Just random stuff that I like

[thebelfry]

I just learned that the Russian word for “ladybug” translates to “God’s Little Cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

It’s the same in Irish! bóín Dé!

[peniswizard69]

in hebrew it’s “our rabbi moses’s cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Oh I love this news!!!!

[pulmonary-poultry]

Multiple cultures upon seeing a ladybug for the first time: “Who’s cow is this????”

[wearepaladin]

Cyberpunk Elf Mage by David Demaret

[matheusgraef]

A few D&D characters portraits!

[outofcontextdnd]

I don’t kill people; I perform non-lethal spine removal, and they just die of natural causes.

[diceprophet]

Dungeons & Dragons is just a really complicated game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill.”

[diceprophet]

TFW one of your players becomes a Dungeon Master

[callmebliss]

Image: a screen shot of a tweet by Chick Wendig ( @chuckwendig on Twitter, @terribleminds on tumblr) that reads: I think the success of GoFundMe campaigns for medical expenses shows that we could probably do it on a national level, creating a collective fund for everyone using something called “taxes,” and we can use it to pay for a thing I’ve invented called “universal health care.”

[thebrisklad]

Do you wanna hear one of the funniest fucken stories?

[gandacel]

Pls do tell

[thebrisklad]

So in my town there is this emo satanist community and at some point a really influential emo dude called Raven lived here. Like every emo in Romania knew him because he was somehow the edgiest of them all. He was also a gigantic incel, but still tried to flirt with every goth girl on sight. At some point when he was in his last year of high school, before leaving for college, he tried to hit on an 11 yo girl(gross). It made her rlly uncomfortable. What Raven didn’t know was that this girl’s cousin was the strongest dude in town-2 meters tall, super bulky, literally looked like a mountain. So the girl told her buff cousin what Raven looked like, and one time, while Buff guy was at work, he spotted Raven. Now, funny enough, Buff Guy worked at a children’s playground, and he was dressed up as a clown that day. So he just walked up to Raven, patted him on the shoulder and asked: “Have you ever been beaten up by a clown?” and Raven said, “N-no”. To which Buff Guy replied :“It’s fine. Because you will be.”

[boffin93]

We buy a sheep as bait for the monster:

Josie: Oh, gods. I can't kill this sheep. It's too adorable!

Me: Ya gotta.

Josie: I love this sheep! I've already named it.

Me: We've had it for thirty seconds!

Josie, sadly: Her name is Snowflake.

[peregyr]

mini commission for @comixqueen of Srance!

[boffin93]

What are those little Owl cats things called? I need them in my life

[l-o-t-r]

The Hobbits

[gackts-guwashi]

they look like a boyband

[parkdonghoons]

MORDORECTION

[butim-justharry-deactivated2019]

In-Shire

Fall Out Hobbit

Backstreet Brandywines

[ava-dakedavra]

Their number one hit song “They’re Taking Us to Isengard (ft. Legolas)”

[boffin93]

Demon-Arm Magus character idea

So this idea is keeping me awake, even though I have to be up super early. Blade bound and esoteric archetypes. Not even 100% its legal. But I’ve got this idea. The character either loses its arm and gets a graft or gets cursed and this is a way to contain it. Which results one arm becoming the black blade. But the arm counts has a unarmed attack. If you chuck on the CHA based archetype you could even have the “arm” teach/enable the characters spells. That way its all wrapped up nicely.

This is probably why to complicated and there is most likely an easier way to do it but it I just wanted to get this idea out there. Maybe I can use this idea for an NPC in my current game. 

[nedroidcomics]

Driven to Greatness

More Comics  • Instagram  • Patreon

[generousdonkeyskeleton]

im crying this is the funniest ad I’ve ever seen

[cccrystalclear]

Self care is designing d&d characters you wont use

[cocomeeker]

Does anyone else remember playing music in Windows Media Player and just sitting there and watching this for like two hours

[did-you-know]

Medieval castle stairs were often built to ascend in narrow, clockwise spirals so right-handed castle defenders could use their swords more easily. This design put those on the way up at a disadvantage (unless they were left-handed). The steps were also uneven to give defenders the advantage of anticipating each step’s size while attackers tripped over them. Source Source 2 Source 3

[severalowls]

Not really the best illustration since it totally negates the effect by having a wide open space for those ascending. Castle tower staircases tended to look like this:

Extremely tight quarters, with a central supporting pillar that is very, very thoroughly in the way of your right arm.

Wider, less steep designs tend to come later once castles moved away from being fortresses to simply noble family homes with the advent of gunpowder.

[mactiir]

Oh! Pre-gunpowder military tactics are my jam! I don’t know why, but this is one of my favorite little details about defensive fortifications, because the majority handedness of attackers isn’t usually something you think about when studying historical wars. But strategically-placed walls were used basically worldwide as a strategy to secure gates and passages against advancing attackers, because most of the world’s population is right-handed (and has been since the Stone Age).

Pre-Columbian towns near the Mississippi and on the East coast did this too. They usually surrounded their towns with palisades, and they would build the entrance to the palisade wall in a zigzag – always with the wall to the right as you entered, to hinder attackers and give an advantage to the defender. Here’s some gates with some examples of what I’m talking about:

Notice that, with the exception of the last four (which are instead designed to congregate the attackers in a space so they can be picked off by archers, either in bastions or on the walls themselves) and the screened gate (which, in addition to being baffled, also forces the attackers to defend their flank) all of these gates are designed with central architectural idea that it’s really hard to kill someone with a wall in your way. In every culture in the world, someone thought to themselves, “Hey it’s hard to swing a weapon with a wall on your right-hand side,” and then specifically built fortifications so that the attackers would always have the wall on their right. And I think that’s really neat.

[his-quietus-make]

Ooh, ooh, also: Bodiam Castle in Sussex used to have a right-angled bridge so any attacking forces would be exposed to archery fire from the north-west tower on their right side (ie: sword in the right hand, shield on the useless left side):

[petermorwood]

These tactics worked so well for so long because until quite recently lefties got short shrift and had it trained (if they were lucky) or beaten out of them.

Use of sword and shield is a classic demonstration of how right-handedness predominated. There’s historical mention of left-handed swordsmen (gladiators and Vikings), and what a problem they were for their opponents, but that only applies to single combat.

A left-handed hoplite or housecarl simply couldn’t fight as part of a phalanx or shield wall, since the shields were a mutual defence (the right side of the shield covered its owner’s left side, its left side covered the right side of his neighbour to the left, and so on down the line) and wearing one on the wrong arm threw the whole tactic out of whack.

Jousting, whether with or without an Italian-style tilt barrier, was run shield-side to shield-side with the lance at a slant (except for the Scharfrennen, a highly specialised style that’s AFAIK unique.) Consequently left-handed knights were physically unable to joust.

There’s a creditable theory (I first read it in “A Knight and His Horse”, © Ewart Oakeshott 1962, 1998 and many other places since) that a knight’s “destrier” horse - from dexter, “right” - was trained to lead with his right forefoot so that any instinctive swerve would be to the right, away from collision while letting the rider keep his shield between him and harm. (In flying, if a pilot hears “break!” with no other details, the default evasive direction is right.)

The construction of plate armour, whether specialised tournament kit or less elaborate battle gear, is noticeably “right-handed“ - so even if a wealthy knight had his built “left-handed” it would be a waste of time and money; he would still be a square peg in a world of round holes and none of the other kids would play with him.

Even after shields and full armour were no longer an essential part of military equipment, right-hand use was still enforced until quite recently, and to important people as well as ordinary ones - it happened to George VI, father of the present Queen of England. Most swords with complex hilts, such as swept-hilt rapiers and some styles of basket-hilt broadsword, are assymetrical and constructed for right handers. Here’s my schiavona…

It can be held left-handed, but using it with the proper thumb-ring grip, and getting maximum protection from the basket, is right-handed only. (More here.) Some historical examples of left-hand hilts do exist, but they’re rare, and fencing masters had the same “learn to use your right hand” bias as tourney organisers, teachers and almost everyone else. Right-handers were dextrous, but left-handers were sinister, etc., etc.

However, several predominantly left-handed families did turn their handedness into advantage, among them the Kerrs / Carrs, a notorious Reiver family along the England-Scotland Borders, by building their fortress staircases with a spiral the other way to the OP image.

This would seem to be a bad idea, since the attackers (coming upstairs) no longer have their right arms cramped against the centre pillar - however it worked in the Kerrs’ favour because they were used to this mirror-image of reality while nobody else was, and the defender retreating up the spiral had that pillar guarding his right side, while the attacker had to reach out around it…

For the most part Reiver swords weren’t elaborate swept-hilt rapiers but workmanlike basket-hilts. Some from Continental Europe have the handedness of my schiavona with thumb-rings and assymmetrical baskets, but the native “British Baskethilt” is a variant of the Highland claymore* and like it seems completely symmetrical, without even a thumb-ring, which gives equal protection to whichever hand is using it.

*I’m aware there are those who insist “claymore” refers only to two-handers, however the Gaelic term claidheamh-mòr - “big sword” - just refers to size, not to a specific type of sword in the way “schiavona” or “karabela” or even “katana” does.

While the two-hander was the biggest sword in common use it was the claidheamh-mòr; after it dropped out of fashion and the basket-hilt became the biggest sword in common use, that became the claidheamh-mòr.

When Highlanders in the 1745 Rebellion referred to their basket-hilts as claymores, they obviously gave no thought to the confusion they would create for later compilers of catalogues…

[chroniclesofrettek]

Also, muskets had their whole “Flint and steel and gunpowder” thing on the right side so if you tried firing it lefty you’d get a face full of fire. More recently, rifles eject their spent shell casings to the right, so if you’re a lefty you get some hot metal in your eye.

[systlin]

good post this is a gOOD POST

[literaryreference]

I took martial arts classes that incorporated some iaido when I was a teenager, in the early 2000s, and even then we were all required to wield the sword right-handed, because, my teacher said, “there were no left-handed samurai.”