photo saturday: pick a card

You want to know what's dumb? And I think I've said this before... but I don't even really want to PLAY a warlock. I just really, really dig all the things you can do with one.

And this is also what happens when your DM makes a comment about the level of sass in your PCs. So you think to yourself... "can I make a non-sass character?". The answer is clearly yes. But also, why the hell would I want to.

It did however lead me to thinking about a character who is... pointed in a different direction than my Thursday Night character. Mostly... what if you want from a character who was deeply involved with the gods to a character who the gods were actively not interested in. Or that your former character's god would disapprove of. And then I got into the idea of a fortune teller who the Goddess of Fate disliked, and the Goddess of Luck was ambivalent about. Which then led me to flavouring a component pouch for spellcasting as a deck of tarot/divination cards.

Also, someone who had been dead, stopped being dead for some reason unknown to even herself, but had no memory of who she had been beyond waking up clutching those cards.

That's before we even get into the Shadow Sorcerer/Undead Warlock of it all. And that potentially her Warlock Form of Dread isn't just physical, what if it's that "The Others" take over. Others... Other... not completely sure. It might also be that that's the thing that's keeping her alive and giving her her powers rather than a fully external patron. A vengeful ghost took over a freshly dead body, reviving up the woman inside in the process and comes when it's called to wreak revenge on the living. Maybe?

Madame Fortuna is only her stage name, obviously, but the name she remembers is Lila.

The whole concept has been through a bunch of variations through the week to be honest.

Anyway...

Yep, this is a three parter. But mostly just the art, not so much the story. Also, am I obsessed with this purple/grey skin tone? Yes, yes I am.

This week was Not Really Minestrone Minestrone soup. And pretty good, but then that always is. If I do say so myself. And I do.

Thursday Night DnD was... thinking about it... not much of anything. Also, very, very, very much one of those sessions where I really wish we were a group of 4 instead of a group of 6. Because sometimes I just cannot.

As I've said before, there are times when your brain can't separate D&D memories and emotions from Real World memories and emotions because you're taking your brain to the same place regardless of whether it's imaginary or not.

So I had a Bad Brain Day on Friday.

Which was also Chiro Day... so there was the ritual Saying Things To My Chiro which helped a little. And the usual Wandering Around Looking At Things.

But then we called off Friday Night DnD due to sick smallperson, so I just let my brain do it's own thing, ate too much good bread and caught up on videos that had been cluttering up my Watch Later list.

Anyway...

To round it out... an action pose. Which is technically a slightly modified body from the last shot, but I'd been fucking around and ended up here and really liked it, so I just went with it. You can see that the belt pouch is kinda sorta a skull motif here too. But the earring kind of blends into the shoulder.

Today was supermarket.

And not even that much supermarket to be perfectly honest. I mean, it took the regular amount, but we didn't buy a ton of stuff. That happens sometimes and I have no idea why really.

Beyond that we didn't really have anything we wanted to do, given the last couple of weeks, so we just called it early.

photo saturday: speak softly and...

So... this week's DnD Character Colouring Book was supposed to be something else... then it was going to be a different random sketch... and then I decided I hated that one. And I went back to this, which is really just me messing around with the new staff designs.

Also, the fact that I want to play a redhead.

Let's not think about it too much.

Anyway.

This week was Halfling Everything Soup week. And what I like about that recipe is that, it does indeed, work with just about everything. I stuck mostly to the recipe this week... although I added celery, because why wouldn't you add celery.

I have a new neighbour... after, what... six months? Eight months? Not sure. She seems fine. Time will tell.

Thursday Night DnD was... stuff. But we're now in a radically different location, but no longer in a horrible temple to evil gods. So, good times.

Friday Night DnD didn't happen. So Fluffy and I did movies instead.

Firstly we did the Puss in Boots sequel. I'm not doing a review for it... it was perfectly serviceable. Bits of it are very lovely. The flipping between different animation speeds at certain points kept throwing me out of the moment. Not everything needs to try to be Into the Spiderverse.

And the plot is incredibly by the numbers. Which doesn't make it bad. I think it's actually the best movie in the Shrek movie universe after the original Shrek.

Anyway.

Today we did the supermarket thing. And then we did a run down to IKEA in order to get a pie dish. We bought more than just a pie dish. But, you know, nothing really of substance. For me anyway. I did buy more candles. Because candles.

Yeah, that's what you get this week... words are not my strong point today.

photo saturday: professing professor

Today's DnD Character Colouring Book proves the adage... sometimes you gotta get weird with it. Is that an adage? Probably not. It should be.

I was thinking about clerics and thinking about Dragonborn. And my general problem with making Dragonborn in Hero Forge is that it's hard to make the kind of Dragonborn I like, where they actually look similar to their respective dragon types.

But I was thinking about Chromatic Dragonborn, the ones "descended" from the "bad" kinds of dragons. Your reds, your blacks, your blues, etc. And I was thinking about a cleric, but then you get into the whole "good god for a Dragonborn who isn't automatically the one good god of Dragonborn".

So I wandered off to sorcerer. As I am want to do.

And if I'm going for the cleric vibe, it has to be Divine Soul Sorcerer. But if I wanted to make a Red Dragonborn, where does that leave me. Because if they were pulling their power from the Good Dragon God, then their outfit probably needs to be blue. But they're red, so it just clashes.

Then I thought, what happens if they were getting their magic from the bloodline of the Bad Dragon Goddess, but otherwise had no affection or affiliation for her. And then, based mostly on the outfit, I thought Sage was a good background... and I saw one of the options in "what kind of sage were you?" was "discredited academic" and it all kind of fell into place.

Add in my favourite city in all of Faerun, Silverymoon, and we have Professor Jhar, former instructor at Arkhen's Invocatorium, part of the Conclave (University) of Silverymoon. I'm slightly fuzzy on why he's now discredited, but still, that's something that would get ironed out depending on when and where I played him, if that were to ever happen.

But I do enjoy this design very much.

Anyway.

Halfling Tomato Soup this week. Which almost didn't happen when my can opener decided that it just wasn't feeling it when I came to open the big cans of tomato needed for said soup. I got there in the end, but there was a small element of panic for a moment or two.

It all worked out fine though.

Thursday Night DnD was essentially chaos. Not least of all because we were playing in a different location. The upside of said location is that there was a baby for me to hold/cuddle/send to sleep for about half the night. But also, the Traumatise Other Player plan was kind of a fizzer. Mostly because Other Player wasn't... I dunno... in the mood I guess.

So instead I dashed away from the rest of the group and almost got incredibly murdered.

And when the person who is usually the Chaos Goblin in that group was the one to tell my character off about running off on their own... which is such delicious irony that I can't even.

Friday Night DnD was essentially one long battle. So... you know... fine.

Anyway.

Today was Supermarket. Obviously. And then the seemingly simple task of "Buy pie plate". Do you think I could find a pie plate anywhere? I could not.

And that was after looking in Big W, Kmart and Coles. Well, to be fair. I found a glass pie plate. But I don't want a glass pie plate.

Of course five seconds on Google tells me that they have a $2.50 pie plate and a $10 pie plate. So, that'll be next week. Maybe.

We did also look for toy trucks for small person birthday, so that was something different.

photo saturday: big foundling boy

There are times when you make a whole character, invent a backstory, really get your head around who they are. And then WotC drop a new background from a new book, which isn't out officially for another week or so. And you reconfigure the whole character to suit the background. Including changing their height, name and subclass.

Wouldn't be the first time.

The original idea came from a single new skin colour in Hero Forge and was briefly a Shadow Touched Shadow Sorcerer before becoming a Guild Artisan Shadow Sorcerer. But I just liked the idea of the Giant Foundling, not least of all because "giant foundlings growing abnormally large for their species". And I do enjoy either a very tall or very short PC, in fact I often find it hard making mid or average sized characters. For the record, he's about 7'5".

Granted I want to pair it with the Rune Carver feat and not the melee focused one it comes with. At least for this character. And yes, I've already played a Storm Sorcerer (also realising that the image should say Storm Sorcerer and not Storm Magic Sorcerer, but, m'eh, amounts to about the same thing), but it fits in nicely with this version of the character.

And I just discovered there's a type of storm giant who gets so old that they essentially end up becoming a sentient living storm... so that's his backstory covered.

I'm going backwards and forwards on the bandaged arm honestly. It made more sense when he was a Shadow Sorcerer because it was going to be a skeletal arm. Because Shadowfell. Less so for this version.

I feel like he might need a whole general once over if he actually does become my Friday backup character. It's also weird that any time I try to make him someone with a normal skin and hair colour, it just looks wrong and I don't really know why. It does mesh nicely with the whole "giant foundlings absorb some of the primeval magic that resonates from giants" aspect of the Giant Foundling though.

But I want to see the full text of the Foundling (and the Rune Carver feat) before I finalise young Issy.

Anyway.

This week was potato and bacon soup... pretty good, but it's hard to go too far wrong on potatoes and bacon, no matter what you do with them really.

This week did also not involved me cleaning everything to within an inch of it's life or running around like a crazy person, so that was good.

Thursday Night DnD was called off on account of a missing player given that we were in the middle of something, see also last week's "stab stab stabbity stab" reference.

Friday I made my first item from the Baking Yesteryear book, Dream Bars. Not perfect, but tasty.

Friday Night DnD was good, but we didn't get very far honestly. We also didn't play until past midnight either, so, you win some you lose some.

Anyway.

Today felt something like old times, but also, somehow more frustrating at the same time.

We did the supermarket thing, but then Ma wanted to look around in town for a new mug to replace one that broke, which you wouldn't think would be a huge issue because... well... it's a mug, how hard can it be? Turns out, harder than you would expect.

Partly because we possibly missed all the stuff they were selling during the mid year sales which ended last weekend. But also because I don't know how much Ma was actually paying attention to things, or perhaps she was just making snap judgements on things without really looking at them.

Also, it's been a hot minute since we've gone into town on a Saturday. I don't really remember us having done it for quite a while. Maybe even for longer than I've been in this apartment, I don't know off the top of my head. But they're "testing out" payless parking payments in the spot we always used to park in The Old Days. Which is just annoying. Doubly so because they've put Saturday parking up to $5, which isn't all that much, but also, isn't the $2 it used to be for a piece of road with some lines painted on it.

But we did a wander around Myer and found basically nothing, poked our heads into a couple of other places, then went to David Jones where we just weren't finding anything. So I pulled a trick I haven't needed to pull in a while and went and found someone who worked there to basically ask "what the fuck is up with mugs?". Turns out that was a good plan, because she was one of those Salt of the Earth Women of a Certain Age women, who immediately pointed out that they no longer have a "mugs" section because brands are fussy little bitches and have to keep all their stuff separated, even if that makes life harder for the consumer when all you want is a mug and you have to look in 85 different places to see the mugs. My words, not hers.

She was lovely though, even if there wasn't all that much she could really do to help us find things beyond pointing in various directions.

It did mean that Ma actually started to pay attention (so god bless you SotEWoaCA lady) and we found a mug she really liked, and that if it turns out that it doesn't work for her, I don't hate, because it will probably end up in my cupboard. Or, I'll just be spiteful and make her use it when she comes here.

I also picked up what they are calling a "noodle bowl" in the same style (which is basically "hand finished" and vaguely dalmatian spots). And when we got to the register, turned out they were both 30% off, so got them both for about $4 less than sticker price each. Noice.

We then spent about eleventy-seven hours looking at artisanal earrings in one of those stores that have a lot of things by a lot of different individual artists/craftspeople. And even though Ma owns like 900 different earrings, she wanted something in particular/different. Which took a while to tease out, but we got there eventually.

We also stopped by Haighs for some Freckles, which I then totally forgot about when we got back and I left mine in the David Jones bag that went home with Ma. Bugger.