yeah that’s right fuck you and fuck your mom the empires cast mentioned dungeons and dragons one too many times and my hands slipped welcome to a list of my assigned races and classes for each of the empires season 2 characters. objectively i’m right always. explanations will be under the cut in case you are not immediately convinced i’m right

race; class/subclass

gem: scourge aasimar; paladin/ancients

false: kalashtar; ranger/fey wanderer

katherine: high elf; barbarian/beast

lizzie: changeling; druid/shepherd circle

joel: water genasi; sorcerer/storm sorcery

fwhip: darkwood goblin; ranger/horizon walker

sausage: firbolg; cleric/peace domain

scott: lotusden halfling; bard/creation

joey: tabaxi; rogue/swashbuckler

pix: human; artificer/alchemist

shelby: astral elf; wizard/order of scribes

jimmy: human; fighter/banneret

EXPLANATION TIME.

gem is a scourge aasimar because, like, look at her. look at her character’s story. she’s a princess of light. she worships the sun. honestly i also like the interpretation that she is a child of the sun, hence aasimar, and i made her a scourge because scourge aasimar are metal as fuck. sometimes you just gotta bleed light in the name of the sun. as for an ancient oath paladin—that just felt like it worked with her absolutely incomprehensible nature and the idea that yeah sun ancient what’re you gonna do.

false. kalashtar are people… sort of inhabited by reincarnated… dream? spirits? it’s weird and tricky and hard to explain, i’m not fully sure i understand it myself, but i thought a combination fey wanderer and kalashtar would be super fun for false’s dimension hopping thing! kalashtar don’t dream, they see windows into their past lives, and i thought that was super cool for false. plus i just love the fey wanderer subclass, and false always has ranger vibes. her fey blessing would probably be some kind of illusory feathers drifting around her or perhaps reflective coppery eyes!

katherine is the assignment i love the most and am least willing to change. before i get mauled on this one, i know there’s a ranger class called monster slayer, but this is about eight thousand times cooler. consider, for me, katherine’s story about her parents disapproving of her fighting monsters in a world where she is a high elf. high elves are weird motherfuckers like that. a beast barbarian princess who wears pink and saves fairies is my favorite fucking character ever she can use her rage to transform herself into a fucked up hulking bear creature thing and maul any dark beasts around her. her magical girl transformation is her going into a rage. i’m right on this one.

lizzie as a changeling! i loved this one because in order for her to like keep that weirdly suspicious disguise thing she’d have to be either a really bad changeling or really paranoid. and i mean it is incredibly lizzie to go “how can i make sure people don’t suspect i’m a fey shapeshifter. I KNOW. [pulls out a cardboard box with a bad drawing of her own face on it] nobody will ever notice a thing now!” circle of shepherds is because those druids have an affinity for being able to summon animal spirits to aid them in battle! lizzie’s got her crazy menagerie with her :^)

alright joel is a water genasi because i think it’s cool. he’s made of water whatre you gonna do about it. i knew i wanted to make him a sorcerer from the get go and then i read the storm sorcery page and i was like yeah. this is him. i’m like 85% sure that the wiki page even says you can get storm sorcery magic from a weird fountain. joel girlbossed too close to the sun on this one. like to imagine he just decided yeah im a god now after touching a fountain and suddenly becoming able to control lightning

fwhip’s race is pretty self explanatory! tried my best to find a race that fit the bill for cave goblin, hence darkwood goblins, who are a bit more chill and interested in machinery than other goblins, i think. the class was tough to pick for him, but i figured since he’s sort of a keeper of the end portal and was the one who wanted to solve the mystery of the stronghold, a horizon walker subclass would be good! they protect the intersection of the planes.

sausage’s race was one i struggled with a bit. i don’t know why but sausage just has such human vibes, but i just also really liked firbolg for his gentler homey sort of vibe this season. plus they’re sort of natural druids and i think that works well, as i was also considering making him a nature domain cleric, but then i found out peace domain existed and i went yeah that’s him. his empire is literally called sanctuary. his abilities all center around how good of a relationship his allies have, how well they’re able to get along, and i love that!

i have no justification for lotusden halfling scott. lotusden halflings are sort of more sneaky and tricky than typical halflings, which, it’s scott i think he deserves that, and i don’t know! i just kind of wanted to make him a halfling. scott’s so often a very typically graceful and beautiful race and idk i just wanna see him be a funny little jester with his rainbow empire full of flowers while also being beautiful and graceful anyway. a bard of creation just felt like it fit with his colorful empire, plus scott always has fey vibes and that’s a very typically fey-associated class.

joey’s race is something i struggled with HARD. i thought about verdin, i thought about kenku, i thought about half-elf, i thought about half-orc, but eventually the need to make joey graceffa a stabby murder cat won out. i imagine he’s a tiger-styled tabaxi! swashbuckler is a no-brainer and i couldn’t find anything that fit him better for me, unlike katherine, so he stays a tricksy pirate guy :^D

as i’m writing this i have just watched pix’s newest episode, episode 3, though i made this list on series launch day, and i am feeling VINDICATED. his projector thing!! he made it to help him!! he’s got his gadgets and gizmos to help him out!! i think alchemist was the subclass that encouraged the most sort of curious testing, so that’s why i chose it for him. he’s just a guy with some magic items, uncovering ghosts in the savannah like it’s a casual tuesday!

shelby obviously had to be a wizard with the way she described the system of magic she belongs to! for a bit, i wasn’t sure what subclass to give her, as we don’t know much about her specific magic capabilities, but then i found circle of scribes, and i was like yeah she needs to be part of the nerd ass wizard circle, aka the nerd class. double nerd, double academic pressure, poor thing! astral elf was just because i found it and thought it was sick as FUCK, and plus the image of this regal elven girl made and blessed by stars being exiled to the swamp is so good.

yes the sheriff is a human fighter. what do you want from me. my friend banana suggested a critrole homebrew class called gunslinger for him but 1) i have no idea how to find information on that, it wasn’t on the wiki i was using, and 2) i wanted to stay out of homebrew stuff for this list, so i felt banneret fit him the best! bannerets excel at leading others to follow them, and i think this season jimmy’s got the charisma to pull it off.

D&D session 2 - The gang bugs out

I really want to do a proper write up of session 2 of d&d, but it went for 7 and a half hours, I’m drunk and pretty tired. So ... here’s the lightning round so I can go to bed.  We got a new player this session and she’s a Druid! Raven enters the team and that ends so well.

We had like a day in the city before going south for maybe revenge and also start Raven’s quest to bury her mothers remains. Below is a bulletpoint rundown of everyone’s day because I really don’t want to do paragraphs at the moment, it took me an hour just to fill in my notes for the whole session so I know what happened

- Olgum woke up early and went hunting, he stumbled across some boars really going at it and he decided he really wants some bacon. 2 sneak axe attacks later, the female takes off running and the male turns to fight. - Olgum gets the shit gored out of him and nearly dies before clutching the fight and then also murdering the fleeing female boar and any maybe babies that were in there. - Olgum dings up to level 2 and wanders back to town with a sack of freshly cooked meat and an even fresher gore wound. - He finds an armorer to replace his current leather armor and upgrades to Scale armor and heads back to the tavern to sell some boar meat and basically just hang out till we leave.

- Eridol bangs the shit out of his head after waking up under his cot. Realises Drack dragged him out of the room in the night and sets the cot up right in front of the door as a tripping hazard because Drack now has a -2 for dex after a reroll. Ain’t that a bitch - Eridol orders some breakfast before realising he’s still coated in orc bits and blood from the last battle and goes to find a bath. - He goes and cleans up and unknown to him Core steals a sausage off his plate. (This comes up later for Drack)  - After breakfast, Eridol goes to meet with his good buddy, Sven the creepy skin guy who works out of an unmarked building in a god damn back alley. He picks up his perfectly tanned orc tattoo and Sven offers to show him what he’s doing with the rest of the orc skin he brought in. Eridol agrees and while Sven is out grabbing it, Eridol looks around and realises that this maybe isn’t the safest place and checks for traps ... just in case. Finding nothing but still kind of terrified of this fantasy buffalo bill son of a bitch, he just backs up to the door and stands there smiling because it’s the polite thing to do. Sven wheels out a sewing manniquin with an exquisite looking full length fingerless glove made out of orc skin and cheekily shows a new belt that’s also made of orc skin. he also mentions he’s looking for a white elk’s skin that’s in teh nearby forests. Eridol mentions how awesome they are but Sven realises that it’s tinged with a hint of Eridol reeeeealy wanting to get the fuck out out of creepsville.  - Eridol goes off to find a library for information about the area and what they can expect ( A direct quote from my notes here: “Surrounding swamps contain a fuck you amount of gnolls”) and meets up with Raven who’s looking for information about why her mum got sick when she entered the swamps.

- Drack wakes the fuck up at the crack of noon and nearly trips in my cot before he asks for directions to a bath and orders a damn feast for breakfast to be ready once he gets back. - After a bath he moseys on back to the tavern and passes Core who is just about to eat the sausage he stole from me. Drack believes this is from his breakfast and tries to steal it back.  - It does not work. Once they’re back in the tavern, Drack orders delicious boar meat on Core’s tab. Eridol is still down one sausage. - Drack goes on a damn shopping spree montage. He goes and gets his backback upgraded so he can strap shit to it, he goes to get his sword sharpened and ends up with a loaner sword which looks like a family heirloom while the blacksmith is “examining” his. He fails to haggle with the shopkeeper about the price of crossbow bolts before kicking the door open to leave, encountering Eridol and Raven outside about to buy some weapons, kicks the door back open and buys some other things and just be a huge draconic arse. - Raven buys a shortsword, Eridol buys a skinning knife and apologises to the halfling shopowner for Drack being “short” with her and gives her some extra gold for dealing with him. - We all head back to the tavern to discuss things and get ready for leaving tomorrow. - Heinrik, the NPC we’re helping out find his daughter took a nasty hit last session and despite being healed ended up getting infected so he’s not looking too good. - We all retire to bed, Drack getting to the shared room first and locks Eridol out.  - Eridol’s not having any of this and decides a justice must be done. He goes downstairs and buys a small sack of flour and starts setting up a trap when their room door is opened Drack’s getting a face full of flour. Halfway through setting up the mechanism on the roof, Olgum walks past a half naked gnome, standing on a flipped over bed tying a sack of flour to a light fixture and just doesn’t even acknowledge what’s happening. - Cut to the morning, Eridol’s all clean and dressed, moving his bed into position for a perfect view of the show. Core and Raven pop into the hallway to see what’s happening and Eridol just points to the trap and lies in bed, waiting.  - Drack walks out immediately and gets half a face full of flour and his left side just gets covered. He sees Eridol propped up perfectly with a shit eating grin on his tiny gnome face. Drack tries to flip the cot in a huff. - He fails horribly and walks outside. 

(We’d been playing for 4 hours so far. We started at like 2:30/3pm to avoid running too long and still ended at like quarter to 10)

- We go out to leave, Core mentions he’s gotten us some more steeds and true to his word there are now 4 horses between everyone. 4 horses ... for 5 of us. I think I’ll just be riding shotgun in the cart again but nooo. Core (and by extension Logan, the DM) had organised a ride for me as well. That  F U C K E R  trots out a mastiff with a saddle. Eridol just stands there looking at this fucking pupper and then at Core, just going between them for a while swearing in gnomish, equal parts furious because fuck, this is demeaning and just slack jaw amazement that this is a thing. But sadly friends, no one gets to see a tiny man riding a dog today. Eridol takes the dog and jumps into the cart because he’s not leaving Heinrik alone while he looks like death. PUPPER GET!

After like 6-8 hours riding we come across a river and a surprising amount of animal carcasses, all kind of dried up and chewed on. After some poor perception roles we get jumped by 3 swarms of insects and 2 stirges (housecat sized mosquitoes). Cue just terrible rolls from everyone for the entire encounter.

- Eridol takes out a stirge about to latch onto Olgum with sacred flame. - Drack gets swarmed by insects and gets taken down to 2 health. - Raven gets swarmed by insects and moves out to help Drack and is immediately set on by the swarm of bugs with a nat 20 on the reactionary attack. She’s down. - Olgum takes out the other stirge with his longbow and gets swarmed by insects.  - Core throws a chromatic orb at the swarm on Raven. - Immediately fails. Like super hard.  - Suddenly a fucking crocodile bursts out of the river wanting some of the carcasses.  - Eridol immediately want’s that scaly bastards skin and “accidentally” fires off a guiding bolt which misses, thankfully. Before moving up to help Olgum - Drack breaks out of his swarm, fire breaths the shit out of it and lays hands on Raven to get her up. -Raven starts trying to kill the swarm with her longsword, casts speak with animals and bargains with the crocodile for help afterwhich it gets some tasty boar meat. - Crocodile runs up and tries to bite the swarm near her. - Core tries throwing another chromatic orb at the swarm near Raven. It’s a bust

Just to avoid some repetition I’ll describe the remainder. You have 5 armed individuals and a crocodile screaming constantly, flailing about and failing to hit swarms of bugs with swords, hammers and staffs that are right in front of them. I want you to imagine a group of people fighting a swarm of bees with golfclubs ... that’s basically what this was. But we all made it.

- Crocodile goes to get it’s meat payment and we depart as friends. 

END SESSION

-Suddenly a guiding bolt of divine energy burns the shit out of the crocodile. Using the advantage, Drack javelin’d it through the heart. Eridol and Drack had a different plan for that guy and the plan is new boots.

- Ecstatic that their plan worked, they both start harvesting the croc to the assumed horror of Raven (I honestly didn’t check, I was busy skinning a crocodile and so damn happy that guiding bolt hit). Eridol takes it’s skin and sweet delicious tail meat, Drack takes like all it’s teeth.

Everyone makes camp on a beautiful beachscape and we leave them for now because it’s 10pm and everyone’s happy and tired. We learn that we got through about half of what Logan had planned for the session.