How do you make a character that would work for a game and a world that you absolutely don't care about... and if people on the internet are to be believed, isn't a very good adventure... so you'll probably never actually play it?
Welcome to this week's edition of DnD Character Colouring Book... were you make a character who also is dismissive about the adventure and world of it all and just wants to be left alone to study.
Say hello to Ephah, Hexblood Warlock of the Witherbloom College of Strixhaven...
At Witherbloom, the College of Essence Studies, mages draw power from the opposing forces of life and death. These mages brew their spells from natural components and the essence of living creatures, using that power to heal or harm the living or to raise or entreat the dead. They can cause entire forests to blossom out of nowhere or call down old curses that scourge flesh from bone.
Oh, also his zombie hand familiar Phalanx. Named after a bone in the hand, obviously.
Of the three "races" (or lineages, which is what they're called in the book they're from), Hexblood is the one I was less excited about, mostly because I couldn't find a concept that I liked... but this all seemed to mesh nicely. The Undying Warlock of it all, plus the Witherbloom element... it just felt like the right way to go.
Plus, I decided he is ridiculously tall, and just generally over everything.
Anyway.
Wow. This week. Not going to lie, it has been the technical definition of A Lot. Not bad, just a lot.
Also, the weather has been so fucking humid all week that I might as well have been in Sydney or Brisbane... too humid for me... I can't with humidity at the best of times. But it's been annoying all week.
Moving on.
We start out on Monday... when I went into the city to do a bunch of errands.
First errand was to go to the Apple Store to talk to them about my dying iPhone. Well, technically the first thing was to get an appointment to talk to someone, then go do other errands, then come back. Which is what happened, but while I was running around going to the bank to get the drama from last Friday sorted now that I had access to the appropriate app, buying a new mask (plus ordering a smaller one for Ma), forgetting the other thing I needed to do... I stopped to take a street art photo... and 15 seconds later, my phone went "nah, no more battery for you".
So I went back to the Apple Store to steal some of their electricity to get my phone up and running again, only to discover that while the girl who booked me in said "come back in two hours"... but I was back within about half an hour, and the appointment I booked in for was at 1pm, which was only about half an hour, forty minutes from when I first went in. WTF. But, I was there, it all worked out.
Spoke to possibly the oldest Apple employee I've ever encountered, he poked my iPhone with all appropriately technology, only to tell me that my phone was only capable of keeping 30% of a charge in it's battery. Fun times. Especially when he said that he'd never seen one so low.
He poked around for a while, I asked some questions where the answers were either "you might need to reformat you phone and then replace it from a backup" or "that's just how that works now", which is about what I expected.
But he was nice, he gave me some stuff to think about, and then left the store, started playing my podcast, got three steps further on and the phone battery just died because it was clearly past the point where it actually had enough charge to do more than just sit there quietly.
Annoying.
So I figured maybe it's time to bite the bullet and get a new phone. It's been a hot minute. And by minute, I mean 8 years, 1 month, 29 days.
I came home, realised that I hadn't gone into the chiro to change my appointment to a day that wasn't the day I have to move house, called them and sorted that out. Then paid my bond for the new place.
Then poked the Optus and Apple Store websites for potential phone plans.
Tuesday I had the plumbers coming to look at the roof and it's ongoing leak issues. Again. They hung around for a good hour and a half. Poked the roof with... whatever they poke the roof with, ran water off it for a period of time to see if any of it ended up in my living room. It did not. Eventually they left after putting sealant on a bunch of places that seemed like they were a problem (also, hi, hello, previous plumbing boys... why the fuck didn't you fucking do that?), and advised me to keep an eye one it. Absolutely. Right up until moving day and then I will never think or care about it ever again.
After they left I called the moving company to update them on the moving date, and while I had them on the phone, I mentioned that when I bought boxes I bought too many of the large ones and not enough of the small ones and was there any chance that I could bring some back and swap them out? Turns out yes. Yay. So I threw five of the big boxes in the back of the car and drove down there to trade them in. Only got slightly lost once, which is better than when Ma and I went down there originally.
And now I have an extra 8 smaller boxes. Plus one of their "Safe Spot" boxes, which is designed to put things like kitchen towel and toilet roll and the kettle and tea and coffee and things that you will definitely need when you get to the new house. For free. Because I asked her about them, and, I dunno... maybe because I'm already spending all the money with them.
Wednesday was a public holiday. For some reason, even though this public holiday is on the same fucking day every fucking year, I was convinced that it was on Thursday not Wednesday. So, there were things I was going to do Wednesday that I had to put off for an extra day. Otherwise I did fuck all. Oh, wait, I emptied the linen closet and put all my towels and bedding in one of the remaining big boxes. So that's done.
Randomly had a lovely chat with Owlgirl via Instagram while doing that last bit... which was lovely, obviously.
Thursday was New Phone Day.
I'd done my research, I knew what I wanted and what was inside my budget, so off I trotted to the Apple Store just after they opened.
Yep, that's right... a nice new shiny red iPhone. An SE to be precise. And not just red... but (Product) RED. Which is nice, even if I'm sure it's not that much of a percentage of the price.
Anyway... it took a while to get through all of process and do all the things. As it always does. Because, stuff.
The guy who looked after me was very lovely though, and, given that they have a deal where if you buy the phone through Apple they give you a massive discount, I got the phone for about $220, and the bills will be slightly lower than they are right now. Which is great.
I also bought an adaptor for my headphones... because that was cheaper than buying new Apple headphones of any kind. Also because I don't really like the Apple ones... they dont' stay in my ears properly.
When that was done, I wandered around town trying to find a cheap but functional case and screen protector... tried Target, tried JB HiFi, looked briefly at one of those slightly dodgy kiosks, totally forgot that the other place I needed to look was Officeworks.
After that, I headed home, and spent... entirely too much time updating the new phone with all my bits and pieces and downloading an iOS update and updating a ton of the apps... and even headed out halfway through to drive down the road to the other Officeworks near me to get the aforementioned case and screen protector. Because, that's where I should have fucking gone in the first place. Whether the city store would have had what I wanted or not, I dunno... and also, I needed to pick up more bubblewrap so that we didn't have to do it today.
By the time I'd done all of that, my phone had updated itself appropriately along with all the apps, the battery was fully charged and I'd put the screen protector and case on it... oh, and I'd finally gotten around to moving the SIM card over, and made my first call on the phone to tell Ma I had a new phone, it was 4:15pm. Keeping it mind that I walked into the Apple Store just after 10:15am. So, a very phone orientated day.
It's just that bit much larger than the old phone... enough that I can put an extra row of apps on the home screen, and right now it's more comfortable to use it with two hands. But everything is new any shiny and updated and lovely. And also chunks of it are now serving me ads that couldn't before because my phone was very old. I'll live with that, honestly.
It is also a huge weight off my mind however. Because I don't have to stress out about my phone dying after me using it for more than 30 seconds at a time.
And, in the grand tradition of Bumblebee, Bonecrusher and Bluestreak... well, fuck, I'd forgotten that I was doing both a Transformers AND a letter B thing for my phones... actually, I very nearly called this new one Blaster, after the Autobot knockoff of Soundwave (the best Transformer, don't @ me... but the phone isn't purple)... but Blaster is kind of a stupid name.
In the end, from the list of the "red" Transformers, I decided on Perceptor.
Because I'm a grown ass adult man... and I can name my technology after stupid 80's cartoon shows if I want.
So there's that about that.
Also, while I was doing all of that, the real estate company from the other application I put in called. I don't know why. I assume to say "yeah, no", but honestly I don't know. Because I'd already assumed that I didn't and wouldn't get that place, so I'd written it off. And why would they call instead of just sending an email or a text message.
But I'll never know, because I didn't let her get too far into her spiel before I cut her off to tell her that I'd secured another apartment and wouldn't be moving forward with this one. Because at this point, it has been about a week and a half... week and a bit anyway. And if it took them that long to get back to me, I'm probably better off.
But not knowing will bug me for... about three more days... or until I forget about it completely.
Friday... actually, Friday I think maybe I let out the breath I've been holding for... I dunno... months. And I didn't even really realise that I had been holding it. But I'm pretty sure I have been. Or at the very least I let it out a bit. Maybe not the whole thing. Enough though.
Mostly Friday I pottered around the house a bit, came up with a vague plan for today's packing, but didn't do much else really. Oh. I did reshave my head and trim the beard for the first time since the middle of December. I probably should have done it at New Years, but I didn't... and was looking like of scruffy by the time I did the trim. Better now.
Then we come to Friday night DnD. It was... also a lot. But in a different way.
DM Fluffy decided that he didn't like the "trials" as written for the tenets of the goddess... you know, the fun stuff of cruelty, isolation, endurance and preservation. So he came up with his own versions, the evil little hobbit.
Because he also managed to sync the trials up to the backstories of each of our three player characters plus our talking polar bear NPC. Only we didn't realise that at the start, because we started with the trial that happened to be connected to our NPC. Turns out the polar bear used to be a prince regent (insert <of_course.gif> here... although, honestly, I had no fucking idea)... and we had to recreate one of his memories and all has to be horrible to him. Because cruelty.
It was... infuriating. In the best way. Because we were all terrible people within the memory... as in we were standing in for existing horrible people. But then we also had to be horrible to the prince regent without knowing that he was actually our polar bear NPC.
Isolation was my character's test. And I knew it was immediately. Because if anything underlines Quillamina's story in this campaign, it's isolation caused by loss and grief. Not that she's isolating herself, and she has the other members of the party, but she's been isolated from her husband through death, her son through circumstances, about half of her druid circle by death, deception or betrayal... and so, yeah, isolation works.
But the thing was we had to split up. Which I knew. Because, isolation, dur. And head in opposite directions. Again, no shit Sherlock. But eventually we each independently came across Quill's house, that she shared with her husband and her son... which she's kind of avoided since his death, unsurprisingly.
When she finally went through the door she realised that the house wasn't hers anymore. Someone else had put their things there. The building was the same, the house she built with her husband when they came to this place. It wasn't her house anymore.
Which, is, you know, not like anything at all that is anything to do with what I'm currently going through in real life... or have gone through previously in the last couple of apartments.
But mostly, when I leave somewhere, I leave it... and it's not mine anymore. I'd also been standing in the kitchen before Fluffy arrived at my place, looking around the room and thinking about that very thing. Moving on.
Fluffy claims he didn't specifically plan that... but it was odd that my character happened to sync up with where my head is at right now. Plus I have plans for that in-game house when the campaign is over. I have had for a while... which, I think, means that Quill has had those same plans for a little while.
Mine was also the shortest of the sequences. Because all we needed to do was have me be at peace with the fact that that house was no longer mine. And, as discussed, already there.
I don't think any of us expected Mr to have the reaction that his character did to the trial of endurance. I don't even think he could explain it, either in or out of character. And it wasn't the longest, but it was... no... it wasn't the most frustrating either... it was the most... interesting actually, because of Mr's reaction.
Also, because my character has been watching the other two characters have some sort of feelings for each other but not be specific about those feelings with my character or each other... we may have left the session on a "cliffhanger" after the endurance test was... endured (yes, I know) because I basically told Mr's character that maybe it was time that he said the things that needed to be said to the people who needed to hear them.
And then walked off to talk to the gigantic talking walrus.
So we'll see how that works out next week.
Oh, and after I fully charged my new phone on Thursday, I didn't need to put it on charge again until last night. Oh, the joy. Oh, the relief. Oh, the battery life.
Which brings us around to today.
Today was... exhausting. Because packing is exhausting. And moving house is exhausting. And I'm so fucking glad that I'm not actually moving house this coming Tuesday, because otherwise, today would have been very different. And much more frantic.
But we did the supermarket thing. And, when the check out girl put only a small amount of stuff into two different bags, I may have just repacked them into a single bag. Because fuck that.
After we came back here and unpacked, we made a brief trip into the city to pick up the mask I ordered on Monday. That's some good service. And by brief trip, I literally mean that Ma circled the block while I went into the store, and then we came back here and... packed.
I think we got through... six boxes. Seven maybe. And started on some of the kitchen stuff. Also, note to self, you packed a whole lot of stuff INSIDE other things. You probably want to check all of that when you get to the new house. Because otherwise, that's going to be a weird surprise in... two years time when you open that random tin or container and find... baking powder. Or something stranger.
You won't re-read this after the move, but maybe having typed it will make you remember. Otherwise, may all appropriate gods have mercy on your... kitchen containers I guess.
But we got through some packing. And my main room is full of even more boxes. And the stack of plastic storage bins next to my bedside cabinet grows ever taller. And the cupboards slowly get emptier and emptier.
And this is less and less my home. And I'm... okay with that. Or at least, it is what it is, and it's the beginning of something new.
And right now, my body is really fucking sore... lol.
And that's about it for this week.
Twenty days and counting.
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