Villain: The Hollow Lords

Though their reign was long thought ended, this circle of skeletal tyrants have returned from the dark depths of history to conquer the ream once again. Their awakening heralded by a tide of destruction and plague meant to destabilize the land and seed it with corpses to make up their army of undead.

Something is wrong with this story though, details that don't match up, an unknown will at work behind the actions of the lifeless villains. Whatever threat they may pose, an even greater danger pulls the strings of the hollow lords, a danger the party will confront all too soon.

Adventure Hooks:

Before they awaken, the hollow lords should be woven into the campaign as an innocuous background detail, a threat from a previous millennium which defined the heroes of that era. Forgotten today outside of festival traditions, old monuments, and the standing alliances between kingdoms, This sets a standard against which the party can measure themselves.

Scenario A sees the Hollow Lords emerging in the party's own realm, a wave of inexplicable disasters paving the way for the rise of an emerging threat just in time for our heroes to enter a new adventuring tier. In this instance it's about preventing the disasters from spreading/ the undead from establishing their foothold across a land the party has just finished journeying across. Our heroes will be stretched thin, People they know are going to suffer, and deliberate choices will need to be made about what they can save. Looking into the history of the lords only raises more questions, namely that many of them emerged from graves belonging to people who were born and died centuries after the original Hollow Lords were vanquished.

Scenario B has the Hollow Lords as an established threat, ruling over a Mordor like kingdom of darkness either bordering the party's own homeland, or being the party's own homeland if you want to get bleak about it. After our heroes defeat their first of the villains they receive a strange invitation, another of the Hollow Lords has broken partially free of whatever enchantment binds them and is pleading for help. If the party are willing to take a gamble, this rogue undead is willing to use all its dread power to aid them if they can figure out a way to put it to rest for good.

Though each was mighty or powerful in their own right, there was no unholy conspiracy that connected the Hollow Lords during their living years, at-least not on their part. Instead they were all called back to the mortal plane by a veiled necromancer who had some invisible claim on their soul. Stripped of their will, they were forced to act on behalf of this faceless puppeteer, allowing whoever it was beneath the skullmask and robe to carve out a kingdom while remaining in the shadows. Most troubling of all, those one or two Hollow Lords that were around for their first attempt at world domination also remember the veiled necromancer, speaking of a conspiracy centuries in the making.

Artist

Kiss prompt for Abrogan (my compensation for the Yoreen drabble): cupping your lover's cheek. staring into their eyes with a grin before the kiss, their hands curling around your neck, anticipating it.

I DID THE THING! And it's short and sweet.

He watched her from the shadowed doorway and Abby ignored him, lower lip caught between her teeth as she scrapes charcoal across the parchment tacked to the easel before her. Wylla had gotten her colored chalks and charcoal as a wedding gift, insisting that she pursue the hobbies she once had. Abby dove in headfirst, fingers stained black and getting smudges over her gowns and on her skin. 

Aegon didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her husband seemed to delight in every new streak he found from when she couldn’t resist reaching for him. Now, she listened as he approached, and the warmth of him curling heat through her belly as he came behind her.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked lightly, and Abby shivered as he stroked his fingers through her hair. The motion was something that could be mistaken for idle affection but she knew her husband better. When she didn’t answer, his fingertips stroked the back of her neck and her fingers gripped the charcoal stick tighter.

“I am,” she replied with a clearing of her throat and she set the charcoal down before she broke it. Aegon leaned over her shoulder, his cheek brushing along her hair as he took a better look. His hand, warm and encompassing, rested against the back of her neck and began to gently work the muscles that had tensed while she sat. A sound escaped her, a strangled kind of sigh as she relaxed into his touch and she could feel him smile but no kiss against her temple was forthcoming.

She pouted. 

Aegon laughed.

“You’re the one that denied us the lazy lie in this morning,” he murmured against her ear. There was the barest grazing of teeth and then he pulled away to drop in the seat across from her. “I’m no longer in the mood,” he declared dramatically before his attention shifted to the apple tarts on the table. “Oh, these are fresh too,” he murmured, pushing a whole tart in his mouth so his cheeks stuck out. Amidst her pouting arousal, she giggled at the sight with a shake of her head and took a much smaller bite of her own tart, uncaring of the charcoal smudges along the confection.

“You had the meeting with the weaver's guild this morning. No amount of harlotry that you could showcase would let you miss that meeting.” He rolled his eyes but didn’t argue, not that the mouthful of apple would stop him if he was so inclined. “Did it go well?”

“It did,” he forced through a spray of crumbs and took her goblet for the remains of her cherry mead to wash it down. “The Lady of Harrenhal was quite clever in the plans for the guild hall plans for the old tower,” he mused, locks of hair falling into his lilac eyes in the careless way that always made Abby squirm and seek to dive her fingers into his hair. She stood, compelled by the need for it despite his denial and he watched her, a lazy dragon in his chair, legs splayed as he held his hand out to her. He took hers, pressing her palm up to examine her dark stained fingers. “I don’t think she’d like it very much were she to catch me with a filthy artist on our balcony.”

She pressed her lips together to keep from giggling and climbed into his lap. “Well, I suppose what the lady of Harrenhal doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she murmured and Aegon gasped in exaggerated horror.

“Keep secrets from my little rabbit?” he asked and she cupped his cheek, smearing charcoal across the flushed round of it. “I would never,” he swore, voice low, his pupils blown so wide the lilac was a thin rim.

That got a grin out of her and Aegon’s hands slid to cup the back of her neck as she pressed her lips to his to make up for the lack of lie in from that morning.

Honesty is the highest form of intimacy.

Electric Street Car under the High Level Train Tracks in New York 1947 - photo by Todd Webb

What do you call such ones - maniacs? Ones that are wild, excited and always having an adrenaline rush for whatever they're involved at? I have never been able to understand a certain class of people who do things half heartedly or engage in matters with double mindedness. I belong to the opposite spectrum. If I commit myself to something, then I'm on fire till I get it done. There's no rest. There's no consideration if I'm hungry or if I've slept - some sort of a really weird insanity in giving my everything to it that I would forget the world around. The energy rush is crazy when you engage all your mind, heart and soul into something almost to the point of devotional worship. Everything else is effaced. Its just you and your focus on that one thing which you have took upon yourself. What do you call this class? Whatever name you give them is irrelevant - world would call them crazy now but it is very often that such crazy ones write histories, leaves legacies and create an impact that's felt in ages to come. Wherever you plant your soul, make sure you bury yourself completely in it, deep underneath, just like a seed...

Random Xpressions

High-Level Eberron Hooks by AndaliteBandit626 & SilaPrirode

• Taken April 22, 2023 •

Hamish (playing Thaddeus): Alright, now can we call Maria? We have the Tarrasque, in the flesh; the centipede that is supposed to surpass it and destroy everything; a madman partially mutated into a humanoid Tarrasque; and 30-40 more miniature Tarrasques that might be on our side.

Tati (playing Seraph): *hesitant* I absolutely agree that we have all the evidence we need. But if they're not going to wake up and be a problem for another thousand years, Maria will cut us off.

Hamish: Will she?

Tati: She said, and I quote, "If you abuse the Sending Stone I will not hesitate to destroy it."

Hamish: *exasperated* This is not abusing it!

DM: Look, I think I oversold Maria's goodbye. She's still happy to be friends, she just wants to live as if she's level 4. She's tired.

Adam (playing Billie): I asked if I could still call to catch up as long as I wasn't asking Maria for help, and that's when she threatened to destroy the Stone.

DM: Okay, that was a mistake. I just wanted to take away the deus ex machina. She can't be there as an option any time you want help.

Hamish: Has she ever actually done anything for us?

Tati: No. She's advised us a few times, but she's never actually helped. She just whines about how much we ask her stuff.

DM: You can still be friends with her. Just no big adventurer stuff. She wants you to forget she's high level.

Hamish: Either way, this is definitely within the realm of 'world is ending' stuff she said we were still allowed to call her in for.

Marijn (playing Godric): Let's sleep on it.

Hamish: *sighs*

High Level #3

by Bob Sheridan; Barnaby Bagenda; Amancay Nahuelpan and Nate Piekos

DC/Vertigo

Villain: Finality 9, Arbiter of the End

For hours you and your allies have sheltered in place as the astral warships bombarded the city, feeling each impact as another block was levelled. Now you watch as the Flagship touches down, scarab like legs taller than spires unfolding from it's hull. It's going to be a bloody, brutal struggle fighting your way through the rubble and the burning streets up to the control deck, but It's your only hope of ending things without your home being razed to the ground.

The embodiment of a death sentence passed long before any of the heroes were ever born, the Marut Finality 9 and the Inevitable armada it commands serve only one purpose: to deliver violent and irrevocable endings to entities that should have died long ago.

Unfortunately for the party, whatever being(s) Finality 9 is hunting happen to reside on the same landmass as they do, and the Inevitable has no qualms levelling anything that gets in its way until the destruction of its target is confirmed. Like many creatures born from the shattered plane of order, Finality 9 and its construct legion have a very narrow set of operational directives, and "preserving life" ends up being the preview of a different order of celestial machines.

Finality 9's operations always follow the same protocol: After using divination to determine the vague location of their target Modron scouts will be sent to investigate, sending a transmission back to the ship to begin the invasion the moment they've determined the enemy's presence and threat level. After that it's bombardment and battalions in specified areas to soften up their target's defences before Finality 9 itself descends to finish the job.

Hooks:

One of Finality 9's scouts becomes attached to the party early in their adventures, following along and providing typical mascot antics until they stumble across evidence of the big bad. This starts a ticking clock for the party to find and oust this evil before the Inevitables arrive... a task the galactic forces of order were failing at for decades.

Every year the realm celebrates the festival of St. Altrin's Star, held on a night when a particular comet is viable to venerate the figure's many beneficent acts. This year however the comet is unusually bright, heralding the fact that it is not a star, but Finality 9's ship which has been circling the world for decades or even centuries waiting for the reemergence of a long dormant demi-lich which the party awoke earlier in their adventures.

The Inevitable does not warn or negotiate, and likely does not even speak the language of the lands it is razing but with some telepathy or a background in obscure astral dialects they might be able to get it to stop by presenting evidence that its target is already dead ( forcing them to do all the work) or that its actions are unlawful (which requires iron clad litigation skills and knowledge of multiple celestial law systems). If the heroes happen to have any favours with infernal deal makers or underworld bureaucrats, now would be the time to call them in.

In a desperate hour, the party must seek out finality 9's armada hovering dormant in wildspace in hopes of gaining their aid against a greater foe. Delving through the flagship in its hibernation mode will not be easy as not only are there defence systems to worry about but astral wildlife that have nested in the interior while the constructs within were in standby mode.

Art 1, Art 2

Da Tweekaz x High Level - Can Can (Hardstyle Mix) (Official Visualizer)

Regardez "Tom Pidcock drops a descending masterclass during Stage 12 of 2022 Tour de France | Eurosport" sur YouTube

Football: Fiorentina; Barone, the story with Torreira is closed

Football: Fiorentina; Barone, the story with Torreira is closed

(ANSA) – FLORENCE, 06 JUL – ” We thank Torreira for the beautiful season she has had in Florence, but now I ask to finish with this story ”. This was stated by Joe Barone commenting on the reaction of the Uruguayan midfielder piqued via social networks to the reconstruction made yesterday by the Viola ds Pradè on his failure to redeem from Arsenal. ” Over the past weeks we have received personal…

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the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

Prompt: High Level writing that an AI should try to replicate

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