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pixelgrotto · 5 years

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A look at D&D’s Curse of Strahd

From about October 2018 to August 2019, I led a group of four friends through Curse of Strahd, the latest campaign book featuring a dive into the realm of Dungeon & Dragon’s most famous vampire, Strahd von Zarovich. It went well, and it was an interesting experience for me as a Dungeon Master, since this was my first time using one of Wizards of the Coast’s official modules. In the past I’ve always come up with my own homebrew adventures, and I still homebrewed a good chunk of Curse of Strahd, remixing characters and formulating story twists on the fly once I learned the ebb and flow of my group.

One of the things I love most about D&D, however, is that such behavior is encouraged, and pretty much all of the major 5th Edition releases outright tell DMs that they shouldn’t hesitate to make a campaign “their own” by only following the book when necessary. Thus, the version of Curse of Strahd that my players ran through was an experience specifically tailored to them - one where a motley crew known as the “Well-Doners” (like a well done steak...or a stake to the heart of a vampire!) were sucked into Strahd’s strange valley of Barovia and forced to ally together for the sake of survival...aided by a few key comrades, including a funny gnome mage who’d lost his magical mojo, the reincarnation of Strahd’s lost love, a grumpy monster hunter and a massive ranger and his dwarf wife. If I ever run Curse of Strahd again for another group, it’s very likely that many of these key comrades - as well as the general crux of the adventure - will turn out completely different.

To all enterprising DMs who might wish to run Curse of Strahd for their own groups, it’s worth first noting that this is very much a Ravenloft campaign. Ravenloft is the setting that sprouted from the 1983 module of the same name, originally devised by Tracy and Laura Hickman and then expanded upon during the heyday of D&D 2nd Edition. In a nutshell, it’s D&D’s horror setting, and the horror is very much steeped in the gothic tradition, with a heavy dollop of foes inspired by the Universal Monster Movies of the 1920s to 50s, sprinkles of Eastern European creepiness and a dash or two of dark romance to complete the mix. I quite like this combination because it reminds me of the melancholy yet deeply beautiful world of Mordavia in Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness, one of the formative experiences of my youth and a game that has a great soundtrack for the backdrop of any Ravenloft campaign. (Interestingly, Quest for Glory creators Lori and Corey Cole were D&D players before they went on to design computer games, which means that the gothic realm of Mordavia surely is a clear descendant of Ravenloft.)

But horror of any variety isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea, and certain parts of Curse of Strahd - if run straight from the book - can veer quite sinister, because Barovia is ultimately a crappy place presided over by a crappy undead warlord. The introductory adventure of the module, dubbed “Death House,” actually deals with ghostly children who’ve died of starvation in a haunted manor due to the cultist ways of their mad parents. It’s entirely possible to make these kids untrustworthy antagonists in order to emphasize that the Ravenloft setting simply does not mess around, but since I was running this campaign for a group of four new players whose prior experience with D&D ran the gamut from limited to absolutely zero, I decided to make them into a spooky but still likable duo who could “possess” the players’ characters and offer sassy running commentary on the monsters infiltrating the manor. Like Casper but with a tad more snark, in other words - and the endearing nature of the children made the moment where my players had to lay their corpses to rest and confront their sad origins all the more compelling.

This act of balance - between ensuring that players recognize this as a dark adventure but also making sure that just enough light and humor alleviates the depression - is one that I tried to perform during every session of our game, and I’d encourage future Curse of Strahd DMs to do the same. I’d also encourage enterprising Dungeon Masters to perform a similar balancing act on the monsters and scenarios that permeate the adventure - specifically on the ones in the Death House opener as well as Strahd himself.

Death House, more specifically, is described in the book as a means to help the party quickly progress from levels 1 to 3, but played as is, it’s quite possible for players to get absolutely curb-stomped by everything within the manor - particularly a “final boss” that they’re technically not supposed to engage with, at least in a fair manner. Veteran RPG fans might relish the challenge, which is more reminiscent of Call of Cthulhu than D&D, but newbies might not like having to re-roll a character because their first one got wrecked by a Shambling Mound after only a few hours of play. So, retool Death House to suit the needs of your party - in my case, I limited the encounters somewhat to prevent a steady drip of HP and also gave my players a few tips on how to beat tricky baddies via those aforementioned ghost kids.

The opposite strategy goes for Strahd von Zarovich himself, who might be the big bad of Barovia but is surprisingly squishy when confronted by a hardy group of level 8 or 9 players, especially if they’ve found all the fancy sunlight-shooting artifacts of the adventure that can limit his powers. I can’t count the number of posts I’ve seen on the D&D Reddit or a Curse of Strahd Facebook group I’m in where frustrated DMs have written something like “Strahd was killed by my players within two rounds, where did I go wrong” - and in order to circumvent this from happening in the last session of a shared storytelling experience that had nearly spanned a year, I took a heavy pair of tweezers to Strahd’s stats and gave him three forms, each with their own HP. The first was his regular vampiric self, the second was him riding on his Misty Steed-summoned horse Bucephalus, and the third was basically Strahd going into berserker mode with black angel wings bursting from his back. (I stole the concept art of Satan from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 for that. Worked perfectly!)

Speaking of Castlevania, I drew inspiration from the recent Netflix series - which I’ve written about here and here - when it came to developing Strahd’s actual personality, because even though the book updated his original Bela Lugosi-esque appearance into something more regal and fantasy-inspired, his essence is still something of a two dimensional bad guy, and the fact that one of his eternal missions in undeath is to make the reincarnation of his original lover fall for him is a problematic pill to swallow in 2019, even if it is meant as an ode to Dracula’s obsession with Mina Harker in Bram Stoker’s original novel. And so I decided to make my version of Strahd similar to the depressed, weary-of-life Dracula in Netflix Castlevania, turning him into a vampire of complexities - a guy who’s been immortal for so long that he almost wants the players to kill him, a man who believes he’s entitled to the love of a woman yet somewhere deep down realizes the inherent selfishness of that belief, and a lord who’s grown bored with his kingdom yet can’t quite relinquish the power he’s held over it for centuries. My Strahd, in other words, was still a bad dude, but at least a somewhat deeper bad dude that the cardboard cutout as presented in the book, and one of my players even described him as “a little like Kylo Ren,” which I took as a compliment.

Before I wrap this up, I’d like to return to the concept of the balancing act with regards to the structure and scope of Curse of Strahd, which is a true sandbox adventure. Players are not required to visit half of the locations outlined in the book, and the replayability factor is high, because the various artifacts that you need to defeat Strahd, as well as the specific non-player characters likely to assist you along the way, are dependent on a tarot card reading that occurs near the start of the adventure. The locations that I found the most important for my players were the towns of Barovia and Vallaki, the Wizard of Wines Winery, Yester Hill, Van Richten’s Tower, the Ruins of Berez, and Castle Ravenloft itself. Other groups online swear by Krezk, a third town that my players never bothered to visit (though I would have urged them to go there if we’d had any clerics or paladins in the party, since Krezk is a town with a giant church), and the Amber Temple, the lair where Strahd obtained his undead powers (a place I feel is best suited for players of neutral or evil-leaning alignments). Your mileage may vary, but if you’re going to DM this module, one of the best bits of advice I can give would be to see which locations your players are naturally inquisitive about, and then focus on those. Exploring every nook and cranny of Barovia can quickly turn into a slog otherwise.

With all this in mind, I think it’s time for the so-called “Well-Doners” to leave the world of gothic horror behind for a bit. They’ve somehow managed to find their way back to their home plane and the city of Waterdeep, and only one of the party was infected with a seemingly fatal curse after their stay in Ravenloft. What further quests await, I wonder, and what new campaign book will I hack apart to suit my players’ tastes? That’s for me to know, for them to find out, and for another long blog post examination...sometime in 2020, hopefully!

All photographs taken by me.

#pixel grotto #musings #tabletop gaming #roleplaying game #rpg #dungeons & dragons #d&d #curse of strahd

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serkonans · 5 years

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i would legit love to know ur answer to all of those dnd questions tbh

so many gfsljgf thank you antonia i love ask memesputting #13 up here for the anon who requested it and the rest below the cut!13. Introduce your current party.I currently DM a few games! School is hectic and I don’t get to play very often but all the characters are GoodI have one group campaign titled “When the River Bleeds Red” (which is probably news to you, Antonia, and everyone else who plays, idt I ever mentioned that slkfjglfskj) that has a blacksmith (half-elven cleric, @the-idiot-who-stood-still) named Brigitte Faestrum, a pumpkin farmer (halfling druid, @beesgnees) named Cathal Headrig, a former stage performer (fire genasi sorcerer, @merrigold) named Emelia Sparks, and a former mercenary (gnome fighter, @jacqmutiny) named Nyx!I also DM one-on-one campaigns for @merrigold (who plays an aasimar druid named senua tasked with undertaking journeys on behalf of the gods in “The Glacial Erratic”) and @fictitiousbees (who plays a kenku wizard named scribbles called to the service of a high dragon in “Luck of the Draw”)Everything else below the cut!

1. A favorite character you have played.

I’ve only played two characters! One was Carran Warset, who is my Son and like the bulk of the reason I know I’m trans, and one was Chim from your one-on-one campaign. I rly like both of them tbh but Carran is my child gkjlsfgjs

2. Your favorite character that someone else has played.

Excluding anything I’ve DMed, Sivarna by @pluviance!

3. Your favorite side quest.

In the group campaign we played in together, there was one session that idr if you were able to be there for but we like,,, went into a forest and bought a really ugly belt from a stoner for zero plot reasons and I count it as a side quest in my heart

4. Your current campaign.

Well, you know everything about all my current campaigns that you’re allowed to know rn, but for anyone who might be reading who isn’t in them:

The group campaign is being used as scapegoats in the brutal murder of an ambassador’s daughter and is fleeing a city through secret tunnels -- we last left off at Cathal becoming a giant badger and burrowing upward

In the solo campaign with Senua, she’s attempting to deliver a large, magical object from the goddess of earth deep inside a mountain, and she’s facing down a basilisk with three NPCs

And in the solo campaign with Scribbles, he’s just played a card game that was really more of an interrogation, where he found out a high dragon has taken interest in him, and he is, in unrelated news, taking a package to the local apothecary

5. Favorite NPC.

Of someone else’s, I love Lucy from the Chim campaign!

Of mine, I will never stop loving Mr. Kretever Tatell. Kret is a goddamn idiot but he’s my goddamn idiot

6. Favorite death (monster, player character, NPC, etc).

Carran once killed an evil poison merchant by seducing her in an enemy king’s bedroom and stabbing her when he went in for the kiss gkfsljgfsj. Then he and Sivarna wound up hiding with her corpse under a bed discussing the concept of threesomes in whispers while the king wandered around his room. Not as like, a possibility. Just because the topic came up

7. Your favorite downtime activity.

S,,,hop,,,,,,, money tiem $

8. Your favorite fight/encounter.

I liked the fight where I balanced the combat correctly lkgsflkjskljg, the one with guards in the tunnels

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

Storytelling!

10. Your favorite enemy and the enemy you hate the most.

Homebrew enemies are coolest imo but hard to balance; the giant gemstone ant I had you fight would’ve been my favorite if it’d been able to get more than like two attacks in gskjgksj

And insect swarms are very annoying to fight

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

How often I play is whenever every single one of the stars align and ideally I would play like every other day fksjglskfjg

12. Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

God the current ones haven’t gone long enough for those yet really and I’m blanking on most from the group player campaign

I do remember Carran was 1000% convinced basil was poison at one point and his pet rat killed an evil, powerful sorcerer by chewing his ear

14. Introduce any other parties you have played in or DM-ed.

Just the group player campaign with Carran, which didn’t get to the heavy plot stuff before it ended tbh, and then the solo one you ran with Chim in what was rly a Very cool world concept of like hellish Las Vegas that I’d like to steal at some point

And then you ofc know this but for anyone reading who doesn’t, I’m going DM a maybe-oneshot, maybe-a few more than oneshot post-apocalyptic campaign for you and @fictitiousbees, set in a world that’s been destroyed by fast growing invasive fungi which is like. only The sexiest apocalypse scenario

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Yes, religiously. Game time snack time

16. Do you play online or in person? Which do you prefer?

I’ve never played in person other than a single test game for new players! I prefer online tho; you can look things up and type if you’re shy

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

I have a rule about only two players being able to try the same sort of check, but that’s it for us so far that I can think of

18. Does your party keep any pets?

Not yet! Cathal has a way with animals though

19. Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

I Do

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

I got into it bc Critical Role made it look super super fun, and I’ve been playing off and on for two years now

21. Have you ever regretted something your character has done?

I’ve regretted everything any character I’ve controlled has done I think that’s just dnd

Realistically tho, big yes for a lot of what Carran did, most notably snooping on another player character who had cast Alarm on her room

22. What color was your first dragon?

Haven’t had one yet!

23. Do you use premade modules or original campaigns?

100% original babey

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

3% planning 97% “oh fuck I need to have an idea Now” babey

For DMs

25. What have your players done that you never could have planned for?

Everything, it’s why I never know what I’m doing

I never expected Cathal to become a large badger and dig out of the underground, how do you prepare for someone to, in all seriousness, tell you they’re going to become a badger and scrabble to the surface

26. What was your favorite scene to write and show your characters.

I really tend to enjoy the one-on-one scenes; I think my favorite was having you roll that insane wild magic surge and detailing What Happened At The Theatre

27. Do you allow homebrew content?

Yes if it can go in DND Beyond

28. How often do you use NPCs in a party?

In group campaigns, not often, although we have two with us right now. In solo campaigns, if you want combat you’re getting an NPC party, at least for a bit

29. Do you prefer RP heavy sessions or combat sessions?

Personally I love RP heavy sessions; combat is fun but I crave Story

30. Are your players diplomatic or murder hobos?

I think mostly diplomatic with a dash of murder hobo

For Players

31. What is your favorite class? Favorite race?

I’m so so so boring but I love humans gksfjgsk

Humans, elves, and half-elves are my favorite

And then I Would Die For Every Rogue, it’s hands down my favorite class

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

Rogue role

Lemme stealth and steal and stab

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

For Carran it was,, A Whole Process

I came up with a basic idea, then journaled as him several times and wrote and rewrote until I had what felt Right, and then I kept toying with it and adding more details throughout the campaign -- I love playing and would really like to again but the obsession with expanding upon his story made me realize I need the freedom of worldbuilding that goes along with DMing; I don’t think I could be a player without DMing a separate campaign bc I just try to take over

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

Both!

35. How much roleplay do you like to do?

So much, I usually use old acting techniques and get fully into character

thank you again antonia!!! these were fun

#fox speaks #long post #in case the cut doesn't work bc tumblr bad #merrigold

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megareviews · 5 years

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Spring 2019 First Impressions

The Spring list is late as usual (is it usual if it’s only the second instance?), but at least I’m closer to the beginning than last year. I’ve reached 50% completion on the doing this for an entire year consistently, so nice.

Aikatsu Friends!: Kagayaki no Jewel (Aikatsu Friends!: Jewel of Radiance): Aikatsu is relatively low on my priority list of magical girl megaseries.

Bakugan Battle Planet: This show actually premiered last semester, but in English, and this season is when the Japanese dub started. Either way it’s somewhere deep in the Bakugan series, which is based off of what are probably my least played children’s toys.

BAKUMATSU Crisis: Second season of an otome game adaption that looked okay when I started it, but I still haven’t watched past the first episode.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Bokuben / We Never Learn): The main show that I know the source material of, and it is just about meeting my expectations. An average guy who has to study rigorously to maintain his average grades is put in charge of tutoring the two smartest people in his school. This might not make sense until it’s explained that he has to tutor them in their worst subjects, because those subjects are the ones they want to major in for college. It’s a nice theme of working hard for what you enjoy situated in a rom-com with some haremy aspects and an unusually high density of goofy faces, so watch it if you like those aspects.

Bungou Stray Dogs 3: I still need to see what they did with HP Lovecraft in season 2

Carole & Tuesday: What happens when a runaway rich girl and a poor orphan girl meet up on Mars? They form a band of course. A tale of two lonely souls finding each other and become a little less lonely in a big world, making music together. It looks great and it sounds amazing, so this is definitely a priority watch.

Chou Kadou Girl 1/6 (Amazing Stranger): Imagine Buzz Lightyear from the original Toy Story except in a 20 -something guy’s house and then failing the don’t move when humans are around rule almost immediately. That’s what this show is.

Cinderella Girls Gekijou CLIMAX SEASON (Cinderella Girls Theater CLIMAX SEASON): For somebody who doesn’t watch idol shows, the theater shorts are pretty fun, though I’m not nearly caught up in this one to say how this season is going.

Diamond no Ace Act II: Oh boy there’s so much baseball this season and a lot of it is sequels.

Fairy Gone: There’s a lot of things going on in this show but I think I can simplify it to military use of fairies to give soldiers super powers. The protagonist has been taking jobs as a mercenary to find her sister who was split from her after their village was burnt down. Then at an auction that she works as a guard, things start going wrong and the thief who appears is none other than that sister. The first episode ends with the end of a three way fight between security and the girls, so I’m not sure where the show’s going at all. Maybe if the show didn’t flash back to the protagonist’s village burning down three times, there would be a little more time to give direction.

Fruits Basket (2019): I never know how to deal with reboots for shows that I can remember, but haven’t seen the original. I know there’s people who turn into animals and a “do the carpets match the drapes” joke, and that’s about it from the 2001 anime.

Gunjou no Magmel (Magmel of the Blue Sea): After a new continent appears in the world, explorers flock to it, not always as prepared as they should be for venturing into the unknown. The main character works at a company to rescue explorers from mishaps along with a few others. The worldbuilding is interesting and the main character’s black lightning is pretty cool looking, but his attitude and decision making abilities kinda put me off for now. That and the comprehensibility of the subtitles I was watching fell off a cliff halfway through the episode.

Hachigatsu no Cinderella Nine (Cinderella Nine in August): So far it looks like a pretty standard club building show based around women’s baseball. It looks nice and we have 4 club members as of the first episode, so they should make it to at least full team of nine pretty quickly. It looks nice outside of an odd montage near the end of the episode when the club plays a game with some local kids, and the character designs are a bit more memorable than the usual baseball cast. I appreciate the fact that they’re playing hardball, but I’m not the type of person to watch anything sports ever.

Hangyaku-sei Million Arthur 2 (Operation Han-Gyaku-Sei Million Arthur): All I know about this show is that there’s a bunch of characters named Arthur and that it’s a sequel.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu (Hitori Bocchi's ○○ Lifestyle): When one of the most socially anxious kids in elementary school gets separated by her only friend when they go to different middle schools, her friend gives her a quest: to become friends with everybody in her new class. She’s got a real go-getter attitude, but from feeling physical pain from trying to talk to a stranger to fainting when somebody actually responds to her, she’s got a rough path ahead of her. It’s a really fun show that gets you rooting for the main character in her attempts of communicating with others in a normal manner.

Isekai Quartet: Four of the biggest isekai series in one short mash-up is a recipe for confusion. Especially since they’re all put together in a school setting where no fighting is allowed, even if there are holy gods and undead abominations in the same class. Anything can happen with all these people taken from their original normal lives, tossed into various fantasy worlds, and then slam dunked back into a relatively normal setting.

Jimoto ga Japan (I’m From Japan): I cannot find a trace of the anime anywhere online and I am glad of this having read the manga. It is just a really dumb comedy about Japanese prefectures that I struggled to read a few chapters of before giving up.

Joushikausei: A silent anime, as in there’s no spoken words, about a few high school girls. It’s an interesting concept, but I found it a bit uncomfortable to watch, mostly due to the whimpering and other nonverbal noises the girls were making.

Kedama no Gonjirou (Gonjiro the Yarn Ball): A children’s show that hasn’t been licensed and no group is fansubbing it, how unusual… It actually looks interesting though so I might search for the raws to check it out.

Kenja no Mago (The Magi’s Grandson): A child raised by a powerful wizard in the country reaches an age where he can move out to the city and attend a magical high school. Unfortunately for him, his parental figures only taught him combat and magic, so he doesn’t really know how to sustain himself in the reals world. It is a decent concept but there’s a 50/50 chance of any scene looking nice or looking awful, and the scene transitions all look like they were made in Powerpoint.

Kimetsu no Yaiba (Demon Slaying Blade): A happy family of coal sellers is destroyed in a night when a demon strikes. The eldest son was out due to a combination of work and a blizzard, and when he returns he finds all but one of his family members completely cold and covered in blood. This last member is rushed down the mountainside for medical aid, only to turn into a demon on the way down. A meeting with a demon slayer turns tricky as he tries to protect his demonized sister who’s fighting between killing instincts and her love of her brother. The opening promises some beautiful animations and the overall show isn’t slacking either, so overall it’s a very promising show.

KING OF PRISM -Shiny Seven Stars-: It’s the TV version of a boy band movie tetralogy which is also a sequel I think?

Kiratto Pri☆chan Season 2: A sequel to a idol anime that I reviewed last year. I think this is one of the first times a sequel has shown up that I also reviewed the first season of, though unfortunately it was for a show that I didn’t watch fully.

Kono Oto Tomare! (Stop this Sound!): One more club building show for this season, this one about a Japanese instrument called a koto. After all the upperclassmen of the club graduated in the previous year, only the main character is left in the club, and needs more members before the club gets closed, the usual. The first new member is a seemingly delinquent 1st year who is surprisingly diligent. There wasn’t too much interesting or unique other than the topic of the club, so music fans might find this more watchable than I.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO (YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World): The first episode for this kind of front-loaded introducing characters and pulled out its premise of parallel dimensions and a device to navigate them towards the end, which means I’d probably have to watch another episode to figure out how I feel about it. It’s nice to not have a giant exposition dump take up the first episode of a show, especially since it will have two cours to tell a story, but I didn’t feel any particular gravitation towards the characters by this point, so I won’t be prioritizing any follow-up on it.

Mayonaka no Occult Koumuin (Midnight Occult Civil Servants): With a job at a place called the Nocturnal Community Relations Division, the first thought of the type of people dealt with is most likely not going to be fairies. Our main character is taken from a world of the ordinary to being able to see and talk to the supernatural creatures that live locally, called Anothers. His co-workers are equipped with magically enchanted police tape and other trinkets to help solve issues that occasionally arise between Anothers. I like the modern fantasy setting, and the fairly low level fights with the supernatural so far, so there’s promise in where the show goes.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai (Ao Can’t Study): While the name Ao is usually blue, or sometimes even moth, in this case, it stands for Adult Only, the 18+ rating in Japan. This is due to her father’s profession, an erotic writer, and surprisingly, the main character hates her father for naming her that and spends her entire life studying to get into a college far enough away from him. This is thwarted by a guy confessing to her and filling her mind with romance and lewder thoughts, with the help of her father. I hate this as a concept and don’t watch this.

Mix: A semi-sequel baseball anime. I say semi, because from what I’ve gathered it is recommended but not necessary to watch the original first.

Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!? (Why is my Teacher Here!?): It’s about a male student and his teacher, ending up in awkward situations together, like being trapped together in a men’s bathroom stall. A show of pure fanservice through and through, so there’s not much else to say.

Namu Amida Butsu!: Rendai Utena: What started out as an action about cleansing impurities from the world gives us a quick bait ‘n switch to a slice of life about gods bumbling about in the human world attempting to be competent humans. I found it irritating to watch, and it was very clearly based off of a gacha game, which do not have a good track record of making good shows.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma (Nobunaga’s Young Bride): A modern age middle school teacher way down the ancestral tree of Oda Nobunaga meets the bride of the man himself, who traveled to the present from the day of the original Nobunaga’s death. She’s no older than when she left her original time, which leaves her at 14 years old, with no knowledge of modern day Japan so she’s stuck with the main character’s family and decides to be the new Nobunaga’s bride anyways, which… is weird.

One Punch Man 2: A big sequel of the season, and one where people have been waiting with wary anticipation due to the change in animation studio and director. It definitely looks a lot stiffer than the first season, for action and non-fight scenes, but the story is a bit more interesting in my opinion, as the show starts working on fleshing out other heroes and why they fight.

RobiHachi: the first episode of this really is a springboard for setting up what the plot and cast will be, just about starting right at the very end. We’ve got an ultra gullible man in debt, a genius teen with no sense of purpose, a robot rabbit helper, and their spaceship that blares its own theme song when it transforms into a mech. They set off to find a legendary planet that grants happiness after a couple of hijinks on their starting planet. It’s a very busy show, both visually and plot wise, but still an enjoyable experience if you can keep up.

Sarazanmai: 50% connecting with other people through oversharing with them, 50% kappas stealing souls from other people’s butts. It’s hard to describe the show but I’m having a good time, and the art is gorgeous, and special care is taken with little details in the show. I’d say watch the first episode definitely, and then decide whether or not to follow up on the rest of the show.

Senryuu Shoujo (Senryuu Girl): The focus of the show is on the Japanese poetry type of Senryuu, mostly because the main character can only communicate with others through writing these poems. Thankfully, she’s got some good friends and is in her school’s Literature Club, so she has plenty of practice and is around people who appreciate her work.

Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san (Meddlesome Fox Senko): The fox gods of the world have a duty to protect humans, and are becoming more proactive in seeking out humans with negative emotions before those emotions go out of control. In comes the male lead of the show, an overworked businessman who has basically just been going through the motions of life by this point. One of the fox gods appears in his house, doing the cooking, cleaning, and other tasks to help relieve the main guy’s stress. It’s comfy and there’s some funny moments, but I feel like the show would be better off as a more episodic show featuring various humans rather than just the one that it looks like the show will focus on. I’m also worried about the romance genre tag that the show has.

Shingeki no Kyojin 3 Part 2 (Attack on Titan 3 Part 2): I’m still on episode 5 of the original series, with no particular motivation to make it any further. More people die in bloody explosions probably.

Shoumetsu Toshi (Lost City): As the title of the show would imply there is a city that has been lost to humanity, as in, it just disappeared one day. The main female character is the only one who survived the city disappearing, and is targeted by a mysterious group due to that, and she tries to return to where the lost city used to be due to a message by her father who went missing with the city. In addition there was a monk with super powers who was standing on a motorcycle’s handlebars facing off against the main girl who could summon her Lost bodyguard with a bunch of guns but that was kinda just thrown in at the end.

Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin Shimasu! (Strike Witches 501st Join Fighter Wing Takes Off!): Oh god it’s been so long since I’ve consumed Strike Witches content. This is a slice of life spin off of the original series, so the context is recommended, but not necessary. The animation is also very much on the rough side for a ten minute long short.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki (Yatogame’s Observation Diary): After briefly being disappointed in the lack of heavy Nagoya dialects encountered in Nagoya, the main character runs into a classmate who happens to have one. In addition, all of her favorite foods and animals are popular or famous in Nagoya, so he sticks around with her for meeting his ideals of what a Nagoyan should be. They then travel the city as part of the photography club to see all the sights of the city.

Youkai Watch!: Despite what it looks like from the title, this is pretty deep in a line of sequels of Youkai Watch.

#Megareviews #first episodes #anime review #Spring 2019

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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The Kingdom of Syree: Acceptance

The King of Syree bestows the main quest.

Facing an Ultima clone often sends me into a process akin to the Kübler-Ross five stages of grief.

Denial: “Aw, hell. Not another Ultima clone. What–it even has a (Z)tats command? No. No $&@#!* way.”

Anger: “What the hell was wrong with independent developers of the period anyway? Why did they all have to clone Ultima? Why aren’t there more Gold Box clones? Bastards!”

Bargaining: “Okay, if someone has posted a world map to a spoiler site, I’ll play the damned game. Otherwise, I’m going to find a reason to reject it.”

Depression: “Of course not. No one’s ever heard of it. Well, I guess I’ll start character creation. Oh, just a name? That’s original. Let’s enter the starting town. There’s an NPC. NAME. JOB. Good god, how many times am I going to have to do this?”

Acceptance:

The world of Sheol.

Once I resolve to making maps, taking careful notes, and tracking a “to do” list, I almost always start to enjoy the game more than in its first few hours, when I’m just half-playing it and hoping for a quick win like Zerg.

So now that I’m settled into it, I can see that Syree is competently-created. It borrows heavily from Ultima, sure, but in a way that’s more clever allusion than direct adaptation. For instance, in the last entry I made fun of the fact that the game had “mantras,” but it really doesn’t. It just has one mantra, in the opening town, and it’s a solution to a different kind of puzzle than is presented in Ultima IV. Similarly, although the game has a town called Yew, a dungeon called Deceit, and a spell called SEQUITU (which it takes from Ultima III), from the other town, dungeon, and spell names, it’s clear that the author was capable of originality. He just decided to pay homage once in a while.

Was the jester really necessary?

The world of Sheol turns out to be 100 x 100, occupying coordinates 0-99 on both axes. It wraps. The same size is used for all the city maps, and I find it too big. I can’t possibly justify the time it would take to map each city the same way I did the outer world, and yet it’s big enough that you can overlook entire buildings as you explore. (Frequent twisty mountain passages and dark forest squares don’t help.) Plus, NPCs have a very wide wandering range in the cities, making it easy to overlook them. For a while, I pinned my hopes on the ability to cast the EIDO spell, which provides a magic map, but when I got it, it turns out it shows only a slightly larger area than the regular view window. I just had to resign myself to looping each city multiple times.

Specifically, EIDO shows a 17 x 15 area where the regular view shows a 9 x 7 area.

The game world (Sheol) consists of two major continents: Syree (north) and Garrett (south). Syree has six towns, a castle, and two dungeons. The towns include the starting town, Ludden, where I have a house. Barren Sheol on the east peninsula is where I spent a lot of time healing and buying food, as the dungeon I used for grinding was nearby. It’s one of the easiest towns to navigate, as it’s arranged in a simple block with four exits and services in the middle. The town of Lost is cut off from the rest of the continent by mountains. Coel is nestled in some southern mountains. It seems to consist of one huge building with a locked door, which I can’t access until I find some keys. Emara is the fourth town, and the fifth, Phanteo Eifcon, is on an island in a lake, so I’m not sure how to reach it. The two dungeons are Mysti and the Dungeon of Fire (borrowed from Ultima III).

On Garrett, we have the castle, where King Dakar and Queen Cirrey rule, the town of Yew, and two other towns called River Bend and Doe Shameh. There’s a dungeon called Deceit and another on an island. (It must be the Dungeon of Water, but I don’t know how to reach it.) The only location not on one of the two main continents is a dungeon called Kehol in an archipelago of mountains.

About half this session was spent grinding in the dungeons. The dungeon called Kehol has a particular purpose, which I’ll cover in a bit, but most of them seem to exist for just gold and experience. They’re all multi-leveled, the highest I’ve found going to Level 9. It’s probable that they all go that deep and I just didn’t find the ladders in all of them. As you descend, the monsters get harder but the chests have more treasure. More important, the dungeons are seeded with fountains. Some of them harm you, some heal you, and some do nothing. You have to find and record the positions of those that heal you, at which point you can grind nearly indefinitely on those levels.

Opening multiple chests while I approach a fountain.

Via grinding, I slowly assembled better equipment, culminating in a crossbow and plate armor, and then saved enough for a ship. (The game is like Ultima II in that killing enemies with cannons still rewards you with gold and experience. But it makes things fair by requiring you to shoot from an adjacent square, allowing them to attack you at the same time.) I then mapped the world and revisited or re-visited most of the locations. I was stymied in many of the cities by locked doors, and only late in this session did I finally find a guild shop, where you can buy keys, in the city of Yew.

I blast a dragon off the map with my cannons.

It also took me a while to figure out the magic system. I kept getting hints about spells and spell names, but I was unable to cast them because I didn’t have any magic points. It turns out that to cast spells, you have to develop a “wisdom” statistic which is set to 0 at the outset of the game. To do that, you have to descend into the dungeon called Kehol. At various level intervals, you find altars that increase your agility, stamina, and strength by 1 for every 100 gold pieces that you sacrifice.

Approaching an altar in Kehol.

On Level 9 of Kehol is an altar that gives you 1 point of wisdom for every 1 point of strength that you sacrifice. So you want to pay to build up your strength first, then trade it for wisdom. This involves multiple trips to other dungeons to collect money first, since Kehol has no chests of its own. Once you have wisdom, your spell points start to generate–1 for each point of wisdom. Spell costs start at 15-20 for basic offensive and healing spells and go as high as 99.

Sacrificing strength for wisdom.

On the main quest, one element of frustration is that NPCs are extremely obtuse in regards to the keywords they respond to. One says, “I used to forge armour.” The prompt for the next point is not FORGE or ARMOUR or even ARMOR, but rather USED. Late in the session, I discovered that if you only feed a single letter, the NPC will automatically fill in any keyword that begins with that letter and answer to it, so if you find yourself talking with a particularly taciturn NPC, you can get information out of him by just going through the alphabet.

Some of the quest lines I’m following:

Grover the Terrified was hiding in a cave in Yew. He said that he was hiding from King Dakar of Garrett and his “hallucinations.” He recommended that I find a dispel spell to reveal the king for what “it” is. This spell might be the same as ALETHEIA, which “forces a liar to tell the truth.” ALETHEIA requires “infinite” magic points, but I met a former wizard named Donnal in Lost who said that he used to have “infinite magic” and that by talking with him I acquired his power to “cast one infinite magic spell.” I don’t know if that means one spell one time or one spell as many times as I need it. In any event, casting ALETHEIA and then talking to King Dakar doesn’t seem to do anything.

I did hear he’s HYDRA.

At the healer in Barren Sheol, I find a king’s guard named Swiftwind who was injured trying to slay the wizard. Of the wizard, he’ll only say that he’s not where one expects him to be. But anyway, to defeat him I will need the Sword of Emara, forged by King Emara ages ago. (Emara is also the name of a city.) At the castle, King Telbor of Syree tells me that the Sword of Emara was stolen by Rancit (the evil usurper from the backstory), but King Emara might know where it is. This confused me, as King Emara is dead and buried in a sepulcher in the same castle, but another clue that “white blocks mark the tombs” inspired me to try talking to the tomb. When I did, I somehow ended up conversing with Emara, who told me to ask around the city of Coel for the saber.

Speaking with King Telbor about the Sword of Emara. He’ll HEAL me if I ask.

I visited Coel late in this session because it requires a key to enter the main building. Coel is hidden amidst dark mountains and forests. The people are obsessed about their own safety and beg me not to tell other people that the city exists. No one responds to SABER, EMARA, or SWORD, but there’s a wizard on an island that I don’t know how to reach.

In keeping with their desire to remain isolated, Coel’s prices are 10 times higher than anywhere else in the kingdom. I don’t even think you can amass that much gold. I think it caps you at 9,999.

Among the spells that people have told me about are EIDO (magic map), THERAPENO (heal), HAELAN (heal a lot), SEQUITU (escape a dungeon), THANATOS (kills an enemy), and HORATOS (see around trees–basically “lights up” dark forests). MAVETH causes “unnatural death,” but it just seems to kill me, not enemies.

A wizard teaches me a new spell.

My biggest obstacle at this point seems to be an inability to cross water without a boat. There’s one town, one dungeon, and at least one NPC that I can’t reach because of local water squares, so there must be some spell or device that I’ve missed that allows crossing water. I’ll have to circle the towns and try again.

Miscellaneous notes:

Ultima had a problem by which you could find artifacts by just searching at obvious places even if you hadn’t received a clue about them. Syree gets around this by making you specify what you’re searching for when you hit (S)earch.

One of the things you can search for is books. There are two libraries in the game where you find books by standing to the right of the appropriate letter. It was a book called Treowth that gave me information about the ALTHEIA spell.

Searching for a book in the library.

About half of the game’s files are music files. It apparently has different tunes for different situations. I can’t get any of the music to work, owing to some kind of Adlib problem. I wouldn’t play it anyway, but I at least wanted to mention it.

Like a few of the early Ultima games, you can (T)alk to enemies as they attack. They shout insults and threats.

Last entry, I couldn’t enter the castle because I was a peasant. The solution seems to be purchasing and wearing chain or plate armor, which marks you as wealthy, if not nobility.

Other past kings named in the sepulcher: Donovin, Sharella, Favren, and Basilikos Mnemeion.

I speak to a dead king among the remains of his ancestors and descendants.

You occasionally run into enemies frozen in place in the dungeons. You miss them with every attack and they don’t attack you at all, but they will insult you if you talk to them. I’m not sure if these are bugs or if they have some other purpose.

I’m just going to have to find a way to live with not having access to that fountain.

One interface improvement over most Ultima clones (and Ultima itself): turns don’t automatically “pass” at regular intervals if you just stand there doing nothing. I appreciate not having to hunt for a “pause” if I want to take a break.

You cannot save in dungeons or towns, only outdoors.

If you try to cast a non-existent spell, the game wipes all your spell points. That seems a harsh punishment for a typo.

Supposedly, “taphouses are a great source of rumors,” but I’ve never gotten a bartender to respond to a single keyword. I’ll have to re-visit them all and try the “one letter” trick.

The game preached to me at one point. I don’t know if this is a reflection of the author’s beliefs or if I was supposed to get something in-game from this. I tried all the keywords from the resulting passage and got nothing.

Why would this world even have the Christian bible?

In the end, Syree has shaped up into a fair Ultima-like treasure hunt. I like the character development system (experience goes directly to maximum health) and the way that the altars serve as a near-endless money sink after you’ve bought the best stuff. If I can conclude it in another session, it will be a satisfying game.

Time so far: 11 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-kingdom-of-syree-acceptance/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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rockiesturnrose · 6 years

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I’m back on the nonsense of wanting both to run a D&D campaign and wanting to play in one. I don’t know. Or I just miss character creation and having a creative outlet so much I’m developing stories. NEITHER ARE GOOD.

(Apparently I’m the D&D player who’s like “Here are seven pages of backstory that fits into the confines of your universe, and here are nine things you could do to my character to make the narrative interesting.” My DM, meanwhile, is more the ‘looks like it’s time you fight a bunch of ogres and some wolves and I’ll tangentially work in some backstory maybe.’ It’s fine, it works for me, but it also forces me to write out things I wish would happen)

So I made Sarya’s mother for the sake of Sarya, you know, having a mother. And then thought ‘this woman has got a little hellion sorcerer who was born in the Feywilds. What the fuck did she do with her life? So the basics are:

-Sarya’s mother, Eslen is an elf who, at age 200-something, decided she needed to see the world. I had a discussion with one of my fellow D&Ders about elves, and he thought it would be kind of interesting if they were like Asari. You know, they’re ‘children’ for a hundred years or so, then a lot of them go off to join mercenary bands and live a crazy few years of wild hedonistic abandon, only to eventually settle down after a century or so. Eslen is like that. Whenever her ‘campaign’ started, she was in the middle of her hedonistic lifestyle phase—joining mercenary bands, exploring the world, sleeping with anything that showed interest, and drinking herself silly a lot. (I picture her looking like Missy Peregrym) (AT THE MOMENT THIS IS ALWAYS SUBJECT TO CHANGE).

-As per a character sheet I just kinda drew up for her, she’s a wood elf Rogue with the Scout archetype, and the outlander background. She was originally a ranger, but I decided that one thing she really wanted to learn was how to pick pockets and cheat at cards, and sleight of hand isn’t a ranger thing.

-Peren Abrase is a High Elf wizard that she randomly encountered one day. Elves, I’ve decided, are kind of…rare to see alone. You see them as part of a delegation, but never wandering alone, mainly because the general mindset among them is that ~lesser~ humanoids will taint them. So unless they have a wild sense of wanderlust like Eslen, you’ll only meet them if you go to them. Peren was actually innocently minding his own business when this wildchild elf was like “OH MY GOD NEW BEST FRIEND” and he realized he was stuck with her.

-Eslen never bothered asking Peren what he was doing out in the ~wild~. When they join up with other people, he gives off the vibe that he’s running from a dark past and doesn’t invite questions. And, weirdly, no one does question. They respect that his past is tough for him.

-In reality, he’s basically Elven Royalty who feels like he’s being pressured into accepting a…a crown, or something? Or he’s exiled for something he did. Or for his own safety. I didn’t think this through for him. But I’m leaning toward ‘exiled to keep him safe while his family figures out who’s plotting against them and their throne. I don’t think he’ll end up being the first in line, but he’s pretty damn close. But his entire party knows he keeps his secrets close at hand. It’s annoying, but considering nothing from his past ever really comes chasing after them, they don’t care.

-Eslen, not being a High Elf and also having been cut off from elven politics for the last 75 years (again ,you don’t run into a lot of elves outside of their cities, so she wouldn’t be well informed), doesn’t know anything about internal elven struggles. So she never connects any dots and also doesn’t give a shit.

-One of their party is a human fighter-type named Matrin. He’s unabashedly from a shit background—urchin, charlatan, something of the like, and he owns that. But he’s confident, funny, and attractive. Rough around the edges, but not unwilling to learn. Eslen likes him immediately, and they occasionally decide to use the other to blow off steam. Basically their first meeting is ‘wanna get drunk?’ ‘I’m already halfway there, get on my level!’ ‘Wanna makeout?’ ‘DUDE YES’

-...though maybe not? Maybe they just click and there’s like..unresolved sexual tension/mutual attraction there that’s complicated by other dynamics.

-Peren doesn’t like Matrin, somewhat because of his background and his boisterous nature, but also because along the way, before they joined up with these other assholes, Peren has developed feelings for Eslen. Feelings that he initially rejected for a myriad of reasons, but really can’t fight anymore. Feelings he doesn’t know how to bring up (I imagine him as not only being demisexual/demiromantic, but also as not having a lot of romantic experience in general. Eslen’s more promiscuous life style and mindset is…strange to him). And he resents Matrin for having Eslen’s affection, when he thinks he’d be a much better choice.

-Matrin, meanwhile, likes Eslen just fine but he wouldn’t exactly say he’s in love with her. At least, not initially. She’s a great friend and a fantastic drinking partner, and like, he imagines the sex would be uncomplicated and fun, not that he thinks about that all that much. He doesn’t get what Peren’s problem is, mainly because Peren doesn’t spit that out either, just seethes when he sees them together.

-Eslen starts developing feelings for Peren. Oh, she’s not exactly pleased about it because he’s a stuck up jackass who doesn’t talk about himself like a normal human, but he’s also a friend and there’s something loveable behind all those walls.

-Matrin might actually fall in love with Eslen, but by that time he’s noticed she’s got the hots for the grumpy wizard as well and he’s convinced elf/elf just makes more sense. Like, he’s a human and will die long before Eslen. So might as well just give up now and let her find true happiness with the elf she totally likes, but won’t admit to liking. His thinking is something like ‘if I cut ties with her, she’ll realize she belongs with Perren and it’ll be simpler’. Spoiler, it won’t be.

-Which means at some point Matrin and Eslen just (mutually?) decide to stop acting flirty with each other? Or something? They put up walls, basically, though maybe only Matrin does? Or he downplays/quashes his attraction in the hopes she’ll do the same/not question him. I don’t know why, maybe Matrin is starting to sense the bad energy coming from Peren. Maybe Eslen is sensing it. Maybe whatever quest they’re on isn’t conducive to carrying on with this bad energy starting. Whatever, something happens.

- Near the end of the ‘campaign’ Eslen and Peren mutually acknowledge that they have feelings for each other. Maybe it’s just been a tense and emotional day and they seek solace with each other. But Eslen is wary of really starting anything with him because she really knows so little about him.

-There are probably some opportunities that arise where Eslen wants to tell Peren she wouldn’t be averse to starting something with him, officially. But every time she thinks she’s found a way past his walls, he throws something else at her. So she eventually makes it clear to him that, while she loves him, she’s not putting up with his bullshit. Either he trusts her with everything, or they won’t work out. He promises to let her in after they finish this grand quest, since telling her before that seems distracting and pointless, and she considers the matter settled.

- Once they survive whatever the final battle is, they agree to tie up some loose ends and meet at the inn where everything began so they can start their life together. Peren intends to give up his title, but the situation is infinitely more complicated than first expected (Like if he was sent into exile for protection, he learns that the enemies have found him and are going to try and take him out?? Or his dad dies and suddenly his brother is in charge and needs him to stay on as adviser or something because the alternative is Not Good for the Elves?) Whatever the case, he doesn’t think it’s a thing Eslen would want to be part of/it’s something that would put her in peril. He figures a clean break will be kinder than showing up with more excuses and a whole set of baggage and basically thrusting her into this life she probably doesn’t want, so he just…never shows up at the inn.

-Look, I’m a huge fan of the ‘I wanted to tell you but I didn’t want it to change the way you looked at me’ thing. Peren is convinced Eslen only liked him because he was ~more down to earth~ then the Elven nobility she’d constantly roll her eyes about. Also he’s a high elf and she’s a wood elf, so I’m imagining a kind of...class divide there where wood elves aren’t very high on the High Elf Sovereign’s List of Priorities because they’re less adept with magic. He’s terrified that if he came to her and was like ‘okay so basically I’m actually your sovereign-to-be but I do love you’ she’d reject him because she’d believe he was just using her for a lark. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, as far as he can see. Either he tells her the truth and she rejects him for lying, or he just...doesn’t ever see him again. Either way, he believes he’s getting rejected.

-Meanwhile, during the campaign, Matrin secretly makes a deal with someone in the Feywild to act as their protector if they grant them some help during this battle. Or something. Basically, he makes this agreement to marginally raise their already slim chances of winning, while fully believing he’s not actually going to make it out alive. But he does, and once the adventure is over he has to come to terms with the fact he has five years left on his own plane before he goes to serve the Fey. Feeling aimless (what’s he going to accomplish in five years?) he returns to the same inn Eslen is currently waiting at, trying to figure out how he got to where he his now

-He finds Eslen essentially wallowing in sadness. Offers her a choice-she can continue waiting for the stuck up asshole, or she can join him in crossing the world and righting wrongs and just having fun. She chooses the latter. So, again, she still has no clue that Peren is actually like…huge Elven royalty. She has no clue what is happening with her people because she chooses not to go back.

-These two finally act on the UST/restart their prior arrangement, and it devolves (evolves?) into legitimate feelings of love after like...a romantic dance or something. Because that’s also a very good trope

-They know their time together is limited, so it’s not like they promise each other much. Just companionship and happiness for a few years. Except with 5 months to go before his bargain comes due, Eslen discovers she’s pregnant. Matrin is overjoyed, but also a man of his word. The Fey he made a bargain with, though, is like ‘Dude I’m not just going to pull you away from your pregnant girlfriend. She can come with!’

-And Eslen does! She lives in the Feywild long enough to give birth to their daughter, Calise. But Matrin definitely doesn’t want his daughter growing up in this strange and terrifying place, and he’d prefer if Eslen is safe. Her choice, ultimately, and she decides he’s right. Besides, he’ll earn vacation time. He can come visit one day. So she takes her newborn and heads back to her home settlement after nearly a century away.

-Of course, by then the elven political situation has calmed down, so if she hears about High Lord Sabrae, she assumes it’s the old fucker who was around when she left home almost a century ago. She doesn’t know it’s switched over to his son, and if she does learn it again, doesn’t concern her much. She’s from a small settlement (and she’s a wood elf, which in this world is kind of lower on the rung than high elves. I dunno, magic is super important and wood elves don’t show as much ability with it) they don’t get royal visitors. She can raise her little half-elf in as much peace and safety as possible-at least until Calise’s own story starts up. Then the fun happens.

-Calise latches onto the ring that Peren gave Eslen as a promise and assumes that because her mom won’t talk about either the ring or Calise’s father, the two are related. She eventually stumbles into (a branch of) the elven high court and meets Peren, whose acting as a high and mighty adviser for his Brother the King, or something. He immediately recognizes the ring and thereby discovers the love of his life had a kid. With someone else. But he tells Calise there’s probably no way her father is in the elven lands.

-Peren, who has tried so hard to not think about Eslen for the past 20-odd years, is now given a Sad. But he also now knows where Eslen is, so he goes to visit her. Basically, he thinks seeing her daughter is a sign that maybe it’s time to make amends

-So he goes, and she is NOT PLEASED but also kind of is because she still loves him. And he finally explains everything and begs her forgiveness and hopefully asks if the two can be friends again

-Eslen is...well, she’s touched that he did this, even if it took thirty years. But she also knows he could’ve gone another 300 without seeing her, if he’d wanted to. But she lets him know she’d be amenable to friendship, even as she lets it slip that she still kind of loves him. Which makes him hopeful.

-they probably end up sleeping together. And re-establishing their relationship. Even though she tells him she also still loves Matrin

-Maybe Matrin comes back for a prolonged vacation and the three enter into an arrangement. Polyamory could solve so many triangle problems...

-Oh GOD I MISS WRITING. If you see snippets about this, don’t be surprised.

#eslen leafburn #peren abrase #matrin delire

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