#treasure trap

[retrocgads]

USA 1990

[ericlide]

I doodled a bunch of my babies. happy new year! writing "2021" feels weird

I kind of forgot tumblr was a thing during 2020?? does anyone still come here, is it worth posting here?? the answers elude me, GUESS I’LL KEEP POSTING ANYWAY

[retrocgads]

USA 1990

[morkaischosen]

I said I would post this thing! Here is this thing!

My second Lightist Fairy Tale. Significantly better structured than the last one.

Once upon a time there lived a little boy named Gunther. Every night, Gunther said his prayers and every night, Gunther's mother and father tucked him up in bed, and every night, Gunther tried his very best to get to sleep, because he was a good little boy.

But every night, Gunther lay awake as the unearthly sounds came from outside the house. Most nights, he stayed in bed, but sometimes – when the sounds were loudest, and he was the most afraid – he got up and opened the shutters and looked out at it.

So Gunther knew exactly what it looked like. It was tall, and broad, and it rippled with muscles. Its mouth was full of terrible fangs, and it had not hands but terrible claws, and atop its head were two enormous, curling horns, and in the moonlight its skin was red as fresh blood.

Many nights he watched it snuffling and growling as it stooped around, grubbing up who-knows-what from the ground around the house and putting it in the sack at its waist. On the nights when he could not sleep at all, he saw it lumber off into the darkness only a little while before the dawn lit the sky and everything was bright and clear and good again.

One night, Gunther saw the beast taking three turnips from the garden and putting them into the sack, and he knew he must follow – for if the beast took all their food they would starve. So he put on his shoes and his trousers and his tunic and his warm overcoat, for the night was cold, and he slipped out of the window and padded quietly after the beast.

It walked through the dark woods and over the bubbling stream up onto the hillside, up until the rocks began breaking through the earth, and then down into a secret, dark hole. And Gunther saw it meet another beast much the same, and a smaller one about his own size; and he saw the first beast take out the turnips and eat one, and give another to the other large beast, and the smallest to the little beast. And Gunther saw them all go into a side cave, where the little one knelt down and growled, and then climbed onto a flat patch of earth, and the two big beasts pulled a mossy flap over it.

And Gunther saw that they were acting just like real people putting their little child to bed.

He padded back down the hill from where the rocks break through the earth, over the bubbling stream and through the dark woods and climbed back through his window and was in bed just before dawn, when his parents woke him to begin his chores.

That night, he was so tired he fell asleep immediately.

But the night after, he left all his clothes by his bed – his tunic and trousers and shoes and coat and the little belt with the little knife and the little water bottle and the little rope, in case he got lost in the woods. And when night fell and his parents were asleep, he put his clothes on and he climbed out of the window and followed the beast through the dark woods and over the bubbling stream and up the hill to where the rocks broke through the earth and into its cave.

He waited until the two big beasts came out of the little side cave and lay down and held each other, and he waited until the sound of their snoring murmured through the air.

Then he took the little rope and tied up the beasts' arms and legs, and he stabbed them in the eyes – first one, and then the other, and the rope made sure they could not tear him with their terrible claws, nor kick him with their powerful legs.

Then he went to the little side cave, where the little beast was sitting up, and it stared at him looking for all the world just like a scared little boy – just like Gunther, when he heard the sounds outside his room.

And because he was a good little boy, Gunther took his little knife and he stabbed and stabbed until the little beast was dead, and the red blood was just the colour of its skin.

Then he went down the hill from where the rocks broke through the earth to the bubbling stream, and he washed the mess from his clothes and his knife, and he crossed the bubbling stream and went through the dark woods to his house.

Gunther's mother and father were looking for him and they were angry when he came back, wet and hungry and tired, but he would not tell them where he had been.

For they were good honest folk, and good honest folk do not need to know that there are beasts that walk and pretend to be like people. And when the preacher next came to Gunther's house, he went and confessed to the kindly old man what he had done, and the preacher smiled and said that Gunther had done the work of the Light.

And so every time Gunther's parents were angry with him, he remembered that time when they were angry because he had done the work of the Light and he could not tell them – and the anger hurt that little bit less. But he still did his best to do what they wanted, because he was a good little boy.

[morkaischosen]

In human speech - I ran my first CUTT interactive tonight! Think it went well; fun appeared to be created by the players, and the efforts to change the IC money from "potion and scroll tokens" to "money" by selling pies IC worked pretty nicely, apart from the slight change-finding issue. I should work something out for whoever's doing that next week...

[morkaischosen]

After all the prep work and so on, tonight's my first time being a ref in the same place as the players... Should be good, and I'll be interested to see what newbies we've picked up - and how everyone reacts to our shiny new plots, of course.

Everything else I want to say has been redacted because some of the players might be reading this. :-D

[tomgarnett]

Drow NPC from the last CUTT 3ygb. 

Bit of a sticky one, because CUTT is having a bit of a move away from the casual 'blackface' as a racial physrep (doing it in a big field full of people who know the context is one thing - but in the middle of town, it starts to look like something really crass) but we left it optional for the 3ygb, and a few people decided to show the world how it was done.

And, as is generally the way when people don't just meet physrepping standards, but actively embrace them, it looked awesome. 

Pain to photograph, though, between the rather low contrast on the subject, and the sunny day. Moved him into tree cover, and figured the background would probably blow out (it did, but some of the brokeh is annoyingly ugly).

The desaturation is just because I wound up using that set of options on the first photo I processed, and copypasting them to the rest of the set kept the theme consistent.

Dark, contrasty, desaturated, was working really well for the 3ygb, actually. It wasn't a colourful event, and we had a lot of black facepaint going around, so it showed it up nicely.

Was feeling a bit down about the photoset originally (was also reffing, so not enough spare attention to pay to shooting) but they've come out quite nicely.