The Glowing Stars

Chiptune goodness. Don't lose these links:

http://theglowingstars.bandcamp.com/album/anything-past-that

http://theglowingstars.bandcamp.com/album/horchata

So good.

The Atlas of True Names

The Atlas of "True Names" makes the whole world sound so much cooler.

006e9c

A truly beautiful color

The tale of Sameo

Copied in full from 1d4chan.org

My Paladin was sitting alone in the tavern while the party was doing some disreputable thing they didn't want me knowing about, when a peasant came in to warn everyone to hide. Scouts saw the orc army that had been alluded to during the campaign was just a few hours march. The rest of the party had no idea and were away (and were actually getting killed by being stupid and being led into an obvious trap.) My Paladin character, who has been laughed at his entire life for one thing or another, stepped up with an air of determination that would have made the most epic veteran of many wars quiver. He told the guards how to set up the defenses as he rode off to prevent this town from being destroyed in any means he could. 

This orc army had been devastating the lands. Since the beginning of the campaign we have heard about their Epic level Half fiend orc Fighter specced cleric of Orc God leading the campaign on his invulnerable Vampire Fang Dragon. His army of ten thousand marched to the town to claim it for their God.

And my level seven paladin rode off to stop their reign of fear and destruction here.

I met an orc scouting party and told them to go tell their boss to surrender. Otherwise this will be the last day he sees on this Earth. They laughed, so I fought and broke their squad and won the fight against the ten of them by being smart and getting lucky.

In the meantime, the rest of the party had wiped by falling in the most obvious of traps and getting backstabbed. I so wanted to scream at them for being so stupid and warn them, but I wasn't about to meta game.

So the DM concluded that the campaign was over. But I told him I wanted to continue, and if I died, I died, I would at least see the rest of the story be told damn it.

So there I was, at the edge of this forest, watching the orc army move past me.

I took out my bow, and fired a shot into the mass, killing something.

Then again.

And again.

Until they realized someone was killing them from the forest.

They sent in a group to find who it was. I hid from all of them, and killed anyone who found me. I continued shooting into the mass, and they sent more into the forest.

I continued this for a few more minutes, until finally I saw the vampire fang dragon in the sky flying towards the forest. He used some sort of fire breath attack for some reason and started burning down the forest.

I took pot shots at the dragon until I pissed it off something fierce.

I ran through the cover of the forest, and searched for a fallen sturdy log, and a high Y shaped tree bearing. I lifted the log using all of my strength to drag it onto the tree bearing. I fired flame arrows into the air to show the dragon where I was.

I mounted up as I saw it approach, and when it was close enough, I did something stupid. Compared to everything else, it really was.

I rode my warhorse up the log and jumped into the air as high as it could go and then jumped off, passing the necessary rolls to do so, and jumped on top of the dragon, grabbed the evil orc cleric's boot, and made him fall. In the meantime, the dragon bit me, doing a lot of damage and two negative levels. My horse died from its fall. I rolled to hit, and luckily, did max damage on my called shot to its wing, tearing it out. It plummeted to the forest below, staking itself into the trees.

In its death throes it breathed an everlasting curse against me and screamed to its master to avenge it, breathing fire everywhere.

And now in the clearing, I grogged in pain and attempted to heal myself while standing and watching through hazed eyes as the Half-fiend orc approached me, giant bone tower shield and great war axe in hand. I saw orc warriors circling the area.

The Orc warlord said something in orcish and the warriors stopped, circling us.

"I hope your ancestors grieve at the knowledge of the stupidity they have sired. You will die this day, and not even in death will you escape the fate that you will face. An eternity of pain beyond your comprehension awaits you. Your soul will be forever engulfed in suffering, knowing no release." as he heals himself and buffs himself up. "All you will find this day is death, and forever on.... only pain."

Initiative.

I win.

But I miss. So I draw back.

Move and attack, one attack hits, and brings me down to 15%.

I slam against a tree and am brought down to 4 hit points. I pass my fort save versus massive damage.

New round, I hold off my turn until he is close enough to attack, as he comes near.

"Feel accomplished, Paladin; you made this day memorable -- for myself at least. And I will make sure that there will be no one left to remember you, your name, or what you did here. That village will burn, and all within it will die. You are nothing but a stain on my blade. Nothing."

I knew it, this was it, there was no way I was going to live through this. Not even with a crit. I was going to die. But dammit, I was going down swinging.

So he spoke my Epitaph to my own thoughts and memories, detailing everything he knew, and why he had became a paladin, and even though everyone had laughed at him, and ridiculed him, that he would save them, even if they never cared, even if no one cared, or would ever care.

He walked up to deliver the final blow. And I screamed out loud and swung...

All hope resided on this die, I wanted some memorable scar to leave him with. Up to this point, this die I had used always failed me when it mattered the most. But I kept using it for the day that for all its bad luck, hoping it would one day churn out unbelievable luck and count at the right time.

So I rolled to make it spin, making it last forever. and it finally came out.. . . . 

... .....

.......

It had rolled a 1.

I groaned and the DM laughed at me.

He told me to roll again to see how bad I fail.

I rolled again.

Another 1.

I groaned again. The DM laughed again, and told me to roll again. If I got another 1, I was dead. 

I rolled and thought about how embarrassing it was going to be to die by my own hand.

... 1.

I sat there in complete pissiness and threw my die in the fucking trash as the DM laughed and consulted his book of critical failures.

He rolled his dice, referenced the book and froze.

"What, I decapitated myself didn't I?"

He didn't say anything.

"Well, what is it?"

He just looked up at me in a look of befuddlement and spoke words that I will never, ever, ever, ever forget.

"Character and adjacent target die."

Reywish: Maps I

Drawing maps is one of my absolute most favorite things to do.  Below are a couple of maps I'm making for the the Dungeons and Dragons game I'm currently DMing with some of my co-workers.  So, if you're in the campaign, and you're reading this post... you're cheating!

I'm currently calling our game "The Reywish Campaign" and you can find game notes for each session of play here.  Session notes should be updated on the Monday following the game, but we'll see how good I am about sticking to it.

In the limestone mountains East of the town of Reywish lives a group of Bandits (naturally).  The bandits are led by a woman called "Ma Li'Telli" (yes, and without shame) and they've got two camps; one on the North side of the road, and one on the South side.  The northern camp is a very large box canyon where they keep most of their horses.  The southern camp is in a much smaller canyon containing some natural caves.

The Southern Camp

I guesstimate that about 75 people (men, women and children) live in this area.  Many of them in the tents in the canyon itself.  A major point of interest in the canyon is the waterfall (center).  The water flows down from the bluffs and into a large sinkhole (~500' deep or more).  Everyone that has gone down has not returned, and the bandits currently use it as a trash dump.

It turns out that the bandits are not the first people to inhabit this area, and long ago (maybe 100 years) a great wizard named Fazool, built a tower home in this area.  Using elemental thralls, he turned one of the caves into a large stable (lower right hand corner of the map), and a small, low security prison.  The bandits don't know that there's a mage tower here because it's protected by a monster that lives in the lake (top middle), and they have done their best to barricade that portion of the cave off. 


Fazool's Tower

Level 1 is the top floor, and level 6 the bottom.

Fazool's Tower (first map, upper right) is six stories tall, and almost completely obscured by limestone bluffs when viewed from the canyon, or any of it's high ledges.  While drawing the map I decided that Fazool was an exceptionally powerful Water Mage.  One of the main features of the tower is a giant aquarium that passes through levels 2-6.  It's actually linked to the plain of Water allowing the creatures seen in the tank to change over time.  On level 2 the aquarium arches across the ceiling, giving the library a rather spectacular effect.

The tower has been abandoned for many years, and it is unclear if it was ransacked or packed up in a very hasty manner.  The library has the most "stuff" in it, but most of the book shelves have either collapsed or fallen, and books are strewn everywhere.  To sample some of the books that can be found in Fazool's library, check out this awesome ArcaneBook name generator I found over on D&D with Porn Stars.

Also of note: On levels 1 and 4 you can smell the sea, and hear seabirds.  On level 6 however, you can hear what sounds like ocean breakers crashing on the shore.  Is it an enchantment that causes these sensations?  Or is it that the pit on level 6 goes all the way down to the black oceans of the Underdark?

PSA: Battles in D&D

This post inspired by, and video shamelessly stolen from, The Alexandrian.

When playing Dungeons and Dragons please do everything possible to make your battles like this:

And not like this:

Thank you.

Having fun with William Yeats

I am a huge fan of Greek mythology, and last night, for reasons unbeknownst to me, I was inspired to modernize William Butler Yeats's poem "Leda and the Swan".  For those that don't know... umm... those that might actually read this... Leda and the Swan is a poem about rape.

The Greeks, loving their kinky animal sex, say that Zeus, disguised as a swan raped Leda, and from this "shudder in the loins" spawned Helen, ultimately leading to the Trojan War. I twisted it a bit, kept the Trojan bit in, kept it Greek, removed the animal though. And I was rather happy with how it turned out.

Mr. Yeats' version can be found here.

Clotho's Woe:

A sudden blow: slammed down towards the ground
With practiced force of lust, her thighs caressed
By his rough hands, her lips cut off from sound,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can her weakness through this terror fight
The destiny thrust fast between her thighs?
How can one denied an epic, Delphic, sight,
But feel the shame beat home with each reprise?

A shudder in the loins, engenders naught.
The sharp spindle, the blood splattering the floor
And Clotho wounded, pricked
Being so caught up,
So tangled in her skein of all that ought,
Did she realize his regal spark of war
Would thrash till death encased in cast off plastic?

Untitled

Like all beginnings there is pain, perhaps a little blood, and a massive ammount of light.

I have quit the World of Warcraft.

WoW does nothing but treat the symptom, and not the cause.

The immediate positive is that I should get some clean laundry out of the deal.