photo saturday: beach textures

I'm putting the DnD Character Colouring Book on hold for a few weeks, possibly ten weeks, because I have actual photos again. New ones. Ten weeks worth in fact.

This week has been A Lot.

Sunday I cleaned the kitchen. And made the discovery that the big baking tray I've been using since I moved in here is actually the grill tray, but nobody bothered to put it in the correct position, and it's much more useful as a baking tray. I also made potato and leek soup... which was... fine. I mean I forgot to put the cream in it before I had a bowl, and after I'd had a bowl I blended the whole thing up. It was tasty enough, it was just a little bit m'eh.

Then on Monday I cleaned the rest of the apartment. By the end of which I was exhausted. And I'd also needed to make an emergency run to the shops to replace my mop which broke halfway through cleaning the bathroom. I also spent a whole hour wiping down the venetian blinds in my bedroom, because they were filthy (because that's the window that actually gets open and I have a main road going past the front of my place)... and because the land agent mentioned them specifically last time. And I had to change the water over like half a dozen times. Not fun, but I was pleased with the results.

I also "rediscovered" candles. Which sounds dumb, but I had a bunch of candles I bought back in 2016 after SA had had a massive, statewide blackout, because I had one poxy candle at the time and went to bed at like 8pm because there honestly wasn't fuck all else to do. And they've just been gathering dust in the cupboard, so I got them out, and once I was finished cleaning, I like one, just to make the place smell pretty. Given that they are IKEA candles though, I had no fucking clue what most of the fragrances I had were... Green apple I know, because it's green and has apples on the label, and vanilla ice-cream (maybe just vanilla), and Christmas 2016 (which appears to mostly be orange and spices), but the other two are "bowl of purple stuff" and "black stone". I chose Black Stone, which is actually really nice. And I've been burning it on and off all week. So now I'm going to turn into one of those Candle Gays (is that a thing, I don't think that's actually a thing).

Then Tuesday, the inspection day, rolled around. I got ready, had breakfast, did the dishes, and headed on out, taking my book and my camera with me.

I wasn't completely sure what I was planning to do, or where I was planning to go, except for the fact that I had just under two and a half hours to kill. What ended up happening was I took a ride down to Glenelg. Not in any direct way, I was kinda sorta headed to "the beach", but arbitrary decisions led to me ending up at Glenelg. And it was raining when I got there, so I was going to settle in and read my book for a while, but then it stopped and I got out to take a few photos.

That turned into an hour-long wander from where I parked, along the foreshore to the jetty, along the jetty and then back to the car.

And by the end of it, I was so broken. After the big walk on Saturday, two "days" of cleaning, including moving most of the furniture around, and then an hour long walk lugging a fairly heavy camera... I was done.

But, as I've said multiple times, there is nothing better than coming home after a rental inspection. Because the inspection part is over but your house is ridiculously clean and tidy and it's just the most pleasant feeling. Plus now with extra candle.

Wednesday was the first time since March that the Wednesday DnD group actually met in person. Well, the whole group anyway. Since the other week when they were supposedly going to play board games and I couldn't be bothered going because it was too warm and I hadn't had enough sleep. So they all (characters and players) got together and had a big old adventure without me.

Honestly I'm actually fine with it. It was my choice, so I can't really blame anybody else anyway.

We got three quarters of the way through the module, but we'll finish that off and start the Part 2 next week, then probably finish up that the week after. So at least it's a better plan than we've had in the last few weeks.

Friday was good... the bread I made is possibly the best loaf I've made in a while, insomuch that it wasn't too wet or too dry, I realised that I needed a little more water than I've been using before, and it all just worked out. It is a little weird that I think the loaves have been paler after they're baked than perhaps they were before... which just seems odd, because now the seal on the oven door is actually working properly, so what's going on. Couldn't tell ya, but it's weird.

After Fluffy arrived we were talking shit, as we do, and checking out YubTubs, as we do, and the algorithm suggested this... and I was curious, so we watched it, and were very confused to start with, not least of all because of the thumbnail...

But by the end we were both totally spellbound. I'll fully admit, I didn't even know Christian Coppola existed (turns out that he's only a distant relative of the Francis Ford Coppola end of the family), but this is just exquisite. I mean, yes, Dylan Sprouse is ridiculously beautiful (plus that luscious hair), but this is just an amazing film. Full kudos to both Christian and the cast. Just spend the 18 minutes. Even if the middle of it is kinda confusing. Totally worth it.

And while I took the whole thing pretty much at face value, it's worth diving into the YouTube comments afterwards because people have some interesting ideas.

Friday night's DnD game was yet another instance of us avoiding what could have been potentially lethal combat with an appropriate use of spells and some lucky rolls. Honestly, there was some definite panic-roleplaying at certain points, and the opening of a door that shouldn't have been fucking opened. Because there's always a door that shouldn't be opened that somebody subsequently opens. Because DnD.

We had fun though.

Today was... okay.

We did the supermarket thing. I'm going to make another batch of Tuna Noodle-Do this week, because it's going to be hot, then cool, and that ended up being good "leftovers" (in so much that while it's technically left over from the day I make it, that's actually the point). So hopefully that works out as well as it did last time.

Afterwards we headed into the city, fairly early honestly, all things considered. And we got to exactly the right carpark at exactly the right time, because the woman who had just left it came over and gave us her ticket, which still had 2 hours left on it. So score.

Mostly I wanted to look at candles (see, Candle Gay), but I also wanted to get my Typo calendar for next year... the joke might wear thin over 12 months, but right now, I'm totally fucking here for it. It's a shame they don't have a Disney themed one this year, but yeah, given the amount of time I actually look at the thing, it'll be fine.

After we'd walked the length of the Mall, picked up a few bits and pieces, been given free cans of Pepsi Max Mango (which is... fine... it's been forever since I actually had Pepsi Max but honestly I could barely taste any mango... but it was free, and free is always better than not free), we headed back to the car and did a brief stop-off at Haighs, because chocolate.

And that was it really. Plus I still have an apartment that essentially looks like it did when I got home after the inspection, which is great.

Current mood:

character saturday: future self

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is actual future characters... as in, characters I intend to play in other campaigns once our Friday group is finished with Avernus.

Mr Keel (always Mr, because politeness, and seniority) is for Waterdeep. He's a Warforged (not an actual Forgotten Realms race, but screw it, who cares, I've been wanting to play since I heard about them) literally washed up on the beach outside Waterdeep, got himself a job as a shipwright, and then later, because he's incredibly literal, saw some ripped posters that told him to serve one of the gods of creation, so he upped and left his job and went straight to the temple.

So now he's a Forge Cleric. Who is technically wearing armour (the model is actually just wearing boots and gloves, but in universe he's wearing armour), but Warforge can "incorporate" armour into their bodies and make it part of them. Which sounds pretty fucking cool, honestly. Plus he's got the cool head fin, which is where his name came from.

Quill, or Quillamina Silverthread (no relation to Orryn, I just really liked the surname, and didn't want to waste it just on a one-shot character), my first proper gnome. Like I know there was Orryn, but again, one-shot. So she'll be the first proper gnome. Mostly because we'll be playing with the new "move around your racial ability scores" variant that will come out in the new book next month.

She's a Way of Stars Druid from the same book, or will be if they haven't totally ruined the subclass when the published version comes out. So, she's a stargazer, and some kind of folk hero, I haven't worked out all the details yet... I do think she has a husband and a child though. 

Originally she was going to be a redhead, but I coloured most of her outfit first and when got to a certain point I realised that I'd more or less made Skywise from Elfquest... or a female, gnomish variant anyway. So I basically went with it and gave her silver/grey hair. I also really like the eyeliner and the freckles and the red rosy cheeks because she lives in the cold.

And the quilting on the lower tunic, the star patterns on the shoulders, the actual apple skin photo on the apple and the pattern on the chest leather. I tried repeating that pattern on the boots and the belt, but it never really worked, so I gave up. I also added in the silver cloak pin... which took a few goes to get right, but I really love the final version. This was where I really got into my groove and found the best way to lay in those textures, but she's one of the last ones that I did right before Hero Forge's colour tool dropped.

Sad face.

As much as I enjoy whipping up fully coloured characters in the tool, it's not quite the same honestly. I mean it's cut down my Google searches for random wood textures, random gemstone textures and other such things to basically nothing.

Anyway.

I didn't end up putting the chicken in the "minestrone" soup this week. I mean I could have... it might have been more interesting if I had. It was fine, it was just a little... average.

Otherwise the week was... actually, it was a bit of a nothing week, honestly. I did some general tidying up so I don't have to do it tomorrow or Monday for my rental inspection on Tuesday. Which mostly just consists of putting things back where they're actually supposed to go rather than just putting them neatly elsewhere.

Wednesday was... wait, can you hear that? Those crickets, and the tumbleweeds. Yeah, Wednesday. Nobody bothered to tell me if there was a plan, nobody bothered to tell me that there wasn't a plan. Nobody messaged me at the last minute to say "hey, forgot to tell you...". So as far as I know, there was no Wednesday night get together. Who fucking knows.

I'm not quite as salty as that sounds honestly. I mean I could have easily asked. And usually if something is happening, somebody says something eventually.

Friday night was our one year anniversary playing Balder's Gate: Descent into Avernus... I tried, more than once, to make a Avernus/anniversary tie in... Averniversary... anniAvernusary... yeah, there might be something there, I just can't fucking find it.

But it wasn't a bad session... it wasn't super huge, and while there was a mild character revelation, it was one I'd already thought of, had a brief look at, and then discarded as being "a bit too on the nose". I mean, honestly, I think it's just that I get how stories work. I get the shape of them. And as much as I'm delighted when they surprise me, especially when it's a good surprise, I often see the shape before we get there. At least it often feels like that.

In any event, it was a good evening, we finished it off with a game of Phase 10, which the Universe decided that I should completely dominate at. It happened when I shuffled the cards, it happened when other people shuffled the cards, it just seemed to happen. Which was kind of great. Not perhaps the best introduction for other people to the game... but, hey, I had fun, even if we ran out of time to actually finish all ten phases.

Today was an IKEA kind of day. In that, we went to IKEA.

But first we did the supermarket thing. And despite what I said last week... more soup again this week. Because the weather can't make up it's mind. Plus I didn't want to be fussing around with daily meals on an inspection week. It's potato and leek basically.

Then after the usual routine we headed for IKEA. Mostly to have a poke around their Christmas stuff. Because while we seldom ever buy any of it, we do like to have a poke and a look. Also, I think it may have been the first time we've been all year. I don't think we took a trip in January or February. I think maybe August last year... so yeah, it's been over a year.

Not that all that much changes really. The details change, which is kind of the point, but again, the story is much the same.

But we did the wander, got our steps in, picked up a few little bits of nothing much, and then called it a day.

Current mood:

character saturday: deep blue duo

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book is my sailors... well, one half-elf pirate, one water genasi sailor.

They both got featured as part of the blog template, and I'll probably repeat most of what was said there, but I wanted to dig in a little more maybe.

Masika El-Borak was possibly the first character I made whose name was packed with meaning... Masika is an Egyptian name that means "born during rain". And her surname, El-Borak is actually an Arabic name that means "the lightning". Because she's my half-elf Storm Sorcerer.

She was supposed to be my bad girl, my bitch, my character who didn't give a fuck and wasn't nice (the fact her first name, the way I pronounce it, is a homonym for massacre only occurred to me later). But something happened to Masika when she travelled across the desert with a bunch of idiots, then continued to hang out with them for months and months and months. She ended up caring about them and they cared about her. And kind of ended up as either the bitchy older sister or occasionally the slightly exasperated and authoritative mother of the group. Well, except for the pretty but insane human girl PC she ended up fucking... their relationship has been weird and on-again, off-again, mostly due to the player in question, but still incredibly important to who both of those characters are now. She also has possibly the shortest temper of all my characters. If you fuck with what's hers, she will end you in spectacular fashion. She also once shaved her head after an altercation with an barman in a dockside tavern.

And I wouldn't have her any other way.

The designs on her coat actually come directly from Elizabeth Swan's pirate captain coat in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Her whole outfit in my head (and outside of what is possible in a Hero Forge design) was basically a dark blue version of that outfit. And when I found a fan made image of the coat embroidery, you bet I added it straight to her outfit. She also has a Lichtenburg scar down the entire left side of her body, from neck, down her arm and down to her foot... but very few people get to see the whole thing.

Oceanus (Oh-see-ann-us, thank you very much) Hopkins owes his name to an episode of the No Such Thing As A Fish podcast. Because Oceanus Hopkins is the name of the only child born on the Mayflower, bringing the pilgrims to America. And even better than that, Mrs Elizabeth Hopkins was Miss Elizabeth Fisher before her marriage. Too damn good. So I scribbled it down, intending to give the name to a water genasi at some point.

As a brief sidebar, the list of names of passengers on the Mayflower (or other members of their family) is a DnD player's/DM's dream. Humility Cooper. The brothers Resolved and Peregrine White. The siblings Love, Patience, Fear, and Wrestling Brewster. Desire Minter. Too fun.

Anyway, Oceanus is "Southern". My accept repertoire isn't enormous... I can do a decent accent from the American south though. And by decent, I mean often terrible, but a bad real world accent makes for a workable DnD accent. He's also partially Southern because one of my friends was playing a fire genasi who was Southern, and I liked the idea that genasi are just Southern. It also makes him often more laid back than I might otherwise play characters. He's also has a lot of Big Dad Energy. I didn't intend to play him that way, but maybe because I play him mostly with people roughly two decades younger than me, it's just what happens. I also haven't played him in almost a year at this point, which makes me kinda sad.

Oh and for the record, I've always described his coat as being his leather armour, but being made of "kelp leather"... in fact, his pants, boots and coat are all "kelp leather" because it sounds cool, and it seems weird for a druid who is all about caring for the coastline and the water to kill animals to make clothing. Plus I wanted something that would resist getting wet given the amount of time he was going to be in and out of the water, being a water genasi druid. You also can't see the full collection of rings on his fingers, which is a shame. The jewellery is the only thing that doesn't 100% gel with the way I ended up playing him (he doesn't feel like someone who would care about shinys, but maybe they're all things he found down on the ocean floor or in salvaged ships), but it was too cool a visual not to keep.

This week was... let's be honest, with a few slight variations, this week was the same as every week since late March, and not that dissimilar from every week before that.

However, I made the Tuna Noodle Casserole I mentioned last week, and it worked out really well. Doubly so because the weather this week was... way too fucking hot for October, so I ended up having the additional portions cold through the week, and it was really nice. And I think I only succumbed to eating out of the plastic container once. Otherwise, I still put it in a bowl and ate it like a person.

I spoke too soon about Soup Season being over though, since the weather goes back to a much more reasonable level next week. So I'm doing possibly a chicken minestrone. Or something.

Wednesday DnD was... a non-event. We hadn't organised anything, and then the suggestion was made to play board games in person. But Wednesday was the hottest day and I had been sleeping really shit all week... so I just wanted to stay home and hibernate. So I did.

Friday the weather was suddenly wet and cool... I mean honestly, I ask you.

Also on Friday I had my chiro, so that was essentially same same but different. And I got back here before it started to rain properly, so bonus there.

Friday night's DnD was good... I mean we kind of detoured into an hour long conversation about Buffy, since Fluffy is currently watching it for the very first time... which is a total walk down memory lane for the rest of us. In the best possible way.

The game itself ended up being just a combat encounter. For various reasons, not least of all because we came very close to getting our asses handed to us... but didn't, we called it after that. Next week will be our one year anniversary (which is actually the 25th), which is kind of insane. It also means that this week (the 18th, aka tomorrow) is the one year of our "session zero", such as it was.

And honestly, if we could survive playing online from March thru June and still be talking to each other, we're good.

This morning was the usual supermarketry.

The rest of today was walking... so much walking... I mean not really in the before times, but now... so much walking. We went to Westfield Marion. Ostensibly to look at potential ideas for Christmas presents... but also because we haven't been since... last year. I don't know when we last went last year... November maybe? Or possibly late December after Christmas... I honestly have no idea... but it's been 10 months. Weird.

And we did our usual walk. When neither of us are walking anywhere as much as we previously did. So now everything is complaining *le sigh*.

But we found a few things... a few ideas also. So it wasn't a total waste of time. And we got those steps in.

Current mood:

character saturday: body and soul

There is a problem with knowing what most of the content of a new DnD sourcebook is going to be before it's available. You start making characters that you can't do anything with yet. And really cool characters that you absolutely want to play at some point. Or at a minimum, you make very cool art for said characters and may or may not leave it up on your computer screen while you're busy doing other things so that you can appreciate it.

Or you might not. Who can say?

This week's DnD Character Colouring Book are two of those characters.

Firstly, The Path of the Beast barbarian... I really like this subclass as it appeared in the first draft. And my other barbarian, Fenris, could very well have been this subclass. But instead we have Wrath... because why not have a creature who already has sharp teeth and claws and a tail when the subclass lets you attack things with teeth and claws and a tail. And Wrath... well, he was most recently a resident at a particularly harsh prison... and maybe escaped, maybe was set loose in the world, but in either case, he has kept his restraints, for when the beast inside gets a little too violent. I will say that so far he's the only character I've given visible chest hair to. Or stubble for that matter. And originally he was blue, but then I decided that the idea of an albino tiefling was too fucking cool and I couldn't not do it after I thought of it.

And he's side by side with Jab... Jabble Nucklestamp. And the Way of The Astral Self monk subclass. Now I'm not sure I will every play Jab... I'm not 100% sure I'm as enamoured with the subclass as I am with Jab's art. Because when I started designing Jab, I designed the astral version in the background. And then I saw this line in the flavour text... "they see their mystical energy as a representation of their true form, an astral self". That was when I realised that what I was designing was that true/astral self. So instead I went very simply... that character at the start of the martial arts movie who gets picked on by thugs, only to turn around and kick their asses. Yeah, obviously I've been watching a lot of Asian martial arts movies. And yes, most of the colouring is random textures sourced from the internet... but I like how it came out anyway.

There's also no truth to the rumour that during the last week and a half I have coloured approximately 130 models on the Hero Forge website... okay, there is, but shush. It's just so easy (sure there are a fuckton of bugs they need to work through, and I still don't really like all of the default colour choices) and fun.

Anyway...

My lasagne was... relatively successful. I mean the meat sauce wasn't the best, because I added a bunch of grated vegetables to it and it just lacked that full on meaty tomato taste (I mean if ended up fine, but during the making I wasn't sure if it would). And next time, I need to skip the ricotta, because, while it sounds like a great plan, it never really works. And after I made this one, I totally remembered that I thought the same thing last time. Second time's the charm maybe.

It also probably would have stood up if I hadn't put it into containers that didn't really let it stand up, and I'd skipped the ricotta.

I also attempted to make banana bread part was through the week. And I mean, at the end, I had banana bread... but it wasn't as sweet as I wanted it. Partially because I was using a recipe I had never used before and partially because the recipe called for brown sugar and I only had dark brown sugar and used that instead. Plus I should have ignored the recipe and added the third banana I had.

Wednesday's DnD game didn't happen. Nobody bothered to organise anything, and I wasn't really up for it when Wednesday rolled around, so when asked, I voted for skipping.

Friday's game was our first game in three weeks, and not too bad overall. The mozzarella and tomato bread I made didn't hurt either.

Today I overslept. Ma was getting her hair did, and I didn't actually surface until the point where I should already have been at the supermarket. Whoops. Not that it really mattered, I did the whole trip and managed to get home before Ma arrived. I hadn't unpacked or anything, but I at least beat her here.

And we didn't really do anything. We did the YubTubs thing, made plans for later, then eventually took a wander around the Village, and called it a day.

Current mood:

character saturday: old blood, new blood

So... Hero Forge ran a very successful Kickstarter campaign back in January (their $42,000 goal was fully funded in 20 minutes, and they ended up getting over $3 million), and this week they dropped their Hero Forge 2.0 website, which now gives everyone the ability to colour your miniatures.

It did mean that the ability to download screenshots, which I've been using to make DnD Character Colouring Book entries, is now part of a pro account. Which makes sense as a business model, but is sad at the same time. Mostly because I now can't do my own colourings and character amalgamations/group shots.

It also took me several days to get to a place I was really happy with as far as the colouring is concerned. And there are still some colouring/designs I'm not completely pleased with. But this is just the first week (not counting when it was open for Kickstarter backers). And I know they have tattoos, shield decals, fabric patterns, make-up (I desperately want eyeliner, since almost all my character art ends up with eyeliner), war paint, scars and the like coming... and that shouldn't take a world of time now that it's live.

I'm also totally missing patterns and textures that just can't be done right now, but that I felt I was finally getting a handle on in Photoshop.

The problems I have right now basically boils down to colour intensity... especially in both the leather and the wood... There are almost none of the colour swatches that I like right out of the box. And a lot of the other colours end up feeling washed out. I will say that I really love the edge/crease detail colours, as seen on the shoulders of the leather jacket above. But I also need to keep reminding myself that these are miniatures designed to be printed at between 25mm and 28mm... and also that as much as I love Hero Forge and the fact that I have been using for years now totally free of charge, they're still a business, and their decisions should reflect that.

I will say that the redo of Orryn Silverthread was one of the ones that a) got the closest to the original overall (minus the aforementioned eyeshadow), but also kind of exceeded it in a lot of ways. Plus it's super weird being able to now view one of my characters not only in full colour but also in full 3D at the same time. It's also good that I can go in and tweak the colours a little (or a lot) in seconds, especially after changing items or posing.

Orryn was my first gnome character (they're a race I just don't much care for, especially when comparing them with my preferred halflings), who I made for a one-shot back at the end of March... who is a class from the world of Critical Role, who took part in a solo adventure (one DM, one player) that was mostly The Witcher but with more than a little of the Mandalorian thrown in. Neither of which I have seen/played. But it wasn't bad.

He ended up being a much more grumpy/gruff character than I thought he might be... and very pragmatic, in that he killed an old woman who happened to be a werewolf not because he had any anger towards the old woman, but he'd been sent to kill a werewolf and find out what happened to the people it had abducted, so he did.

It was definitely one of those instances where I didn't know who the character was going to be until he was out in the world. I do like him though... and so I might have to turn him into a different class at some point, something I can actually play. Maybe the new Rogue who take their knowledge from the dead... I think that might work.

Anyway.

Unsurprisingly, I got more than a little distracted by the new Hero Forge this week. So much so in fact that I totally forgot to have lunch on Tuesday.

I made possibly the final chowder for 2020 this week... depending on how the weather goes for the next couple of weeks, maybe the last soup... since I'm going in a lasagne-type direction for this coming week. It won't exactly be lasagne the way I remember the lasagne Ma made when I was a kid, because that shit was amazing... but it'll be lasagne after a fashion.

I considered pulling the pin on Wednesday's DnD game... just because we had a missing player and that can often result in us falling in a hole of indecision. But we got there. Which was good, because this will be the last game with that DM for a while since his partner is about to have a baby. I honestly don't know what the fuck we're doing this coming week since nobody has made a suggestion or put forth an idea of what the plan is... so we'll have to see. Whatever it is, I'm totally not making a new character... I'll have to see who I have in the roster who seems like a good fit. Or that I want to play.

And then Friday... no game... no DnD, no board games, no nothing. Because our DM was sick. And it was too hot and I couldn't be bothered with anything else.

Today was pretty fucking average.

We did the supermarket thing, and for the first time since March, muscle memory took over and I went down one of the up aisles... I mean there wasn't anyone in it at the time, which definitely helped, but it did confuse us both for a minute there.

Then back here for the usual unpackery and YubTubs... and I also cleared out my fridge, because that's a thing that needs doing on occasion.

From there we took a trip to Kmart, because after I mentioned my Phase 10 cards last week, I discovered that they sell them at Kmart for $10, which I swear is more than I originally paid for them forever ago. And they have update graphics, which I actually like better. So, no loser there.

We also wandered randomly around Kmart, looked at their small Halloween section and shook our heads sadly at their Christmas decorations that are already going out... but as I have said on a number of occasions, we are still part of the problem, because we still looked at it, even though we agree it shouldn't be out this early.

Then we picked up a few bits and pieces at Coles that we forgot to get this morning, came back here, hung out for a bit and then called it a day. So there's that.

Current mood:

character saturday: wild magic ladies

Urgh... everything hurts right now. More on that later.

However, this week's DnD Character Colouring Book dips once again into the land of "Characters who have yet to be". In the new Tasha's Cauldron of Everything book, one of the new barbarian subclasses is the "Path of Wild Magic" (or whatever name they finalise for the book), a warrior who feel the surges of magic from places like the Feywild. And it's one of the subclasses I'm possibly the most excited about. As usual, that excitement resulted in me developing a couple of concepts, a couple of characters.

And I never like to do the expected thing...

So we have Lady Rava, former Moon Elf noble, who got lost in the Feywild, and emerged lacking most of her memory, but a wicked feymetal (which is a thing I made up) sword, a shoulder full of scarred symbols, a lack of eyebrows and fey magic coursing through her being. What I will say is that this piece was where I properly learned how fucking effective masking layers are in Photoshop... so I will be using those forever from now on. It's also the first time I've really relied on a print to do most of the heavy lifting in a design. Her outfit is super boring if not for the giant print.

Then there's Vanwa... because I haven't, as yet, played a half-orc. Full orc, sure, half-orc, no. Vanwa wandered away from home when she was tiny, following a fairy/sprite, ended up in the Feywild, couldn't get home. Now, she defends the Feywild and has stumbled back into the Material Plane. She picked up the wings somewhere along the way (I haven't thought that all the way through yet), they aren't big enough for flight, but I figure they'll come into play when she gets the barbarian speed boost. It's not that she's running faster, it's that the wings finally work enough to propel her further.

Will I get to play either of them at any point given the current state of everything. Who the fuck knows. But they were fun to design/colour.

This week I made... stoup... stewp... basically somewhere between soup and stew. Perhaps too thick to properly be soup, too thin to really be stew. But it was beefy and full of vegetables and pretty damn yummy.

Wednesday's DnD game was decent... looooong, but decent. It was an adventure I'd played before that went badly for my character that time... this time it went pretty well overall.

Friday's game was cancelled due to reasons, but I said to Fluffy that he could still come over and we'd play board games. Then our DM said she might join us, sadly she cancelled at the last minute because she wasn't feeling well. But Fluffy and I still did the board game thing. Complete with chocolate stuffed bread.

But because I was expecting more company than usual at my house, I did some vacuuming on Thursday, which included moving some furniture around, which my body didn't appreciate. I then wanted to find my pack of Phase 10 cards (which I don't think I've actually played with since they got soaked when my roof leaked), and I knew that they were in one of the bottom two drawers of my dresser, but those two drawers are crammed full of CRAP, so on Friday I pulled both drawers out, emptied them, tossed away a fuckton of random shit I just didn't need and packed everything away again. I was tired by the time I finished, and my body didn't appreciate it.

It was this morning that my body was all "fuck you", which I didn't appreciate.

However, I feel better for having sorted out all my crap, and I found a bunch of stuff I didn't even remember I had. Like an actual photo (well, cut out of the free gay newspaper of the time) of my first boyfriend. That fucking took me back. And things that made me think of Lownee and Raury...

It was good to throw a bunch of stuff away though, and reorganise the drawers. I just wish it didn't come at the expense of literally everything hurting. Well, my back mostly... but that makes it feel like everything else hurts.

Today wasn't much of anything once again.

Supermarket and the makings for some form of chowder, unpacking and YubTubs, a wander over to the Village to pick up a book, and that was about it really.

Current mood:

character saturday: the dumb boys

Someone said to me recently, during a conversation about my DnD characters, that they liked "my dumb characters".

I didn't take any offense to this for two reasons... firstly, the person doing the saying, and secondly, because I also love my dumb characters. I couldn't do dumb all the time, it would do my head in. But I do enjoy my two "dumbest" characters.

So for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book, we're exploring the Dumb Side.

For the record, yes, one of these characters has a lower Intelligence score than any of my other characters and low Wisdom on top of that. The other has Int as his dump stat, sure, but his Wisdom is pretty decent. This is about how they're played, rather than what their stats are. At the end of the day, dumb is a roleplay option.

Firstly there's Vrak. Vrak is a fighter/rogue/ranger goblin who likes to lick things. He licks things he doesn't understand, in an effort to understand them. He licks things that may or may not be food. He licks things he absolutely should not lick. Vrak is a licker. It's what he does.

Vrak also put his armour together from whatever he could steal, scavenge or otherwise acquire, so none of it matches. And when tasked with an adventure that would take him onto the high seas, his only stipulation was that he wanted a "boat hat". Later he turned said "boat hat" into a magical boat hat that he can make produce a frog up to three times a day. This, obviously, involved him licking the inside of the hat, amongst other things.

And as far as I can tell at this point, Vrak's main aim in life is to Be Useful. So he's the character who will not necessarily attack the enemy, but instead go and assist one of his new friends. His ranger spells aren't the premier choices (Goodberry and Speak with Animals), but they suit him.

Then there's Khurg.

I've mentioned Khurg before. Khurg is my dumbest boy, my baby orc and I could not love him more.

He's also fiercely loyal to people who are kind to him, or most of anybody under 4 feet tall. He never remembers anybody's name and usually comes up with some visually descriptive name for them. Unless they're under 4 feet tall, then they're all called some variation of Squishy. Loud Squishy, Pink Squishy, Mr Squishy.

I do let him have the odd moment of brilliance, usually only when nobody else at the table is doing anything and the correct answer is blatantly obvious. Or I've played the module before and everyone else is going off in the wrong direction.

Speaking of DnD... Adventurers League dropped their new "rules" for Season 10. And once again, they are totally unable to get out of their own way. In fact they may very well have been laying in bed, thought their butt was hanging out, got up to check if it was, discovered it wasn't and got back into bed.

I'll be honest, I kinda get it. I get why you would think that putting certain restrictions in place would somehow be a good idea. But at the same time, it's yet again giving us something that NOBODY ASKED FOR. Nobody was screaming for this to be the way the rules worked this season, I don't believe, nobody was asking for restrictions on the types of characters we can make. And I can't even remember them doing the sensible thing and putting out some kind of survey, asking the community what they wanted. I know they've done surveys, but they're always very badly written and don't actually ask any questions that they'll be able to really do anything with. And I've written a few surveys in my time. You ask questions you actually want to know the answers to. Things that are going to be important later. You don't ask sideways questions with generic, unspecific answers that are going to give you some kind of information, but nothing that is going to be useful going forward. And if you're just putting out the same survey over and over so you can compare results, that only works if the questions are still relevant and they were any good in the first place.

In fact it's not just the AL surveys, it's all the ones they put out, Wizards of the Coast, call me... let's talk surveys, yeah? While we're at it, let's talk the whole way you convey AL information too.

Not that I'm actually playing any "game store" AL games at present. The Wednesday game is still AL legal, but only because it's just fucking easier to run it that way. The Friday game has never been AL. And I haven't played outside of those two groups since March. I also haven't played anything other than the intro adventure for season 9, and probably won't be playing any of the season 10 adventures... mostly because I'm more interested in playing the hardcover book that season 10 is associated with... and while I wasn't really interested in the season 9 hardcover in relation to AL, that's now our Friday night game.

Anyway.

Wednesday's game was decent. The best moment though, was after the official end of the game, when another character asked my character if he knew anything about a specific thing that's been happening to his character for a little while now... and I just replied that I didn't, but that it was only happening under this one specific circumstance... and the 5-10 seconds on silence on the voice chat as the penny finally dropped for the player was 100% gold.

Friday's game was actually pretty good. It'll probably go down on that list in my head of the best moments where my character just talked their way to what they wanted. Our DM did a very clever thing, she had the bad guys separate us and talk to us individually (I don't know if that's what's supposed to happen in the book or not, but in either case, it was a great idea). And she started with the character who's not great with the talking. Which was 100% the right idea, but also slightly physical painful to me.

Then it was the character who really didn't know much of anything because he hasn't been with us that long. And all the while my drow bard is sitting on the floor of a locked room, practicing with her violin (which I've decided she does pizzicato, but laying on her lap, rather than like a guitar)... and putting the puzzle pieces together in her head.

And so, by the time she was called in to see the boss, she was more than ready to go. I thought of it like the raptors in Jurassic Park... first, you test the fences, see where there are weak spots, see the places you absolutely should not go. And you give away information that has absolutely no value to you... and if it has the added benefit of completely screwing over one of the many horrid denizens of Hell you've encountered, that's all a bonus.

You flatter when appropriate. You never lie though. You might embroider things a little at certain points... embellish when necessary. But never lie. And don't stop talking. Never stop. Because you can tap dance on a sheet of thin ice provided you never stop and you don't stay in one place too long.

When you've been tap dancing long enough, you take a chance. As far as I was concerned, there was a 50/50 chance of what was going on... and I was pretty sure (given how stories generally work... which is also something that a bard would understand) what was going on... and so, you just throw it out there. See if the fish are biting under the ice. Turns out, I was completely right.

And when you go from the NPC potentially wanting to kill you through to him being perhaps a little flirty, or at the very least, we were moved from the holding rooms into the guest wing.

It was definitely one of those moments where I start out in the driver's seat and at a certain point my character just taps me on the shoulder and says "I got this", and takes over. Those are the moments I fucking live for. Honestly, I don't remember half of the things I said, I just know it was all pure Nightingale.

The most fun.

In things that aren't my friends and I telling each other stories...

I used the oven a fuckton this week. I made tuna mornay on Sunday, then finally baked some fish that I'd had in the freezer since the start of May on Tuesday, did more fish for lunch on both Wednesday and Friday.

And then Friday evening I baked a cake for Fluffy's birthday, which was also this week. As well as the regular Friday bread. I did not manage my time quite as well as I might otherwise done, but even though we were about 15 minutes late leaving my place, everything was cooked and pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

Sadly I forgot to take photos of any of it before we demolished it. Ah well.

I also had a chiro appointment yesterday... which other than being my monthly trip into the city at present, was pretty much business as usual.

Today was... uneventful. As weekends mostly are these days.

We did the supermarket thing. I bought generic beef soup ingredients, we'll see what the fuck I cobble together tomorrow. Also, slightly sad that we're coming to the end of soup season and I'll have to actually make food on a regular basis again, which sucks. I'll have to come up with a plan of some description.

Then we came back here... and did the usual, unpacking, YubTubs... and nothing. Eventually we went and did a wander around the Village shops, just so we could stretch our legs. But that was officially it.

Current mood:

character saturday: those wascally wizards

Wizards man... possibly my least favourite class... definitely my least favourite of the three big arcane spellcasters, which also includes Sorcerers and Warlocks. It's because they have access to a lot of really cool spells, and they have those spells in their books, but they can only prepare a certain amount per day, and while Druids and Clerics (and Paladins) have the same mechanic, those classes don't bother me as much as wizards do.

But here we have my two wizard characters for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Firstly Lady Ovelia Opalfist was my first... and totally not optimised. I did very much enjoy her though. I always described her by saying "if dwarves had supermodels, she'd be one". Sadly she did at the hands, or possibly that should be the eyestalk of a zombie beholder... disintegrate eye for the win. She might have survived had one of the party not set off a lightning trap about five minutes before, leading to her having about 40 less hitpoints. So when the damage hit, she was a small pile of ash and some random magic items including the Bag of Tricks, one of my favourite.

When I discovered that a wizard's spellbook doesn't count as a magic item so it can be destroyed, and if it is, the wizard only remembers the spells that they prepared that day and have to start again from that basis, I said "fuck that for a game of dice" and decided not to get her resurrected, and just quietly retired her.

I've tried to make a HeroForge model for her a number of times, but I was never completely happy with most of them... there just aren't anywhere near enough options for female costumes, but once the high heeled shoes dropped a little while back, I had another go at it, and I don't half mind this version.

The Morning Star was my desire to go completely the other way and was my first (and to this point, only) full elf character (well, surface elf anyway). He comes along with a ridiculously crappy French accent, and while many of my characters are verbose, he takes the cake even within the Venn diagram. He was also the first design I did where I really properly played around with patterns, something I've done a ton of since then.

His familiar is supposed to be a barn owl, but there's only one owl model in HeroForge... I do like the colouring job on the owl though. Made with real barn owl photo.

*extended two hour pause while I go for a nap*

This week I made chilli... perhaps not as spicy as I've made it in the past, I only had a couple of packets of chilli powder, but as always I made a lot of it... and then had it with either rice or potato or corn chips (or some combination of same) for the rest of the week.

Wednesday's DnD game was decent... nothing special honestly. I recommended these adventures to the DM, because they were a series that went across Tier 1 and Tier 2, but it turns out they're not as good as we may have wanted them to be. But then, really, what DnD non-hardcover adventures are.

I also got a call on Wednesday, the call I've been waiting for since the end of May when the tradie finally rocked up to look at my oven (after I submitted the job at the start of May). The parts were now finally in to fix my oven door. The tradie was on his way (on Friday).

And Friday afternoon, he showed up with his little offsider and the two of them took the door off the oven, replaced the seal, split the door in halves and added the new hinge (or hinges, I'm not completely sure). They were here for a total of about 15 minutes and left me with a fully functional oven.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

*picture the "It's been 84 years" gif*

Actually it was 126 days. But it felt like longer. Probably because with one thing and another, it's been almost six months since I last made bread for Friday night's DnD.

And yes, you know that I had already made bread dough before the oven got fixed (and if things had gone wrong I would have just taken the dough with us and cooked it there). It wasn't perhaps my best dough, not quite enough water so the dough was a little stiff, but tasty none the less.

As a consequence, everyone at Friday DnD was very happy to have bread back on the menu.

The Friday game was pretty good... my bard got to put on a performance, which is always good. But then we got into the proverbial unmarked van in the parking lot. So who the hell knows what will happen next week. I have a theory about what's going on, but I don't know if I'm right or not. Time will tell.

Today was nothing special.

We did the supermarket thing, neither of us bought a lot of stuff... I'm intending to make tuna mornay, because oven. And because I'm been wanting to make it for weeks now.

And then we came back here, I did the unpacking thing, we did the YubTubs thing... and then I made sausage rolls. Because Ma had said that she wanted me to make them for her birthday back in June, and neither of us thought that my oven would be out of commission for four months. And they're a faff to make, so it's always good when other people make them for you.

So I did all the things, and once again thanked the culinary gods for providing me with an oven that allows me to put 36 sausage rolls in all at once. However I did make the mistake of putting the leftover pastry in on a separate tray under the main tray. This had the effect of pulling a lot of the heat away from the big tray, so they didn't cook as well as they might have otherwise done. It meant that I had to end up putting them back in the oven for another fifteen minutes. Which was, once again, a bit of a faff, but honestly, worth it.

I mean they're all gone now... because I sent Ma home with half of them and I had what was left for dinner.

Current mood:

character saturday: town and country boys

Have I mentioned I have a slight obsession with halflings? I mean, honestly, they're my favourite DnD race. And while I've only played five thus far, I do have at least as many in the "maybe" character pile. Which brings us to this week's DnD Character Colouring Book.

Mielo Thornhill did kind of see the light of day as a sidekick when I ran the one on one DnD game for Ma a couple of Christmases ago, and given that the new DnD source book has a ranger class I'm interested in, a bunch of racial changes AND default beasts for the Beastmaster that can be reskinned into anything you like, Mielo may very well get repurposed into a functional character at some point. I very much like the idea of him running around with a little parrot-feathered velociraptor (you know, the actual, historical, turkey sized ones, not the fictitious people sized Jurassic Park ones). And he was one of the first times I tried proper freckles... or at least more effective freckles. So he deserves another chance at some point.

Colton Wildheart was a character I put together initially for a future campaign, but then decided that as much fun as he was, I was more excited to play a race I wouldn't normally get a chance to, and a class that would possible be more fun. But Colton was me pushing the envelope on fabric texture and seeing what would work inside an urban DnD environment that might not make any fucking sense for an adventurer who travelled around. He's another character that might either get repurposed or reinvented at some point. He'd make an interesting wizard, if wizards were really a class I cared very much about.

Plus I love that these two are using the same facial model and the same expression (more or less) but feel like completely different people/characters/whatever.

Anyway...

This week I made Basic Bitch Chicken Soup. Cube everything, add stock, use some chilli so it's not completely bland, enjoy.

Wednesday's DnD session was... one four hour combat session. Which wasn't bad, just a lot. Our DM dumped a bunch of the adventure that was badly written or seemed like pointless busywork... and we can make a two hour adventure last four hours at the best of times, so it was fun.

Friday we had another games night instead of DnD and played another game of Disney Villainous... which, you would think, as the true Disney villain at the table, I would win... but alas no. Not yet anyway. We followed that up with highly competitive game of Love Letter... because it was late and we were already feisty. Which I love... more so when we turn totally chill and zen games into feisty fuckfests, but any time really. And I think we did like 16 rounds of Love Letter, including some amazing first round guesses.

Fun was had by all concerned.

Today was super fucking simple. Ma was getting her hair did, so I did the supermarket thing on my own. I forgot stuff, because of course I did, but it wasn't too bad overall.

Then it was back here for unpacking and general whatevers before Ma showed up. And then it was basically a bit of chat and then a drive to Big W because I keep dropping my wireless mouse on it's head, which leads to dead mouse. Or at least dead mouse buttons. Which is incredibly irritating.

So one new mouse later and that was that.

Current mood:

character saturday: character sketches

Wizards of the Coast, the folks who publish Dungeons and Dragons, announced a new book this week, entitled Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, which like Xanathar's Guide to Everything, will contain a massive number of new subclasses. Twenty-two of them if the general scuttlebutt is to be believed, plus reprints of other ones that have appeared in other books. Which is very exciting. I mean, like Xanathar's before it, we're aware of essentially all of them as far as I know, because Wizards like to get the community to playtest potential subclasses, or just give their opinion on the potential build.

And that brings us around to this week's DnD Character Colouring Book... where after a random comment from one of my friends, I designed a character for a subclass that isn't even published yet... so we have Sister Lomea, the wood elf Twilight Cleric, who I made using a lot of the design choices that came out of last week's artworks. She's also my second lesbian character, since I just knew as I was putting her art together that she had a wife. Sometimes you just know, you know.

Just don't ask me how goddamn long it took to put that Elvish script around the top of her weapon.

Then, I realised that somewhere in the back catalogue was a character I first created probably 15 years or so ago, who was originally a sorcerer, but who would make a very different and interesting kind of druid. Which led to me making Blaze (not his original name... but the name he gave himself... I think he was probably called something basic by the orphanage like James Rose), the former orphan and human Circle of Wildfire Druid... along with his wildfire spirit, Ember (which is just some very cool phoenix art I stole from the internet).

So think of these are a character sketch more than anything.

Will I ever play either of these two? Who can tell. It will partly depend on how much they change the subclasses, whether I'm more excited by some of the other ones. I've probably played less than half of the ones in Xanathar's at this point... so only time will tell.

And if not, it was a fun exercise in character creation/adaption. Plus the artwork looks fucking cool.

Anyway...

This week's soup was a pretty simple potato, bacon and leek... blended smooth, which I haven't really done this year, because I've been enjoying the chunkier kind.

Thanks to SBS On Demand, I've ended up watching a slew of Jackie Chan movies... which is not something I'd done before. Not for any particular reason, they just never seemed super exciting to me. But they're fun. In most of the movies I've watched the female characters are often portrayed as complete idiots, and the commitment to stunt safety based on the post credits footage is insane to the point of lethal. But Chan is super charismatic, has amazing acrobatic and martial arts skills and they movies are a fun romp for the most part.

Wednesday's DnD game was decent. I mean we did have a character death, but the player concerned wasn't overly cut up about it. Otherwise, decent.

Friday's game was great... I mean it was mostly a shopping episode, but I love those. And we got a bunch of fun character stuff, which I also love. I will say that once we've shopped and done all the other bits and pieces, and schemed and plotted and whatnot, I wouldn't mind a big, fat, protracted combat session. Because it's been a while... granted the last few of those felt more deadly than I would have liked, but we've levelled up a bit since then.

I also had a really interesting and intricate conversation with Fluffy before we headed out, which was great.

And after the game, we worked out that there was a very high likelihood that at some point during my tenure in North Adelaide that we were all in the same place at the same time without knowing it... or at the very least all crossed paths at certain points. Which wouldn't surprise me, honestly. But is still kind of awesome.

Today we had good weather. Especially compared with the last few weekends. But actual sunshine and the ability to not wear a jacket and whatnot.

We started off with the supermarket... I'm doing something with chicken and soup again this week. Very likely including some noodles of some description. We'll see.

Otherwise it was definitely one of those "many things" supermarket days, especially given that the last couple haven't been, so I'd run out of a bunch of stuff. But overall, not that much different from usual.

Afterwards we did the unpacking and a truncated YubTubs, then headed into the city for a few errands. Not gunna lie, it's still weird. I mean it's probably going to be weird for... the foreseeable forever... but yeah, just going into town is weird. I would imagine going to one of the large shopping centres is even weirder, but we haven't done that in quite a while.

Anyway... we ran a few errands, nothing particularly exciting, and then called it a day. But it was nice to be out in the sunshine.

Current mood: