To the underdark 30 Oct 2020

 Started a new DnD campaign. We play on Friday evenings. The characters are:

1319: A warforged druid who used to be on the dark side, but has been converted to a nature loving robot by Ploquad, a tortillian who takes care of the forest. 

Toi: A changeling warlock. 

Creek: An aracockra monk, a bird that can attack from the sky. 

Figwit: A wood elf ranger. Me. I always play a wood elf ranger in all my campaigns. 

Pyro: A genasi cleric. 

This is a picture of me drawn by Basim, the DM

Another picture of me drawn by 1319

We are ultimately looking for a way into the Underdark. Our adventures have brought us to Kohan, from where we have taken a mission to investigate a goblin problem. We find ourselves at the entrance of Kohan, and start heading towards the mountain. Toi asks us if she should get a ranged weapon or a melee weapon, and we wonder where he gets his weapons from. She tells us that she was trained by the Raven Queen, who 1319 tells us is the god of death. We walk for half of the day and reach the foot of the mountains. While walking through the forest, we hear some noises, so we start sneaking up towards the sounds. There are two bugbears up ahead. 

1319 marks them by casting fairy fire. Both the bugbears light up with a shimmering light. I fire an arrow at it. After just one round of surprise attacks, the first bugbear goes down as I shoot an arrow through its head. Creek attacks the remaining bugbear with her Yklwa, and it starts bleeding. Toi tries to strike it, but the bugbear summons up some will to live and manages to dodge all his attacks, but then it starts running away. Toi's does not do any damage with the halberd on the opportunity attack. 

Then a bunch of goblins start attacking us. I take one down, Pyro downs another and 1319 turns into a spider and kills another one. Two goblins start running away. I zephyr strike after one of them and kill him. 1319 manages to restrain him. Toi interrogates him in undercommon, and we find out that fire slugs and other creatures attacked their settlements driving them away. They are now one among a few hunting parties. We go back to the clearing, and search the bodies. 

Then we continue to interrogate the goblin. He tells us of his king Bango, and that his settlement has around 80 goblins and 40 bugbears. We also find out that they are attacking people for food, and that the settlement is about 4 hours away. The Goblin King's name is Bango Dickbiter. In the middle of the night, four bugbears sneak towards the camp. 

 

WWO Roles

 Haven't thought this through yet, but in medieval times, people did not sleep like us with LEDs everywhere. Not everyone slept at the same time, and sleep was divided into two phases or shifts, the first and second sleep. Monks had strange timings and woke up a couple of hours after midnight. People went on midnight patrols (maybe for werewolves). Also, it was common to sleep in the afternoon. For example, Forky would almost certainly have a siesta time after working with the cows and fields early in the morning. All these are for ROLE IDEAS. Look for things where the day night cycle shifts for the rest of the village. So here are some suggestions, some might work, some might not, but this is for the general direction in which to think rather than specific roles:

Soothsayer - can suddenly put the village to sleep in the middle of the day, during or before the voting phase

Monk - goes to sleep during the voting phase, and wakes up in the middle of the night. Cannot vote, can only think for the village, and cannot be killed by ww. Dies if all other villagers die.

Forager - Wakes up directly during the lynching phase :D Can only vote, cannot see what the rest of the village has talked about, then goes back to sleep. 

Watchman - Can read what the wws are saying without the player names shown.   

Binod

 Binod

Dream Diary Goats and Rabbits Edition

I am in some northern village in the mountains, and my mother urges me to become rich, and have some ambition. I tell her in a very determined manner that it does not matter that it does not matter how rich you become, but it matters how good you become. I then head out into the mountains and the road leads to a cage with doors on all sides. I am scared of some leopards, and latch the doors on three sides myself. The door at the back is where I came from, the door on the right leads to a path along the edges of a valley, and so does the door in the front. The door on the left leads to a mountain path, that snakes up a mountain side. There are some shops midway up the mountain, a guesthouse even further up, as well as some official looking mountain facility. After latching three of the doors, I carry on forward. Here a mountain goat keeps hopping high in the air and following me. It tries to bite me once or twice, but I escape. Somewhere along the way the mountain goat meets a dog that it knows and the two go away together. I come across a beautiful lush green meadow with a pond full of lotuses in the middle. Here, there are some small brown bunnies and I photograph them. I meet another photographer who asks me where I am from. I say my address, and tell him where I work. He says he has been to my hometown, and that he has seen my place of work, which is a great bank. What he has actually seen though, is my school. I do not correct him on either part. By this time there is another local following us around. We compare cameras and I try to explain to him that he has a better model, and that we review gadgets. 

We see a forest official gassing the meadow, and I ask if it is a good idea to rescue the rabbits. We manage to save one bunny who is just too enormous to carry. I then head back to the cage and see a number of forest officials coming down the mountain path. The shops are closed now. One of them comes to me and tells me to keep the doors open for a few hours as people are going to keep coming and going. He then allows me to open and close the doors, but according to the scheduled timing and asks me to visit again. 

The rabbit signifies luck, the goat signifies wealth. The rest are simple enough to understand. 

Austronesians went to America

Here is a map superimposed on another. One is the spread of humans across land out of Africa. The second is the Austronesian expansion using boats. For some reason, Norse expidition apparently crossed the Atlantic, but the people of Hawaii or Easter Islands did not make it to the Americas across the pacific. The red lines are considered fringe or pseudoscience. 

There is plenty of evidence that this happened though

- Skulls matching pacific islanders in South America

- Similar words in the pacific islands and South America

- Chicken found in South America that is not genetically similar to European chicken

- Sweet potatoes in South America

- Similar boat building techniques used in America

- Custard apple carving in Indian Stupa, and elephant carving in Mayan remains

Those are not Elephants on this Mayan stele, according to scientists

Music listening habits before and after lockdown

So discovered the ganzfeld effect during the lockdown, and this is how my music habits changed before and after the lockdown. The sudden dip is when the lockdown happened.

I also made equipment for the ganzfeld effect by repurposing some old swimming googles, and also do not like to do cham cham in the water any more

D&D Journal - Adventures at Terra Vol 8

Adventures at Terra volumes 

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

30/10/85/01 Tazius
We all wake up except Eric. We pack up and once everyone is ready to move, I use the opportunity to try and train Bubbles to wake people up. Bjorn acts out pouncing, but Bubbles only pounces on him. I ask Syl to explain it to him, which she does. Apparently Bubbles is happy with her name. On command, Bubbles goes and wakes up Eric, so we managed to train the diredoggo a bit.
Eric, Syl and Bjorn have some wine each. Then we start walking towards the point where we are supposed to meet Karthak's men, instead of following Eric to the bandit's camp. Suddenly the guy drops from the trees and says he can take us to the camp, but the way is peppered with traps. Bjorn, Syl and me walk through the traps, carefully disarming them. There are boulder traps and bow traps. We disarm them all, and I climb into the trees, with the help of Bjorn, we set up 34 traps in the trees, that can all be sprung with a single pull of a string. We aim these arrows across the camp. I stay up in the trees with a gagged Eric and Karthak's man, while the rest of the party goes ahead to investigate the camp. We have set up the whole thing in such a way that the arrows will fire around the camp, but leave a safe zone, where the party is supposed to stay.

Bjorn walks in and starts fighting. I release all the traps. The boulders take out all the houses, the arrows kill one, and injure another bandit. Another bandit manages to step aside, while a fourth escapes by some miracle. Eric starts running towards a fourth bandit. I loosen an arrow and kill the second bandit. Syl casts fairy fire. The chief bandit blows a whistle summoning four abyssal chicken, who promptly start attacking everyone. Galadriel and Syl go down quickly. Bjorn is still fighting, and Eric is running across the camp. I fire at a chicken and miss. Chief bandit blows his whistle again, this time summoning a pair of demonic clackers. Things are about to get bad.  

There are three abyssal chickens clearly visible with fairy fire. One of them is sleeping for some reason. Galadriel and Syl are still down. I shoot one of the chicken and kill them. Donger turns around and runs back towards the fight, and swings his axe on a chicken, and gets his sword stuck. The Dwarf whistles again, summoning a pair of Maw Demons. Bjorn swings his greataxe through one of the abyssal chicken, and gibs it. The other chicken gets saved because of cushioning from the gore from the first chicken, but still gets hit. One of the Maw Demons attacks Donger, and makes him bloodied. I shimmy down the tree. Donger then starts breathing fire for some reason, showing dragonborn powers that we do not know about. We gain three roasted chicken, but all the cacklers and Maw Demons are alive. I zephyr strike into the arena and grab the whistle from the Dwarf. There seems to be some instrument on his wrist. Bjorn says hi Lindir as I approach and bye Lindir as I go away with the whistle. Galadriel manages to become stable. Donger strikes at the cacklers and misses it, then takes a few more down. The scuffle continues. We kill 17 creatures. The Dwarf shouts something about Jak with a K as he gets killed by Bjorn. 

I go and console Eric. Eric talks about Mark the Dwarf, and how they were good friends and spent many nights looking at the stars. I check the shed and find that the goat is alive. I stabilise it. We clear the debris from the kitchen and recover some food. Bjorn checks out one of the rooms, finds a sword and some stationery. 

01/11/85/01 Tazius

We set out towards the next town, Multum and reach there after about a day's walk. As we approach, we see a begger asking for alms, and I give him a bunch of foraged strawberries. The beggar whispers to me that Bjorn, a member of our party is wanted in the town and there are posters of him stuck all over the place. We ask Bjorn to go around the city to the docks on the other side, and steal a boat. Syl, Galad and me head to a tavern, where we get a healthy supply of alcohol. We also pick up plenty of alcohol and some supplies for the river voyage. I make some pitch using oil and soot from the chimney. 

When we head to the docks we find the whole place in uproar. By overhearing snippets of conversations we come to understand that Bjorn has stolen the biggest boat around, the King's Barge and has gone away with it. Down the river we can see a quickly receding bright light. Sylph thinks on her feet and gets a guardsman to steal a boat to follow the Barge. We get on that boat, and catch up with Bjorn. We then take all the loot we can from the King's Boat, ask the guardsman to pilot it, and head on our way. We encounter some river creature on the way, but I'm not paying attention to it.