The Austrat Darakethend's travelogue

The blog of Moon On The Horizon Etherdell, planeswalking wizard! Profile banner by Era7, pfp by KittenAttack_24

[pumpkimbreb]

my DND character

awesome

idk

[austratdarakethend]

I'm so glad the Lupine is back in Official DnD!

If you want to learn more about the history, lore, and ecology of Lupines, the following video is perfect:

[hemipenal-system]

i need personal mp3 player culture to come back. take my paw we can make a better world

[austratdarakethend]

I discovered that all of the (no-AI) dungeon synth artists that I like are on Bandcamp, and most of their albums are free, so I grabbed a load and paid for more and now I listen to my playlist with VLC with 0 interuptions due to bad internet.

[mountaindook]

Hihi! Has anyone played WOF dnd? If you have, do you have any recommendations you’d give?? I thought there was more WOF homebrew online…

I’m looking for ANYTHING that could help me play, especially things like modifiers…

[austratdarakethend]

Yes! There is a blog on this very platform called Scavengers & Dragons (@elzed9056) who is creating exactly what you seek with full rules for WoF DnD

[liebelesbe]

Yeah man, this wizard sleepover is cozy. I just saw a guy gently clap his hands together and say "hot beverage conjuration" or something, and suddenly everyone was holding a perfect mug of their favorite warm drink in their hands. Nobody who was already sleeping even woke up, that's how cozy it is. I'm over here casting pillow and level 2 pyjamas. I think I just heard "power word: blanket fort" two groups over. I gotta get in there.

[sangrefae]

now that we have even more confirmation than we ever needed of r*wling's dangerous bigotry, here's a non-exhaustive list of media similar to the shitty wizard franchise that DOESN'T platform transphobia:

discworld

little witch academia

percy jackson & the olympians + heroes of olympus

witch hat atelier

the books of earthsea

artemis fowl

skullduggery pleasant

witch hat atelier

legendborn

the lunar chronicles

witch hat atelier

please read witch hat atelier

[literally-a-spellbook]

What do you do when you’ve been on the shelf so long that you forget what’s it’s like to be useful. to feel like someone needs you.

What happens when you don’t want to go back but you miss the days when you felt wanted.

anyways… i’m still looking for a new wizard to attune to.

-Good quality ancient grimoire with an increasing layer of dust

[austratdarakethend]

Question: do you mind if the other wizard has other spellbooks?

[bigmfrat]

What do your characters use to disguise themselves?

I ask because I finally made a mind flayer character who I have discussed with the DM will be disguised as their former self (the patriarch of a Baldurian noble family)(also one of the Balsurian noble families that are heavily into devil cult stuff) and I was wondering how your characters do it.

The few Illithid I have that disguise themselves do it through two types of polymorph enchanted jewelry. The first and likely least common you'll come across (for expenses and crime reasons) is a commissioned polymorph spell with a preset appearance. No matter what, the wearer will always look like what was described in the spell; it doesn't matter who puts it on.

The one you're realistically most likely to come across on the surface, and the one that Thez uses, is a magic prosthesis. Still based on the polymorph spell, but functions differently. It reads the base meat of the individual and aesthetically undoes the damage. While on a human, all it would do is remove scars and blemishes, but on an illithid that uses a human as a base, and depending on the strength of the spell itself, it will do its best to undo the ceremorphosis, as it will read it as one large scar. If your Illithid doesn't have mental partialism and doesn't know what their host looked like, they likely won't even know that's what's happening, which is the case for Thez. The differences between these two: The first is meant to be a disguise, so it changes the appearance of everything that's worn by the wearer, so clothing and accessories that fit the squid, will fit the disguised body. It's likely that a colony illithid could probably get this from their creative creed through psionic circuitry or purchase it from some crime organization/shady wizards through human enchantments. The prosthesis is very likely to be found anywhere on the surface that has money and a significant amount of danger. Seeing as it's a prosthesis, it's not going to be able to alter any clothing. Along with that, results may vary based on the strength of the enchantment itself. You don't need a heavy-duty full-body spell for just a scar on the face. Thez just happened to be lucky that a fire wizard wasn't so lucky sometime in their youth.

But! Not everyone is going to be hyper against Illithid; crime organizations do dealings with Illithid all the time, and some cities, like Athkatla, won't even give a shit so long as your illithid follows the local laws (and spends lots and lots of money). Even bg3 as an example, Omeluum was allowed to be out in the open and undisguised because of their affiliation with the Society of Brilliance. Not saying they'll be NICE, but Faerun isn't as hyper-segregated as dungeon cover art depicts it. Illithid make excellent assets, and there's no shortage of Illithid getting kicked out of their hyper uptight communities. There's probably a good amount of squid mercenaries working out in the open on the surface at any given time, and Illithid will usually latch onto the first god in sight after getting kicked out, so they're not unheard of in monasteries either. There are actually a few named mind flayers who end up in good-aligned religions in canon. While they're rare, you can probably find one or two hanging out in any big city just living their lives like anyone else, so you might not even need a disguise if they have a reputable organization backing them up. While your character is likely to have issues with paladins and do-gooders who don't care about the actions of an individual over the situation they were born into, you'll probably have little issue with rogues, spies, thieves, and, depending on the god, even clerics, as a few of the crime-related characters might have already worked with or been around illithid in the past. But that's up to your dungeon master, and if your fellow players want to set aside their biases and stereotypes to work for the greater good.

If your players are worried about brains, eating humans is actually pretty rare for illithid, as it's a waste of resources, even in colonies. Illithid mainly eat lizardfolk, a species humans also see as pests, and will do their best to exterminate them on sight. And you only need one a month to stay in good health, too. Though this may be something your Dm will change for balancing reasons. If they want some good psionic drawbacks, Illithiad has some really good ones in chapter 3 that can easily be converted into whatever system you're using.

[austratdarakethend]

Interesting! Are the items your own creation/some other fan creation or are they from some source?

My plan is an item like the second one you mentioned but just uses the change apperances part of an alter self spell, so the stats and abilities stay the same but they just look like their former self. Their ceremorphosis was somewhat botched and incomplete so they retain things like their hooves (they were a tiefling). After their ceremorphosis they returned to their role as the patriarch of their minor noble family, hiding their transformation from the rest of their family (whom they have always seen as pawns in their political games).

[depsidase]

[geek-ramblings]

https://glaad.org/fcc/

[bigmfrat]

What got you interested in DnD?

Short answer: Bg3. I had been trying to get into the game itself since 2013, but they kept falling through before or right after session zero, so I gave up on it. Adults are difficult to wrangle when your friend group fucks off to every corner of the country after graduation, and you have a sleeping disorder. It's whatever, though, I'm an annoying ass "Um Actually ☝️🤓" Lore Lawyer, so I don't think I would be any fun to play with anyways.

Long Answer, well, less of an answer and more of a kind of related ramble: My mom was really into miniature painting when I was an itty-bitty baby. Unfortunately, in the nearly 30 years since she died, they have all gone missing, and the closest thing I have to it is a single 40k board game from sometime before 2000 that INSTANTLY disintegrated the second I moved it from Nevada to Georgia. I've been told she collected both DnD and 40K, but I couldn't find any when I went to get her stuff a few years ago, and I don't remember the models themselves, but I do remember her painting little monster guys when I was very little. Funny enough, I spoke to my older half-brother for the first time in like, idk, 15-20ish years a couple of months ago, and we've somehow managed to get into all the same things independent of each other, so there's something up with the DNA she passed on to us. Oh, and I just remembered, all through elementary and middle school, I was OBSESSED with dragons, and my family would get me a bunch of DnD books, and I just didn't realize that's what they were. I actually wasn't aware until kind of recently, when I saw some of the art from those books reused in another book that I was digging through for squid stuff. I think the one I remember was.. Something about dragon riding? Some guide to dragon riding that was in-universe written by Arthur Pendragon. No idea why I remember THAT but not the name of the book, but whatever. It talked about the types of dragons and subspecies of dragons. I LOVED that thing, I want to get a replacement copy sometime, but I don't think they were that popular, so they didn't stay in print that long. I don't think they even had the DND logo on them. BUT If you squint your eyes really hard, DND has always been there, just in the background :) Also funny: I remember seeing Illithid a lot as a kid growing up, and because I know that I can't do anything in moderation, I kind of avoided them for years. My coworker way back in either 2022 or 23 showed me their little DND figures that were being sold at our store at the time, and I remember pointing to the illithid and telling them, "I always thought those things were cool, but I know if I get into them, It's going to ruin my life, that's like 40 years worth of lore I'm going to force myself to sift through".

AND I WAS RIGHT

For the last 3 damn years, I've not been able to think about anything other than the fucking things. UUGH.

[austratdarakethend]

Shame you rarely get to play. Trust me, I get it when it comes to being a stickler for lore... Idk, my mind doesn't let me create characters without doing extensive research.

When I tried to play Thousand Year Old Vampire I got stuck researching the political movements of 1000 CE France and never even finished character creation...

[brainsanalysis-deactivated20210]

Hello please reblog this if you’re okay with people sending you random asks to get to know you better

[cryptonature]

It’s really that simple.

Withhold time/resources from organizations building an anti-human future

[cluster-fandom]

Wizards, witches, and other magic users. What is the absolute smallest length a wand can be? I’m trying to prove a point.

[the-mighty-dalob]

I mean... considering one can also just forgo any casting implement if they so wish...

I'd say even the stub of a pencil counts.

The Real question is, how long can a wand be before most mages would consider it a staff?

[austratdarakethend]

I believe you have missed one. A wand does not become a staff through length. There is an oft-forgotten middle casting implement: the rod

[literally-a-spellbook]

everyone knows a staff is overrated.

And rings are in apparently, whatever.

but what about the classics.

Like grimoires.

What did spell books like me do to deserve being cast aside in favour of things like…

Wands. 😒

[the-mighty-dalob]

I use an Axe

[literally-a-spellbook]

am i not good enough for you the mighty dalob

[austratdarakethend]

Worry not, spellbook, my arcane focus and fine compaion is a fellow sentient spellbook. They even have a strap so I can comfortably carry them at my side

[sandersstudies]

Hey, you reblogged that AI post and I was surprised to see something so mean on your blog. "If you cant write unassisted, fuck you, youre a disgrace to the community." Is that really something you want on your blog?

Just in case this isn't a spam message:

Posting AI-generated content to a platform intended to be an archive for writers is not appropriate use of the platform. On a platform intended for human creation, it is rude and inappropriate to clog search results with AI-produced content which often plagiarizes the work of human authors.

Use of generative AI is also horrible for our environment, leading to massive waste of fossil fuel energy and water. We should not be doing damage to our planet for the sake of generating (robot-produced, often plagiarized) fiction, especially when the joy of fiction comes from the creation and emotion of real people.

Rather than giving a prompt to a generative AI, people should consider attempting to write their own work, or asking another writer from the fandom if they would be interested in writing it. Anyone who is capable of typing a prompt into ChatGPT is capable of writing a story. The first attempts may not be amazing, but that is true of any skill, and anyone can improve with time and practice - and while ChatGPT may give you big returns in your time, it doesn't give you practice, growth, or creativity, which is where the joy of writing should come from.

[fofflesnave]

To add to this, generative AI isn't an assistant for disability. Something that assists you helps you complete a task. You do the task yourself, the thing assisting you just helps you manage parts that aren't possible for you. Assisted writing could be using dictation, using a screen reader, relying on a spellchecker, typing instead of writing by hand, etc.

You aren't doing the writing yourself if you use generative AI. You're offering up a single sentence and asking a machine to steal the hard work of others so you don't have to actually write anything. The hard work you steal may well belong to people who actually need assistance with writing, and absolutely will not appreciate seeing the struggles they overcame being turned into slop for others to claim as their own.

Enjoy the creative process. Be part of the creative process. Don't become reliant on AI to the point where you can't think, create or act for yourself. This is why AI isn't an assistant. It takes independence and from you, instead of helping you realise it. It convinces you that you can't do things, instead of helping you try. It tells you to just leave it all to the machines and don't bother yourself with the fun (and struggles) of creating.

[sl-walker]

If you use generative AI, fuck you.

[shadowmaat]

Generative AI generates content. That means the person using it isn't doing the work themselves. And that means it isn't a tool, it's a bypass. And it's a bypass used by lazy, entitled people who are more interested in "content" than in telling a good story. People who want headpats for being "creative" when they're so unoriginal they can't even do the work themselves.

Spellcheck, voice-to-print, screen readers, etc. aren't "AI," they're tools. They are what writers use to help capture their stories that they wrote. The writer does all the real work of creating and then uses tools to assist them in getting it down properly. Folks who try to lump it all together with shit like chatgpt are deliberately arguing in bad faith so that they can their machine-generated bullshit behind real tools that actually help.

[angstandhappiness]

SO TRUE

[mama-qwerty]

To repeat an oft seen quote:

"Why should I bother reading something you didn't bother to write?"

AI isn't 'helping' you write. It isn't 'assisting' you. It isn't some tool for disabled people. You're telling it what you want, and it's stealing words from other sources to string together a story. All you're doing is slapping your name on it to post online for back pats and high fives.

Just as an art AI isn't 'creating' that picture for you, it's stealing bits and pieces from other artists to copy and paste it together in some semblance of a (kinda sorta) cohesive image.

I'm sick of this argument that AI 'helps' new writers or artists. It doesn't. It's actually stunting your ability to USE YOUR OWN BRAIN and come up with scenarios and stories on your own. And every fic or fanart that's posted using AI just clutters up the space for those of us who write and draw each line ourselves.

We're not being "ableist". Miss me with that bullshit. We--as in, those of us who actually write and draw with our own brains--are having a hard enough time getting eyeballs on our work, so having AI created slop filling our spaces makes us testy.

We work really hard on our craft. Don't demean it by claiming your computer generated content is in any way equal.

[wigglesthedragon]

As a disabled person, with disabilities which include severe brain fog and memory problems as well as some problems with vision and hearing and a ton of problems with my joints (I have dislocated bones by writing), I find the excuse that generative AI is some kind of accessibility tool so insulting. I'm out here taking copious notes to check for continuity and keep my ideas where I can get ahold of them and taking all kinds of ridiculous measures like taping my fingers and shoulders and collarbones and ribs in place so that I can get my ideas and my words out. If it ever comes down to me not being able write, rather than writing at a high cost, and AI is my only option, I'll give up because whatever the AI spits out is not my story. And while writing a real story from my own brain puts ~me~ through a lot, it doesn't damage the rest of the world the way AI does.

And at the end of the day, storyteller is one of the most traditional societal roles of disabled people, across many cultures. I'm not letting that get taken away from me by some shitty computer program.

[serious-tabaxi]

gawds DAYUM that last line is on the spot.

[rudjedet]

Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”

[thatlittleegyptologist]

The carvings at Abydos aren’t modern machines but recarvings over old carvings. Sure they look like them but if you can read hieroglyphs and know that Ramesses II will even usurp the carvings of his own father just to be a little shit

[rudjedet]

‘No soot on the ceilings and walls of the Dendera temple!’ is actually because of extensive restoration works and not because Egyptians were in on shit like Baghdad “batteries”

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

The pyramid is the simplest, sturdiest shape with which to build and many different cultures discovered this in their own time. There were never any weird fish humans/aliens involved

[rudjedet]

The sphinx of Gizah is only an approximate 5000 years old; the 10,000 year/rain erosion nonsense is proven hokum

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

The Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate (twice)

[rudjedet]

While they had feline deities throughout their history, Egyptians didn’t actually worship cats themselves. This was a later Greek/Ptolemaeic addition

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Herodotus lied about a lot of things and many misconceptions about ancient Egypt can be traced back to his Greek ass

[rudjedet]

I can’t believe I forgot my favourite Hill to Die On

Seth was not the god of “evil”, and despite his chaos providing a foil to order, he wasn’t completely villified until very late in Egyptian history, when he became associated with despised foreign enemies

[rudjedet]

Hats off to the few of you who’re reblogging this with tags saying you’re going to check my claims later. You make me not entirely despair of this hellhole.

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

Te Velde, H., Seth, God of Confusion 

[rudjedet]

Guys do me a solid and reblog this version instead of continuously asking for sources on the other versions thanks

[chronic-backpain]

Excuse me please post ancient erotica link

[rudjedet]

hey it’s not my fault people keep reblogging the version without it!

[arvalis]

Gem dragon design updates I did for D&D The Book of Dragons last year. Prints of them available here