There are some characters who are minimalists... you put them in an outfit, you look at that outfit, you go "yeah, that works" (although the last time we had one of those on the blog was back in early February with the elderly halfling barbarian) and some of them are decidedly maximalists.
Because they require a lot of fussing around in Photoshop, and then once you have done, you realise something about it needs tweaking, and so you start from the beginning again.... and then you do that a second time. And then you keep seeing things you could tweak, and you keep adding to things and before you know it you've done three versions of the character and the Photoshop file has over 75 layers.
And it all started with the hand.
Well, technically it started back in 2021 when Inky was one of my potential backup characters for our Avernus game.
Firstly we have Thaddeus "Inky" Oakfoot, halfling tattoo artist, monk and cleric to one of the more obscure halfling goddesses. 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.
But I was going through and deleting or updating some older characters and I looked at him and figured he might as well get a new face. And a new staff, new hair, new pants, a new pouch... basically a do-over. And I was playing around with the new hand poses when I tried the "devil horns" and, suddenly we were off to the races. He suddenly became much more "punk" in my head.
So first the tattoos got some updates. And the idea that he had perhaps avoided the events of major adventures kind of morphed into the idea that he was there for most of them, just at a different time and doing different things that the adventure as written. Which meant that some of his tattoos got upgraded to cover books the old ones didn't. And the largest tattoo, which covers his whole chest is of Yondalla, the matriarch of the halfling pantheon.
Then I decided to give him the same brooch as Miss Jamjar, because it's Yondalla's holy symbol. Which triggered the idea of punks and badges... or just badges in general.
And I started adding various "in world" badges. Things he definitely could have gotten his hands on, things he probably couldn't have. Things that tell a story.
Then I realised he should always have been an Inkfoot and not an Oakfoot.
And in looking up details for the goddess Dallah Thaun and saw that prayers to her start off with "If only...". So that became the repeated motto on the metal parts of his staff in various in-game (and not) fonts. Which then led to the "graffiti" on the staff. And the invention of a partner or lover or something with a first name starting with M. I haven't even decided on a gender for them to be honest. There are also some definite "crossing into other fictional universes" references across his whole deal.
One of the last additions was taking some existing items (much larger items like chain-whips and a giant padlock) and turning them into his padlock necklace.
Also, not that you can see it but just because it amuses me and is it's own in-joke, he only wears pink socks.
Maybe some version of him should just be my perpetual back-up character. He would also work well as a different idea for the first character from the 2024 PHB, which is kind of what this version is. And a character that would start out at Level 10.
On the plus side, now that he's been posted to the blog, I can, hopefully, stop making changes LOL.
Anyway...
We seem to have reached that point that comes around every March where I start the week in shorts and potentially end in a hoodie... although perhaps not as cleanly as that since it's going to shoot back up to over 30 at the end of this week, but the nights have gotten cold, so I'm very much on board for that.
That also means that it's very nearly the start of soup season... depending on how the weather goes next week.
Thursday Night DnD actually happened. And was... a lot of fumbling around on a very confusing map. But, you know, one step closer to getting to the end of this adventure.
Friday Night DnD, by contrast, did not happen. For all the usual reasons.
Anyway...
Today was the usual supermarketry... but afterwards I managed to cross a few things off my to-do list when we took a trip to Big W.
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