Nee: mostly remembers them, though only for like a day. Dreams about missing exams/school stress, sometimes vague memories of her parents holding her hands. Recently her dreams have been largely about drowning under ice, as her mentor watches -- don't piss off sea hags, kids.
Linmir: rarely remembers her dreams. Gets them confused with memories as a lot are the kind where she goes about a perfectly normal day and then realizes, nope, this is a dream. Relives her most anxiety-inducing memories from time to time -- wakes up crying without knowing why.
Sûl: keeps a dream journal. Often dreams of trying to speak in a language she doesn't understand, picking up books whose words make no sense. Sometimes, walking through a burned forest as something stalks her. Sometimes, attending her own funeral, speaking to people who can't hear.
Silence: LOW WIS LOW INT, almost never remembers her dreams. Tons of gambling imagery though: cards, dice, roulettes, chips. She doesn't recognize these because they are illegal/heretical. About once a month, she drops back into a continuous dream of building the same giant house of cards.
how well could YOUR party pull off a fake dating scheme?
i had a dream that the hot new dnd meme was to take your party members, pair them up, and rank them on how convincingly they could be fake dating/fake married. Grading was based on how well they could act, pretend to be affectionate, etc.
Here's that for the Wayfarers!
(Note: Freegift+Silvertongue and Aelinor+Linmir have been omitted on account of Siblings)
Argos/Silvertongue (Nilgos): Beautifully dramatic and elegant. Silvertongue and Argos both cut a very striking silhouette, tall and sturdy. They would make constant reference to their “daughter” (Percy) to continue to sell the story. Silvertongue is fully away of Argos's past relationship baggage, which allows them to navigate the fake relationship with grace. I think they could even kiss convincingly! 10/10 honestly.
Argos/Freegift (Fargos): As the two party members most likely to Commit To The Bit, FG and Argos would play a constant game of “yes, and” while pretending to date. Argos would pull increasingly bizarre romantic stunts (all with a completely straight face), while Freegift wouldn't be able to tell if he was being serious or not, but he can't take that chance. Ironically, this actually makes them extremely convincing. 9/10.
Antigone/Argos (Antargos): Tig would be afraid of stepping on Argos's toes, literally and metaphorically, and it would impact her performance as a result. 5/10 could go either way but I think closer to a 4 than a 6.
Antigone/Aelinor (Aeligone): Actually not too bad, I think. Aelinor is good at being affectionate without necessarily kissing, and Tig can help reign in Ae if she gets riled up about the grift. 6/10
Antigone/Linmir (Lintigone): Kind of stiff but in a sort of elegant way? See the problem with Antigone is that she just can't kiss anyone convincingly, even if they would look like a solid couple otherwise. They'd struggle too much with affection to be convincing. 4/10
Antigone/Nilvertongue (SilverTig): Nil likes to tease Tig affectionately but they're also one of the people that Tig first really took a liking to on the tribe, so she could pull out some genuine affection towards Nil. But she would be very tsuntsun about it. 7/10
Antigone/Freegift (TigGift): Absolute gremlin energy. They're the couple who brings up your last divorce in such a way that you can't tell if they're being rude on purpose or not (spoiler: they are). They would drape their arms over each other and pull each other close, but they falter because they simply cannot kiss convincingly. In fact, they can't bring themselves to kiss at all – they have too much bro energy. 3/10.
Argos/Aelinor (Arlinor): I can't decide if Aelinor threatening that she won't ever let Argos die would make them MORE or less convincing as a couple. Either way, they're both kind of intimidating, especially when they're next to each other. 7/10 they could probably pull it off.
Argos/Linmir (Lingos): EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE: The Couple. They really, really tried but they just have too many hang-ups. 1/10. At least they're both tall.
Aelinor/Nilvertongue (AeliNil): Oujo-sama laughs at you from across the ballroom. 8/10
Aelinor/Freegift (Freelinor): Bonus points for being Actually In Love; unfortunately, they would each become too flustered by their displays of affection to keep up the charade convincingly. Both of them would alternate between trying too hard and getting shy. 4/10
Linmir/Silvertongue (SilverLin): Extremely, intimidatingly beautiful, and could coast on that energy for a lot of their charade. They could delicately hold each other's hands and kiss the back of their palms and such, and truly, who would try to question them? 10/10
Linmir/Freegift (LinGift): Nope, they just can't do it. Linmir would spent too much time wondering “is this how FG treats my little sister?” and interrogating Freegift, who would immediately go on the defensive. Lots of arguing, but not in a very couple-y way. 0/10 bad job all around.
I saw someone else do this and I think it could be fun: send me a number 1-100 and a character/pairing of characters and I'll try to write a microdrabble for them based on that number on my spfy wrapped list? Or at least I'll think really hard about it, and isn't that what counts? :)
Ravnica campaign, nonspecific eldritch battle
Prompt 4 from here.
Sûl ricochets off the wall and directly into six feet of irritated legionnaire.
“How many times,” says Maeve, with clearly fraying patience, “do I have to tell you? Stay out of the frontline if you’re not going to wear armor!”
She hauls Sûl’s arm across her own shoulders, which is good because little concepts like standing and balancing are looking somewhat improbable at the moment. Sûl coughs and then winces when the movement jostles their ribs. “Aw, Sergeant, you don’t think this dress is battlefield-appropriate? I’m--” they pause for effect-- “crushed.”
Maeve makes a strangled huff instead of just laughing like she clearly should. Her eyebrows are drawn down dramatically, turning her striking face into a caricature; evidently she does not appreciate her hard shielding work going to waste.
In Sûl’s defense, they were doing an excellent job of dodging one monstrous, alarmingly wiggly tentacle. They dodged it so excellently, in fact, that they dodged directly into the path of another tentacle -- this beast seems to have an infinite supply -- and got smacked across the room for their trouble. Hence the ribs, which are probably only cracked and not crushed, but come on. The joke was right there.
“Can you stand on your own?” asks Maeve, clearly not appreciating Sûl’s rapier wit and admirable comedy under pressure.
“Oh, sure,” says Sûl amiably. They try, and then promptly fail, to get their legs beneath themself again. Embarrassing.
Maeve catches them around the waist before they can land in a heap on the floor. “O-kay, apparently not. Jud’s taking care of the, uh-- thing--” Squelching noises, stage left, probably Jud taking care of the thing with extreme prejudice-- “So are you healin’ yourself or are we gettin’ you over to Penny?”
Sûl blinks back some of the dark spots in their vision and considers, briefly, the fact that Maeve came over to check on them; that without her intervention in the attack, Sûl was likely to be a Sûl-shaped smear on the wall instead of just feeling like one; that she is fully prepared to haul their slime-begrimed and currently not-very-sexy self over to Penny for healing, probably bridal-style, despite being wounded herself.
Then they identify the slow-growing warmth under the steady ache of their ribs as an emotional sensation rather than a physical one, and promptly stop considering all of that, for their own sanity.
Maeve’s hair is all askew, her forelock straggling even further into her eyes than usual and matted with blood besides. It looks objectively terrible. It does not make the warm feeling in Sûl’s chest go away. “You look like a hooligan, Mae-mae. Come here, let me fix it.”
“Wha-” she starts, but Sûl is already humming a soft note to magically whisk the blood out of her hair, already propping themself up between her and the wall to finger-comb the forelock into its accustomed shape. They straighten out a strap on her pauldron, too, and shake the mostly-clean sleeve of their dress down over their hand to buff the surface shiny.
“There,” they say, with satisfaction, into her perplexed face, and let themself pass out. Maeve will probably catch them again, anyway.
Niosiki “Nee” Cranta
The Halls of Screaming Stone
Titanomachy Campaign (written in early 2020)
The Acorn Path academy prides itself on the gruelling nature of its entrance exam, but what you chiefly remember is the time just after its completion: the hour you spent waiting for news of acceptance or rejection. Prior to today, prior to right now, that hour was the longest one in your life. Now, as then, the seconds drag past. Your stomach feels as if it is stuffed with boiling lead; a horrible itching restlessness crawls along your skin. You can feel every molecule of blood and sweat and cave dirt on your body and all of them are… Wriggling.
Now, as then, you pace in long circuits. Only this time, you’re pacing an underground passage instead of the deep-carpeted university hallway. That’s fine. The clatter of your hobnailed boots on the stone is more satisfying, anyway.
“Nee,” says someone, from somewhere; you don’t know where, because you’re extremely not interested in looking anybody in the eye right now.
“I’m fine,” you say, brusque, with a lot of dignity, and sit down on the ground. Sketch the outline of Prestidgitation in the air with your fingers; it’s a cantrip you’ve done a million times, and it’s actually almost relaxing. The invisible force that whisks everything unclean off of your skin and clothes. The almost-heat, almost-cold, almost-pressure of the sensation, all of those and also none of them. It steadies you, so you cast it again. Uselessly.
You didn’t take a single hit in this fight, so you don’t have any need to patch yourself up. You used maybe two spells, and flipping through your spellbook to prepare more takes precisely forty-seven seconds. Leaves three thousand, five hundred fifty-three before the rest of the party is ready to move on, and you feel every single one of those seconds like a weight on your ankles.
Pacing bothers the people around you, apparently. People who got to the fight sooner, and, therefore, did get injured, and, therefore, need more rest. So you won’t pace. You cast Prestidigitation again. Still feel unclean, afterward.
This hour is stretching far, far longer than the other one, the Acorn Path one. You think about possible time-dilation or -compression spells (that’s, what, Dunamancy?) to occupy your brain, which otherwise will start churning about the fight itself. You refuse to think about that. Your brain is your most powerful weapon and you are not going to-- oh dammit, you’ve thought about it.
This hour is stretching, yes, far longer than seems possible or believable, but it’s nothing. Nothing, compared to the agonizing seconds of waiting to see if Tanith’s desperate spell would take.
You’re thinking about it now, so any protection not thinking about it could have afforded is gone. That makes it okay to look across the cave, to let your eyes pass over Oz (sitting with one leg pulled up, leaning back against the wall, face pale and drawn, hands unsteady) and Lylah (squatting next to him, talking low and seriously). Nothing immediately happens, which makes it okay to take a deep breath. From this angle, the new scar on Oz’s face is glaring. Obvious, with its corpse-white hue, with the way it drags one eyelid down, with that eye’s iris gone pale green and milky. It’s not a clean scar, somehow. It makes your fingers itch to shape healing spells, even though you don’t know any. You have tried exactly one healing spell, back in university, which sucked and was boring. But still.
If you look at it logically, laying out all the facts, what happened shouldn’t be shocking. It really shouldn’t. Yesterday, you took a horrible gelatinous cave-thing to the face and upper body, and passed out twice within the span of an hour. Leif routinely gets skewered by assorted weaponry, and also hasn’t had an audible heartbeat in weeks. Lylah and Oz and, yes, Tanith and Symon and Arrie, too, have gotten knocked out plenty of times. Sometimes more messily than this. No one in this party is invulnerable, you know that. Obviously.
But it’s never been this bad before. Never anything that wasn’t fixable by dumping a healing potion down someone’s throat and hoping for the best; never anything that put you out of sorts like this. Leif and Lylah and, awfully, Oz -- you’ve been traveling with them going on five months now. You’re used to them being around. You kind of like them being around. And when you saw Tanith’s face as she leaned over Oz’s body -- when you thought, for an eternal, nasty moment, that he was gone for good--
Your thoughts stop right there. They refuse to congeal. It feels like someone is moving heavy furniture on your chest.
Pushing harder on that line of thought doesn’t even do any good. It just kicks your stupid heartrate into overdrive and shallows out your breathing, and that horrible, crushing weight on your chest gets worse. Your thoughts wheel away from Oz lying still, Lylah screaming, Leif’s intent stare, but the only replacement is Rill’s wrinkled face. Her lips, turned down at the corner. Her saying How did you get to be such a disappointment, Nee. Your skin itches again; if you got up. If you paced, back and forth, fast, vicious, maybe you’d feel better. But Oz is tired and Lylah might be crying; you cannot disturb them. Instead, you twirl your new wand in your fingers. Put it away. Cast Prestidigitation again, even though you can’t have possibly gotten dirty.
A sudden memory, that time at Acorn Path again: you’d folded a spare paper from your exam booklet into a shitty little fan to pass the time. You’re way better at paper-folding now; when you dig out a spare parchment from your pack, your hands are practised and sure on the creases.
Rabbit-ear fold. Outside-reverse. Pleat. Making the edges perfectly even, the folds crisp and straight, quiets your mind and soothes the weird itchy-jumpiness. It speeds time back up, too; it’s almost time to pack up when you look down and realize the finished shape of the thing you’ve made.
Your chest almost gets crushed again, but you take a deep breath through it. Stand up. Stalk across the cave, angry, now, all of a sudden.
You drop the tiny paper wolf in Oz’s lap just as he finishes talking to Lylah. Skitter your eyes away from his befuddled look. “Don’t do that again,” you say over your shoulder, already turning to go. You add, as an afterthought, “Asshole.”
Some of the pressure in your chest eases, just a little bit.
For the currently-paused Ravnica campaign, I'm playing Sûl the elven bard-warlock, currently a courtesan but formerly a noble. Mainly I wanted my Ravnica names to sound different from my Eberron names; these are different settings and vastly different people-groups. Let's, once again, get into it.
Rules for myself
Ravnica is a planet that is all one giant city, but some parts of it are currently less-inhabited and more ruined than others. Sûl's family hails from part of this Rubblebelt; while Linmir's clan is a diaspora of middle-class tradesmen and occasionally warriors, Sûl comes from a stuffy, dissipated high-elf aristocracy clinging onto their former glory.
So the idea here is still poetic eloquence, but where Eberron elves make portmanteaus with layered meaning, Ravnica elves go big or go home. Long names are in vogue, and often include hyphens and/or prepositions. They also have multiple names/forms of names for different levels of connection!
Long, formal name used by strangers + acquaintances
A shortened (usually single-word) form of that name used by friends and family
An entirely different "private name" known only to parents and really serious lovers
Formal names
These are used by strangers and acquaintances, in formal settings (which are most settings, for Sûl's family). Elves have long lives and long memories, and it's considered slightly disrespectful/kind of bad luck to name your child entirely after someone else, whether deceased or living. They can get away with this because there are not, historically, that many elves, period, in Ravnica. There are even less in the Rubblebelt, the sparsely-inhabited area of ruins and urban decay that is home to this branch of crumbling elf aristocracy.
We're not using Sûl as the case study for any of these, for reasons I'll explain later. Instead, let's go with her oldest sister. Her long-form name is Elen-atto-vomentië (=meeting of two stars); short form would likely be Elen, as the first word in the name is most likely to be picked for casual usage. Elen (stars) is an extremely common Elvish name; other possibilities could have been Tië (path) or Vomen (to gather together).
Generally, children are allowed to choose the casual form of their name whenever they want to. Like being named Alexander and going by Alex, for example. Not a particularly weighty decision, and subject to change! The "don't name your kid after someone else" social norm only applies to the full formal name, but if you have like six people in your immediate family tree who shorten their name to Elen, it's considered quite gauche.
Intimate names:
The intimate name is a much bigger deal. Generally only a child and their parents know it & parents would never use it except alone with their kid in a moment of great emotion. Traditionally you'd tell your spouse at your wedding, but modern elves might tell it to a non-marital life partner or even a VERY best friend, if their bond is close enough. It's supposed to be something of a horoscope/prophecy/wish from the parent to the child. Elen's intimate name is Asya-Mekte (=to ease [one's] heart); her parents hoped she would be a kind and empathetic soul.
I cannot stress enough that you Do Not say this name except in private! Think like the True Name of a fairytale creature. There's a superstition that where you give your private name, you give your heart -- with the proper spells, some believe it can be used to control you. Is it true? Who knows! But certainly it would be extremely rude, having been given the honor of an elf’s intimate name, to use it where anyone not so chosen could hear.
[I think I was using an older form of Elvish for these? But I've forgotten entirely.]
Surnames:
Surnames are a lot easier to deal with, because they're just place names. This brand of elves is pretty traditional and keen on long history, so they generally go by whatever region/estate/geographical feature they consider their ancestral home. Sûl's family comes from a region and its corresponding manor called Haudh-en-Calen (= Green Hills/Green Barrows), so that's their last name. In the most formal settings you would stick a possessive from in there: Elen-atto-vomentië Haudh-en-Calenva. If one were inclined to make one's introduction more accessible to non-Elvish speakers (Elen is NOT inclined), one could call oneself Elen of the Green Hills. Or Two-Stars of the Green Hills, but that would be just too assimilationist.
This got long and has been languishing in my drafts for months, so you'll have to hear about Sûl's name another day.
Oh my god there were exactly four beds
a Cinders microfic
feat. vaguely one-sided (?) Harthsel
"Well, based on our sizes... it would be best for Gawain and Brân to share a bed," Harth was saying.
Brân, looming large over Gawain, looked down at her with their one good eye and asked, "you good with that?
Silently, Gawain nodded. Some kind of look passed between them - Haze couldn't quite parse it - but it felt like a secret handshake.
Ishtar, who had been a little more flighty ever since she started manifesting psionic powers, suddenly snapped back to the conversation.
"What are we talking about?"
"We are divvying up the rooms," Harth explained.
"Oh." Ishtar frowned. "I'm not sharing a bed."
"You don't have to!" Aysel chirped. She threw one arm around Haze's shoulders and pulled Harth into a side-hug with the other. "You can take the other bed in Brân and Gawain's room, and then Harth and I can share a bed, and Haze can take the spare bed since he's so bony."
Haze had a single inch on Aysel, and plenty of muscle, but he brushed off the comment.
"That's fine with me," he said. "but what about you, Harth?"
"That is acceptable," Harth said.
Barker Maple, the innkeeper, smiled broadly and handed one room key to Harth, the other to Brân. As the group started to make their way upstairs, Haze caught Aysel's arm.
"Hey," he said in a low voice. "You sure you know what you're doing?"
Aysel tilted her head back to look at him. "Whatever are you talking about?" she asked.
"You know," Haze said. He cast a glance at Harth's back, and continued, "You know Harth is here looking for her girlfriend."
Aysel's chipper expression didn't falter, but her smile was suddenly tense, like it was hard to keep it plastered to her face.
"Obviously I know that," Aysel said. She balled a hand up into a fist and lightly bopped Haze on the arm. "Geez, Haze, don't look so serious! I know what I'm doing, okay?"
She continued to look at him, blithely smiling. They were playing chicken - who would break eye contact first.
Ultimately, it was Haze. With a sigh, he dropped his hand and nodded.
SHIT I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT RIGHT NOW IMMEDIATELY whether or not Haze knows that Aysel has a crush on Harth so I can decide if he's going to make them sleep in the same bed during this inn stay lol
snowghoul
romaincrisis
turnnoffyourmind
vaporwave
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
