Let me paint you a word picture. (And feel free to join in)
It’s somewhere during those twelve long years of dying/reviving/forgetting/raging and Barry’s back in a fleshbody again. But he’s not alone, he’s in a good old fashioned adventuring party, playing fighter.
They’re exploring an old crypt and it’s turned out to be just plain lousy with illusory traps and tricks. So their caster puts on true seeing. Smart move, she’s getting the lay of the land now, which is great.
Things are less great when their caster turns back to their party to relay this information and instead of the older, nervous, very-human fighter she’s been traveling with for weeks now…there’s something else there entirely. Red ghost without a face, empty cowl turned towards her expectantly and the words die right in her throat.
The next time Barry gets distracted poking at a monster’s corpse (a habit that had once seemed harmlessly weird), the caster takes the rest of the party aside and whispers the news. Barry is by far the newest addition to this group, so they trust her over him any day, regardless of how kind he’s been during his time.
So they turn on him, and he isn’t hard to beat. He’s got good reflexes, sure (the sort of reflexes you get from combat practice, not instinct, so it’s weird when he claims he has no formal training), but his skills aren’t terribly advanced. So he’s defeated and tied up within a few minutes.
The caster questions him about what she saw–what she still sees, with the Truesight spell still in effect. Her voice wavers because it really is deeply terrifying. But Barry has no idea what she’s talking about, and it eventually takes a Zone of Truth to prove it. (But how the hell can he be some kind of monster and not know?)
Meanwhile, they’ve paused their progression in the dungeon, and their voices are increasingly loud during this interrogation. They’re all too distracted to notice that they’re slowly becoming surrounded by what monsters remain in the dungeon (and as everyone knows, the stronger ones are always the ones further in–the last ones you’d face).
He’s still tied up.
Barry’s tied up, and it’s all the others can do to defend themselves, let alone defend him. It’s horrible when he gets killed, right then on the spot, and then–
So the bad news is, he is in fact a lich.
And the other bad news is that he’s screaming, and he just seems stressed in general. Angry? Panicked? Nobody knows, but neither adventurer nor monster wants to be struck by any of those goddamn lightning bolts shooting out of him as his horrid ghostly figure sheds the mortal body.
Barry is furious but as soon as he gets himself under control he aims his fury at the attacking monsters. They are wiped out in one well cast and extremely high level spell.
He turns to his recent party and his voice is sad when he says, “I understand why you didn’t trust me. But I wasn’t lying. I couldn’t remember. I just… I’m just trying to find my family again.”
He summons his chest from the demiplane where he keeps it hidden and mage hands the important objects from his corpse. Glasses, for one, that saves him a lot of work later if he can save them. A note he spent a lot of time looking at but didn’t understand. He should probably stop letting his body carry that around before something happens to it. He just hates to let himself walk around with nothing tangible for what he’s lost.
His former friends watch in silence, still afraid. He’s disappointed but unsurprised. How can he blame them? He looks like the villain right now.
Leaving them, he scouts ahead through the cave and takes care of the remaining monsters for them. It was nice being part of a group again and he’ll miss it. But it wasn’t part of his goal so it’s probably for the best.
Back to the drawing board.
Tag: taz
“Light ‘em the fuck up”
[ID: an Illustration of Lup from The Adventure Zone from the waist up, against a dark purple background. She is a dark-skinned elf with freckles and shaved hair, and several facial piercings, smiling slightly. She is wearing a red robe with the hood up, and an IPRE patch on the left breast. Her hands are outstretched, holding a fireball that is illuminating her face from below. Pale yellow light forms a halo behind her head.]
i still have a love/hate relationship with my art rn but at least drawing blupjeans is there to comfort me during these hard times
The Vision
There came a time when, a couple of weeks into February, they found themselves in Indrid’s Winnebago again.
It was a cramped space, but they made do: Aubrey perched on the countertop, Duck squeezed onto the little half-couch with Indrid, Ned sat on the arm of the driver’s seat and bitched about it the whole time. All of them held mugs of warm nog. It was growing on them, like the man who gave it to them. After the funicular train, they’d realized that Indrid was more useful than they’d thought – and perhaps, too, he could be a good ally. A friend. It was hard to offend someone when they had a few extra moments to prepare for whatever bullshit you were going to say. Between the three of them, they had a lot of bullshit to spare.
Besides. Indrid seemed to like them, anyway. Poor guy was probably lonely, out here in the woods by himself.
Aubrey took a sip of her nog and slowly wove a ribbon of fire between her fingers. It was a control exercise someone in Sylvaine had taught her; from the looks of it, the exercise seemed to be working. The fire looked like one of those Chinese dragon puppets, but in miniature. Its light flickered off Indrid’s opaque glasses. “So, Indrid,” she said casually.
The man looked up. “Hm?” he said.
“What’s the weirdest vision you’ve ever had?”
Ned chuckled, and winced a bit, shifting where he sat on the chair’s arm. That had to be uncomfortable. “Yeah, see anything… wild?” he said, grinning. “Anything worldshaking, or crazy? Anything… risqué?”
Aubrey choked on her eggnog. “God, Ned, don’t be gross,” Duck muttered.
Indrid, though, didn’t seem offended. If anything, he seemed to be taking Ned seriously. “Well, I’ve had quite a few,” he said in his soft, polite voice, smiling placidly. “I’ve ignored the ones that don’t, well, have worse implications down the line, but I can see nearly everything if I focus hard enough. For example, I -”
Ned shifted again on the chair’s arm, slid back too far, and fell down into the driver’s seat with a yelp.
“I saw that coming,” Indrid said stoically. Duck snorted with laughter.
Ned grumbled something rude and rearranged himself in the driver’s seat. “Thanks for the warning, mothboy,” he said, but with no real heat. “But c’mon, Indrid – don’t tell me you’ve never seen anything interesting, or -”
“Something you couldn’t explain,” Duck said. Aubrey nodded in agreement.
“You ever see the Kennedy assassination coming?” Ned said.
“Yes, actually,” Indrid said, the smile stiff on his face. “It went poorly.” The air went a little tense in the Winnebago. Duck patted him on the shoulder.
“But really. I’m just curious,” Aubrey said again.
Indrid took a deep breath, and let it out through his nose. The smile slowly faded from his face. “Well,” he said, and paused.
He suddenly stood up and set his nog on the counter. Aubrey tugged it away from the edge, and watched as the man drifted towards a far wall of the Winnebago. Here the dust lay thicker on his sketches, and they seemed wild and frantic – the edges of each shape shaky, as if half-glimpsed through dream and just barely pulled back to reality. His long fingers skimmed over the pages and riffled through. “Once,” Indrid said, and paused.
The three watched him in rapt silence. He peeled back the sketches until he reached an old one, drawn on a yellowed paper napkin, and gently tugged it loose from its pin.
“Once,” he said again, with his back still to them, “I saw seven birds.”
Taako, as Magnus prepares to use his body as a wrecking ball on the train: How the hell do you know physics, you don’t look like you stepped foot in a school at any point in your life.
Magnus, not remembering that he was in fucking nasa: uh, it’s basic stuff Taako, everyone knows this, c’mon.
whatdoyoumeantheresonly3episodes:
there’s nothing better than griffin mcelroy completely apathetically and deadpan doing a bit while his brothers literally choke on their breath screaming with laughter in the background
oh sorry sorry but this is FALSE—patently FALSE—information because i’m pretty sure what’s better is Justin struggling to get through what is probably not even a very good bit while his brothers shout over him and also each other in the background
“What brings me joy is… life. I think you can find joy anywhere, in life. I think it’s a conscious choice. I think you- you choose joy, in life. And no matter how bad things are, no matter how crummy, no matter how dark, no matter how many times some guy named John kills your ass– You find joy. I’ve found joy, honest to God, gettin’ to know ya. I’ve found joy playin’ chess with ya [laughs], I have enjoyed– I haven’t enjoyed, you know, gettin’ my– my ass killed, but I– I find joy whatever I do. I don’t always do things right, and I don’t always do things smart. And I don’t always do a character voice. But whatever I do, I find joy in it. Because, at the end of the day, that’s all you got, is lookin’ back on the joy you had and the joy you found and the joy you gave other people.”
— Merle’s speech from episode 63
blackash26 