birds to an expensive form of sterilisation, before settling on a catch, rehome or euthanise approach. Two earlier trapping programs in 2013 and then 2015 were largely ruled as failures. In an "overwhelming" response, more than 400 submissions to the plan were lodged with the government. About 233 wanted the birds to stay, while 60 wanted them gone for good. Another 118 didn't pick a clear side, opposed to euthanisingthe birds but many in favour of rehoming. The government has since gone back to the drawing board, in talks with locals about formulating a new monitoring program. Geoffrey and other close observers of the Narrabundah colony report the birds remain small in stature, likely due to inbreeding, and the number of chicks sighted each year is low.

Narrabundah residents Geoffrey Dabb and Gretel Dabb feed the Peacocks in Narrabundah every afternoon. Photo: Melissa Adams Professor Cassey says the risk to the native environment from peafowl is fairly minimal. "They're nowhere near as damaging as other [birds], it's more a nuisance thing ... but we have to be careful that pets don't become pests ... because so often that's how biosecurity threats develop." In the case of the Narrabundah peafowl, which often fall prey to foxes or cars, Professor Cassey says the real surprise was how long such a small population has lasted. "They seem pretty resilient."

A mock-up of signs proposed by the local community to help warn drivers about peafowl pedestrians. Photo: Supplied To Susannah, one of the peafowl's local "guardians", that's no mystery. Every Christmas since the one they lost Harry, she says something wonderful happens on Wylie Street. The peafowl come bearing gifts. They go from door to door, from safe house to safe house, she says, and introduce their new chicks to the locals. "They know which houses are safe, it's amazing. "They're part of our history here and we love them." *I might have started this rumour. Do you know more about the origins of the Canberra peafowl? Get in touch and help us solve the mystery: [email protected]. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter. https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/act/so-why-are-there-peacocks-roaming-the-streets-of-canberra-20180620-p4zmjz.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

1 note · View note