We're back in the land of DnD Character Colouring Book character creation this week. And I didn't realise how thematically similar they were in some ways until I put together these images and realised that the background colours could essentially be the same.
Plus the fact that they both have alliterative names... which isn't something I gravitate towards, except in the case of dwarves... dwarves should always lean into alliterative names in my opinion.
Leif Leatherbuckle is the latest in a long line of potential back up characters for our Friday game. Others on the list included a human fighter, a tabaxi ranger, a half-orc monk and a gnomish artificer. All male, interestingly, because that just feels right as a contrast. Leif is a mountain dwarf, a race I've never played. And I've never played a male dwarf at all. I've come up with character ideas for ones, but they've never seen the table.
Plus it means that I can lean into the idea of a Strength based ranger who throws axes and hammers.
And since they improved the Beast Master ranger (and rangers in general) in the most recent sourcebook, it's a class I definitely want to have a play with at some point. Weirdly though, most of the Beast Masters I've come across always seem to have animal companions instead of birds, and while the idea of a dwarf with a boar or a giant badger or a giant wolf spider or just a wolf is interesting, we're already a bunch of tiny gnomes travelling with a talking polar bear, so another big land bound beast didn't seem right.
So a big old snowy owl seemed like the better option. Because I love owls, the entire game is set in the dark because reasons and in the snow, for the same reasons.
I'm not 100% positive on the names yet... particularly the owl, but for now I like it... and especially because Ari is short for Arianrhod, a Celtic goddess of the moon and the north star. Which ties into the character I'm playing now.
Brief sidebar: I do very much wish they would add more designs for the owls in Hero Forge... or at the very least a version without the ear tufts that work work as like a snowy owl and a barn owl or whatever.
What is weird to me is that originally Leif was supposed to be a redhead. I loves me a redheaded dwarf. But it just didn't work with the rest of the colour scheme somehow... he wanted to have dark hair. I don't really know that much about his backstory... beyond the fact that Fluffy and I were recently talking about the fact that since I'm playing a female druid from a group of female druids, there must be male ranger counterparts to them who stay in the shadows and just get on with things, whereas the druids are more known in the region.
So Leif is one of those rangers. From the same town as my druid in theory, but, honestly, I think he would just end up being the ranger for whatever area is the closest is to where my druid would be if she died. We'll see what happens though. I don't intend her to die, but stranger things have happened.
In contrast, Riley Rose is a himbo. I conceived of him as a himbo, I built him as a himbo, he was born in my brain when two different unrelated videos I watched on YouTube both mentioned himbos in the same two day period. He's a sweet, handsome, muscular, stupid human farm boy who worships Chauntea, the goddess of agriculture, and just wants to protect people and do good.
He's a paladin of the Oath of Glory... which is, in my opinion, the most himbo subclass of the most himbo class. I love paladins, don't get me wrong, but they are the class most likely to be very strong, very pretty and very dumb by default. I also feel like he's the seventh son of a seventh son, or something equally "prophetic" or "mythic" or otherwise like a fairy tale.
And of course he has a shield with a big painted rose on it, one of the two symbols of Chauntea. Plus his grandfather's spearhead on a brand new shaft. Also, people don't use spears enough in DnD.
Moving on...
Going back to basics with a fairly simple chicken soup was the correct way to recover after the previous week's disaster. Even if I may have underestimated the amount of vegetables I needed, so it was perhaps a little thin. Tasty though.
I also booked my first vaccine appointment... and having seen that the place I wanted to have it saying they had appointments in the next two days, I thought I was golden. Turns out those appointment weren't for me... and the earliest one was the 15th. That's not so bad I thought... and extra week, but at least it's soon. So I booked it. Only to finally notice on the final confirmation page that the appointment is for 15 September. I can't blame the booking site that much, I did vague out a little, and honestly the difference between a 7 and 9 is... yeah, never mind... I didn't read the thing fully and made assumptions.
And we all know what happens when you assume... you make an ass out of you and umption. Or at least that's what Samuel L Jackson told me in a movie once.
Anyway.
I was back in the DM's seat for our Thursday game... dealing with all of the fallout from the previous game where somebody died. And we're a wordy group at the best of times but there was more than one instance where I just sat back and let them go. And as I commented at one point, the amount of emotional constipation amongst the characters without my character there. It does help that the adventure locks them in a library basement and lets them get on with things. Interestingly, it has also allowed my character to get all emotionally constipated and go off on his own, since he's not there while I'm running the game.
The other great thing was they investigated all the rooms that don't really matter and didn't investigate the ones that do super early in the game and uncovered things I didn't want them to before it was time. They also dived into the mechanic I thought could be annoying or off putting with both feet, so that's always a bonus.
Friday night's game was pretty good actually. I mean, it's always a problem when you accidentally capture the bad guy and have to decide what to do next rather than just fighting them. And then they escaped. Maybe, probably. I mean I might have avalanched them in a little, but it's very likely they'll show up again later. So, fun times.
And now we need to go and find out if my character's husband is indeed trapped in a mine with a bunch of kobolds or safe at home with our son. Because fuck you DM Fluffykins. On the plus side, in either scenario, he's going to need to roleplay my graph paper husband sooner rather than later, so... joke's on him I guess maybe? I dunno, but I'm looking forward to that quite a bit.
Plus I got to use my super special Circle of Stars druid transformation not once but twice this week, and while I flavoured some of it, he flavoured the rest of it in a way I really liked. And, honestly, my character was entirely too pleased with herself after the transformations... because who wouldn't be when it's taken her 40+ years to get to this point in her druidic career.
Today was...
Today was "I have a headache", that's what today was.
We did the supermarket thing as per usual. Came home, did the usual unpackery and YubTubs. I also made a whole fuckton of pickled onions, one small jar to give to Ma, one giant jar to keep for myself.
Then we got to the portion of the day where Ma wanted assistance in getting on the internets at home. Which, as anyone with half a brain will know, is a much longer conversation, especially given she hasn't connected her laptop to the internet (ie brought it down to my place) in a hot minute.
And because she hadn't warned me that this was a conversation we were absolutely going to have this week, I hadn't done the mental prep to think of all the things I needed to think about. So, as I described to her, there's a box in my head marked "The Internet" that I've been putting things into for at least twenty years with no real rhyme or reason and only loosely categorised. And now I need to take only the relevant things out of that box, present them to her in a way that she'll actually be able to take in and remember and not give her all of it at once. And also remember how stuff works, because some of the things I do/have just work that way because I've slowly modified them as I've gone along and don't remember the how or the why or the wherefore for some of it. And some of it I didn't even realise that it works differently to the way it works for me.
So now my brain is broken.
On the upside, if all things go to plan, Ma will be connected early in the week and everything will just work the way it's supposed to. For the love of all the gods in every pantheon... pray for me. Pray that it all works like it's supposed to and is smooth like the silk.
I'll keep you posted.
A large chunk of the day was, obviously, consumed with all that, so that's it really.
Current mood: 
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