#islanderscaper

[theinvulnerabletide]

Fandom meme: Dresden Files

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh. Kelsey you might not want to read this because spoilers, but you asked for it. But also I couched some of the more spoilery things in vague language, so??? read at your own risk. 

1.) Favorite Male Character: Hmmmm. It’s either Thomas Raith, or Nicodemus or Carlos Ramirez. There are so many characters in this series, ya’ll.

2.) Favorite Female Character: Mab or Karrin Murphy or Anastasia Luccio. Or [Spoiler Warning for Islanderscaper].

3.) Least Favorite Character: Maeve. Hands fucking down.

4.) Favorite Ship: Carlos/Molly. Though I am also into Anastasia/Harry or Murphy/Kincaid.

5.) Favorite Friendship: Murphy & Harry.

6.) Favorite Quote: “The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”

7.) Worst Character Death: Susan.

8.) “This made me so happy you have no idea” Moment: Harry visiting the little girl staying with the Carpenters. 

9.) Saddest Moment: …the scene on the top of the ziggurat. 

10.) Favorite Location: McAnally’s, the best fake pub in Chicago.  

[chasingmyreflections]

Character Development Questions: 2, 12, 22, 38 for Twiggy; 42, 62, 75, 83 for Ester

Twiggy:

002. Do they do anything to celebrate their birthday? 

Nothing too much coming from a pretty simple lifestyle. It’s just about the only time aside from festival celebrations that he indulges in sweets or more lavish meals than usual. He’s looks at his birthday more as a “I made it this far, good.” than anything else.

012. What makes your character embarrassed?

Many many things. He’s not quite admitted to himself some of the things that he, *ahem* may have things for and from that he’s not to sure how to misdirect conversation away from the things that embarrass him. He’s also absolutely useless in front of any authority or female figure so the list is long indeed…

022. What is the most beautiful thing they’ve ever seen?

Twiggy actually finds the most beautiful things are found in nature or are at least naturally occurring on their own. Finding creeks as he travels, finding pretty stones or flowers. By far though he enjoys sunsets and when he is awake enough to see them sunrises. 

038. What bad habits do they have?

Aside from the forgetting where he hides snacks? He does tend to pick at his hands or clothes or the ends of his hair when he’s stressed or nervous. Not that hangnails or frayed sleeve ends are a real concern with the lifestyle he’s taken up but it’s something that’s definitely stuck with him since childhood.

Esther:

042. What is their greatest achievement?

Up to date probably finishing up as much studying as she could before being she out in her own to do work for the church. She’s mastered four languages through study alone and has worked herself to a level of personal relaxation that she can keep her thoughts clear enough to focus on the tasks given to her. Having a scatter brain and a drive for fighting weren’t really things the church had in mind for it’s clergy members, so she is also pretty proud she beat those things down to a manageable level as well.

062. What sort of legacy does your character wish to leave behind?

She wants to make it known that through dedication and self discipline alone one can change their fate and be accepted into the church of Avacyn with open arms. With all the discussion of the issues within the church Esther just wants to paint what little she can in a good light while she can, and as long as she can after she’s gone.

075. Is your character ticklish?

Don’t you dare. She bites…

083. What is the first thing they say and/or do when they wake up?

Once she’s gotten herself up into a sitting position, still not necessarily out of bed or fully awake, she starts her days with a couple short prayers to Avacyn before starting her morning. Usual prayer stuff like to keep her and her lands safe, to guide her purpose, to thank her for keeping her safe while she slept… Then if the sun hasn’t quite risen yet she might lay back down until it’s bright enough to start making breakfast, etc.

[theinvulnerabletide]

25 OC Questions: 4, 6, 10, 16, 25 for Evie

4.) Describe EvieUsing a Song Title:

“Champion.”

6.) What would Evielike (or have liked) to do with their life?

Actually, at around the time the campaign she was in ended, she was about where she wanted to be. Hunting down necromancers and rescuing books thefingers of Vecna secreted away from the temples of Ioun. I thinkshe wouldn’t mind becoming the Sunstriker someday, though she still thinks she’sa long way off from being worthy.

10.) What is the most badass thing this character has done?

Oh man, it’s either when she swooped down on backof her griffon in the middle of a storm-tossed sea to save the people on theback of a ship that was going down, or (and I know I have told this story amillion times because it will live in my memory forever) the time she thunderoussmote the shit out of the crystal a necromancer’s soul had fled into, watchinghis smug spirit face get blasted to wisps.

16.) Emotion or Logic?

Evelyn is firmly in the Logic camp, though occasionallyher own anger got the better of her.

25.) What does this character mean to you?

Evie was the first D&D character Iever made, and goddamn that what like forever ago. I chose paladin because I remembered Matthew Mercer saying thathalf-casters were a great way to go for your first character since you get a taste of fightingand a taste of spells, and paladin drew me a lot more than ranger did. So Idrew her up and rapidly fell in love with my big buff lesbian scholar-knight. And also with smiting the shit out of things. 

It’s really hard to put into words how much shemeant to me. She was basically a distillation of everything I wanted in acharacter at the time; I got my cool vengeance backstory, a badass lady paladin with a firmplace in the world, a wicked awesome plot to play her in and a fantastic partyto interact with, and a beautiful gryphon to be her companion and friend. I learnedso much being her,  and I miss her so much. Definitely going to have to turn her into anNPC someday. <3

[theinvulnerabletide]

D&D Ask Meme: 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 19, 20

<3 <3 <31.)  A favorite character you have played.

Whisper, my tiefling sorceress, is still my favorite of all time. She’s an awful, selfish person who really cares about her friends and is desperate for approval, and her skillset is still like everything I love.

2.) Your favorite character that someone else has played.

Oh, man. I love so many of my friend’s characters it’s so hard to decide. Thia, of course. @biinthestreets-aceinthesheets‘s Nym. The sweet little halfling that Will played in my one shot who so wanted to be a good guest. Every other character ever. It’s too hard to choose. 

3.) Your favorite side quest.

The one that we’re on right now in the sunken temple. I’m very, very excited to see what happens because of it. 

9.) Your favorite thing about D&D.

Same thing that I love about all TTRPGs. Hanging out with wonderful people and making new friends, telling a exciting, breathtaking story together, pretending to be someone with a whole different set of problems. But I think my favorite favorite thing is the way a good game up my brain the whole next week.

12.) Your in game inside jokes/memes/catchphrases and where they came from.

Oh jeez, I am so bad at remembering these things. XDThe ones that come to mind are all mostly influenced by CR. The metagaming pigeon, the Taliesin face when something awful happens. Pretending we have a podcast (and merch) that our DM knows nothing about.David Cage’s DBH has probably reached meme status among us too.

13.) Introduce your current party.

Oh jeez, WHICH current party. I guess I’ll go with the only one I have that we play on a regular basis. 

Alright. So. We’re called the Susurrus Society, and it is the best name ever, obviously, and we’re lead by my tielfing sorceress, the stunning and brilliant Whisper, who is and the best at magic. Then we have Thia, who is the best at archery (which is almost as impressive as being the best at magic) and has a wonderful animal companion, in the panther Irusan, then there’s the broody assassin Adoraor, the now-broody monk Isao (who are also awful thieves. awful in the sense that they’re bad people, not bad at it). Then we have the group killjoy/mom friend (depending on who you ask), the paladin and now very human Oriana, her bff Frank, who is the Best Of Us, and eldritch abomination mom friend Shade. Last but not least, there’s Twiggy, who missed so much elf school, and Master of Memes, and his adorable companion MoonMoon the wolf.

They’re a bit of a rag-tag group, but they get the job done.

19.) Do you or your party have any dice superstitions?

Idk about the rest of my party, but I used to roll my dice before every game and choose which sets to use that way. Now, I have character sets, and I only use the character’s specific sets for them during our campaign (unless all of those are rolling terribly and then I go grab some of the general ones). Also in battle, or before a stressful roll, I’ll hold onto my d20, hoping it’ll “attune” to me and then roll really well.

20. How did you get into D&D? How long have you been playing?

I’ve only been playing for about two-two and a half years about now, and I owe everything to Critical Role, and all the wonderful people it has brought me into contact with, or back into contact with as the case may be. <3

[theinvulnerabletide]

5 sentence fic: Whisper/Thia - comfort

“Hey, hey. It’s alright. I’ve got you,” Whisper murmurs, one hand carding through Thia’s hair, the other holding her flush to her. Thia’s head rests carefully on the tiefling’s shoulder, tears damping the front of her favorite silk shirt, but Whisper doesn’t seem to notice.

“It’s okay,” she says again. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

She’s lying, she knows. Things are coming to a head, and not even she’s strong enough to keep all of Thia’s nightmares away, not even with all the tricks at her disposal. But here, right now, she can pretend. “I’ve got you,” she promises, murmuring into Thia’s hair as she lets out another little sob. “I’ve got you.”

[theinvulnerabletide]

Microstory: Celandine 2

Celandine stood up from the table,looked Arwen hard in the face. “This was a mistake.” She never should haveaccepted the invitation to sit with them, should have just took her sandwichinto the library like always and gotten some reading done.

She wasn’t meant for friends. They’donly take her attention away from her work.

She grabbed her lunch tray and beganto turn, only for a large, metallic hand to come down on her shoulder. Shelooked back at Onion’s smooth face, wood and metal managing to projectconfusion, even concern.

“He didn’t mean it!” theelf—Caela—said from the other side of the table, her face screaming all sortsof anxiety. “Right Arwen? You didn’t mean it, right?”

It grated on Celandine a little. Allthese people, all their emotions. She had to be so careful with her own words,so generous with theirs. To not see slights where they were obvious.

She pressed her lips together,looked at Caela, then at the dragonborn whose eyes were wide. Guilt? Orsurprise? She stood still and waited.

“I’m sorry?” he offered, and heseemed sincere. She thought. Dragonborn faces were the hardest to read.

“Are you? Are you really.”

“Yeah! I didn’t mean to offend you,I only meant that Boldrei—”

“Arwen.”

“I’m sorry!” the dragonborn yelped,and he threaded his claws together anxiously.

She should just keep going,Celandine thought. Go back to her solitude, screw these people and their pity.But Caela’s eyes pleaded at her, and the warforged, at least, was interesting.When else she going to be in such proximity to be able to ask one all thequestions that boiled on her tongue? And Arwen did, at least, appear sorry forthe slight.

She turned around and sat back down,tilting her chin at them in defiance, daring them to say anything else.

By the time they all got to highschool, she’d be willing to admit, that was probably the best decision she hadever made.

[theinvulnerabletide]

Whisper: how impressed are you with both the plan to steak the invention and the man to murder an assassin and how well they went over?

“I’m actually quiteimpressed at how easily they both went off.

“Like…my little plan was out of desperation. I got told by my… employers neededwhatever sweet little Percy was going to be unveiling mere hours beforethe carnival was going to start. And there was going to be no way to break intothe safe that she had it in, though I suppose I could have read her mind andfound the combination, there was no way to take it pre-show without hernoticing. And I really didn’t want to hurt her. “But I was there to protect her from assassins. Assassins that were to strike duringthe show, who presumably wanted the device and not dear Percy’s life. Afterthat, it was simple. I take it during or right after the show, I blame it onthe people who we already knew wanted it. No one would question it too closelyif there was already a scapegoat. Isao creating a distraction would only add tothe chaos and make it easier for me to slip away. “So there you go. Stick close to Percy, drop a fog cloud in the middle of heract; the fact that it happened right after she got shot was honestly just goodluck, and have my double pretend to be an assassin. I go in, convince her togive me the weapon, or steal it if she’s down (thank the gods she wasn’t, Icould just hand her the potion instead of feeding it to her), and slip away tothe rendezvous point. “Hurting myself wasn’t fun, but the theater of it made it all the moreconvincing. Keep the lies vague, and no one will question you too much if you’re bleeding.“And actually, interrogating the assassin in the woods made covering my ass allthe easier. I was the only one who could hear him. If anyone asked, it would betotally believable that he and his ‘wife’ had a bunch more assassins sent herefor the job, and those were the ones that followed me from the tent. Theyjumped me, we fought, they just didn’t bother to finish me off once they gotthe thing they wanted. Simple. “But I am also very impressed with Thia’s plan. It was simple. Elegant. The manwas getting away, and ran into Shade, and of course we couldn’t stop Shade fromkilling him. He’s a force of nature, probably didn’t even recognize who he was.Just saw all of us running after him and instinct took over. But thefact that Shade agreed to it actually shocked me. “But… ? All in all, a night of perfectcrimes. I just hope they stay perfect.”

[theinvulnerabletide]

10 facts about Whisper

:D

Okay! For those of you who have just joined me, Whisper is mywonderful disaster tiefling who also happens to be a homebrewed version of asea sorceress. As her virtue name suggests, she is full of secrets. I will betrying very hard not to reveal any of the ones that have not been revealed ingame yet.

SO HERE WE GO.

1.)    Whisperleft home at around 16, and except for a brief meeting with her father veryrecently, she has not seen any of her family or been in contact with them sinceshe set out. She misses them so, so much.

2.)    Whisperspent about two years on her own once leaving, scouring the countryside forwell, clues, signs. Maybe anything that might point her to whatever ended herlittle brother’s life. She came up with nothing, however, and life quicklybecame about trying to survive. That was when she learned that the way shelooked wasn’t considered a blessing, or even normal, by everyone.

3.)    Duringthose two years she ended up doing a mixture of stealing and magic performanceon street corners to survive; along the way she met another tiefling—one of theonly ones she’s ever met— who called herself Victory. They were friends, of akind, and Whisper learned something about tiefling “culture” such as it was,including virtue names. She tried on a new name in each town for a while, longafter Victory joined up with a mercenary corps and left her behind.

4.)    Whisper’stail has dolphin flukes at the end rather than a barb or a demonic-esque point.Her fingers and toes are also slightly webbed, because sea sorceress.

5.)    Sheloves the water obviously, and also loves bathing, though she makes due withprestidigitation to keep clean when on the road. But whenever they make it toan inn or someplace, one of the first things she does is order up a bath—it’sone of the things she and Oriana bond over, comparing bath salts and essentialoils and soaps—though Oriana does it to soak her bruises and keep acceptablyclean and Whisper more because she enjoys the bath itself.

6.)    Whisperalso falls asleep in the bath 8/10 times. The party has been woken up more thanonce by a maid coming in to refresh the room or whatever, who began shriekingat the sight of Whisper’s body at the bottom of the tub of cold water. Whisperforgets breathing water is not a normal thing.

7.)    Aftertheir first… ahem, assignation, Whisper refused to sleep with Ignatius (the “ringleader”of the carnival, who picked her up after seeing her conjuring and shaping waterand fumbling her way through slight of hand on the streets of some city inArwyl) for another two years. Whisper was an impressionable 18-year-old who hadslept with one (1) other person and had a very ill-advised gratitude crush onhim, and Ignatius was NOT good at explaining “hey I tend to sleep with everyoneno strings attached,” nor was he kind about her hurt feelings. Since Whisper holds agrudge like no one else it was definitely a while before she even talked tohim, let alone messed around with him. Even then, it was only because of theadrenaline high of a con gone perfect.

8.)    Whisperdid sleep with other people in thecarnival outside Ignatius though. She was not as free with her love as some people, and never got around tojust boning down with people because she was bored or as a comforting techniqueor whathaveyou, but she ah… rapidly attained a sexual education, let’s justsay.

9.) Whisper’s favorite trick to performin the carnival was summoning water, shaping it delicately into a flock of multicoloreddragons and sending them out over the audience, and she also did plenty of smokeand mirrors for other acts and some knife throwing but she actually headlinedas The Magnificent Mermaid, doing a Water Cell Escape act. She, being able tobreathe water, was in no danger, but she always hammed it up to the audiencelike she just barely escaped with her life.

10.) She is very bad at sincerity. Shecan be charming as hell if she wants something from you, or if she’s distractingyou while people take everything you own behind your back, but when it comes toactual sentiment and real emotion, Whisper can never seem to get it across properly—astime goes on with the party, I’m hoping this will change.

Thank you for asking~