photo saturday: the beastmaster and the baker

And so, we reach the parents of my very first DnD Character for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book. Originally this was going to be a double post with the parents as adventurers and then as small business owners, but something else came up, so we're just going to do the adventurers this time.

Keeping on the Doctor Who naming theme... we have Melody Longpond. And, honestly, it shouldn't take much guessing to consider which "water/music themed" character she's a reference to. Dad Brandien is a little more... convoluted. There's a book from an older edition which has a "build your own halfling name" table, which has a table of syllables that you can put together in various ways.

It's how I worked out, after the fact, that Peregrin (or Perygren to give it it's "halfling spelling", translates to various things, my favourite of which is "Loyal Baker". In this case, Brandien translates to "Adventurous Blue"... or, you know, a certain big blue box.

Brandien also carries the bee logo from his father's career as a bard into being a symbol for this branch of the family, having armour made with it, and also having a pin/clasp made for Melody once they started dating/got engaged.

Interestingly, the bakery thing actually comes from Grandmother Rosie... her character was a baker/cook, and, so it had to filter down the family line. I feel like Bran learned directly from his grandmother, and then everyone else in the family learned from him.

And, of course Melody had a peregrin falcon beast companion, because I was completely obsessed with them throughout my teenage years for a variety of reasons. Admittedly, the Hero Forge paint decal is only... about 90% there. Also, white armor on a ranger just screams "impractical as fuck", unless of course, you're an arctic rangers. She was not.

But sometimes you just go for the vibes.

Anyway...

This week was Chicken Noodle Soup... and, I have to say, it was really, really good. Possibly thanks to a liberal helping of dried thyme. And, also, butter.

DM Fluffy and I did a quick solo follow up session from last Thursday's DnD game, because neither of us intended to suck all the oxygen out of the room by doing it at the table. Plus, I much prefer doing those things away from the table if you can, because the rest of the party wouldn't know what happened anyway.

I went and took back the black fabric dye at the start of the week and bought some new socks with the refund.  Then I went to Bunnings to ask the nice man in the nursery/plants section what the hell was up with the little bug things on my (20 year old) parlour palm. And got a recommendation for some lovely chemicals.

I also sprayed the palm... and will spray it again in a couple of weeks... so, fingers crossed.

I ticked off "finish the crochet scarf that you started to avoid finishing the cardigan that your brain tells you is too hard to finish" from my To Do list... and it looks pretty good. Attaching tassels nearly broke my brain for any number of reasons, but I got better as I did more of them. 

Now I just need to resist the urge to start on making small granny squares with the same yarn to make myself a lap blanket. I need to work out how to finish the fucking cardigan. Because we've now reached the point where I should be wearing it. Argh.

Thursday Night DnD should have been a no-brainer. Because it was also a public holiday. But people can't get up early, essentially do nothing all day and still be functional humans for three hours in the evening. So, fuck the rest of us I guess. And, as previously mentioned, we're too close to the end to really not have everybody on deck.

So, honestly, my decision to step away from this group when we're done with this campaign just keeps reinforcing itself. Because while I enjoy them as people for the most part, this group is now dysfunctional bordering on passively aggressively falling apart. And to that I say... best of luck boys. I'll come back if you don't implode.

Friday Night DnD was... traps, spiders and a very lucky, very himbo barbarian... that we kind of lost our minds over and ended up riffing on it for more time than was sensible... including inventing a TV show. And then on the drive home Fluffy mentioned turning the Hero Forge model I'd made of said character after our last game and making a promo image for said TV show. And it just screamed 80's to me.

Honestly, it's very much a "You Had To Be There" thing... but, also, I was kinda proud of the final result... even if trying to do the "fake TV still" process did take me far longer than it should have. And I had to go back in at the last minute to change the colour of his eyes to blue, because I forgot that they were blue.

It's very dumb, but it amuses me.

Anyway...

Today was pretty standard. Supermarket, then home, when we ended up just watching a movie before Ma toddled off home.

photo saturday: the boxer and the bumblebee

Last week we hit the great grandparents... this week we have the grandparents. Back when they were adventurers. Because everybody in that line was an adventurer. Or at least all the direct antecedents on that side of the family.

Also, this combined shot of Iona and Javic became more of an action shot given that it looks like Javic is casting a healing spell on a beat-up Iona. I also do love the idea of a relationship between a physically strong woman and a socially strong man.

And keeping with the Doctor Who name theming... Javic coming from a certain greatcoat-wearing, bisexual former time agent... and Iona being an imperfect female version of the name Ianto.

I also like to think that Javic was known as Bumblebee when he was an adventurer, because of his outfit and his surname, and created the bee symbol that became important to the family line going forward. And the text on the lute gives it the name of Honey. Because of course.

Anyway...

This week was Lasagne Soup... which always sounds dumb, as I've probably said in the past, but it gives you exactly the right description for what it is. Technically it's also just "pasta sauce soup", but I make it with broken up lasagne noodles, so... you know. It is good though.

I also managed to embed a teeny tiny piece of glass in my foot after breaking a glass. Because that happens when you don't realise a piece of glass smaller than a grain of rice has fallen on the other side of the kitchen counter and you turn on the spot...

And it takes two days for you to be able to dig it out of your foot with tweezers. [shudders]

Thankfully, it was the part of my foot that is thicker skin and it wasn't continually painful for two days.

Otherwise, I kind of finished my crochet scarf... but I don't like the way I finished it, so I need to undo the last row and try again. And I haven't gotten there yet.

Thursday Night DnD happened... and was all going... very well, until the last five minutes where my character ended up being teleported/transported to a different version of the room we went into than everybody else... which is where the bad guys where. Well, some bad guys, a bunch of mind controlled NPCs who used to be our friends and the character that is the alternative universe version of one of the PCs... yeah, DnD is fucking weird.

Is my orc boy having a slight saviour complex that will lead him to do something incredibly stupid? Oh absofuckinglutely. Will I try to be at least a little bit smart about it? I mean, I'll TRY... but his personality trait it literally "nothing is more important than life, and I never leave anyone in danger", plus he's in a room that enflames his passions. Fuck... he's gunna die isn't he...

Well, I can go invisible 6 more times... so... fingers crossed.

I'm also going to try to have a pre-session with DM Fluffy in order to at least get a sense of what I'm doing while the rest of the party fumble around and do what they do. So we don't have to cut back and forth between scenes. Because if I'm doing a dumb, I don't want them to feel like they have to try and find/save me.

Because I'm definitely going to do some kind of dumb.

There was no Friday Night DnD because small children and school holidays exist. So I ate bread, drank gin and tonic and rewatched Mad Max Fury Road, because I'd read a book about the making of it and wanted to rewatch it.

I will say that I stand by a non-zero amount of what I said after I saw it originally. I did kind of like certain characters more, understanding some of the backstory a little more. But I feel like it's a movie where the title character is actually unnecessary and... honestly, while having almost no dialogue, actually has all of the literal worst dialogue in the movie. And Tom Hardy is giving a solid C+ performance against most of the major characters giving an A performance at worst.

And Nux is still my favourite character.

Anyway...

Today wasn't much of anything.

Supermarket, then some sharing of things on the YubTubs... and that was it really.

photo saturday: dynasty forebears

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is actually the foundation upon which I built last week's images. Because I'd been messing around with updating the extended family of my first ever DnD character, who have existed as Hero Forge models since the very early days, and then started putting the various couples together on the same image.

So we start here, where it all started. Me getting inspired by Kate Welch's Rosie Beestinger character from the Penny Arcade DnD series, Acquisitions Incorporated: The C Team, who she very kindly opened up the Beestinger clan to the fans as something they could use for their own characters.

And, I'll be honest, Rosie is the start of my obsession with all things halfling. It fully solidified with playing Belben. But it starts with Rosie. So of course my character is the great grandson of Rosie. Other people were making direct "children" (mostly adopted), but I wanted a more direct line.

Consider this my fan-art of Rosie though. Because, at the point these two were together, she wouldn't have been a Monk yet, she may have been a Pirate Queen at the time honestly... but her backstory is still a little vague and fragmented (also, I gave up on both Acq Inc and C Team during the pandemic). I just liked how these two looked together. Also the green and purple combo of Adric and Rosie works nicely.

And yes, outside of Rosie and Belben, all of Belben's family have Doctor Who related names. Some direct, some indirect, some that are very, very obscure references. So we start with my favourite Fourth Doctor companion (and yes, I know he hung out with the Fifth Doctor also, but I never really vibed with Five), who I had a massive crush on when I was a kid... Adric. And interestingly, it turns out that Matthew Waterhouse who played Adric... gay. So clearly I must have been picking up the vibes... lol.

This mini is 1000 miles away from his original "too much armor" look, but honestly, it was when I just picked the kneeling pose on a whim that he really came together. Also, not gunna lie, adding pins/brooches to people's outfits since I did that with Inky... definitely a thing right now.

Anyway...

I attempted to restart/finish my rainbow hexagon crochet cardigan this week. Cuffs/ribbing is hard you guys. I ended up in a worse position than when I was when I started, because I managed to undo previous work. So I got very annoyed and undid it back to a previous point before I started closing in the sleeve openings.

And then put it back in the box so it could think about what it did.

Instead, I started making the scarf I'd been planning on, using the same yarn as the cardigan. It wasn't a bad plan. I hadn't done anything for the last two months essentially, so I'm a little out of the groove. Plus, the best thing about crocheting a scarf longways is that you can wear it while you're making it. And I did.

I still don't know what to do about the cuffs. Urgh. I think it will be very much a me Inventing Things when I get back to it.

This week's soup was good old reliable potato and leek.

No Thursday DnD this week because we're so close to the end that it doesn't seem completely fair to anyone who has to sit out. Granted, there are some people who could not be there and it wouldn't really impact the story one way or the other... but, you know... the theory holds.

Friday Night DnD was... a lot. Firstly, we got to the point of the adventure where the give you all the things you need to do for pretty much the entire second act, maybe even into the third a little bit. Plus we got to unpack some personal drama along the way, which, thankfully, I have very little of, having built an orphan with few connections for this particular campaign. Because the last two major campaigns were quite enough for my characters honestly.

Also, I got to put a long standing opinion to the test... for whatever reason, my brain just rejects the idea of Bread and Butter Pudding. I mean, I know what it is. I know that's it's basically just old bread, presumably butter, milk, eggs and sugar... but still my brain goes... "nah". For reasons that slightly escape my memory now, Fluffy made (well, Fluffy's Ma made) a very boujee one with dark chocolate chips and rasperries for Friday night. And I was 100% willing to be convinced, I was down to go "well, fuck my life that I've spent all this time not enjoying this clearly very enjoyable thing". I was right there.

It's wet bread.

It's wet.... bread...

If it had not been for the chocolate and the raspberries (and I'll admit, the golden toasty bits on the very top) I would not have been able to make it through a bowl. I nearly pulled the rip cord just based on the fact that the texture of it looks like you're slicing into somebody's brain stem.

And, I reiterate. Wet. Bread.

No thank you.

Anyway...

Today was less of going in directions other than the ones I wanted to go in order to get to the supermarket, so that was good.

And like last week, afterwards, we went to Haighs for broken Easter egg... which, like the last couple of years I believe, was actually broken/beheaded duckies.

Which is fine. Because so long as it's the same kind of chocolate as regular egg (which I believe it is), I have no issue with a beheaded duckie.

photo saturday: three loves of a scoundrel

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is a story in three parts... and kind of accidental. I actually started with Part 2, but I'm running the images in reverse chronological order. And I've run a version of this before. This is my Out of the Abyss character post game in three different romantic entanglements. Firstly, with his husband and his final name/fate.

But I actually resized up the husband when I realised that the size difference wasn't right. Also I like the posing better.

I also finally looked at Pery's old sheet and realised I had named his husband at the time, but the name was, honestly, dumb. So I went with the second version I came up with. I also named the bakery. Because I think it had just been "Beestinger Bakery" in my head, but that absolutely didn't fit (and also, my other halfling Beestinger baker family use that name already), so it became the more thematic Scoundrel's End Bakery. Because, again, as a former Charlatan, keeping yourself accountable.

Also, Husband Nathaniel got a tattoo, because of course my boy's fantasy husband has a big old arm sleeve tattoo.

And the pose here is much better. Partially because their relative sizes are much more accurate.

Anyway...

Part 2 is where this whole thing started. I'd been redoing the other halfling Beestinger's family portraits, and tweaking various older NPC characters, because honestly, the difference between the quality of what I've getting out of Hero Forge now and back in 2019 is... extreme. And going down the line, I realised that the version I had of Pery's in-game love interest, Eldeth, was even older than that and, frankly, kind of terrible. So here's my boy in game.

Honestly, this definitely isn't the version of Eldeth that I had in my head during the game. But I also don't know that I ever 100% decided on what I thought she looked like at the time. So let's just say that this is the version I would have made had I been playing that campaign now.

And once I made her, I needed to do a shot of her and Pery together. Even though their lovestory ended badly in two different timelines, because, honestly, you can't flirt with your ambiguously bisexual disaster DM firstly via fictional characters and then IRL until he trips over his own feelings and essentially runs away to stick his dick in the first woman to blinks sideways at him and not have the very volatile in-game relationship go severely sideways. Honestly, my own fault for entertaining an ambiguously bisexual disaster.

But, it was, relatively speaking, good while it lasted. And I like the characters' little interaction here. And her blush.

Again, the sizing is kind fucked. Because the Hero Forge sizing is... massively inconsistent and doesn't scale appropriately. According to their calculations, he's a little over 3 feet tall, she's about 4'5". But when you measure them against any other scale, it just doesn't come out that way (making him 3'3" only puts her at 3'6"... and Part 3 is actually even worse... so what the fuck is up with that Hero Forge?).

But I already said "anyway"... so...

This week marked the return of Soup Season. Mexican Chicken and Rice soup... which honestly came out more stew-like, because while I love a rice soup, it does absorb all the fucking liquid. And, honestly, throwing a whole packet of Chilli Con Carne seasoning was a good call. It was a little intense at the start of the week, but as is always the case, it mellowed as the week went on.

I also didn't think I had enough ingredients and that it was going to be a little sparse. Turns out that that was a complete fantasy.

It was good though.

Thursday Night DnD was actually very effective. Granted we sidestepped what should have been the difficult third wave of the battle from the previous week with a well placed Divine Intervention, which turned out to be pretty thematically appropriate.

We also levelled up, so we only have one more level up before we're done. And I assume that's going to be right before the final fight. So, potentially, I might print out my Level 11 and Level 12 sheet this time, just in case.

Friday Night DnD was an exercise in "Don't Touch The Thing You Obviously Shouldn't Touch". And definitely don't touch it a second time once someone else touched it the first time. It also further reinforced that I will attempt to talk my way through any situation where that seems even remotely viable. And given this character's Charisma vs Intelligence score, he will just talk AT you yet make very valid points along the way.

Granted, this party's propensity to split the party, even when it makes sense to do so, may well be our undoing eventually.

Anyway.

Part 3 of Pery's romantic entanglements... in his previous identity with his fellow Charlatan and former partner, who, in a very different kind of game, would have shown up.

And while Pallas came out almost exactly right based on the feel of him in my head, I think that potentially, the original version might have been closer to Nathaniel from Part 1. This also came out way more "We Saw You From Across The Bar And Really Dig Your Vibe" than I originally intended. So much so that I both added a key to Pallas's hand and decided that they were also pretending to be married.

This is also where the Hero Forge sizing gets wacky. Because Pallas is, according to HF, 7'2" in heels next to Falco's flat 3' in the same heels. Does that vibe at all with what you're seeing in that image? No, no it does not. I mean, I already knew that their sizing was wack, but it's really only when you try and match up a gnome or halfling character with a full sized character that it gets weird.

Also, four years later, coming up with more info about these personas actually helped me to solidify what happened to Pery that made him have to run from Waterdeep before the beginning of the campaign. Because I didn't know about House Minstrelwish, the halfling noble clan who are basically house flippers and couriers. The two of them definitely did some dodgy dealing in that space.

I do love Pery with Falco's longer hair though. Predictably, I'd listed the looks for each of the different personas he had as far as hair style, colour and eyes were concerned. I also started to see the transition he want through when he went on the run. Changing clothes several times, getting his hair cut, and eventually waking up in an alley with a knife sticking out of his back before taking on the Pery identity.

Complicated little shithead.

Where was I... oh, yes... today.

Today can go fuck itself.

Or rather, the decision to close a bunch of streets in Norwood for an extended period of time over a weekend so a bunch of people can sit in the middle of the road and eat overpriced food and get enthused about sportsball can go fuck itself.

So instead of the straight shot from my place to the supermarket, we had to go the very long and overly complicated way. Doubly so on the way back.

And then after shopping, we went to Haighs to get our hands on the best of all things, broken Easter eggs. Only to find they had a space for the milk chocolate ones, but no actual product. Grrr. We'll try again next week maybe.

Also, I've said every single year that the broken Easter eggs taste better, which is mostly comedy, but it turns out that I was at least partially right after mentioning it to the woman behind the counter. Turns out that their Easter eggs have more cocoa butter in them because they're moulded chocolate, so they do taste different/better. Who knew?

That was it really.