photo saturday: how many feathers

At some point I want to play another tabaxi character. I've played a couple, albeit one of those for a very short period of time. And when we were potentially playing a different adventure on Friday after I finish DMing, I had a different idea for the type of character I wanted to play.

So this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was a potential version of that character. Nine Feathers, the tabaxi archaeologist who was also a warlock.

Because if the game you're going to be playing involves a very powerful undead creature, why would you not accidentally either link yourself to that creature OR to some other force that is in opposition to that creature.

And if you're going to be wandering through abandoned buildings and ruins, why wouldn't you be an archaeologist.

But then the adventure changed, so poor old Nine Feathers just sits in the tray of abandoned characters for the rest of time.

Anyway.

Dinner for this week was tuna mornay. I still don't think that I've completely found the balance between "very spicy" on the day it's made vs "does this actually have spice in it" by about the middle of the week. It's a hard nut to crack.

However, everything about it was pretty much perfect. I do need to buy some breadcrumbs before next time though. Or abandon the crust altogether.

Hey, guess what. We finally had Thursday DnD. After not having had it for a month. And it wasn't bad. We are headed off to all points "not my backstory", which is something of a relief. Right up until the other half of my backstory rears it's ugly head. Because it will.

It's also interesting that various bits of my boy Dax's personality became clearer to me this game. Well, more so after the game when I was thinking through some of the "why". But that's the case with real actual people also. It also became very clear that he's something of a horndog. Not overtly, but definitely at his core.

Friday was... much.

Because the Norwood Christmas Pageant blocked my access to the supermarket (without going all the way around), I did my shopping at 7:30 on Friday morning. Which was actually a good time to do it and I got everything done in under half an hour.

Then it was back here to unpack, have actual breakfast and then kill some time before heading out for this month's chiro appointment. And thankfully my appointment was 15 minutes later than usual, so I had enough time to go to Greenlight Comics for their Black Friday sale, where they had 50% off DnD book and dice. So I grabbed one of the books and three sets of $3 dice. Woo. Because I'm a dice goblin. Shut up.

Friday night DnD was good... not least of all because, just like last year, Mrs (and Mr) gave Fluffy and I the same dice advent calendar she got us last year. I will admit, I'd looked at it earlier in the week, and I'd wondered. With no expectations you understand. But when we walked in and I saw two identically wrapped boxes on the dining table, I knew.

So, yay! And this year I don't need to hook one piece of technology up to a different piece of technology every day in order to actually get the photos of the dice onto my Instagram. Which is nice. So look forward for that daily update Instagram followers.

They've just made it to the final section of this chapter. I mean, there's enough content left to keep them occupied for at least a couple of weeks, but I feel like we're definitely going to be done by February. Probably.

Depends on how much they screw around I guess.

I did pause the game right before the third and final hag made her entrance. Well, her speaking entrance. Because it gives me an extra week to work out what the voice is ACTUALLY going to be (I mean, how do you voice someone who looks like dried out beef jerky in a veil and a big skirt?) and how I'm going to handle them. I have a plan, but I don't want it to be... too easy for them.

My biggest worry as we start to enter endgame territory is just sticking the landing. I want the things that I've added (and the things that are part of the actual game) to be impactful or interesting or mean something to the characters. The worst case scenario is for me to go "hey, a thing" and the table to go "oh... ok I guess".

I mean, I very much doubt that will be the case, but I also hope I haven't built things up too much. Especially with Fluffy's character.

Time will tell.

Anyway...

Today was... weird.

Because I didn't do anything. No going shopping super early. No Ma coming down first thing (she came down in the afternoon to drop some stuff off/pick some stuff up though). No anything. And I got to relax and have actual breakfast with last night's leftover bread. So that was nice.

And then listened to that one bagpipe band that is in every single Christmas Pageant ever. I mean, sometimes there's more than one, but there always has to be at least one.

And then I put my Christmas decorations up. By which I mean I tried and failed to put the big red glittery bow on the screen door and ended up tearing the, admittedly cheap and old, plastic. And then I put up my Not Lego wreath on top of the bookcase by the door and put out my "Oh my god, how the fuck has it lasted for this many years and nobody tell it how old it is or it might stop working" Neon Christmas Tree and hung up the ribbon that has my Christmas Piglet, Tigger and Eeyore hanging from it.

Oh, and I put the vibrating pull toy reindeer on the table behind my chair and then I called it a day.

Because why would you want more than four Christmas decorations?

Current mood:

photo saturday: twosome

One of the very first instances of DnD Character Colouring book was this post... when we finished our Out of the Abyss campaign with the Thursday group. Back when I was still colouring things by hand in Photoshop.

A lot of both literal and figurative water have passed under the bridge since February 2020, but this week Hero Forge released their "two figure" models to everyone. They've been available to premium members for a while now, but this is the first time I've gotten to dig into it.

And while this isn't the first couple pose I made, I did very quickly circle back to my favourite charming little shit, Peregrin and the half-elf husband he picked up in the epilogue. Hubby (aka Nathaniel... I have no idea if I had a different name for him at some point, but really, the only viable answers were either Nathaniel or Jack, because of reasons) got a makeover... I'd designed a version back when we finished, but looking at it again, it looked clunky, so I just did it over. 

And the Pery model got a bit of a redo of the colours, because back when I made it I hadn't quite got my head around the colour options in the way I feel like I do these days.

What's interesting is that some of the choices I made in reposing Pery led to unintended consequences. There seems to be a slight nervousness or a sense of waiting for the other shoe to drop in the way his left hand sits on Nate's shoulder. I mean, I mostly did that because there's no open hand pose where the hand didn't actually clip through the shoulder, so I settled on that as an appropriate compromise, but it also fits. Because I think that there was always a sense with Pery of "waiting for the other shoe to drop". Good things happened, sure, but he was always waiting for the universe to balance out and drop a bad thing on his head to make up for the happiness he was feeling. And I don't know that that ever completely went away.

It's also very probably me reading way to much into it, but I just get a sense of how he feels from this, you know. It is very sweet though, and everything I could want for my favourite little charlatan.

I also realised that the only possible name for Nate's tavern is "The End of the Road". Because of course it is.

Anyway...

I made shit up for this week's dinners. I have vague memories of being a kid and having something we just called "savoury mince"... which was about as complicated as it sounds. So I made my own version this week. And it wasn't bad. Weirdly, I could kind of tell that I'd used the cheaper cut of mince than I usually buy, but at the same time, there was more of it because of that.

It was good tho.

One to keep in the back pocket for sure.

Otherwise, this week was all kind of me in a holding pattern for the rental inspection on Friday. I did the minor clearing up earlier in the week, hit the kitchen on Wednesday and then did the bathroom and the floors on Thursday. And, I'll be honest, it doesn't look THAT different. But at least I know I've given everything a big old clean.

The annoying thing was the inspection itself was between 3pm and 5pm on Friday. I mean, rude. But, as usual, I cleared out, went down the road to the Burnside Library and did my DnD prep. Mostly because the Norwood Library down the street is too fucking small and doesn't really have space for hanging out for two hours.

I also had to go back to that library earlier in the week when I discovered that a) the book I borrowed last week wasn't as interesting as I thought it was going to be (I expected biography, I got self-help), and for some reason it was also showing up as "overdue". Turns out the woman at the library hadn't ticked a box in the computer, so my card expired on the day she gave it to me.

Firstly, why is that even a feature? I'm very confused. Also, why doesn't the computer just do that shit automatically when it's a new number/card?

But we got it all fixed with pretty much no fuss. And I wandered around the three or four shelves in there and found a couple of more interesting novels.

Going back to Friday... of course the time when I needed to leave the house was the time it started to pour with rain. But it was all good.

I do need to remember that since my land agent sends me an email when she's finished with the inspection, I can just check my email on my phone to see when she's gone. In this case, she was out by 3:30. It's not like I was wasting time given that I was doing DnD prep, but it's still good to remember that for the future.

No Thursday DnD... we were all good to go until someone else reported the spicy cough. So, we're officially cursed. And we generally end up taking a break over Christmas, so at this rate it's going to be January before we come back together.

Granted I can't be too salty about it give that I was the one who pulled the plug last year due to moving related mental trauma.

Friday night DnD was good... our first time back in... three weeks.

No great developments... they're just getting where they're going. The real stuff is going to happen when they get to the main area in this region. We'll see how that all goes.

Anyway...

Today was... a non-event.

We did the supermarket thing, we came back here, Ma had a thing to go to this afternoon, so we didn't really bother doing anything, she just toddled off home.

Also... just for the record... and not that I'm complaining... but why the fuck am I deciding whether or not I should put a jacket on in the middle of November? Again, better than the alternative, and we definitely need the rain... but still.

I just hope that March isn't going to be a little punk ass bitch and drop a heatwave on is.

Anyway...

Current mood:

photo saturday: the friendly skies

You know how they say that time is a flat circle? Yeah, I have no fucking idea what that really means either. But I do know that at a certain point in DnD character creation, I got all the way around and start coming back the way I first approached things...

Which is why today's DnD Character Colouring Book is a return to the idea of an artillerist artificer. But instead of a smart little goblin raised by dwarves, I started playing around with an aarakocra... or bird person. This one based around a number of different sea eagles. Which is where the name comes from, because it's the Latin name for the group. Only without the apostrophe in it. But more specifically, a mix of the White-bellied Sea Eagle and the African Fish Eagle. Or as close as I could get with the Hero Forge colouring options.

I've played with the idea of aarakocra before... and also owlin, the owl version, but never for very long because, honestly, the original version can be a little overpowered and Adventurer's League didn't allow flying races up until recently.

I'm not completely settled on "sage" for his background. That's one of the issues I generally have with artificers... there are like three "good" backgrounds for them. Sage, Cloistered Scholar (which is basically "librarian" and Guild Artisan. I mean, there are others, like Clan Crafter, Noble, Acolyte... but it always feels to me like you're not going to make a sailor artificer or an urchin artificer. I mean, maybe you can... I just can't find my way there easily. So the background is the thing most likely to change.

And yes, that's the same armour set I've used for about... 3 dozen characters at this point. Including a previous artificer and two other characters sitting on my desktop. It had all those straps and details and it just looks really fucking cool.

What I do know about Hali is that he is more of a hermit/loner than the previous artificers. He's much more going to have been somewhere isolated, with only a small collection of other people. Maybe a temple, maybe a monastery or something small, high on a mountain somewhere. I don't have a full backstory worked out yet, but he's brewing in my back brain as we speak.

I also like the idea of him using the hand held Eldritch Cannon from above, or swooping down, dropping the larger walking version into battle and then flying out of range. I just wish that Hero Forge had more things that were interesting enough to stand in for the cannons. That aren't just, you know, guns. Because that's boring.

Anyway.

Can I just ask a quick question? What the actual fuck was up with the weather this week? Last weekend was thunder and potential hail and rain and whatnot. Then it was all hot and ick and then we got massive thunderstorms and rain and whatnot in the middle of the week... and we're back to thunder and storms and the like now. And it's November. What the fuck?

So, food was weird this week also. I made a quiche, I also made what might be one of the best potato salads I've ever made... and because I had eggs and milk left over at the end of the week, I made pancrepes. Of course, that means that many eggs were consumed during the week.

Otherwise, the week was about as much of a non-starter as last week. In that there was no DnD. Because of Fluffy and the Spicy Cough.

I did go and pick up the book I requested from the local library. Which, it turns out, is fucking tiny. It's cute and sweet, but really, really tiny. And, now I have officially borrowed a book from the library for the first time in more than 20 years. Woo.

And it turns out that certain libraries also have an arrangement with certain websites to let you access movies for free using your library card. So, there's also that. If only I'd done this shit earlier.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything.

We did the supermarket thing... bought a metric fuckton of Bundaberg's Spiced Ginger Beer because a) that stuff is liquid fucking Christmas, and b) it was on special.

And we were possibly going to do other things... but then the big black clouds rolled in and then it started raining... and we kinda didn't bother even attempting to go anywhere.

So that's that about that.

Current mood:

photo saturday: fugitive recovery agent

Remember how I said that I was only going to be making a single backup character for the Thursday game...yeah... that didn't last.

I mean, it's partly the fact that we already have two arcane casters in the group, both of whom took Find Familiar, so adding a third familiar to the group just feels like overkill. And the fact that I've been musing about the setting specific Pallid Elves with their pale skin, white blonde hair and totally black eyes for a while now... even before I realised that they got advantage on two skills that I like using a lot.

So... today's DnD Character Colouring Book is my (mostly final) Thursday backup character, Ranya Duskgrove. And I have a way to link her into things if it comes to that... or at least a number of hooks that I can present to DM Fluffy and say "these are all possibilities, tell me which one you wanna work with". The easiest of which is "she's a bounty hunter, who has she been told to track down?".

Also, I really do want to play a rogue. Even if my current rogue dies. There is also a secondary Cleric character somewhere in the background, depending on how dire things get along the way, given that we don't actually HAVE a cleric. And she does have a hook... I'm just not quite as in love with her as I am with Ranya right now.

It's weird, there's often just something about the visual of a character that clicks for me. It then helps if the character build speaks to me, but if the visual isn't there, I often don't get much further than that these days. Oddly enough, she did start life as a tiefling. And I liked the tiefling version but something just wasn't clicking. So I tried out a pallid elf. That was, as they say, a bingo. I did pay slight homage to that aspect by putting a male tiefling in as part of her backstory.

Fingers crossed I never need to actually bust her out. But it's good to be prepared.

Anyway.

I made chicken cacciatore for the first time ever this week. I mean, I've made it out of a jar before, but that's not the same thing at all. And it was really, really good. Definitely a possibility of turning it into one of those rice based soups next winter, or just a soup in general really.

I did manage, somehow, to slice my finger open while chopping onions. I don't even really know how, because the cut is on the hand I was using to hold the knife... I think I dropped the knife or the knife slipped out of my hand or something, and I went to grab what I assumed was the handle, only to have it turn out to be the bottom of the blade.

On the plus side, it was a very shallow flesh wound. Which did mean that it bled like a motherfucker. But at least a small collection of band aids sorted me out, and while it's still visible, it's closed up and on the mend (barring the edge of the flap of skin, which will wear away eventually, it's just not there yet).

It could, however, have been worse.

Anyway.

This week was... a non-starter.

The weather was predominantly Wintery. And both DnD games got cancelled. Thursday through a missing player, Friday because Fluffy finally caught the spicy cough. Granted, he found out Thursday, so if Thursday hadn't been cancelled for other reasons, it would have been cancelled because of that.

So, yeah... nothing really to report on for the whole week.

Anyway.

Today was fine. Given that the weather is going to be warm I kind of ended up getting ingredients to make about four different things. I don't necessarily know what I will be making, I think I'm going to just see what happens during the week, and what I feel like. Which, of course, will mean that I have to cook on more than one day. And that's why I much prefer soup season. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

After that we finished the errand we started a couple of weeks ago and took something back to IKEA to exchange for the same item that Ma hadn't fucked up by not following the instructions.

So that was it really.

Current mood: