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dramioneasks · 4 years

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HP FESTS: Dramione RomCom Fest (Part 1)

Dramione RomCom Fest 2020:

12 Years and 3 Months by pixiedustandbluebutterflies - T, one-shot - As news of their engagement takes Wizarding England by storm, elusive power couple Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger are finally sharing their love story in this Witch Weekly interview!

50 (First) Dates with Hermione Granger by HufflepuffMommy - G, WIP - Draco Malfoy sets his heart on romancing Hermione Granger, but she has short-term memory loss; she can't remember anything that happened the day before. So every morning, Draco has to woo her again. Her friends are very protective, and Draco must convince them that he's in it for love. Plot (andsummary) taken from the movie "50 First Dates" for the Dramione RomCom fest!

About Time by WordsmithMusings - E, WIP - When Draco's Father reveals to him that the men in their family have the ability to travel back in time, he uses his newfound gift to do many things - save a life, be a better friend, reconnect with a witch, and fall in love.

All's well that ends well (to end up with you) by weestarmeggie - M, one-shot - Hermione Granger is all set to be the maid of honor at her best friends wedding. She is taken back when she finds out that the best man is none other than her ex-fiance.

Away by In_Dreams - E, WIP - Desperate for a change of pace, Hermione unknowingly commits to a home exchange with Pansy Parkinson and finds herself swept up in the chaos of New York City and into the arms of Draco Malfoy. Dramione/Hansy. Loosely inspired by The Holiday.

Bells on a Hill by HeyJude19 - T, WIP - Left by his fiancée a month before the ceremony, Draco never got his dream wedding, so agreeing to assist Granger with her own wedding planning to distract himself from his broken engagement seems like a great idea—though Draco probably shouldn't fall in love with the bride-to-be. Based very (very) loosely on The Wedding Singer.

Chasing the Future by Rdlentz8 - T, WIP - An unusual and anonymous Patronus finds a frustrated Hermione alone in the library and talks to her about being lonely. Could this be the push she's needed to change her fate? Inspired by A Cinderella Story. There are direct quotes from A Cinderella Story.

Domino Effect by KoraKwidditch - M, WIP - Resolved to live her life in Muggle London, Hermione Granger finally felt free. Free from the Ministry, free from her celebrity status and everything that entailed. But who knew that one cataclysmal incident would lead her straight into the Malfoy's den and down a series of unfortunate events? At least they think she's a Muggle.**A Dramione retelling of While You Were Sleeping**

Fairytales and Wishes by Charlie9646 - T, one-shot - All Scorpius wants is for Hermione to be a nice step mother, but somehow that sort of gets lost in translation with his accidental magic.

Flipping Through the Pages by DarkAngelOfSorrowReturns - T, WIP - Draco Malfoy had a fascination with a popular book series and its writer. His life changes when he meets her.

The Hate List by bethelson - T, WIP - While chaperoning the post graduation trip, Hermione and Draco find themselves wandering the streets of Paris in the middle of the night, fruitlessly searching for the seventh years they were supposed to be in charge of. What Hermione doesn’t know, is that those seventh years struck a bargain with Draco to keep her occupied so they could sneak out for a last hurrah before they all head back to London. So in his efforts to derail her search, he convinces her to join him in their own night of frivolity. As they paint the city red, they slowly learn to let their guards down, and find that putting the past behind them allows them to finally focus on the present. ___ My contribution to the Dramione RomCom Fest!

Hollywood & Vine by dreamsofdramione (Bugggghead), msmerlin - M, WIP - As the manager of an occult bookstore currently renting a room from an old friend and living paycheck to paycheck, Hermione wasn’t exactly living the Hollywood dream. But her life is turned upside down when a chance encounter with Tinseltown’s current heartthrob, Draco Malfoy, leaves her questioning everything she thought she knew about life and love. or the one in which Hermione unintentionally falls in love with a movie star.

Home is Where the Heart Is by lrs002 - T, one-shot - A rewrite and Draco/Hermione look at basically the last scenes of the movie Sweet Home AlabamaOr in the other words: The Wedding and the Kiss

How to Lose a Wizard in 10 Days by GracefulLioness - E, WIP - Hermione will do anything to prove to her boss at Witch Weekly that she's ready to take on more serious topics, including dating a man just to drive him away for the sake of her next column, How to Lose a Wizard in 10 Days. But pushing Draco Malfoy away proves to be a challenging task, perhaps because he's got ten days to make her fall in love with him. Inspired by How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

It Happened One Knight by Klawdee - T, WIP - “A spoiled heir running away from his family is helped by an old classmate, who is actually a journalist in need of a story.” Based off of the 1934 film, It Happened One Night

It's All In The Malfoy Family by TwilightToMidnight - M, one-shot - Over a decade of longing and desire comes to fruition one night. Not quite the way Hermione expected but definitely with a bang. Everyone and their dog seem to be working against her. For the 2020 Dramione RomCom Fest. Loosely based off Sabrina (1954 - with Audrey Hepburn).

Love, Actually in Dramione by Blessedindeed - G, one-shot - I absolutely love the movie "Love, Actually" and was so excited to make some art pieces from a few of the more memorable scenes! Many thanks and kudos to QuinTalon & NuclearNik for hosting and being such amazing encouragers to everyone! I cannot wait to dive into all these fun pieces!!

Love, Hermione by pandora_rose_xo - G, WIP - When Hermione leaves some personal letters lying around in a sleepy haze, Dobby comes across them, and trying to be helpful delivers them to their recipients. Who were never supposed to see them.

Metamorphosis by persephone_stone - T, WIP - Draco Malfoy is king of Hogwarts High—student body president, captain of both the water polo and basketball teams, and boyfriend of Astoria Greengrass, the hottest girl in school. That is, until said girlfriend returns from Spring Break with some unexpected news: she’s dumping him for a college boy. Now, Draco is on a mission to win her back. And who better to help him turn into a more intellectual, cultured version of himself than Hermione Granger, the smartest girl in school? As he and Hermione spend time together, will Draco learn how to be the right type of boyfriend for Astoria? Or will he instead learn that maybe Astoria is not the right type of girl for him? Written for the Dramione RomCom Fest, based on the 90’s teen romcom She’s All That.

Midnight in Paris by Aneiria - E, one-shot - ‘Granger,’ Draco replied, casting a quick wandless charm to clean his own clothes. ‘Want to watch the magic you’re casting next time? Whatever spell that was, it nearly took both of us out.’ Hermione’s face settled into a frown of confusion. ‘I thought that was you,’ she said, hesitantly. ‘I wasn’t using magic.’ They both looked away at the same time, taking in their surroundings. ‘Where are we?’ Hermione wondered out loud, as she spun on the spot and took in the sights. It was the wrong question, really.

My Big Fat Muggle Wedding by BiscuitsForPotter - G, one-shot - Draco's gotten more used to having Muggles as future-in-laws, but what about his parents?

No More Waiting by anchoredto717 - T, one-shot - The end of Hogwarts, an impending Mastery, and confirmation that Hermione is well and truly over Ronald Weasley: three factors that push Draco into a place he never imagined. Is he really going to Harry Potter’s house party? A one shot heavily inspired by the 90s teen classic, Can’t Hardly Wait.

Off the Rails by RoseHarperMaxwell - E, WIP - For the Dramione RomCom Fest 💚 My adaptation of the movie Trainwreck (Amy Schumer/Bill Hader), featuring Draco in Amy's role. “Pans.” Draco’s head falls back petulantly. “I can't interview Granger, especially not about how she's healing Potter. Neither of them are going to want to talk to me. Make Creevey do it.” “No, you'll do it. And don't sulk at me, Draco.” Pansy shuts him down immediately, not that he expected to talk her out of it. She gives assignments, not suggestions. “Old Quidditch rivalries. Gryffindor Princess confiding in the Prince of Slytherin, with a side of The Boy Who Lived. You’re the only one for it.” She drops her pen on her notepad with finality. “She’s also fit as hell now. I’d even fuck her, so our readers will be drooling over her. This is easy, Draco. Don’t fuck it up.”

One Thing We've Got by IrisCalasse - M, WIP - Over a decade after the Second Wizarding War, Draco Malfoy is a broke socialite straddling the Muggle and magical worlds. One day a new neighbour moves in his residential complex. What has happened to Hermione Granger to make her hide from Ronald Weasley? If Cormac McLaggen is gay, why is he hanging around Granger so much? And why does her cat seem to know way too much about everything? Based on the plot of Breakfast at Tiffany's, but set in 2012 London with a magical twist. Updates every 16th of the month.

Pin down your heart by hiyas - G, one-shot - Hermione Granger contemplates a door when Destiny comes knocking.

Playing Cupid by tygermine - T, one-shot - Set It Up AU.

Pretty Witch by TakingFlight48 - E, WIP - When confronted with the opportunity to take on an alter ego - Hermione Granger, Potion's Mistress and the Wizarding World's Golden Girl became Vivian Roberts - London's weekend escort. For three years she lived in this duality until Draco Malfoy, lost in Soho and driving a precious DB6, wound up uncovering her secret. This is the tale of Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy finding a balance between work and love through the guise of fake dating, unacknowledged feelings, and Hermione not wanting to let go of a part of herself that is no longer serving her.

Promises, Promises by Musyc - T, one-shot - Lawyer and social work advocate Hermione Granger is one signature away from fulfilling her dream to have a house-elf education program. All she needs is to seal the deal, and Draco Malfoy has promised the full support of Malfoy and Son Developments. But the owner of the property is balking, there's a new buyer in the mix, and a promise isn't a contract.

The Proposal by FaeOrabel - M, WIP - When Head of Creatures Division of the DMLE, Hermione Granger, is pushed into a corner regarding a new marriage law she doesn't want to comply with, she gets the brilliant idea to stage an engagement with her long time, loyal assistant, Draco Malfoy. Draco goes along with the charade on the condition she gets him promoted to a new position. A deal set, they prepare to fool not only the Minister of Magic, but Hermione's best friend, and Draco's entire family. What could go wrong? Just the threat of Azkaban should they fail.

PS I love you by emotionalsupporthufflepuff - M, WIP - After a tragic accident, Hermione must reintroduce Draco to a life they've built far away from home. She recieves unexpected help in a series of letter written by Draco himself before the accident...

Regrets Only by nztina - T, WIP - Draco and Hermione are the best of friends - until Hermione goes off to teach at Hogwarts and Draco realises that he doesn’t just miss her. Upon her return to London, he intends to reveal his feelings, but she has a surprise of her own, one that will definitely put a damper on Draco’s plans. Draco. Hermione. And...Hermione’s fiancé?

Restless in Ripon by QuinTalon - T, WIP - Scorpius Malfoy wants his father to be happy again and as his grandfather often told him, a Malfoy always gets what he wants. A nosy radio host, well-meaning friends, and fate will help bring two lonely souls together. Well, that and one tenacious eight-year-old.

Rushing Back by floorcoaster - M, WIP - Draco Malfoy is thirty, surviving, and very much not thriving. He's near the utter end of himself when he experiences the worst of all possible bad days--a double betrayal that rocks him to his core. Unmoored, untethered, he winds up in a strange place, where he begins an adventure through time that will change the course of his life. A time travel fic with a twist on the movie "13 Going on 30."

Say Anything by MidnightValkyrie - G, 9 Chapters - To know Draco Malfoy is to love him. Hermione Granger is about to know Draco Malfoy. Written and created for the Dramione RomCom Fest, based on Say Anything.

She's the Snake by monsterleadmehome - E, WIP - In a universe where Voldemort never came back, Harry lives with Sirius, and Dumbledore isn't dying, the worst thing the Golden Trio has to contend with is their grades and Quidditch matches... oh, and the recent magical attacks on Muggles and Muggle-borns. Harry is sure Malfoy had something to do with it, and though Hermione doesn't agree, her sarcastic offer somehow turns into her latest nightmare: to go undercover as a boy in the Slytherin dorms and find out what's really going on. And maybe throw a Quidditch game or two. But there's one thing she hasn't prepared for: falling in love with the boy she's supposed to be spying on.

Signed and Sealed by niffizzle - M, WIP - She owns a children's bookstore. He runs a corporation buying significant shares of small businesses. Never in their lives have Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy gotten along — or so they think.

Timing is Everything by anne_ammons - M, 7 Chapters - Draco Malfoy is your average bachelor living an average bachelor's life, until he crosses paths with his former classmate, Hermione Granger. Strike that - when has Draco Malfoy ever been average? A retelling of the 1994 movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Dramione-style.

A Trip to Kouloura Beach by rennaissance_woman - one-shot - A day at the beach, what could happen?

The Truth About Kneazles and Crups by samkablam7 - T, WIP - When Draco Malfoy started hosting his wizarding radio show The Truth About Kneazles and Crups, he had no idea that it would bring Hermione Granger back into his life. He also didn't know that they would both be interested in each other. The only problem? She thinks that the radio host she's interested in is his best friend and Pro-Quidditch-player-wannabe, Blaise Zabini.

Untitled Marital Crisis Comedy by Darlingheart - G, one-shot - Draco is rich, handsome, and most importantly, excellent with the ladies. Harry Potter is not. Which is where Draco comes in. With Draco’s help Harry will learn there’s more to life than being a one-woman man. But what happens when Draco meets someone who changes his mind? And what does Hermione Granger have to do with it...

A Woman of Some Dignity by mcal - G, one-shot - That seemed to get his attention. “What are you—of course I respect you, you daft witch!”

“Your actions today show the opposite!” I answered. “And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m a woman of some dignity and I’d like to shower in peace. You’ll kindly wait half an hour before Apparating back to my flat.” Hermione's not one for diaries, but it's been a week to say the least. It all started off with a confusing meeting with Draco Malfoy in her office, and... well, Hermione thought maybe recording her thoughts on the events would help her process. She isn't wrong.

You lost and lonely, You just like heaven by Wake_The_Dragon - T, WIP - Dramione Romcom Fest. Hermione Granger had needed something new and a change of scenery was a good start. What she hadn't counted on was renting a flat with an annoying (if handsome) ghost, who claims he isn't dead. Somehow, helping out a ghost and falling in love were two things she hadn't bargained for.

You Wish by Talonwillow (Ehollis303) - T, WIP - What makes a bad case of "Black Cat Flu" more tolerable? Young Perseus is learning that hearing about dueling, torture, revenge, giants, dementors, chases, true love, and miracles from his Grandfather Scorpius certainly makes things easier- If the man would finish the story that is. A story about love, where not even death can keep the beautiful feisty stable-girl and her sometimes irritating one true love apart. Together they must battle the evil Lord Voldemort through an adventure crossing the magical and fairy tale realm.

#Fests/Exchanges/Challenges #dramione #Dramione RomCom Fest #humour #fluff #based on other book or movie plot

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maskydoolovesmasseffect · 3 years

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Mass Effect Tag

Wellio, I’ve been tagged by @berryshiara. Passing this on to @grummel83

Gunna answer my questions now. Y’all feel free to tell me what you think of these answers.

I’m a fan since: 2008. I was just out of high school and still not over KoTOR. I was fresh in the army and got to talking to some other dude fresh to the army about video games. He asked me if I played Mass Effect. I said no. By the next day I just about totally forgot about him, then he suddenly appeared out of nowhere sat in front of me in the chow hall and pulled a copy of ME1 for Xbox 360 out his pocket like he was a magician doing a magic trick (ACU pockets are huge.)

Anyway turns out that guy was a romance option and I must have picked the right dialogue options. I’m still with him, too.

Favorite game of the series:

Mass Effect 2. It seemed like that’s the one where choices mattered most and you really got to know your squaddies. Also MAJOR gameplay improvements over the first game. And that game gave me the most freedom to do basically whatever I wanted and wasnt afraid to give me consequences for it.

MShep or FShep:

FShep. Nothing against MShep, but for me the real Shep is FShep. Can’t beat Jennifer Hale’s voice.

Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer:

Colonist. I like having the background of knowing just how dangerous the galaxy can be and how the Alliance can’t be everywhere at once so sometimes you need to manage your best on your own.

Biotics or Tech:

Both.

Paragon or Renegade:

Paragon, mostly. I tried being renegade but some of the actions are just so pointlessly dickish, or even outright unhinged in a way that would make it impossible to believe the Alliance would ever promote Shepard as an officer or even keep her in the Alliance at all, especially in the first game.

That said, there are times where a renegade action is more expedient and practical than a paragon one, like in 2 when you stab a dude in the back to prevent him from repairing an enemy gunship, so even with a paragon playthrough, my Shepard will have no issues taking that opportunity. She’s already seconds away from betraying all those guys anyway.

Paragon in treatment of others, renegade in combat pragmatism.

Favorite Class:

I play as infiltrator and vanguard.

Infiltrator is great for using a sniping and opening loot, and then for going invisible, and if I remember right AI hacking too. That’s cool and I wish there were more genuine opportunities for stealth.

Nowadays I play as Vanguard in my playthroughs mainly just so my Shepard can be canonically biotic for story reasons. From 2 on when looting no longer needs a special skill and I get to charge around the map. I don’t really care much about using biotics (that’s what the squadies are for) but the movement is super useful (when Shepard actually does the thing instead of just standing out in the open soaking up bullets until the ability decides to actually work.)

Favorite Companion:

Garrus. I like to set him up in sniper positions. When he actually STAYS where I put him instead of running straight up to enemies to try to snipe them at point blank, he’s great.

Also his quips in 2 on are pretty entertaining.

Least Favorite Companion:

Garrus, Oh my god. Go back to the sniper position where I put you. Leave tanking to krogan; you do not have the HP for this.

Also Kaidan in ME1. He can not shoot to save his life - literally.

My Squad Selection:

For all ME1 playthroughs after my first one, Ashley and Kaidan, just of their comments and because... well... I only have so much time with them.

Apart from that I mainly just pick my team based on who’s likely to have the most interesting commentary on whatever the mission happens to be, squad balance be damned.

Favorite In-Game Romance:

Garrus X Shepard is my favorite love story. They are just so adorable together and always supportive even when they disagree.

But my cannon romance is Kaidan X Shepard for the drama and angst.

Favorite NPC:

In ME1 there’s this random Turian on Noveria who randomly has like a New York accent and I absolutely adore him. He plays basically no part in the story other than some minor information but he’s just so pleasant to speak to.

“If you need anything, I’ll be here.”

Favorite Antagonist:

Morinth, the Ardat-Yakshi daughter of Samara. Yes, she’s a murderous vampire who will absolutely kill you given the chance... but like, it’s a medical condition. And I really can’t help but feel for ardat-yakshi in general when their only options are to spend their whole lives on the run from justicars out to execute them, or waste their entire 1000 year lifespan imprisoned in a monetary unable to experience the world at all. Yeah, Morinth is evil, but Ardat-Yakshi don’t exactly have a good deal.

Favorite Loyalty Mission:

Grunt’s loyalty mission is the best. I get to help my baby boy, reunite with Wrex, enjoy krogan society being fleshed out, have a kickass battle against a thresher maw, and get a breeding request. It’s nice to have a quest that isn’t about family drama and genuinely gets a happy end.

Favorite Mission:

Despite Citadel DLC requiring everyone to have a deathgrip on an idiot ball, and also basically gloss over some really dark stuff, the whole clone storyline with the whole crew is an absolute ride all the way though, with lots of interesting and unique scenarios, a ton of replay-value, and funny party banter that feels like it came straight out of a Marvel movie.

Favorite DLC:

Again, Citadel DLC. Not only did it come with the story above, it also had all those interactions with past and present crewmates, including a memorial for Thane (finally!), a cool apartment to hang out in, a party, an arcade, and an awesome battle arena. It really added a TON. Also, it’s nice to see Bioware figure out that DLC needs characters - I’m remembering back in the DLC to ME 1 the party never had a single thing to say, no matter what was going on. The fun and wacky Citadel DLC is a far cry from the serious and somewhat dark space opera Mass Effect started as, but as the final DLC capping off the end of the series, it gets to do a silly victory lap (and get the taste of the ending out of our mouths.)

Control, Synthesis, Or Destroy:

No.

Favorite Weapon:

Sniper rifles, whatever I have that’s fast and has high damage output. Also that one pistol that shoots tiny energy grenades. Pew pew.

Yeah I wasn’t really big into the weapons so much. I’m here to get my story on.

Favorite Place:

The presidium on the Citadel. It bothered me a lot when I couldn’t explore it in the second game. I know it would have been terribly impractical, but as the presidium is just a huge ring, it would have been cool to be able to explore the whole thing, going past all the little park areas, shops, monuments and so on until you loop aaaaall the way back around to where you started. Like, how cool would it be if the ring had a running track? Maybe C-sec academy trainees would be spotted jogging together along it in formation. And can you imagine grabbing a coffee (I was going to make up a space-related name for Starbucks but it’s already STARbucks...) and taking a nice stroll along the water before finding a nice bench to alien-watch from? Other locations in the game are like great places to explore and do gameplay stuff, but the presidium seems like a nice place to just be.

Favorite Quote:

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer." - Javik.

This is such a fucking raw damn line. It makes me think a lot about Cerberus. When ME3 wasn’t out yet, I thought maybe the plan was Shepard would at some point choose a side, Alliance for paragons and Cerberus for renegades. It would have been so cool to have morality not merely be good vs evil, but idealism vs that ruthless calculus Garrus mentioned. How fucking raw would it be if Cerberus wasn’t just generically evil for no reason and suddenly indoctrinated but really were embodying that ruthless calculus, determined to defeat the reapers at any and all cost. Maybe Cerberus actions’ were more likely to do terrible things for the sake of ultimate victory, doing whatever it took, whereas the Alliance would be less willing to make the terrible choices and ultimately be less likely to succeed.

Now obviously, that’s not what happened, as it would have required Bioware to basically make two entirely separate games. But that line from Javik makes me think of that concept, and a universe where like Dragon Age party members can approve or disapprove of actions not merely as good or evil but along the lines of their personal values. I think Javik would sit at victory at all cost.

Also that one mission in 2 where some random NPC catches Shepard sneaking around and is all like ‘what are you doing here?’ and Shepard is like ‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Get out here before it blows!’ and the guy’s freaking out like WTF and she says ‘RUN!’ then laughs to herself as he flees from an imaginary bomb. Shep you troll.

The thing I like the least about the entire franchise:

The misogyny and objectification that crept its way in, epically from the second game on. Really didn’t like those ass-shot camera angles, or female characters being slut-shamed in-universe for the clothes the designers made them wear. Yikes.

But the biggest yikes for me in that regard is actually the reveal in 3 that the prothians guided asari development. That was fine and all, but the part that bothered me was the characters commenting “ooooh, so that’s why asari are so advanced,” as it was ever any kind of mystery before that exact moment. For one thing, asari aren’t really shown as being more advanced than anyone else, apart from having discovered the citadel first, and for second, why wouldn’t asari be advanced? All the way from ME1 it’s established that 1: Asari live for a really long time, and 2: can instant transmit information directly from brain to brain. That means they have long lifetime in which to accumulate knowledge and experience, and also can easily spread and preserve that knowledge without even the need for books. That ALONE should put them ahead. And even with all that, they only barely beat the salarians to discovering the Citadel first. But no one asks for an explanation for why salarians, who live only a few decades and can’t do mental data-transfer, are so advanced. No, only the success of the all-women race needs explaining. It was just one moment but it still bugs me.

Also the general loss of realism after the second game. First game everyone gets armor, including full-face helmets automatically on in environments that need it. After that, people can apparently just wander the battlefield half-naked and even somehow survive in a total vacuum if they just put a plastic cup (that isn’t even connected to anything) over their mouth and nose. In the first game they at least made up some reasonable-sounding science fiction explanation for things, but after that it’s like F-it everything is just space magic now.

Oh, and those repetitive unlocking stuff minigames. I use a mod to just skip those.

#mass effect #tag

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dlamp-dictator · 3 years

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Allen X Rambles about Chapter 7

“I hope Episode 7 is focused on only 2 or three characters with little distraction... Amiya maybe finding out that Ch’en is slowly becoming Infected and helping her come to terms with that. Ch’en revealing her past to Amiya and the two connecting over losing so many close to them due to Oripathy. The two standing up to the political corruption of Lungmen, shoulder to shoulder, as women that refuse to see another life lost due to the indifference of a city’s politics.”

-Allen X, October 2nd, 2020, Rambling about Chapter 6

Man... I’m starting to believe it when they say Arknight’s story mode is longer than the Harry Potter series. Things are getting crazy in Chapter 7 and crazy-long to in terms of length. This chapter really had me on the edge of my seat as I read through it and as I played through because 7-16 and 7-18 were a bitch to get through that require some of the most precise timing I’ve seen in this game yet. That aside, I enjoyed a lot what I read and experienced.

And I wanted to talk about it a bit.

But first, as always, a synopsis.

Coming off the heels of Frostnova’s death and the realization of Wei Yenwu’s purging of the Lungmen slums, tensions are high and trust has been fractured between Rhodes Island and Lungmen. However, in the midst of Ch’en hot temper and Amiya’s cool head, Reunion is plans to send the Russian Ursusian city of Chernobog on a collision course with Hong Kong Lungmen, giving Ursus a cause to make war against Lungmen and its great region of Tawain China Yen. However, through some rather amazing political maneuvering and passionate words by Wei Yenwu’s wife Fumizuki, Rhodes Island agrees to mobilize in order to save Lungmen, the Infected, and the beloved daughter of Lungmen, Ch’en. But beyond Chernobog lies Patriot, Reunions greatest commander next to Talulah herself, who’s rage toward his daughter’s death is only matched by his disciplined mind and even more disciplined soldiers. It’s a fight to the center of the Chernobog to save as many lives as possible, even at the cost of this great general’s life.

An Addendum to 7-18

So between my venting about 7-18 when I talked about some fun Arknight’s lore a handful of people wanted to give me some advice on how to conquer that stage. Admittedly that venting was said out of anger and was much more acidic in tone than my usual essays and opinion pieces. I have since beaten that stage and I can give some of my thoughts on this advice. Some of it was helpful... some of it.

“AmIyA cAn TaNk PaTrIoT’s SpEaR tOsS!”

This is technically true and I was technically wrong. When Amiya’s S3 is active she gained increased Max HP and can in fact survive with a sliver of health. However, Amiya’s S3 takes quite a long time to charge even with her talent, and unless someone is actively blocking Patriot her can honestly spam his spear through for how long it takes Amiya to get prepped for her S3. This is more of an issue of Amiya’s balancing than with the game, but I’ll talk about that later.

“jUsT sTaLl PaTrIoT tO kEeP hIm FrOm UsInG tHe SpEaR tOsS!”

This would be pretty viable advice if Patriot didn’t one-shot my units. Yes, defenders like Cuora, Nian, Hoshigumi, and even tankier vanguards like Zima and Siege can tank at least one hit from Patriot without dying, meaning a squad of healers can just focus-fire on them while they do chip damage to Patriot and stall him out. However, Patriot’s phase 2 has him do constant damage to nearby units with his aura ability, so if he can get lucky enough, he take someone down to a sliver and let his poison damage finish off your staller before they get a chance to be healed. That strategy needs luck and some damn smart unit placement. Neither of which I honestly have.

“uSe SpEcTeR aNd DeBuFfErS!”

Again, this is also a pretty good strategy. Specter’s S2 makes her immortal for a limited time and pairing that with healers like Breeze and Celycon who reduce stun damage isn’t a bad idea. Characters that ignore or lower defense like Pramanix, Shamare, and Meteor are also good. This doesn’t work for me however since I only have Pram and the other debuffers are way too underleveled and not on my priority at the moment, and E2-ing units this late in the game just to take out one boss feels like madness.

“f12 CaN dOdGe ThE sPeAr ToSs!”

F12, W, Jessica, and FEater have a dodge chance. Their dodges are not guarantees. Yes, Patriot will target the ranged operator furthest from him and there are range tiles pretty close to his spawn point for that purpose. However, some of those operators have some pretty damn expensive DP costs and waste that on a chance to survive isn’t worth.And feeding Patriot ranged units that take over 30 seconds to redeploy is a waste of DP in general. And those either dodge chances aren’t viable. Them surviving isn’t a strategy, it’s a fluke, and you can’t depend on flukes in auto-deployment.

“Allen, you’re being kind of an asshole to what’s actually sound advice.”

Yes, I am.

I don’t care.

7-18 does things to a person, man. That stage breaks people. I lost sanity IRL just doing that stage or 20 times with a guide... dear lord this stage.

Anyway, moving on.

Story Notes

My, this story sure was thick, wasn’t it? It’s been while since I’ve been on a ride that wild. And this time around I don’t have any small issues to bring up. All the characters felt in character without breaking my suspension of disbelief. There weren’t multiple character arcs going on at once. And I even tolerated Kal’tsit berating the Doctor for reasons beyond his understand since she wasn’t discussing too many things that were above my head as the player.

No... I only have big issues.

But before that, I wanted to hit on some actual important notes that were very good and smartly written.

Rosmontis and Child Soldiers

This was probably the biggest takeaway for me. I know the Arknights community likes to poke a lot of fun about the child soldier thing and how Kal’tsit is harboring slave children, but... man, it makes so much since now.

These kids aren’t just kids, they’re all infected people with some rather scary abilities. Popukar has a history of mental instability coupled with monstrous strength. Ifrit has powers she can just barely keep under control and could set Rhodes Island ablaze at any point. Frostleaf and GreyThroat are deeply traumatized from their past. The Ursus Self Government are full of kids with hatred, resentment, and fear of both the world and themselves. The list goes on, but the fact is that these kids all either have abilities that would be a danger to themselves and others if they aren’t trained, or have emotional hang-ups that might very well have them lash out at innocent people if not put on a leash. Wouldn’t it be better to at least give them some training and let them hack and blast away at the actual bad guys? Wouldn’t it be better to at least make them a weapon for some kind of greater good? And would anyone else really treat these broken, powerful children as anything but weapons and warriors anyway?

I know this is about chapter 7, but I remember in Children of Ursus Rosa asked Zima why she fought, and Zima casually answered that she just liked fighting. It’d be far better to have someone with that mindset working for an organization like Rhodes Island than ending up in Ursus’s fold and blindly hacking at something she shouldn’t.

And I think it’s important to remind everyone that Amiya is the head of Rhodes Island and not Kal’tsit. She’s a big part of the organization, but it’s the bunny in charge. And the bunny that is herself close to a living nuke and is also has empathetic superpowers understands this probably better than anyone else, which is why she okays it.

Patriot and Reunion

As much as I despise, and I do mean despise, how cagey this series can be with it’s portrayal of Reunion’s morality I can understand why a lot of its members can see the group as being just. Patriot is a warrior of such renown and praise, and Talulah has so much charisma and power that I can see the group overlooking characters like Mephisto and W when the other two do so much for their members and general people. The Guerillas under Patriot behave like soldiers. They don’t rampage, loot, pillage, or harm everyone in sight, only those that halt, stagnant, and harm the infect. Talulah has a charisma about her and attracts people, and seems to come from some sort of royal/noble line to match. And while Faust wasn’t mentioned much in this chapter, he was a soldier that started at the bottom, worked his way to the top, and made sure to play by rules that kept his moral high ground. Mephisto seems to be the only outliner here for some baffling reason.

But... there are some major issues with this story. I hint at them every time I talk about Arknights’ story, but I’ll go into depth here. And I’ll present these two issues I have in the form of a two question:

Who is the Doctor?

I don’t mean this the sense of the story, but what is his function as a character? Is he a self-insert for the player, or his own character to be explored and examined?

And either answer, to me, is wrong.

The Doctor Isn’t a Self-Insert

It’s straight up impossible for the Doctor to be a self-insert character. Most self-inserts are blank enough to let us place our own personality onto them and the situations their in the choices they make are meant to be more or less choices we’d make or at least a general audience could make barring some specifics. Their personalities tend to be blank or at least bland to let us, the players, live through them and project our personalities onto them.

The Doctor isn’t this.

There are too many moment where our choices are clearly pointing to one conclusion and most choices, though varied, give a clear idea that the Doctor is someone that care about the operators’ wellbeing deeply and hates seeing them used, abused, or manipulated. They are strategist and commander, but they have enough humanity to not see people as tools. They are passionate when they see other operators and especially Amiya in harms way and tries to come up with strategies to minimize lost and causalities. Awhile we, the player, feel the same in this regard the Doctor has dialogue that feels more conversational and toward specific directions than what a player would likely want and gives us some bits and piece about what they’re actually like.

The Doctor hates Kal’tsit and wants little to do with her, only tolerating her presence as much as she is with the Doctor. The Doctor is a bit of a bleeding heart that doesn’t fully grasp that they are constantly in a warzone despite their strategic competency. The Doctor has an extremely weird diet and eating style, devouring live animals and ingesting foods that would probably need to be probably mixed and brewed before consumption. The Doctor still sees Amiya as a child despite her mature nature.

The list goes on, but there’s enough there for me to say the Doctor is more like Hakuno Kishinami of the Fate/Extra series, a character that seems like a self-insert but has a number of traits and character tics that keep them from fulfill that role. However Fate/Extra, for all I have against it, makes Hakuno work by giving them their own internal thoughts outside of the player’s actions that explain their dialogue choices and actions outside of the player’s control. The Doctor doesn’t, so them being a self-insert feels really weak and irritating when the dots stop connecting.

But despite this...

The Doctor Isn’t Their Own Character

Too much of what the Doctor does is passive. For a clear as their personality is, at least to me, they don’t have much agency in the plot. Not enough for me to call them their own character at least. They commander the battlefield, but they don’t have a place on it. They don’t have much reason to interact with characters like Patriot and Talulah unless its on the metaphorical and literal chessboard we’re playing on.

Every time the Doctor says something that advances the plot in some way I feel like it could be said by another character and work better. Amiya trying talk down Patriot and explain that Frostnova fought bravely did not need the Doctor’s interjections, especially when Patriot shoots them down in the same manner. In chapter 6, being trap with Frostnova would had worked much better with Amiya since that chapter was giving them parallels anyway. The only thing that really works is the Doctor trying to call out Kal’tsit for her treatment of Rosmontis as a soldier despite her age, as that’s only something that someone who didn’t have the full context could do.

But... Jessica, Frostleaf, Frostnova, Melantha and several other Operators are young teenagers and even children. Specter and Lappland are clearly just as mentally damaged and still going into battles. The Doctor knows the kinds of people that fight for Rhodes Island, so isn’t this just another young fighter like Popukar and Suzuran? Hell, in chapter 6 we canonically had Beagle and Fang in a stage where they had to fight and tank Faust, why is the Doctor so surprised that someone like Rosmontis exist and works for Rhodes Island?

See?

See how trying to give this character separation from being a self-insert and actively slot them in the active story does more harm than good?

I think games like Girls Frontline and Honkai Impact 3rd do this better, where the player character is clearly more behind the scenes and is only a passing influence, if any.

But that leads me to my next question, which is...

Who is Amiya?

Amiya falls into the trope of being a cute anime girl with a mysterious past and dangerous powers. More accurately, she has a mysterious past and powers to the player, but everyone in Amiya’s inner circle seems to have a clue about it. I don’t mind this being a mystery, but... when our main character’s plot revolves around things the player doesn’t know, it’s curious at best, and infuriating at worse.

Folks, I’m not someone that looks to theory-crafting. I’m not someone that reads every scrap of dialogue in this game to find out more about its lore. The lore, to me, is just fun and interesting. I honestly do not have the time and energy to spend on making theories and predictions that could be wrong and a waste of mental energy. However, with all this stuff about the King of Fiends just feels like a waste of time, or at least a last minute addition to something I could had been added properly in Chapter 8.

A lot of it feels like you had to know about the Darknight Memoir side story to really get a feel for what’s going on. The Sarkaz civil war, Theresa, W’s role back when Rhodes Island was Babel, a lot of things that don’t come up in the main storyline. Especially with that bombshell about the Doctor maybe killing Theresa.

I don’t like it when a story expects me to have read the spinoff to understand the mainline story. This is why I don’t like the Dragon Age series and I’m really getting annoyed with Arknights right now.

This bombshell of the King of Fiends also kind of sours a bit of Amiya’s character as this young child who rose through the ranks of Rhodes Island as a charismatic leader being able to steel optimism with the reality of war to forge ahead as a proper leader through her abilities as both a commander and an empath. Instead it’s beginning to come across that her skills as a leader comes from something more supernatural, or at least something more forced than "small child is a good leader and can lead an army,” which is surprisingly more believable and nuanced given how seriously the series takes Amiya’s character.

That said, I recognize this criticism is more my wish of what was rather than an issue of what is. I completely understand that essentially wishing for my own fanfic and limited fan theories to come true isn’t a sound criticism, but it's a criticism I have regardless.

But moving on, there’s one more issue that bugs me.

W’s Importance

I’ll keep this brief since I already discussed my bigger issues of the story and this is an admittedly small portion of the story:

W wasn’t utilized much in this story despite being a main feature of it in the promotional material. She has a pretty lengthy intro, disappears from the story for most of it, then reappears at the last bits of chapter 7 to make mean looks at Kal’tsit and the Doctor before being literally shoved offscreen again. I’ve already discussed my issues with the Doctor’s agency so I won’t bother here.

W’s banner should had been during Darknight Memoir, it just makes more sense given she was the feature character of it and her high physical damage would had been a goodsend among all the arts-resistant Sarkaz units of that series of chokepoint-heavy maps, similar to Weedy’s inclusion her is helpful as a lot of these maps could use a good pusher, especially 7-16.

Speaking of, Weedy, the other operator on this limited banner, has no presence in the story at all. Need I remind you in the last limited banner Aak and Hung at least had cameo-esque appearances in the Ancient Forge event. Weedy’s inclusion feels like an afterthought because they didn’t want the limited 6-Star to have a good chance to be pulled for the whales.

Anyway, I believe those are all the big issues I had with this story, so...

In the Future

As I always tend to say, I don’t like the idea of trying to fix something that has already been made and has already passed. It’s too late to change the past, but I see nothing wrong with asking for things to happen in the future as a way of giving feedback.

To that end, I still have hope that Chapter 8 will have a focus on Amiya and Ch’en tackling Talulah together. From my understanding of some spoilers this is more or less what is going to happen. I also hope that we’ll have a more detailed idea on this whole King of Fiends thing is about. As much as I personally don’t care for it, it’s already be discussed in the story so I at least hope we get the full idea on what’s going on with that plotline.

I also hope the Doctor either plays less a role or becomes their own character outright away from any player influence. Us speaking through a character that already has a personality feels weird to me and I’d rather not have it at all.

Anyway, that’s it for me folks. Next time... maybe I’ll talk about anime or something, who knows.

#your dictator is speaking #arknights

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dothemacarena · 4 years

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a new wild dnd session to scream about online

This session started with us dealing with a t-rex which we left off on as a cliff hanger. This was the least interesting part of the session.

the characters in this story are: Jomu my kenku fighter, Jond @pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird a tabaxi rogue, Lwdd @spontaneousmusicalnumber our elf bard, and Veritas @chimpoot a wizard rogue who turns into a dragon born on nights near a full moon like 7 nights a month.

Many sessions ago and weeks ago in game the Jond admitted under zone of truth that he had a crush on someone before promptly running away as fast has he could, which is very fast.

The party decided not to press him on it and wait for him to be ready to talk about it, but did not necessarily give up trying to figure it out/set him up in some way.

After fighting the T rex which ended up being a rather quick fight we travel montaged for two days and then sent Jond to sneak into a town for supplies while we waited. While waiting a Remorhaz attacked. This thing did dealt fire damage whenever it got hit with a melee weapon and tended to focus attacks on one creature. The fight starts Lwdd sends Jond a message and he manages to get back fast enough to get the first attack in. My character can usually tank their way through most fights with 21 ac and 98 hp going into this fight wasn’t too worried even with the damage taken every time I hit.

First round starts Jond attacks, Lwdd attacks, and Veritas uses his breath weapon which for him does a random wand of wonder thing. In this case that random thing is that his mind leaves his body and goes into someone else’s his body works on autopilot and can do physical attacks and his mind can cast spells. He rolls a d4 and the dice says it is Jond’s body. Que loud distressed “can he read my mind?” after a dice roll it was decided that the answer is no. Lwdd and Jomu don’t know this has happened his body is still moving around. The remorhaz fails to bite Jomu and Jomu attacks taking about 12 points of damage each turn.

Second round Jond attacks, Lwdd attacks, and Veritas uses mirror image to make there be 3 more Jonds. This thing gets manages to successfully bite me dealing fifty something damage. I am in its mouth restrained and grappled. I struggle and manage to stab it once forgetting that that does more damage to me so I second wind to heal a bit.

Third round more attacks happen, Lwdd heals me a bit and it is not enough as this thing manages to do exactly enough damage to knock Jomu unconscious and swallows him so he can’t be healed. My turn one failed death save

another round goes by the remorhaz thankfully misses a bite attack on Lwdd which might have been able to down our healer in one attack and his stomach acid does damage to Jomu leading to an automatic failed death save, and I roll and fail my third death save and the race is on. It is now that I will mention my character dying is also not even close to the most interesting thing to happen this session.

Over the next round the party manages to kill the monster and then they manage to cut it open and revivify Jomu before I am gone for good Jomu talks to the one god he is friends with. We go to the town to rest but don’t go to sleep right away because we haven’t been awake that long but we aren’t going to keep adventuring with the tank on deaths door so we have some down time.

Veritas tries to read a book but because of plot reasons all of the words have been turned into the word become. So Lwdd pulls out her book that has the most pictures I can’t remember its title rn but it is along the lines of Dwarfs getting down and dirty, and is basically a dwarf Kama Sutra. Lwdd starts trying to make memes out of the pictures with the word become under them.

Jond goes outside to practice and Veritas follows after a while to try and fish for information on the crush or on any other secrets there might be, “so anything you want to talk about”. Because he knows he couldn’t read Jond’s mind but Jond doesn’t. Jond however shuts him down without him getting any info and he returns to the tent.

Then Lwdd goes to talk to Jond and asks how he knew he was in love. He explains how he knew and goes and after asking her to promise not to tell reveals to her that his crush is on Veritas. Lwdd listens to the reasoning rolling a high deception roll to keep a straight face and then after Jond had finished talking said “I need to go have a problem now” promptly dimension doors away.

While that conversation was happening Veritas was asking Jomu if now (while in the relative safety of the city) is a good time to give Jond some catnip and lock him in a room with Jomu (because the three of us had decided out of game of course Jond’s crush is on Jomu he always talks about how strong Jomu is and that one time a guy came to our table and said hey beautiful to Lwdd Jond responded with “yes Jomu is quite beautiful” and when they were trying out for some positions he encouraged Jomu to go for one of the highest ranks instead of a lower easier one because “of course you can do it Jomu your amazing”)

Jond comes back to where we’re staying to find out why Lwdd teleported away so quickly only to find she is not there like he assumed. We ask about the conversation and Jond says I don’t think I said anything mean to her or that would have gotten her angry. Jond tells us that she said I need to go have a problem before she teleported away. In the parties mind this means one of two things if Jond really said nothing to upset her either she is having some digestional issues and had to go poop or she is going to go get in a fight with someone. The only person we know in this town is the mayor so that must be who she is going to fisticuffs with so we start walking to his house which takes 20 min

Meanwhile Lwdd teleported south of town an cast silence on herself before screaming. when the silence ran out after 10 minutes she did it again,

We get to the mayors house ask the guards if they have seen or heard her (no) so we decide to head back and if she isn’t there and doesn’t show up after 15 min we will start looking for her, she can message us if she needs help.

We get back and there is a tiny hut dome colored black filling half of the tent we are staying in. It won’t let us through we knock and say “hey Lwdd is that you? It’s ok if you want some time alone but it could be any magical person in there and we need to make sure it’s you” she responds with it’s me an won’t say anything else prompting us to go outside to try and figure out what is wrong with her out of her hearing range.

After needling Jond a about what they discussed to try and find out what is wrong Jond tells us that he talked to her about who is crush is, but he still won’t tell us who it is. We come up with three possibilities of why she is upset.

1) She has a crush on Jond and is upset it isn’t her.

2) She has a crush on the same person as Jond.

3) While we were away she looked at more Dwarf’s Getting Down and Dirty and needed some private time.

We resolve to let her know we are here for her and she can talk to us about anything if she needs to but not push her on why she is upset in the morning. We also all leveled up during the night because we beat the remorhaz yay.

Come morning we get ready to head out. While Jond is off filling canteens Jomu asks once again if she is ok and with one bad deception roll gives her a big hug.

Two days of tense traveling pass before one night Lwdd asks Jomu to take watch with her. Jomu seeing this as her wanting to talk like was offered is glad to accept and after the others are definitely asleep she talks. At first it is very hard to give advice as she is talking very quickly and vaguely in a jumbled mess. Eventually Jomu calms her down a bit and explains that Jond already told us what you talked about and what is upsetting you has to be one of three things. Replacing private time because that wouldn’t cause all of this tension in the air with Jond confessed to you and you had to turn him down.

Lwdd tries to avoid saying who Jond’s crush was on because she promised she wouldn’t. “hypothetically if you had a crush on the same person as a friend what would you do? Confess to the person, or tell the friend you have the same crush, or just do nothing and hope the feeling go away or tell the crush that we both have a crush on them and let them choose.” Jomu;s advice is that ultimately it is up to the person you have a crush on to decide who they like more or if everyone is open to an triad or an open relationship, but I definitely don’t think not doing anything is the right answer because you have been not doing anything for two days and it has been really tense.

After some dramatic high school drama along the lines of what if I am lonely and miserable for the next 1000 years, Jomu mentioned that “none of us are going to live as long as Lwdd. Unless you do some weird necromancy I’m sure if it doesn’t work out with this crush you will move on. You will have other friends and loved ones in your life and that is ok.” “is this a bad time to say that I learned some weird necromancy spells recently” “a little and please don’t necromance me for the full 1000 years of your life you can go for 100 years right after I die if you need comfort or help in a fight but please learn to move on”Jomu thinking she would necromance all of her friends and just wanting to be clear that she can necromancy my body for a little but not forever and she then slips by saying “I don’t have a crush on you!” proving that her and Jond both have a crush on Veritas.

Jomu thinks for a bit getting used to knowing both party members have a crush on Veritas who is a certified dumbass and eventually gives the advice to talk to Jond about it. Maybe you both eventually confess to Veritas or one of you decides to root for the other but confessing to Veritas with out letting Jond know in advance would be betraying Jond and letting Veritas know you both have a crush would be breaking your promise to Jond to not tell anyone, and we already know that bottling it up and not doing anything doesn’t work for you since the past two days have shown us that. So you need to talk to Jond. It probably won’t go as poorly as you are thinking you guys are too good of friends for having a crush on the same guy to ruin it. maybe it will make your bond stronger you can take watches at night together and talk about how cute his butt is or whatever it is you guys see in him that I don’t. Lwdd says she will and makes Jomu promise that he wont tell anyone about this conversation. Jomu promises and has no plans to break her trust. Lwdd then says “Jomu do you trust me” “of course we have been through so much together and just two days ago you brought me back to life”

Lwdd pats Jomu on the head and casts modify memory.

Jomu successfully wisdom saves.

A quick scramble of Jomu instinctively resisted not because I don’t trust Lwdd and do I know what spell that was no I have never seen it before but it doesn’t feel like zone of truth which would make sense if she just wanted to be sure I was truthful in my promise. Lwdd awkwardly says “good talk” to having the spell not work. Jomu says “Hey I do trust you and I promise I am not going to tell anyone”

end of session

#dnd #crazy session #death #romance #drama #love triangles

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jeaneybean · 6 years

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The idiots accidentally a whole wedding

So we earned a week of downtime after solving the great mixup of the caravan and the town of Evil Donkey.

During that week Jasna went on all kind of errands and found herself a bit screwed over in that none of the buildings in town have pictures on them. She received help from Vera who helped her learn some more letters and encouraged her in reading and whatnot. Vera also helped drill her in some combat, as Vera’s spent a few years getting her ass handed to her by much larger people. That didn’t inspire Jasna with confidance.

In addition Vera kept stirring the pot all fucking week re: Nitahn and the girls. She also succesfully got one dude into the chase and had another one questioning himself. Two of the three girls spent the week chasing after him, the third was missing but Nitahn strangely kept getting better food than everyone else.

Nitahn spent the week fucking hiding. Thanks Vera.

Magnolia spent the week with the priest of the village, learning and helping. She scoured the woodlands around hte villiage and managed to find wildflowers to decorate the wedding. Flowers are rare in Montysylvania.

Jilly spent the week drunk as fuuuuuck

Jake spent the week in the necklace. Anya was nowhere to be found.

So the wedding happens, with Magnolia helping the priestess after she did her duty as flower girl. (They were going to offer ring bearer but Magnolia insisted on flower girl. It was adorable.) Just when the priest asked if anyone wanted to speak out against the marriage, Jake popped out of the necklace.

(Literally when we got to the part with the priest was when Cody walked in an hour late from his foobaw game. It was perfect.)

The wedding party stared at Jake. Jake was like ‘uh hi where are the goblins?’ and Vera shoved him towards a chair and told him to sit down. He did, and Vera kind of smiled at the wedding party and was like ‘We apologize for our techinical difficulties, please continue with your regularly scheduled wedding.’

At the reception, Jilly and Nitahn performed a song Vera had given to Nitahn to sing. He got the first bit out before stopping, because Vera is a disgusting romantic and it went something like ‘Our eyes first met across the room/I had one thought and knew it true/That I was made only for you/We are one soul that’s split in two.’ And him singing romantic songs made the girls beeline for him. Mags and Jake danced. It was cute.

A traveler turned up with a letter for Vera from beloved beautiful husband, and it was very sweet except for the end when he mentioned that the king died. Vera asked for a toast, because Geoff had been a good man. May the gods themselves guard his rest. She then sent the traveler back with a letter for her husband, and Jake did his usual ‘give strangers gold’ shit.

After the wedding the mayor of the town and Patchouli the caravan leader met with the group and handed out some gifts. Jilly got a dope ass drinking cup that could have been sold, but the party was like ‘oh hell no bro that looks sweet keep it’, Jasna got a masterwork bastard sword, Jake got a +2 resistance cape, the party got a set of full plate armor, and Nitahn got a proper caravan cart.

It was about this time that Jake forgot that NItahn goes by Havilah and kept refering to him as Nitahn, leading to Vera telling him that he’d be the first one taken by the fae. She also explained to the other members of the party that if someone asks if they can have your name, you say ‘no, but you may call me’ because names have power.

THe next morning they leave and head north towards the next town. Vera and NItahn ride on the front of the wagon, Jilly and Jasna on top, and Mags and Jake ride on the back. Vera spends her time either reading a letter from her husband or harassing Nitahn about how he could leave Patchouli’s daughter behind, he gave you a caravan and his daughter was flirting with you, he obviously wanted you to marry her. They both miss what Mags spots: signs of a skirmish.

Nitahn stayed behind, but everyone else goes into the woods a bit where they find the skeleton of what Magnolia identified as a dire bear. Vera detected Evil comeing from somewhere in the skull and tried to look in the mouth and eyes but found nothing. (Sam explained how Necromancy worked a bi tlater to Katie, what with having to put Onyx in the eyes or mouth and I’m waiting for someone to call me out on constantly looking for signs of it) and Jake smacked the fuck out of the skull with a stick. Jasna found a tooth big enough to use as a dagger. Under the head they find a talisman that Magnolia figures out was basically inducing evil on whomever wore it. The necklace was big enough to fit on the bear, leading Vera to be like ‘who the fuck goes up to a dire bear and puts a necklace on it?’

But they take hte talisman back with them to destroy later and head on to the next villiage. They get there around sundown, and the town is long dead. Nearby a decrepit keep stood and a few gargoyle statues still stood. Jilly, developing paranoia, took a pot shot at one and noticed that it flinched. He leaned down to Vera and was like ‘That thing is alive.’ ‘Oh, fantastic.’ Said Vera, sarcastic as fuck but kind of pleased someone else in the party is paranoid.

So the group heads up close enough that Vera can detect evil on it, and yep. That’s evil. So the group decides to call out to the gargoyle and ask it some questions. It answers the first, but after that doesn’t answer anything until Jake is like ‘So what do you want?’, to which it respons dramatically ‘YOUR DOOM’ and flies t the party.

Gargoyle gets last in intitave, so anyone with ranged attacks take their shots and Vera yelled out at the Gargoyle ‘This won’t end like you want it to’. The Gargoyle responds by tearing into Jake with two slash attacks and a critical bite. His teeth meet through Jake’s shoulder, and Jake goes from full HP to -3 in one hit.

Next round Magnolia heals him to his feet and Vera heals him the full rest of the way because jesus christ, what. The gargoyle is suprised by this and choses to grapple Jasna, likely to carry her off and drop her from a great height.

Jasna doesn’t take kindly to this and grapples right the fuck back. Nitahn took out his mining pick and threatened the gargoyle to little effect. Vera dove into the grapple because Fuck you, rock. The gargyole tried to break free and managed to let go of Jasna, but couldn’t break free from Vera leading her yelling ‘We’re not trapped here with you, you’re trapped here with us!’

Next round Jasna joins the grapple and Vera rolls to pin, and succeeds. The goblin escapes the pin. Jilly tries to shoot into the combat and shoots Jasna, later healing her out of guitl. Jasna pins the next round, and Nitahn joined into a dogpile. Sam then explained how coup de grax worked and Jake moved to coup de grax him next round.

The gargoyle answered a few questions at this point, saying that he was there to make sure nothing lives in the town, that he didn’t know anything about the next town, and when Jilly asked him if someone sent him there he failed a bluff check hard. Jake executed the gargoyle after that, leaving the party to be annoyed but the players to be like ‘that’s metal as fuck my sweet dude’

Vera suggests that the party rest on the other side of the river, citing line of sight issues in the ruins of the town as well as Vampires being unable to cross running water unless they’re carried. Nitahn ads a few more checks to his list of ‘she’s a fucking vampire’ and mumbles to himself ‘like the cart carried you’. Jilly agrees with Vera’s paranoia. They set up camp across the river and have an uneventful night.

They scour the keep the next day, finding gold and Jilly finding a sweet new vest, but nothing else of note. They go looking for the mine while Magnolia and Jake search the town. When they find the mine it’s boarded up from the outside, and Vera detected evil inside. Nitahn, Jas, Jilly, and Vera all listened but only Vera could identify the noise inside: bones. (”What is it made of that it’s making that sound?” “BONES!”) Nitahn ran back to get Mags and Jake and they opened the door. 14 skeleton goblins shuffled inside, but none came running. After a while one wandered out the door and the group destroyed it, they had like 3HP each. But they don’t get charged.

Jasna decided to leeroy and charged in, and everything went her way. But of course our idiots couldn’t let that happen to their sweet girl and ran in. With magnolia’s staff, Jakes’ magic missiles, Vera’s holy damage, Jasna’s shield, and Nitahn’s fists they made quick work, though Vera learned that lay on hands would dissolve them and thought it was the coolest thing ever and also got her thigh grabbed by Jilly when he tried to touch kill a goblin (because Jordan rolled a one).

Inside the mine there’s a second door, this one locked. There’s a window in that wall that’s been boarded over from the inside, but the lock is on the outside. No one in the party can open a lock, so Jake picks up a goblin mace and beats on the lock till it breaks. Meanwhile: Vera detects evil from the other side, 12 or so moving presences. The lock breaks and the door opens, revealing far, far more than 12 goblins. Women, youngling, and babies. They’ve stumbled on a goblin’s nest. But it was guarded from the outside AND locked from the outside. Are these goblins prisonors? We’ll find out next week.

#The idiots do a adventure

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gamearamamegathons · 6 years

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Dragon Warrior IV: Fantasy Day Job

Circe here! In the third chapter we meet Taloon the merchant. Apparently he wants to be the world's greatest arms dealer, which sounds somewhat less than noble when you phrase it that way, but we're really just talking about swords here I guess, so that's not so bad. Every hero needs a sword, right? I mean, okay, not *every* hero but -- look, you gotta get that stuff somewhere. I guess blacksmiths would sound more ominous too if we called them 'weapons manufacturers', which is technically true, so we'll just chalk this up to tonally clumsy localization.

Taloon starts out in his small hometown of Lakanaba, where he has a wife, a kid, and a day job. In this chapter, the game goes a lot heavier on event scripting, so you can actually work for the local weapons shop and everything, which mostly involves standing still while customers walk up to you and answering 'yes' to all their questions so they buy stuff. But it's interesting, and notably, Taloon starts out very, very weak even compared to other level 1 characters, so you actually have some reason to work at his job and make some money living his day-to-day life for a bit. In the morning, he wakes up, his wife gives him lunch, and he goes off to work. At night, he goes home and says goodnight to his wife before going to sleep to do it all over again. I'll admit, this actually got me in a bit of a roleplaying mood, and even when I had Taloon going out and poking monsters with sharp objects, I still tried to go back home every night.

Eventually, though, you've gotta get together your own weapon and armor and set out. Taloon's big perk is that he seems to get more money and items from encounters, which means that once you get going, it's a lot easier to kit yourself out with pretty good equipment. This makes the earliest encounter zones pretty easy to handle. The first big hurdle Taloon has to cross is heading to a dungeon to the north to find the Iron Safe, an item that stops you from losing any gold on death. Yes, that's right, with this item in hand, you basically suffer no consequences for dying. It's kind of awesome, actually. And it's important, because amassing large quantities of gold without losing a bunch of it is going to be integral to Taloon's quest. This dungeon is kinda fun, 'cause you gotta run away from a giant boulder and swap the treasure with a stone, Indiana Jones-style. It's definitely a lot more involved than a lot of the old stuff, and it looks like they really wanted to show off what this game's engine was capable of compared to the previous ones.

Taloon's travels take us south to the castle of Bonmalmo. It's actually not far from Endor, which is where Taloon wants to get to, but the bridge is broken. You might remember Endor as being the endpoint of Alena's quest, so things are starting to connect together. Unfortunately, the king of Bonmalmo wants to invade Endor. Our quest to solve this whole problem involves us rescuing a guy from Lakanaba who's been imprisoned in Bonmalmo, then borrowing his dog to rescue the king's architect from magical foxes (yes, really) and then, once the bridges are fixed, talking to the prince of Bonmalmo and the princess of Endor, who want to marry, and convincing the king of Bonmalmo that a marriage would be better than a war. Phew.

If we were paying attention last chapter (and I was, don't worry) we would've already met a man in Endor who had a shop he wanted to sell so he could retire. This is Taloon's next goal, to start his own shop here. But it's pricey, so we need to find a good way to make 35K gold. Luckily, we can pick up some rumors of a rare artifact called the Silver Statue, and it turns out there's a guy in Endor who will pay a lot for it. So off we go. This dungeon is actually pretty tough, but luckily Taloon can hire a couple folks to help him out -- a warrior and a spellcaster. Even with their help, it's pretty rough going, but remember, even if we die, we don't lose any gold, so with that in mind, I happily took much greater risks than I would have normally. And this, eventually, led me to the Silver Statue. Selling the statue to the collector, plus some money I already had on hand, is enough to buy the shop, and Taloon's whole family moves to Endor with him. So that's done, but Taloon's quest isn't over yet. He wants to find this one awesome legendary sword, but that means helping another guy dig a tunnel further east. That'll be 60K gold, please.

Getting together the money is a bit more straightforward this time. The king wants 7 broad swords and 7 half-plate armors for his men. That's a lot, but with a combination of Taloon's ability to scrape together money and the fact that he can get monsters to drop those items semi-regularly, I was eventually able to deliver the whole order and get enough money to help get that tunnel finished. Completing this task brings Chapter 3 to a close.

Chapter 4 introduces us to the sisters Nara and Mara, dancers who are traveling from town to town seeking to take revenge on the man who killed their father, named...Balzack. I really have nothing to add to that, chalk it up to clumsy localization again. Nara is a Fortuneteller, and she has healing spells and is pretty competent in combat. Mara is a Dancer, and she has offensive spells, and is going to take a while to even find a weapon we can equip her with. The two of them together are a lot stronger than Taloon was, although they're admittedly a bit fragile. I can't tell if it was my impatience or because this was intended, but when I took their first dungeon, they were very weak, so I wasn't able to travel very deep at first. The monsters did give pretty good experience, though. Funnily enough, we actually managed to find an ally in the dungeon who joined us, and he was a very heavy hitter with a lot of HP, so he managed to carry the party pretty far even though the sisters were pretty weak. Again, I can't tell for sure if this is how I was supposed to do things or if I was hugely underleveled, but oh well. In this dungeon, we also find the Sphere of Silence, which is supposed to help us defeat Balzack.

Our journey eventually takes us to Keeleon, which is apparently ruled by an evil king. We get word that this is where Balzack is holed up, but we have to find a way to uncover the king's secret chambers. This involves going into a mine in a nearby town to find gunpowder, so we can make a loud noise with it and scare one of the king's servants into fleeing back to the chamber and revealing it to us. This is where we fight Balzack, who has apparently been turned into a monster by...evolution, or something. With the Sphere of Silence, we manage to take him down, but then the real king of Keeleon takes us on, and he's also an evolution-monster, except he totally kicks our ass in a clearly scripted beatdown. So we end up in jail. Luckily, we're able to find a boarding pass to get on a ship and flee Keeleon, heading to a port town to the north and getting the heck out of this entire messed up continent. We failed to kill Balzack though, since the king intervened before we could finish him off. Darn.

That's the end of the sisters' quest for now, though. Now, finally, it's time to get started on the main quest, which means we're going to play as...me! Yes, that's right, it's finally time to be the hero. We find that our hero had been raised in a hidden village, far away from civilization, and trained to be a hero until the age of seventeen. Oh, and we finally have a female sprite, so, life is pretty good. Well, that is, up until Necrosaro's forces find the village and burn it to the ground and kill everyone pretty much. So that sucks. We survive by hiding in a hidden basement, and one of our friends disguises herself as us so that the monsters think they killed the hero. That...sucks a lot, jeez. So, now we're on our own. But at the very least, we know that there are allies out in the world, the characters we've already met and played as, we just need to find them. It turns out that our hidden village is east of Endor, so we can find Taloon's tunnel and travel there. In Endor we meet Nara and Mara, who join the party and give us some much-needed extra power.

One thing that's immediately noticeable is that in this part of the game, our allies are not directly controllable -- we can only tell the hero what to do, and for everyone else, we have to set a tactics mode that will determine how they act. I dunno if I'm a huge fan of this approach, but I'm getting used to it.

At this point, I know we're supposed to find Taloon, but I'm a bit lost, so I just kind of wander around until I find another dungeon further east. This dungeon is strange -- it requires you to have three party members, and a little ways in you get separated from Nara and Mara, which sucked because they were like five levels higher than me. Then you find imposters who turn out to be monsters, and after you defeat them...you find more imposters who turn out to be monsters. What a mess. After meeting up with the sisters proper, we manage to find the Symbol of Faith, which is...uh...ah...? A thing. With no other clear direction, I rub the quest item on the immediate next obstacle, which is a guy who has a wagon we need to travel across the desert, but won't help us because he doesn't trust people. Apparently, rubbing this quest item on him causes him to realize the power of friendship, and he joins us and allows us to continue. After crossing the desert, I happen across another port town, and I hear people talking about Taloon preparing a boat, but it can't leave yet because of an...evil lighthouse or something, and Taloon's gone of to fix the lighthouse so it's not evil anymore. Uh, so I guess that's our next lead!

I'll admit, I'm quite wary of boats in Dragon Warrior games at this point, but we'll see how things go. I've quite liked traveling over the land with my companions and beating dungeons and meeting people and stuff, so I hope the game will continue on like this. The main quest is still in its early phase, so only time will tell where it will lead us.

#circe #marathon #dragon quest #dragon warrior iv

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