This Is Amazing!

Wow this is incredible!! :)

a hypothetical d&d party

The bard is mute.

It’s not the first thing people notice about her, usually.  The first thing is generally that she’s young, and female, and lovely–the first thing people notice about their entire party is that they’re all young, and female, and lovely, and that’s gotten more than one would-be thief or mugger in far over their head when they haven’t noticed the the paladin’s hammer or the ranger’s axe.  It comes up rather quickly though, often enough.  Whoever heard of a bard who can’t sing?

She plays a lute, mostly, or a lap-harp made of shell and sinew, string instruments she can pluck while she smiles in secret and watches everyone around her.  She dances quick, except when she’s tired, when she’s scared, when she forgets to remember the feet at the ends of her legs.

She doesn’t tell her story to strangers, but enough of the other girls have learned to sign by now, and it’s easy enough to sketch out the outlines of the old bargain: the voice, the prince, the witch, the thousand shards of glass she walked upon on her way up the beach, the look in her sea-green eyes when they travel too near water.  The thousand shards of glass she walked upon when she left the palace, and turned back towards the sea to throw herself upon the rocks, and then made her way up the road inland, and kept walking.

.

The warlock is beautiful and mild and self-effacing and shy, is tidy and generous and charming.  She’s small with herself in exactly the right way to shout abuse to the half of her party who knows how to recognize that same look in the mirror in the morning.  The bird on her shoulder is too small, too bright, too sweet for a real warlock’s familiar.  The knife at her belt is sharp enough for anything that needs doing, though, cooking or otherwise.

Her fae patron visits sometimes, in the quiet hours between dusk and midnight, a sweetly old godmother made of moonlight and shadow.  She’s kind to the whole lot of them in her own chaotic way, free-handed with transmutations and illusions that break halfway through the evening, for better or worse.  She once spent three hours around their campfire drinking brandy and gossipping outrageously about the Feywild and teasing the wizard into fits of laughter.

She’s never told the story of how she met the warlock’s mother, or what debt was owed there, and the warlock doesn’t know herself.  It was never meant to be a debt paid in power and violence and the deft will-sapping enchantments the warlock weaves now, but, well.  The prince wasn’t meant to be cruel, the warlock says.  The palace was meant to be warmer than the fireplace cinders in her stepmother’s house.  The faerie was meant to be saving her from her lot, not throwing her into something worse.  The power’s an apology of sorts.

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The wizard is awkward and joyful and nervous.  She has no fear of heights or small places, which just stands to be expected, she says, after all those years in that little tower, and she’s got no skill at lying or even edging around the truth at all, which is why she isn’t in the tower any more in the first place.  She says too much or too little or the wrong thing entirely, always, but the most well-socialized member of the whole party is the ranger who walks around with a dire wolf at her hip, or maybe their mute bard, so who are any of them to judge.

There was nothing to do in that tower but read, and brush her hair, and sort through the witch’s endless stockpile of dried herbs and potions ingredients, and watch out the window as woodcutters and hunters and princes rode by, and dream.  The reading was more interesting than the dreaming, most of the time, and the witch didn’t mind it as much when she talked about it.  She never bothered to actually use any of the magic in the witch’s books until the thing with the prince and the haircut and the desert, which she’s told them all about in all the detail they could ever ask for, but most of the girls get uncomfortable when she starts talking about princes.  It’s a little easier if she just starts rambling about conjuration and abjuration and illusion theory, about the 400-year-old history of a city that doesn’t exist any more, about the proper grammatical structure of Celestial, until maybe one of the quiet ones finally answers back.

Her hair is too short.  She keeps an illusion up over it whenever she can, while it grows back slowly, tickling the side of her face and the back of her neck and leaving her head too light and unbalanced.  

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The ranger doesn’t care about princes, which makes one of them at least.  Then again, the ranger doesn’t trust anyone, really, prince or no, not wolves or monsters or the men who kill them.  She more or less trusts the rest of them by now, mostly, when the wind blows in the right direction.

She wears bright red in the middle of the woods and it shouldn’t help her slip into the shadows half as easily as it does, but most beasts can’t see color and red’s just another shade of gray if the light’s low enough.  She never uses her axe against trees.  She doesn’t need to.  She can find a path through any brush without it.  She picks flowers when she finds them, and tucks them into the other girls’ hair.

Her wolf’s mother killed the man who taught her to use the axe, and the man who taught her to use the axe killed that wolf’s mate before that, and the mate had an old woman’s blood on his teeth when it happened.  The ranger’s blade found the wolf’s mother’s throat.  The ranger’s mother sent her out into the woods in the first place.  It’s not as though anywhere is really safe, cottage or forest, axe or teeth.  One of these days maybe her wolf will turn and go for her in return, and maybe one of these days her axe will be faster and maybe it won’t.  In the mean time, there’s flowers and berries and pastries and enough game to keep everyone sated, for a little while.

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The paladin’s hair is raven black and her skin is chalky as a corpse.  She’s not undead, mostly.  The undead are her job.  She knows that much.

She was sweet, once (they were all sweet, once) but apples are bitter now and so is she, and there’s judgment to lay out in the world.  Her grip on her warhammer’s all wrong–she holds it like a mining hammer, but it hits as hard as it needs to.  Her armor’s all dwarven make, and her shield’s black and red and white like snow.

She was sweet once, and frightened, and when she says it quietly around the campfire in the night when none of them can quite make out the glimmer of understanding on each others’ faces, everyone still nods.  She took a bite of poison and somebody left her a full year in a glass coffin of Gentle Repose, dangling on the edge of the Raven Queen’s domain while all the other newly-arrived dead passed by and faded away.  She woke up to somebody’s lips and hands and skin on her lips and her hands and her skin.  She doesn’t like princes.  She doesn’t like necromancers.

She likes sunlight, and summer, and colors that aren’t black and white and red.  She likes the way the bard grins when she whirls into a dance, and the look in the warlock’s eye when she sets her feet to say no, and the wizard’s laughter on high with a Fly spell, and the ranger’s gentle fingers braiding flowers into everything she can touch.  

Wow

For all your future scenario needs of “trapped in a murder house with freaking Bloody Mary”.

The Oracula is a new wraith that will be in the Book of Beautiful Horrors: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByEZ_EOCyILZTzhxdk5BQWpsWmc

Reblog and see if you get a color.

PURPLE: We near never speak, but I do enjoy your presence on my dashboard.

FUCHSIA: I wish I could become your best friend through the internet.

GREY: You leave me with jumbled words.

RED: I'm in love with you.

PINK: I have a crush on you.

TURQUOISE: You're hot.

CHARTREUSE: I sincerely wish you would notice me.

TEAL: We have quite a lot in common.

BLUE: You are my Tumblr crush.

ORANGE: I dislike your page.

YELLOW: PLEASE FUCK ME.

WHITE: PLEASE MARRY ME.

GREEN: I find you cute.

BLACK: I would date you.

BROWN: I dislike you

Popularity, Totalitarian Regimes & Other Signs of Vampires. Interesting... book title

Reblogging so I don't forget. This is great for writing

Resources For Writing Sketchy Topics

Medicine

A Study In Physical Injury

Comas

Medical Facts And Tips For Your Writing Needs

Broken Bones

Burns

Unconsciousness & Head Trauma

Blood Loss

Stab Wounds

Pain & Shock

All About Mechanical Injuries (Injuries Caused By Violence)

Writing Specific Characters

Portraying a kleptomaniac.

Playing a character with cancer.

How to portray a power driven character.

Playing the manipulative character.

Portraying a character with borderline personality disorder.

Playing a character with Orthorexia Nervosa.

Writing a character who lost someone important.

Playing the bullies.

Portraying the drug dealer.

Playing a rebellious character.

How to portray a sociopath.

How to write characters with PTSD.

Playing characters with memory loss.

Playing a pyromaniac.

How to write a mute character.

How to write a character with an OCD.

How to play a stoner.

Playing a character with an eating disorder.

Portraying a character who is anti-social.

Portraying a character who is depressed.

How to portray someone with dyslexia.

How to portray a character with bipolar disorder.

Portraying a character with severe depression.

How to play a serial killer.

Writing insane characters.

Playing a character under the influence of marijuana.

Tips on writing a drug addict.

How to write a character with HPD.

Writing a character with Nymphomania.

Writing a character with schizophrenia.

Writing a character with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Writing a character with depression.

Writing a character who suffers from night terrors.

Writing a character with paranoid personality disorder.

How to play a victim of rape.

How to play a mentally ill/insane character.

Writing a character who self-harms.

Writing a character who is high on amphetamines.

How to play the stalker.

How to portray a character high on cocaine.

Playing a character with ADHD.

How to play a sexual assault victim.

Writing a compulsive gambler.

Playing a character who is faking a disorder.

Playing a prisoner.

Portraying an emotionally detached character.

How to play a character with social anxiety.

Portraying a character who is high.

Portraying characters who have secrets.

Portraying a recovering alcoholic.

Portraying a sex addict.

How to play someone creepy.

Portraying sexually/emotionally abused characters.

Playing a character under the influence of drugs.

Playing a character who struggles with Bulimia.

Illegal Activity

Examining Mob Mentality

How Street Gangs Work

Domestic Abuse

Torture

Assault

Murder

Terrorism

Internet Fraud

Cyberwarfare

Computer Viruses

Corporate Crime

Political Corruption

Drug Trafficking

Human Trafficking

Sex Trafficking

Illegal Immigration

Contemporary Slavery 

Black Market Prices & Profits

AK-47 prices on the black market

Bribes

Computer Hackers and Online Fraud

Contract Killing

Exotic Animals

Fake Diplomas

Fake ID Cards, Passports and Other Identity Documents

Human Smuggling Fees

Human Traffickers Prices

Kidney and Organ Trafficking Prices

Prostitution Prices

Cocaine Prices

Ecstasy Pills Prices

Heroin Prices

Marijuana Prices

Meth Prices

Earnings From Illegal Jobs

Countries In Order Of Largest To Smallest Risk

Forensics

arson

Asphyxia

Blood Analysis

Book Review

Cause & Manner of Death

Chemistry/Physics

Computers/Cell Phones/Electronics

Cool & Odd-Mostly Odd

Corpse Identification

Corpse Location

Crime and Science Radio

crime lab

Crime Scene

Cults and Religions

DNA

Document Examination

Fingerprints/Patterned Evidence

Firearms Analysis

Forensic Anthropology

Forensic Art

Forensic Dentistry

Forensic History

Forensic Psychiatry

General Forensics

Guest Blogger

High Tech Forensics

Interesting Cases

Interesting Places

Interviews

Medical History

Medical Issues

Misc

Multiple Murderers

On This Day

Poisons & Drugs

Police Procedure

Q&A

serial killers

Space Program

Stupid Criminals

Theft

Time of Death

Toxicology

Trauma

This seems important. Sharing in case it could help people.

Can I have everyone’s attention please? Especially Australians

Sign Petition EN7163 - Asylum for Gender and Sexual Minorities from the United States

There is a petition imploring the Australian government to take in LGBTQIA+ refugees from the USA. Given the rapidly worsening political situation over there, I want to at least give this a go. I don’t have any illusions that it will get through to the people that need to see it but I want to try anyway.

The petition closes in 8 days; if you aren’t Australian, please do me a solid and pass this around. Reblog this if you can. Thank you.

I love the idea of this. Mainly I’ve because I always loved this song and critical role.

THIS SONG IS THE PERFECT FJORESTER SONG BYE

This so cool!!

CH

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I would recommend this YouTube channel. It’s great. Conversations and gameplay commentary both very good.

In this weeks episode of the Velvetcast, Mitch recovers from his surgery and plays a ton of games!!! Sora and Josh continue the good fight adulting and we discuss Stranger Things as well as Future Boy Zoltron!!!

This is adorable...

I wanted Alistair to be able to interact with Morrigan and Kieran so badly :(

Bonus: