Issue 9 - D&D
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
15 - 21 January 2023
A much quieter week than last which of course has meant Fears and Doubts have begun to creep into my brain. What if my travel agent has scammed me, or hasn't actually booked anything and I've spent all this money on nothing? What if the minor screen issue with my laptop causes it to break when I'm travelling? Everyone keeps telling me I'll be fine and I'll have a fantastic time, and even if they weren't all people I deeply trusted, I'd have to believe it by statistics alone at this point.
I got to try out my new lens on the loveliest of subjects last weekend. Even with the low light and high ISO both the lens and camera produced some lovely shots:
D&D
For the past few months I've been playing a D&D campaign with wonderful people from work, and the last session it was my turn to take notes as to what happened. For some reason I decided to turn them into an actual story, part of the (very) first draft of which is below. I'm not sure how it will land with anyone who isn't familiar with the story and characters thus far - it's very in media res - so the audience for this is even more hyper-specific than usual with my fiction.
Things were not looking good. This thing: all vines and beaks and malice had rumbled out of the darkness and attacked indiscriminately. Surging through the open portcullis that had been heaved open only minutes before, it sounded like it had knocked either Letho or Orpheus to the floor. Meanwhile, the congealing, ethereal mist that had harried and corralled them into this awful house, swirled around Myrha spiriting her away like it had done with Alocin the previous day. Barely visible through the gloom, Rita nocked an arrow and just missed the perambulating monstrosity.
There was a wet slap and an ugly heave as something humanoid hit the floor. Tendrils crept out of the antechamber as Lorgoth The Decayer shambled back into the altar room. Alchemist’s fire still roiled across the massive mound of this creature with seemingly little effect. Somewhere in amongst the refuse of its body Rita and Finick could make out the prone figure of Orpheus, trapped.
With scarcely enough time to think, it lurched from the doorway towards the pair. Arrows struck home but didn’t even give the creature pause, and it only took a couple of strikes from its girthy appendages to topple Finick, dropping him into the murky shallow water underfoot. Rita, now alone, ran. Skirting around the room, Lorgoth single mindedly lashed out, striking stonework and mud, barely missing with each powerful strike. Amongst the tumult, Rita caught the sickening sight of Orpheus being fully subsumed into its body.
Dashing nimbly out of reach of gnashing beaks, Rita grabbed the portcullis chain and threw herself and her full weight through into the recently vacated antechamber. Just a heartbeat behind her, Lorgoth lunged just as the mechanism yielded and the solid iron portcullis dropped, blocking pursuit. Rita chanced a look back, and after an expectant pause, the beast slunk back into the darkness, the slopping of its unwieldy gait slowly dying out. Silence remained.
Lying dishevelled on the floor was Letho - still effortlessly handsome and debonair of course - but crucially alive. Popping the cork on her solitary potion of healing, he coughed and spluttered back to life.
“We have to go back for them,” Letho managed after being brought up to speed. This didn’t sit well with Rita, she had barely gotten out of that place alive, and knowing how much effort it had taken to raise the portcullis it seemed like an impossible task.
The adrenaline began to ebb as they both searched the surrounding area again, more thoroughly than when they had first entered, what felt like weeks ago now. The antechamber felt more like a gallery, displaying all manner of trinkets and knick knacks, yet it abutted onto a foul smelling prison. It was long out of use but the rusted manacles and slumped skeleton told a fuller story. Carefully hidden against one of the walls was a door into the altar room Rita had just fled from.
The plan was to go in, get Finick who lay, hopefully still alive, somewhere within, and if possible disentangle Orpheus from the creature’s guts, then leave hopefully unscathed. Like all of Letho’s plans, it was flawless, logical and brave, but unfortunately, luck was not on his side. Quietly levering open the hidden door, Letho dropped down into the shin-high groundwater while Rita hung back, pensive and alert.
Lorgoth, alerted even to the flawless cat-like stealth of Letho, grumbled back to life and emerged from its dank alcove. Finick was not where he had fallen, and Orpheus was no longer visible within Lorgoth’s heft. Dashing up the steep steps to the stained altar in the centre of the room and with few options left, Letho offered blood to the altar that had likely triggered this whole ordeal, but to no avail. Lorgoth closed quickly and struck the back-alley medic down once again. “Gallant and heroic as always Letho, I must go and tell the world of your deeds and sacrifice” Rita managed, solemnly pulling the door closed and beginning to make her way back through what her companions hard charmingly referred to as The Murder House.
The house however had changed since they had made their way through it. Where once there had been just a grimy attic, it was now choked with thick putrid smoke, and where a bare doorframe had stood was now a maw of scything blades. The smoke was billowing impossibly out of a nearby stove with no sign of abating, and with only one way out, Rita steeled herself and chanced a dash through the blades. She felt no pain as the razor sharp metal cleaved her in two.
The End
Only, consciousness returned to the previously deceased party. Unable to move and hardly able to think, all four of them - Finick, Rita, Orpheus and Letho - found themselves on a carriage being transported by someone. Randolin? The name hung in their heads. Slipping in and out of awareness, the group remembered peels of thunder and cracks of lightning, and the towering visage of a castle they had only seen from far off. Eventually, unceremoniously, they were rolled bodily out of the carriage, and left tottering in the middle of… somewhere. Dressed in unfamiliar clothes but still replete with all their worldly possessions, this turn of events made no sense.
“Lord Von Zarovich sends his regards!” called one of the coachmen gayly as they rode off. Pulling out something from the folds of his robe, Letho wielded what, to the untrained eye, looked like a stick with a desiccated frog attached to it but was of course an item of immense power that he had liberated from The Murder House. Nothing happened. Sheepishly, Letho pocketed the magical-artefact-and-not-just-a-frog-on-a-stick.
They were in a village square of some sort, still in the awful winter halflight that they had started in, but now at least there were signs of life. Hopefully these signs turned out to not also be ghosts with a penchant for possession like before. Discombobulated, the group made their way towards the Blood On The Vine tavern, which upon closer inspection had been the Blood Of The Vine but had been hamfistedly rebranded.
YouTube watches
- Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse Developer Commentary - the release of Fatal Frame (Project Zero in the UK and Japan) Maiden of Black Water for modern systems was a pleasant surprise, and Tecmo are following that up with the fourth game in the series that was both Wii and Japan only; an English fan-patch does exist but it required some gnarly hoops to jump through, so an official release on modern platforms is lovely and bodes well for other remasters
- Powerwash Simulator Speedrun - six people, the most powerful accessories, great fun
- Surviving the Abyss release trailer - another interesting twist on the city builder, looks to be in the same vein as Frostpunk and after IXION left me a bit cold, I may try this out when I return from my travels
- Japanese manhole cover production - this video has popped up in several other places, but apart from the final painting step this is a standard (but still super interesting) manufacturing process video
- The Slow Mo Guys Tiniest Fire Extinguisher
Random links
- Choosing a Postgres primary key - this was the article I was looking for when I went through database keys several weeks back, covers a lot more of the different types of keys even if the conclusion is a bit out of the blue
- Top 5 Solitary Gourmet Spots in Tokyo - whether I try any of them while I'm over there is up for debate but can go alongside 7 More TV Shows To Watch If You Love Japanese Food; I have The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House queued up to watch as I've heard good things about it
- Sky Void of Stars by Katatonia - my Spotify Wrapped for the past couple of years has put me in the top 0.x% of listeners for Katatonia so to say I was excited for their new album would be an understatement; on first listen it's solid and builds on the sound from City Burials (which I adore) so I'm looking forward to sinking into this more
This was hand-crafted by John.