photo saturday: the path not chosen

So with our Friday night campaign over, I no longer have these two strange but delightful boys waiting in the wings in case of sudden death.

Firstly we have Thaddeus "Inky" Oakfoot, halfling tattoo artist, monk and cleric to one of the more obscure halfling goddesses. And I made him before magical tattoos were officially a thing. So now he'd be even more fun to play. With the Eldritch Claw tattoo or the Coiling Grasp tattoo or the Masquerade tattoo. The selection and addition of his tattoos was fun, but I will say that I enjoyed coming up with the history of his tattoos even more, and the fact that he'd basically been in or around all the major cities in Faerun right before the events of the major adventures. That his halfling luck told him that he really needed to head somewhere else before everything went to shit. Also, I do really want to play a Trickery Cleric at some stage.

And then there's the bisexual disaster and horrendous flirt that is Prince Sam'ael. Tiefling noble from the sixth level of Hell, Malbolge and inquisitive rogue, both in the general sense, but also in the more specific rogue subclass sense. Which is all about detecting lies and being perseptive and stuff. I might have mixed a little bard in there, but honestly, I was probably fairly over bard by the time he would have been coming on line. His backstory is a little fluffier, just because I didn't nail it down completely, and had Nightingale died I would have needed to take a second pass at it. I do know that I wanted him to have Glamoured Studded Leather armour, so that he could have been running around in what looked like an open fronted jacket, but really, he was securely wrapped in armour.

Weirdly, they would both of had English accents. Inky was definitely my terrible Cockney/London accent, which I enjoy... and Sam'ael ("Call me Sam darling") would have been some version of an "upper class" British accent. Of the two, I would kind of loved to play Sam'ael more... he would have been a different mood in Avernus. And within the party.

I do now need to come up with some idea of a back up for the next major campaign though.

Anyway...

Speaking of which, we did the wrap up this week. We were supposed to do the wrap up and play games... but we started late, and went later than expected on the wrap up. So just the wrap up.

But it was nice to put the characters to bed fully... and as much as I liked the wrap up we did for Out of the Abyss, it was nice to have the extra week to really think about what the future would hold for Nightingale.

And, mostly, it was all good stuff. There were some surprises along the way, a few things that were set up but didn't pay off (which was good... because I don't know what I would have done with the main one... funnily enough though, the lack of payoff was caused by the person who put the wheels in motion in the first place... so ya screwed yourself over there buddy, sorry). And it was nice to finish out the adventure with two of the original three characters giving each other the same amount of shit as they ever did. I even gave her doomed love affair if not a happy ending, then a successful conclusion.

But that was also the only DnD game last week. We were supposed to start the new storyline on Wednesday, but then we were down one player and a second player had some personal stuff to take care of, so I just deferred the whole thing for another week.

Otherwise... yeah, there was a "public holiday" this week that wasn't any different than any other fucking day for me right now.

Today was solo shopping, since Ma was getting her hair did.

And you know those moments when you go "oh I should get that, I used up the last of what I had" only to get home and discover that yeah, you had that same thought last week or maybe the week before. And you already bought one. Yep, three times.

I came home, unpacked, chopped some strawberries to macerate in balsamic vinegar, because yes, and had been sat down for like 10 minutes when Ma arrived.

Really we didn't do much of anything. And then she headed off just after noon.

Current mood:

photo friday: the end my friend

All good things come to an end. Sometimes that also covers journeys through hell... in this case, the end of our Balder's Gate: Descent into Avernus campaign, which happened almost accidentally last night.

The end for my Drow bard, her ultimately doomed and unconsummated love affair with the Goliath (now an angel because sure) sorcerer/cleric and the very odd, but loveable half-orc Aasimar druid. It's been a wild old ride.

I mean technically next week we have the "post campaign wrap up", where we get to talk about what happens directly next and in 15 years time to the characters. And let's just say that after saving two cities from Hell, including the Duke who runs her home city, Nightingale has a list... as do I.

Honestly though I could NOT have asked for two better roleplay partners and a better DM for this... even if we ran away from or talked our way out entirely too many combats (because, really, why wouldn't you?!).

It was also possibly one of the weirdest sessions, just because after last week the party was still split up, so Fluffy and I actually spent the first half an hour, three quarters of an hour playing a board game in another room while Mr and Mrs got to a jumping off point in their story, then it was our turn and we worked out where Mr had gone, tracked him down, regrouped and then went to do the thing that we were supposed to do, without knowing that it was going to trigger the end-end game.

And then suddenly it was end game and we made the rolls we needed to make... two natural 20's on the dice and one that became a 20. Which, really, was the dice gods saying "yeah, we heard you all roleplaying your little hearts out just now... here, you deserve this". So yay!

Now I just need to switch gears and work out how to play a magical robot in two weeks. And get a half decent fake Irish accent going.

But that's a problem for later.

There's honestly not a lot to report for the rest of this week.

I finished off the adventure we got halfway through during last week's Wednesday game. And then talked about what we were doing next week. When I am also running. So we'll see how that goes.

Oh... and for whatever reason, for the first time since we started playing the Friday game... I forgot the bread. I mean, I made it, but I left it on my kitchen bench and only realised when we got there. Whoops.

Today was pretty basic. We did the supermarket thing, but because it's a hot weekend, we came back here, watched some YubTubs and called it a day. Because, fuck doing anything.

So, yeah... that's it.

Current mood:

photo saturday: easy being green

For this week's DnD Colouring book, I'm dipping into the "I love the art, but I'm probably never going to play this character" section.

I realised this week that I quite like playing goblins. Or at least I have. I only have the one right now, but I enjoy him. And I think I could enjoy/would have enjoyed Grandmother Muhd (pronounced "mud", obviously). Grumpy wise-woman, slightly chaotic cleric and possible matriarch of a large goblin family, Muhd could have been fun. I like the eye makeup and the black feathers, the human skull on a stick, the big chunky beads. It all works for me. And I love a Grave Cleric.

Honestly, I think I love the texturing I did on Toru more than the actual character. But I do love the bear head on top of his turtle/tortle head. There's something absurd about that that speaks to me. And I really like the Shepherd Druid. I like druids in general honestly. Which is good, because I'm planning to play one in an upcoming campaign.

This week was... fine.

Wednesday I ran a D&D game for the first time since... I don't know... June I guess. And the first time in person since last March. It was okay. It's not a great adventure, but the magic item is nice... so... swings and roundabouts.

Thursday I made relish again. I said last year that I needed to stop buying peaches and nectarines and a glut of tomatoes in Summer, but somehow I didn't learn and had a vegetable crisper full of all of the above. So I made some nice spicy relish, which hopefully will retain some of the heat when it has sat for a couple of weeks. I kinda need to experiment a little and make one with just tomato at some point. Maybe when I've finally given away/eaten all the jars sitting in my cupboard of my previous efforts.

Friday I had chiro, so I took two jars of relish into town with me, gave one to my chiro and then went to see Owlgirl at her work, went for coffee and a good old chinwag with her and gave her the other jar.

Friday night's DnD was a weird one... just me and Fluffy... because, you know, we split the party last week, so this week we caught up with what our characters were doing. Which meant that Mr wasn't with us at the table, because his character wasn't with us. So that was strange. Honestly we didn't do anything all that exciting... we could have done some more stuff, but the bag with all the stuff we needed is still sitting on Mr's character's belt. Annoyingly. Because I'd been thinking about taking that off him for a few sessions and never got around to it.

But we had a nice time and then we finished up the session playing Dungeon Mayhem and talked a lot of tabletop smack, which I love... both the smack and the game to be clear... and not just because I won two games out of four.

Today wasn't much of anything really.

We did the supermarket thing. It felt like we bought too much stuff, but having put it all away, there didn't seem to be an excess of stuff, so who knows.

Then after the unpacking and the ritual YubTubs, we went into the city so Ma could use the gift card from Dymocks... which instead of attempting to get the next book in the hideous series I couldn't even finish the first book of... I showed her the "The World of Critical Role" book they had on the shelf and she changed her mind. So a win all around really.

We did the usual wander from one end of the Mall to the other, poke our nose in at Typo... then wandered all the way back to the car and called it a day.

Current mood:

photo saturday: speedy and the brain

So... I'm not completely convinced about that colour combination, honestly... it's a little bit ketchup and mustard and/or a certain global fast food chain. But the characters are good.

It's not quite a blast from the past for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book, but we have my very first character, my very first halfling, my boy Belben. Sixth born child and only boy of Brandien and Melody. Arcane Trickster Rogue. With all the very cool roguey magic items (Goggles of Night, Cloak of Elvenkind, Winged Boots, Gloves of Trickery... and a +3 shortbow). With a passive investigation skill that is kind of off the charts. He's also featured in the current blog header. And he's also probably the closest to my regular personality in character form. Because he was my first.

And then, because a conversation about Tabaxi monks was had this week, my third or fourth character, Rain in the Night. Named as such because I came up with him on a rainy night. Tabaxi are suppose to be either jaguar flavoured or leopard flavoured according to the lore, but nobody ever bothers to read that and just go with generic cat person. I at least stayed in the realm of the big cat and went with a cheetah theme... because monks get improvements to their speed, and tabaxi can double their speed. Somehow, even though I wouldn't say I have major impulse control issues, Rain is a distinct lack of impulse control. He's likewise in the blog header. 

Moving on...

This was, without a doubt, the first week of the year. That's definitely a thing that happened.

Otherwise, not a lot of anything went on directly in my world. The world at large lost its damn mind again all over the place. But otherwise things here were calm.

Wednesday we finally finished (finally) the series of questionable DnD adventure modules. Which brings Canadia's run as our DM to a close for now. And ushers in my run. I haven't run an in person game in... ten months. I haven't even run an online game for six months. So that'll be... a thing.

Cross your fingers for me.

Friday's game was... not the plan. Things happened. Interesting things. But not what we thought was happening. And then decisions were made. Bad choices. Well, interesting choices. Probably bad choices. Once again, partially because I opened my mouth and my character spoke for me. So instead of all three characters going off together to fight a giant group of demons, our freshly minted angel player collected a previous PC and an NPC to help him fight. And we did... okay. Possibly slightly better than we might have done with our regular characters, but it was definitely an unexpected session.

And then, of course, at the end of the session that group got separated from the two remaining player characters. So that's a thing that we're going to have to deal with next session.

Argh. I mean, don't get me wrong... we're eating it up with both hands and a spoon, but still, argh.

We also didn't finish until after 1am... so with all things I didn't get home until 2am and didn't get to sleep for another half an hour. Waking up at 6:30 was certainly a surprise.

That does lead us on to today though.

We went to the supermarket. We came back here. We faffed around with YubTubs. It was going to be too hot to do anything or go anywhere. Also we didn't need to do anything or go anywhere. So Ma just went home before lunch time.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Current mood:

photo saturday: father daughter dragonborn

Some father/daughter DnD Character Colouring Book for our first real post of the year. Zzilar ("two z's, at the front" as he usually introduces himself) and Seyr, silver dragonborns, he's a paladin of Bahamut, she's a draconic sorceress.

She was also never supposed to be a character I played. She was part of Zzilar's backstory when I had to make him at very short notice after my original Curse of Strahd character got herself a little bit dead. Zzilar's wife/Seyr's mother died, but I gave him the bond that he wanted to make the world a better place for his child. He carried around a book of dragonborn nursery rhymes that had been hers as a child, complete with a drawing of the family, that I turned into an actual real world artifact (and how I learned book binding). But then I really wanted to play a Draconic Sorcerer, so a dragonborn just make sense to me. And why not use the dragonborn I already had.

Originally I had envisioned her as being about 8... but I also figured that he'd been away for some time, and who knows how time works between planes of existance, so I bumped both of their ages up to make her a teenager.

He wields a magic glaive taken from the tomb of Strahd's father, she pulls her powers from both the ice powers of the silver dragon who watches over their line, but also from fire. Because she's a silver dragonborn and has silver draconic heritage as a sorcerer, some of her stuff overlaps, and I should probably look at that at some point, but, honestly, I don't know when I'll get around to actually playing either of them again.

And, honestly, I went with the two of them because he came up in conversation at DnD last night.

These were also some of the earlier colouring jobs that I did, although I think I stared a version of Zzilar that I never finished, instead I went in and reworked the pose into something that worked a little better.

Anyway...

Honestly I don't have that much to share this week. Not that I haven't ready shared.

Sunday I did fuck all. Monday I did likewise. Tuesday Fluffy and I went up to Mr and Mrs's place to play boardgames with a friend of theirs who was in town. It was fun. We screwed the game up, but had fun anyway, the friend is definitely our type of nerd... maybe even a little more hardcore honestly.

Wednesday I did fuck all. Thursday I did all the NYE things I've already written about. Friday likewise, but then in the evening we had Friday DnD. Interesting developments, some cameos from former allies, some forward momentum, but not a ton. The bread I made was good... so good in fact I forgot to take a single photo of it.

Today was... a thing that happened.

We did the supermarket thing... and I don't know if it was because it was three weeks since I've been shopping with Ma, or it's just the after Christmas thing, but we seemed to buy more than average amount of stuff.

After that we went thataway to visit Cheap as Chips for the looking at things, then thisaway to Spotlight where we investigated their sale items. So I now have a new body pillow and some more decent candles.

And that was it really.

Current mood:

2021

2021, hey. How about that.

As always, I like to highlight one of the UN's International Years in my first post of the year.

This year there was a lot to choose from (not like 2018, seriously, what was up with that)... 2021 is the International Years of Peace and Trust, Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, Fruits and Vegetables, and the Elimination of Child Labour.

I went with Peace and Trust. Because we could all do with a little more of both this year.

Otherwise, I went through the NYE motions... I changed my bedding (which, thinking about it, makes it sound like I only do that once a year given I never mention it otherwise... which is not the case, it's just something I definitely do as part of NYE), I tidied the apartment, took down my few Christmas decorations, wrote my yearly wrap up post, made grilled chicken and potato salad for dinner, prepped bread for tomorrow and settled in to watch both Tom Holland Spider-man movies.

Sidebar reviews: Tom Holland is squeaky voiced, adorkable perfection. I could have done with an amount of the "Ned" character more rapidly approaching 0%. Zendaya's character was not what I expected. The second movie was better than the first one. Yes, Jake Gyllenhaal, yes. Some of the more interesting post credit scenes. Points for the Captain America one from the first movie.

After hearing the fireworks off in the distance, I finished up the movies just after midnight, was happy to see that Channel 9 was playing Can't Stop The Music, as is their post NYE movie tradition (actually it started here at 11:30, but I think that was just a time zone thing honestly) for reasons I don't fully understand. It's even mentioned on the CSTM Wikipedia page. Anyway, I watched maybe two minutes of it this year before commercials happened and I gave up and went to bed.

Today has been, as usual, a big fat nothing day... but at least I have DnD to look forward to tonight.

Current mood: