Piss Off

[the-griffons-saddlebag]

⚔️ 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗺! Spellsword Weapon (shortsword), rare ___

This item appears to be a shortsword hilt. While grasping the hilt, you can use a bonus action to expend a spell slot of 1st level or higher to activate the sword, causing a blade of pure energy to spring into existence. The sword remains activated for 8 hours, or until you deactivate it early using an action. Once you activate the sword in this way, you can use it as a spellcasting focus, and you are proficient with the “spellsword" for the duration.

You can use your spellcasting ability, instead of Strength or Dexterity, for your attack and damage rolls using this weapon, which deals force damage instead of piercing damage. If you activate the sword using a 3rd- or 4th-level spell slot, its damage die becomes a d8, and you gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with it. If you use a 5th-level slot or higher, its damage die becomes a d10, and the bonus increases to +2 instead.

When you deactivate the weapon early using an action, the remaining magic stored within the blade erupts into a wave of energy. Each creature in a 10-foot cone must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 3d6 force damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one. If the sword was activated using a 3rd- or 4th-level spell slot, the force damage becomes 4d8, or 5d10 if it was activated with a 5th-level slot or higher.

The blade emits bright light in a 20-foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet, and disappears if the sword is no longer activated or if you let go of the weapon. While holding the activated sword, you can use a bonus action to cause the blade to vanish or reappear. ___

✨ Patrons get huge perks! Access this and hundreds of other item cards, art files, and compendium entries when you support The Griffon’s Saddlebag on Patreon for only $1 to $7 a month!

[gallusrostromegalus]

The 1969 Easter Mass Incident

Content Warnings: Religion, food, symbolic cannibalism, symbolic gore, penis mention, Blasphemy, SO MUCH BLASPHEMY, weapons, war mention.  Mind the warnings and your health always comes first. Its a HILARIOUS story, I promise.

As always, all the names have been changed to protect people’s identities.  This is a long one, so Press J now if you want to skip it.

When my dad was a young man and still a practicing catholic, he participated in a small church communion that nearly got him and six other people excommunicated.

Father Patrick ran a small church outside of California Polytechnical and tended to be… rather more liberal in his interpretations of scripture than most of the church was, which made him something of a hit with the local students and liberally-inclined populace.  Pat went to all manner of civil demonstrations, condemned the shit out of the vietnam war and the politics that lead to it and so on.  In January of 1969 a series of incidents lead him to start exploring “nontraditional” means of holding Mass as a means of reaching out to his community and exploring his own faith, which ultimately culminated in the 1969 Easter Mass Incident.

For those of you who weren’t raised catholic, Communion is this ritual where you become one with Jesus by eating a really horrible bland wafer cookie and taking a shot of wine (called hosts), which then *literally* become the flesh and blood of jesus in your mouth, allowing him to become one with you.  It’s big McFucking deal, and you have the opportunity to take communion at every mass.  All this had to be explained to me second-hand because after this and Dad’s 51 days in the army, Dad decided he wouldn’t inflict religion on any children he might have in the future.

*

“Hey dad,” Six-year old me asked the first time he told me this story after my practicing friends were talking about getting wine at church. “Isn’t that cannibalism?”

“We’re getting to that.”  He waved.

*

The First Incident in January when, due to a serious cock-up by the church, all the hosts Father Pat received were moldering and spoiled and probably would have killed someone if he’d actually fed anyone them.  But it was the first mass of the year, when a peak number of people came in after vowing to got to church more for new year’s.  He couldn’t NOT have communion.

“I’ll bake.” offered Maria, the parish secretary and probably the best baker in the county. “So we have hosts.  Jesus will understand.”

Father Patrick, not one to pass up the chance at Maria’s cooking, immediately agreed.

A Host is supposed to be composed solely of unleavened wheat flour and water, which is why they taste terrible.  It’s a theological point of some importance relating to Exodus or something but Maria had an important theological counterpoint: Jesus both divine and loves all his children, ergo, Jesus would neither be a nasty bland cracker nor want his children to suffer as such and so instead, she made Mexican wedding cookies.

They were a SPECTACULAR hit.  Many praises were heaped upon father patrick for the Much Better Wafers and that they’d be sure to show up next week as long as Maria kept making them.  Father Patrick figuring that hey, anything that gets people in the doors is good and really, if it was turning into Jesus once inside the parishioner, did it really matter what the wafers were made of?  So he continued to let Maria bake the Hosts, and encouraged her to try out new flavors, like nutmeg and cinnamon.

This went on swimmingly for a few weeks until The Bishop showed up for a surprise visit the same week Maria decided to experiment with rainbow sprinkles.

Dad remembers hearing the bishop through the windows roaring “THE HOLY BODY OF CHRIST DOES! NOT! CONTAIN! RAINBOW! SPRINKLES!”

The matter went clean up to The Archbishop, who decided that while Pat was probably right to not feed spoiled hosts to his parish, he should attend some remedial classes to remember what Communion was all about, so that if it happened again, he’s come up with a more suitable substitute.

Father Patrick returned in late March, full of spite and some fascinating new ideas.

*

“Is this where the Cannibalism happens?” Six-year-old me asked, eager to get to the good parts.

*

At his remedial classes, the teacher had stressed the importance of transubstantiation, aka “That bit where the wafer and wine, Actually, Literally, become the flesh of Jesus Christ and we expect you to swallow.”  Also on the syllabus was understanding the importance of Christ’s suffering and sacrifice.

“So, I was thinking about Easter Service.”  Said father Patrick one afternoon while dad was doing his computer science homework at the church because his dorm was a barely-standing fire hazard and the library was where you went to have sex.

“Well, we do re-enactments for christmas.  Why not on easter?  Why not re-enact the crucifixion of Christ right here? Make it real for everyone.  Trauma’s great for bonding a community together.”

“Who’s playing Jesus?” asked Maria, always one for a good laugh.

“That’s the thing- A Host, it doesn’t look much like flesh, right?  Doesn’t look like much of anything, really.  Not great for reinforcing one’s belief.

What if, instead, we- and I mean you, Maria, I can’t cook to save my life- make a man-sized loaf of bread, maybe in the shape of a T, and we have some of the boys dress up as romans and whip the bread and we pour the wine on so it’s bleeding and them- then we make a big wooden cross and actually nail the bread to it with, I don’t know, railroad spikes, more wine all over. And we raise the cross, all while telling the story of the crucifixion.”

He paused to take a drink, Maria slowly crumpling onto the floor in horrified laughter and Dad now thoroughly distracted from his homework.

“Then we lower the cross, and invite everyone who wants to take communion up to tear a hunk of Jesus off.  Just descend into his corpse like vultures.  I think that’d really be a good bonding experience for the church.”  he nodded thoughtfully.  “The hard, part, I suppose, will be finding enough romans.”

“I WANNA BE LONGINUS.” bellowed my father, barreling into the room.

And so, the plan was hatched.  Dad hit up every other guy in the Church and eventually rounded up four more romans, three of them from the Education Department of Cal Poly, and one guy from Chemistry, who just liked to watch things burn.

This, being a play, naturally meant that there was a rehearsal, and test Bread jesus.  Maria had decided that if they were going to start being extra-literal, she needed to make the most lifelike Bread jesus possible, and made a distressingly buff and human-proportioned Jesus by Advanced bread-braiding, complete with plaited hair, quail’s-egg-and-raisin eyes, bready muscle groups, and an eight-pack because why not make the lord completely shredded?*  She also made the important theological decision that since Jesus loves everyone and was happy to die in spite of all his suffering, he should be smiling, and had a toothy corn-kernel smile.  He was Wonderful and Terrifying all at once.

“Maria,” asked Father Patrick after a few minutes of delighted and horrified cooing over Jesus’ toothy grin and abdominals. “Why is he wearing a tea-towel?

“Well, he’s the Son of God. A Man.  With all that entails.”  She said, pointedly staring at Father Patrick while everyone stared at the suspiciously lumpy tea-towel.  “And he might have… burnt, slightly.”

Everyone nodded and agreed that the tea-towel was the best course of action.  The rehearsal goes splendidly and everyone agrees that this is the most delicious Jesus they’ve ever had.

*

Easter Sunday arrives and the Church is PACKED, from the more lapsed Catholics showing up for a high holiday, parents visiting for spring break and a whole horde of newcomers who had gotten wind that something was up and they ought to come.

Dad is a lanky as hell 21-year old composed mostly of technical jargon and acne but he is STOKED to be playing Longinus, the roman that speared Jesus on the cross, because he gets to do the BEST technical effect in the whole parade.  Since he came in at the end me missed a good portion of the sermon, but did hear the “oooh” from the crowd as the massive cross was dragged in by the other Romans, followed by horrified gasps and high screams and a discernible “What the FUCK” as they brought in Bread Jesus 2.0, whipping him enthusiastically, and hammering him into the cross, the sound of wine splashing onto the floor loud in the terrified silence of that Parishioners.

Finally Father Patrick gets to the part about Longinus, and Dad comes sprinting down the aisle as hard as he can, because in order for Bread Jesus to be seen by everyone, his middle had to be about 10 feet off the ground, so Dad had to run, shrieking latin curses,  down the length of the church, with a big honking spear and take a flying leap at Jesus in order to spear him in the gut.

Please take moment to imagine you are some normal god-fearing catholic who has decided to visit little bobby or maybe patricia at college and you’re all going to church together like a nice family and this Fucking madman has decided to go all Silence of the Lambs on mass and now there’s some sort of underfed translucently pale man in ill-fitting Roman armor and cape flying at a horrifying glutinous effigy of your lord and savior, with an actual fucking spear, screaming like a madman.  Don’t you feel yourself drawing closer to God already? Defensively, perhaps, like an octopus trying to ooze itself into a crevice against the horrors of the ocean.

However, two things happen that were not planned on

1. Dad misses.  In his defense, Bread Jesus is close to but not quite the size of a man- more like the size of a doughy teenager, and his middle is a small target 10 feet up in the air and dad is has a computer science minor, not an athletics scholarship.  He misses by about 8 inches and instead very solidly stabs Bread Jesus right through the groin, leaving a big hole in Maria’s tea-towel and the spear jutting out at a decidedly… attentive angle, as Bread Jesus’s Bread Dick drops to the floor with a splat.  Nobody notices this, however because

2. In rehearsal, Dad had managed to get the spear right in jesus’s navel but neither Father Patrick nor the other romans could get the wine up there to make his middle appropriately bloodied.  

Maria come up with the Genius solution that since wine is made of grapes and Jam is made of grapes, she could make a jelly-filled Jesus for Dad to stab.  There was a normal-sized test loaf and when dad stabbed it on the table, it had a nicely gooey dribbling effect.

However, this time the loaf was torso-sized, still hot from the oven and upright, so when dad speared the very end of the loaf, all the steam-pressured jam had collected at the bottom and a spray of lukewarm smuckers exploded out from bread jesus, turning the first three pews into a splash zone of symbolic entrails.

There was  a hot, sticky minute of complete silence in the church after that. 

Then, Father Patrick indicated it was time for the cross to be lowered, and continued on with the normal preparations of the Host, he himself covered in hot smuckers, as though nothing particularly ordinary was occuring, quietly kicking the bread-dick under the altar. At the end of it all, Father Patrick and invited everyone up with the Last Oration:

“Thou, O God, has kindly allowed us to have a part in this Holy Sacrifice; for this we give Thee thanks. Accept it now to Thy glory and be ever mindful of our weakness. Amen.”

…And everybody came up, shuffling like terrified zombies, pinching off tiny bits at first but then the madness took them and they began tearing apart bread jesus by the handful, weeping as they partook, scattered prayers and begging for forgiveness.  The whole congregation was kneeling about the altar, tearful and united in their guilt and their need for God.

*

“IS CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THAT?” six-year-old me asked, absolutely stoked.  I’d convert on the spot if I got a show like that.

“No, it’s normally bland wafers and lots of chanting in latin.”

“Well that’s boring as hell.” I remember muttering and Dad snorting the coffee he was drinking out of his nose.

*

As people filed silently out of the Church to a gloriously sunny California afternoon, faces wan and smeared with wine and jam, Father patrick turned to Maria and asked “You don’t think that was too much, do you?”

“No.”  Said Maria with a sarcastic deadpan so intense it was hard to tell from sincerity.

It was the exact same tone she used when the Archbishop and Six other high clergy showed up, clutching a letter someone had written, Livid and almost foaming at the mouth, demanding to know if such blasphemy had transpired.

“No.  That’s crazy.”  She said, staring down the archbishop like he was an idiot.

“Such imaginations some people have!” Said Father Patrick, much less convincingly.

“And you-  you didn’t…  Spear an effigy of our lord and savior?”  the archbishop demanded of my father.

“Do I look like I can jump that high?”  Dad asked, having in the interim been drafted for 51 days then nearly died of pneumonia from it, and therefore no longer afraid of the Church, the Law or God.

Somewhat relieved that he’d only received the extremely detailed ramblings of a doddering parishioner, the Archbishop sat down and complemented Maria on her most excellent Mexican Wedding Cookies, may he please have another plate for his nerves? Perhaps the ones with sprinkles?

Dad went on to help build the internet, Father Patrick converted to Buddhism and Maria became a Nun.

*For those of you wondering, Jesus was made of Challah.

If you got a laugh out of this, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or Paypal, as telling stories on the internet is my only source of income right now.  Thank you very much and I hope you enjoyed it!

[prokopetz]

Concept: combine the “you don’t know you live on a death world until you leave it” trope with the whole Cthulhu-in-space genre of weird fiction, except in reverse: humanity’s Special Thing™ is that humans (and, by extension, all terrestrial life-forms) are weirdly resistant to reality-bending bullshit, which is what lets us survive and build a relatively functional civilisation in spite of hailing from a world that plays host to multiple Other Gods – which is, of course, otherwise unheard of; having even one of those squamous bastards in the neighbourhood is generally enough to ruin a whole star system’s day.

Non-human vessels can’t approach within a dozen light years of Sol without their crews being driven mad by the corrosive psychic resonance emanating from Earth’s deepest oceans, and we’re wandering around living our lives and not noticing. Aliens can never travel on human ships because our FTL drives kind of maybe tunnel through Hell, a process that horribly warps non-terrestrial life, and we just think it looks pretty when the n-dimensional hellfire coruscates across the viewports.

This sort of thing kept humanity uncontacted for a long time, until the aliens’ observers eventually figured out that we weren’t a bunch of weirdly normal-looking elder thralls, we just straight up weren’t aware there was a problem. It’s only then that they arranged first contact – remotely, of course – to basically ask “dude, what the fuck?”

(Humans are reasonably well-integrated into the galactic community these days, though most worlds enforce strict screening and quarantine procedures before allowing a Terran traveller planetside; it’s just like a human to have a class 7 epistemivore hitchhiking in their brain, and when informed, go “you know, I have been getting these headaches lately”.)

[prokopetz]

More inadvisable D&D characters, silent protagonist edition:

A gym-rat-themed human barbarian who communicates exclusively via an ever-changing array of pithy slogans displayed on their enchanted novelty t-shirt  

An elven rogue who refuses to speak aloud out of a professional commitment to stealthiness; when the need arises, they produce artfully handwritten notes from their numerous pockets  

A halfling warlock who traded their voice to their patron for some unspecified favour; their toad familiar, who speaks on their behalf, sounds exactly like a 1950s radio announcer, static included  

An orc wizard who speaks a unique three-handed dialect of sign language with the assistance of the mage hand cantrip; when otherwise unoccupied, the mage hand is prone to rude gestures  

A bard whose spellcasting performance skill is being a professional sports mascot; nobody knows what species they are because the suit never comes off

[prokopetz]

More inadvisble D&D character concepts, transtemporal edition: 

A fighter who’s the last survivor of an apocalyptic parallel timeline. They knew versions of the other party members in that timeline (all sadly deceased), and it kind of bothers them that they themselves don’t seem to have a counterpart in the new timeline. Their Action Surge class feature is described as them experiencing temporal drift and performing two different actions at once.  

A wizard who placed themselves in suspended animation for a thousand years, expecting to awaken to a world of wonders – instead finding, well, the campaign setting in its present state. They’re egotistically convinced that their own absence from history is the reason things have ended up in this sorry state, and are constantly searching for ways to send themselves back to fix it.  

A rogue whose misdeeds have resulted in them being cursed to live the same stretch of time over and over again, which happens to be the exact duration of the campaign. The loop never plays out the same way twice, but they can sometimes exploit their recollection of situations they recognise from previous iterations, represented mechanically by their various class features.  

A monk whose unique martial discipline revolves around small-scale temporal manipulation, stepping a heartbeat back in time to perform a coordinated attack with their past self (i.e., use the Flurry of Blows class feature), or evading an attack by jumping a split-second forward and vanishing from the timestream. They’re definitely going to paradox themselves out of existence some day.  

A warlock whose patron is their own future self, their ascended consciousness echoing back through time and manipulating events to paracausally bring about their own as-yet-hypothetical existence. This might not be as terribly concerning as it is were it not for the nature of the patron in question.

[nailsofvecna]

This strong yet flexible pole is coveted by monks across the world. Its lightweight construction enables novice and master alike to launch blindingly fast attacks, and to train for days on end without risk of fatigue or exhaustion.

[probablybadrpgideas]

Alrighty, fellas. Today I’m gonna teach you how to play chaos dice.

This isn’t strictly a rpg thing, but it involves D&D dice and could easily be worked into any campaign that uses gambling, lots of chance, or players getting very mad at each other and the universe.

So each player lines up all their dice in this order: d4, d6, d8, d10 (ones place), d12, d20, d10 (tens place).

On “3, 2, 1, Go,” each player starts rolling their d4. As soon as you roll a 1, move on to the d6.

You keep rolling each die till you get a 1 (on the first d10 you’re still aiming for a 1, not a 0) until you hit the final die. First one to roll double 0s wins. If you drop a die, all other players are allowed to keep going.

That’s the basic way.

If you wanna make it more fun, any time you roll the highest number on a die (first d10, the 9 is the highest number), go back one die and continue as normal. The exceptions are the first die (cause there’s no lower die to go to) and the last die (because I’m not that mean).

I’m convinced this is the worst best way to play. I’ve seen games where one person zooms their way to the d20 while the other has rolled a 6 on their first d6 roll 4 times in a row. It’s fantastic.

You can also add a Queen’s Luck or Bitch Luck rule. Queen’s Luck—anyone who rolls three 1s in a row on their first try skips to the end. Bitch Luck—they have to start over.

Wanna be extra cruel and slightly impossible? Go straight from d8 to d12, and make it so the first person to roll all zeroes with both d10s (as in, tossing both at once) wins.

So if you’re a GM who wants to make their players hate each other and develop weird superstitions about their dice—just have ‘em play some chaos dice and watch everything unravel.

And if you’re a player with a bad unlucky streak—you might just be a chaos dice champion.

[a-tired-dm]

Tools of the Gods

Firebolt: An elegant crossbow etched with glowing red runes. Deals an additional 2d6 fire damage and grants a +3 to attack rolls

Ethereal Armor: Light armor made with a thin, iridescent material. It glimmer in all the colors of the rainbow and glows ever so slightly. Strong as steel, it grants the wearer an AC of 14 + dexterity modifier. 

Tattered Tome: A leather bound volume of great age, the writing mostly worn away and the covers falling apart. It’s lingering magic gives the holder a +2 to intelligence and advantage on all arcana checks. 

Incendiary Cards: What looks to be a regular deck of cards. When thrown, they ignite, each doing 1d8 fire damage. Up to three can be thrown at a time. 

Stormbringer Talisman: A small charm on a leather cord. The charm looks to be of an ever shifting blue grey material, but it is solid to the touch. The wearer has resistance to lightning and thunder damage.

Embroidered Cloak: An fine blue cloak of silk, embroidered with flowing golden patterns that seem to enchant all who see it. The wearer has a +2 to charisma and advantage on persuasion.

Blightblade: A greatsword of a dense black iron, carved with scenes of famine. Deals an additional 2d6 necrotic damage and lends a +3 attack bonus. 

Deathward: A worn piece of bone set into a silver ring. Grants the wearer immunity to necrotic damage.

Well of Wisdom: A flask of water from the well of wisdom. The water is bittersweet and very cold. Drinking it will provide a +3 to wisdom and advantage on insight and history checks. 

Quicksilver: A delicately curved longsword that gleams sliver. When swung it seems to blur in a flash of light. It deals an additional 2d8 radiant damage and has a +4 attack bonus.

Cool Headed Helm: A pure white helm that is always cold to the touch. Grants the wearer a +1 to AC, resistance to cold damage and immunity to being frightened.

Belt of Thunder: A metal belt elaborately carved with runes. Grants a +3 to strength and advantage on athletics checks. 

Little Fang: A short sword with a snake etched in its blade. Deals an additional 3d6 poison damage and grants a +2 attack bonus.

Void Shield: A shield that seems to be made of polished black onyx, and yet is far to light for that to be the case. It seems to absorb the light around it. It adds 3 to AC and leaves the holder immune to radiant damage.

Feather of Truth: A perfect white feather, fluffy and soft. It floats about an inch in the air. The holder of the feather has advantage against deception but also has disadvantage on deception rolls of their own.

Flash & Bang: Two twin dagger of iron. They deal an additional 2d8 lightning and thunder damage, respectively. They are wielded together, making an attack with one allows the player a bonus action to attack with the other.

Olympian Nectar: A glowing golden liquid of unimaginable flavor. Heals 2d6 and has four uses. 

Rat Box: What do you think it does? When opened 10d100 rats emerge. 

Acid Lash: A whip that sizzles with a vitriolic acid. Deals 2d6 acid damage and grants a +3 to attack and damage rolls. 

Golden Fleece: Exactly what it sounds like. Can be fastened around the shoulders. Raises a player’s max HP by 5 and can heal 1d6 for the wearer per long rest. 

Hermes’s Sandals: The winged sandals of the mercurial god himself. A bit worn with time. Grants a +5 to speed and allows the wearer a flight speed of 25. 

Sorrow: A greataxe of dull grey iron. It seems to leech the color from the air around it. Being hit with it causes the target to feel an aching sadness. Deals an additional 3d8 psychic damage and has a +2 bonus to attack and damage rolls.

Staff of Hope: A staff of pale brown wood, polished to a shine. Once per long rest, it can restore 3d6 health to up to 5 creatures or cast beacon of hope.

Arachne’s Bracelet: A bracelet woven from spiderweb, possibly the webs of the cursed Arachne herself. Grants a +2 to dexterity and advantage of sleight of hand.

Shockwave: A Warhammer of unusual size, very heavy and absolutely massive. Deals an additional 3d6 force damage and has a +3 to attack and damage rolls. 

Unicorn Horn: A small piece of unicorn worm hung on a delicate silver chain. The wearer can cast purify and is healed by 3 every other turn unless they hit 0hp.

Marsyas’s Lyre: A beautiful instrument with a tragic past. Grants a +7 to performance but disadvantage on any wisdom check.

Heartpiercer: A spear of black stained wood tipped with a wickedly sharp white bone blade. Being hit with this spear causes a sudden feeling of intense grief. Deals an additional 2d6 psychic damage with a +4 attack bonus.

Fortifying Bracelet: A band of solid bronze, gleaming and warm to the touch. Raises the wearers max health by 10.

Horus Eye: It’s… an eye. Glowing silver and still very much alive. Provides advantage and a +3 bonus to perception checks. 

[someemochick]

[princecharmingtobe]

[bwepcoast]

If you would like your players to feel less like the above image, you should check out this article. It’s a bit of a read, but if you’ve got the time it’ll absolutely help you design engaging, nonlinear puzzles with multiple solutions.

Three Clue Rule

Mystery scenarios for roleplaying games have earned a reputation for turning into unmitigated disasters: The PCs will end up veering wildly

[theoutcastrogue]

Popular Historical Swords and Popular Fictional Swords, by u/Dlatrex

[danhumphrey]

scott lang, completely misunderstanding peter parker’s power: hey if u want man we could get tiny and just like hang out, i don’t know if you’ve ever been in a lego castle but it’s pretty sweet

peter parker: u have no idea how much physical pain having to turn this offer down is causing me but,

[northstarthembo]

Scott Lang, upon realizing Peter Parker can’t shrink: oh okay no biggee, we’ll just make the LEGO castle big

[magical-awesome-kid]

Peter, ready to cry from joy: do you like Star Wars? Because I have a replica… and my friend Ned and I got it to fly…

Scott Lang, a mechanical engineer and nerd: kid you are my people

[letitrainathousandflames-archive]

Tony, calling peter: …and may I know WHY THE HELL IS SHIELD CALLING ME ABOUT A LIFE-SIZED DEATH STAR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DESERT?!

Peter: we didn’t want it to crush any buildings so we brought it out here!

Tony: THATS N O T MY POINT!!!

[gingersnapwolves]

#and then Tony wonders when the hell HE became the responsible one#and promptly abandons his responsibilities#and jumps in his armor#to go zoom around the life size death star#pretending he’s Luke doing the trench run (via)

[153-centimeters-of-sass]

It got better!

[aqueerkettleofish]

I was gonna SAY, Tony would fly out there, look at the thing, and go…. No, this isn’t life size. Impressive though. Okay, bugs, put on these helmets, we’re taking this into orbit and doing this at 1:1 scale.

[joasakura]

Sam: Barnes is gonna make an awesome Chewbacca.

Bucky: -.-

[iconuk01]

Guardians arriving back in Earth orbit for a visit: Rocket : When the **** did Earth get another moon? Peter Qull (with an indescribable look on his face, but knowing his entire life has built to this moment): That’s no moon!

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

do u remember those fuckers those…

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

those WEEGGh gHOGH stick fuckers

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

THESE

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

And theyre called….. oh no-

[mintycoolnessisrelevant]

Hey baby ;)

Wanna touch my Groan Tube

[goattrain]

Neon Groantube Evangelion

[durbikins]

[defydamage]

God that’s so ominous

[chibikittens]

I prepared myself. I prepared myself for the unholy utterances I was certain would be cast at me, as though they were being cast from hell, and yet I was so, so defenseless for the real thing.

[captainrinsuu]

God damn

[augustdementhe]

…clown ghosts.

[saxifraga-x-urbium]

Art is cancelled

[istezada]

Cicadas do not race cars. If cicadas did race cars, this is what it would sound like.

[elodieunderglass]

the Groaning Machine is so heartstoppingly on-brand for me that I had to watch it twice before I appreciated the sheer Art of it, which is that somebody aligned all the tubes and wheels to carefully calibrate this sound, which rises and falls in a calculatedly horrible way, I am filled with so much respect

[gallusrostromegalus]

This Machine.

This Machine is writing something Angsty in RP This Machine is the video from The Ring This Machine is finding a way to casually drop a horrifying ‘Fun Fact’ into a conversation, like the existence of the Wyoming Supervolcano, or where Pearlfish live. This Machine is an Unfortunatley Well Constructed Pun

An absolute delight for the creator, though strictly speaking the effort was Far Too Much For The Result, and it eats at least some portion of your soul to create it …and an Abomination for the viewer, who must now live with that knowledge. The only cure.  Is the video. In inflicting the curse of Wretched Knowledge upon someone else, we are freed. Go on.  Share it. 

[mooretimetoplay]

That is the ever-present background noise in the Far Realm

[hard-were-wolf]

Dash did a thing.

[probablybadrpgideas]

Barbarian with a twist…

Role playing as a barbarian with anxiety. Raging? No just a panic attack. No flight response only, fight. They’d like to run away/avoid combat but their knee jerk reaction is just to swing the nearest thing that qualifies as a weapon. Danger sense? Sure if that’s what you want to call it. Except it’s just happening all the time.

[doctorslippery]

Magic Tattoos 5e (v 1.0)

Post with 26289 views. Magic Tattoos 5e (v 1.0)

[aliens-and-shiz]

True Prologue For The Book

Az’krah

Prologue

Sre’ja hefted her energy rifle, scanning the empty mesa for any signs of life. Nothing, again. Her third planet and she still hadn’t found another suitable species to be enslaved for the Az’krani Empire. She kicked a rock and walked back to her small ship. Her mandibles clicked in frustration.

‘If I don’t find something soon I’ll be put into the Drekka Prison Camp’ She thought to herself.

She placed one of her 8-fingered hands on the ship, admiring the stark beauty of this world. It was a small one, over a hundred parsecs from her species homeworld, with a rather thick atmosphere for its size, but then again it’s a little far from its parent star. She sighed and climbed into the ship. At least this world has potential for a mining colony. She typed it into the ships computer and sent the file to her command post.

Her next target was about 4 parsecs away, at the star Sol, so she could do it within a single jump. She sighed to herself. The engineer caste still has been unable to fix the overheating issue that occurs whenever they try to jump more than 25 lightyears at a time. But, then again they don’t see it as an issue.

She entered the coordinates, and let the Nav system do the rest. She lay down on the padded part of the floor, designed specifically for her species long lower bodies. She fell asleep, and waited to arrive at her destination.

********

The ship came out of the jump with a jolt, waking Sre’ja from her rest. She stood up and stretched, then walked over to the command center of the ship. There were 3 planets of interest, and a small moon in the outer regions. She looked out over the system, the closest planet was the third one from Sol. It was a small blue marble, right in the middle of the preferential life zone. She smiled. She could already see signs of intelligent life on it, unless it’s just a massive hunk of radioactive materials sending electromagnetic waves everywhere.

Finally.

She grabbed the joystick to manually steer her ship with the sublight engines, and turned on the stealth drive. Now they wouldn’t be able to detect her unless they hit the exact center of the craft with a gamma laser, or if they could sense the ships bend in spacetime, as the stealth drive bent the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum around the ship. She pushed forward on the joystick, aiming her craft for the world.

She gazed in amazement at the planets readings as she moved closer. Not only was there sentient life, but it was a deathworld. It’s axis had a massive tilt for a planet, and a very elliptical orbit, and yet, the life survived. Hell they thrived. Through what would have been very harsh seasons, they didn’t die. Very odd.

As she got closer, dozens of small space stations, looking like old wheels from a millennium ago circled the planet, spinning on a central axis. A stream of small ships, all with sublight engines, darted between the main planet and its singular massive moon, which itself was covered in colonies.

She put that aside, this must be a peaceful race if they were to achieve this level of colonization, and must have never warred except for against the planet they lived on. She entered the atmosphere, which was showing up as being very nitrogen rich, perfect for the Az’krah, but with high amounts of oxygen as well. That’s troubling. But, it’s only 7 percent above her atmosphere’s normal level, nowhere near lethal, so they may still be able to invade.

Then she saw it. One of their cities. It was massive, covering hundreds of square kilometers. But that wasn’t the only marvel, as she approached, she saw the unnatural starkness of its planning, with the straightest lines she’d ever seen splitting it into smaller and smaller sections. And the buildings, some of the most beautiful structures she had ever seen, much more beautiful than anything her species was able to construct.

She had seen enough. The Command should know, she found a suitable species for her masters to enslave. Those practiced at the art of construction at that, without signs pointing towards any high forms of weaponry or violence. She hit the controls, and warped out of the system, back to her home planet.

At least I’ll get to see my brother again. She thought as she prepared the hibernation chamber for her weeklong journey.

She reached her home planet, a large, rocky planet with an intense magnetic field, and a thick atmosphere, it’d be barren with the exception of the poles, if the Az’krani hadn’t developed agriculture. She landed her ship at the Imperial Spaceport, and exited in a hurry, galloping on her four armored legs. She could only gallop for a few minutes at the most, but came upon a transport, thankfully, and hopped on it.

She must inform General Zhû’læ. She flew by hundreds of her brethren, passing military and cargo ships on her way, before finally hitting the tunnel that would take her to the Command center.

She stepped off the transport and removed her helmet, she had never been more nervous in her life. She finally found a species to use, and within 500 light years of home. She double checked her portable computer, and there was still no data on the planet. She walked through the door and kneeled at the golden Az’krani in front of her.

“Sir, I found one. A suitable world with billions of slave-worthy individuals.”

The massive commander turned around, one set of hands clasped behind his back, the other clasped in front of him.

“You’ve done well. You may take 20 days of the Emperor and rest before resuming work. Upload the coordinates to the database for the Assimilation Caste to go and collect them.”

She perked up at that. Rarely does one get a single day of the Emperor for rest, let alone 20.

“Yes sir!!” She exclaimed and walked out of the room.

I think I’m going to see Sa 7’s moons for my vacation… that would be nice.

Sre’ja walked out of the Imperial Spaceport, into the sprawling First City. A fitting name for it, being the first city their species ever created, and then it was only out of necessity. Their species was not evolved to be social, but after their species was enslaved for a thousand years, then decimated, they had to evolve, quickly. And evolve they did, using technology left by those who deemed the planet no longer adequate for their needs. They discovered many marvels, from advanced ones, such as how to create antimatter reactors, to simple ones, such as how to make a shovel. And thus, the Az’krani empire was born.

She walked through the streets, now dissatisfied with the architecture. One of the few things that never changed was the adobe building material. It displeased her aesthetic to no end. But, they had an abundance of the ingredients, and not enough engineering expertise to create the giant structures she had found at Sol. Hopefully the species she discovered would be able to create a new city, using their gorgeous designs.

She arrived at the house she was seeking, and entered. Her brother, fresh out of the Assimilation Academy sat in the main room. He stood up and embraced her.

“It’s been too long, Sre’ja!” He exclaimed.

“That it has been Vek’tra!”

“How was your tri—“ He was cut off by a buzzing at his hip. A mission. He swore under his breath.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll see you when you get back.”

He clicked his mandibles in affirmation and strode out the door, leaving Sre’ja wondering if they were going to go to that planet she found…

End of prologue. Please give me feedback, let me know what you think.

[probablywizardrpgideas]

SOOOOO MY LOVELY PEOPLE

here are 100 tavern names. some of them great and some a reference to some of my favourite things.

there are also some ideas for interesting tenders of bars and taverns to play with

and a randomiser table, even though damn some of the options can suck a little

And if you do use any of these, I’d love to know how you brought it to life, and how, ultimately, your players didn’t care, and just got drunk, slept, and left.