A Draught of Earlier, Happier Sights

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Kids know the secret locations

The powerful places

The castles of a kingdom flying flags of colors only they can see

A vibrancy lost to time and tide

Until we see only sticks and leaves

And cut-up expensive bedsheets

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Kids know the awful monsters

The boggarts and beasts

Threatening their lands and subjects and sleep

Fangs that drip venom, claws that rend flesh beyond blankets

Mouths that mutter of fears

Scream of ghosts and spiders and the dark

Whisper of sex and jobs and taxes

Terrors only grown-ups can see

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Kids know the ancient tongues

The codes and callsigns

Language shared between themselves

And kept from the others, the opposite

The ones who can’t remember what it’s like 

Living each day like they’re infinite

Instead of looked back on dimly

A torchlit cave of petroglyphs and happy face suns

Undecipherable except by those

Who haven’t forgotten yet

Sonnet in Wintertime

Find me in the moments between moments
So that I may regard you the most pure
Without the trappings of context or lure
The readying-yourself-for-art moments
Choosing what paintbrush to use, the lighting
When that is you at your most exciting
The breathless, gaining your bearing moments
Hair flowing freely without brush or pin
Before your heart slows and doubt grows within
The magic time upon waking moments
After night has granted you your release
So that I may find you like Jason’s fleece
The true golden beauty is you, right here
Before, and after, times others hold dear

C1E44: Flooded with Memories

Welcome to Dunia, the world of my first D&D campaign. I will be posting summaries of what happens in the weekly games here. My players and I (the DM) built the world ourselves using Mappa Imperium, a worldbuilding game, and now they’re living in it.

<- Previously on

Tragic backstory time!

We see a bustling seaside village, with the ocean glittering in the distance split by fishing boats just offshore. Elves peruse carts of produce and crafts along the street. Here is one modest house with a metal sign above the door; a childlike etching of a Sai-Rovah twig and leaf with a fancier Sai-Rovah blessing etched beneath it. In the back of this house is a garden, where we find a 10-year-old Axina with her father. He consults his plant notebook and imparts some wisdom to his daughter about the many uses of lemon balm. “This little leaf can do anything,” he says, patting her shoulder. “Just like you.” 

Silence from the village causes both of them to come out to the main street, where they can see the fishers racing up the shore toward town and a group of crabfolk ships behind them. One of the fishers is Axina’s mother, who says another crabfolk raiding party is on the way. He tells both of them to hide but she insists on staying to help fight, so little Axina goes to her room to wait out the battle alone. Figures race past her window and she can hear sporadic clashes of steel and chitin. One elven voice asks about the local scientist who said he was “working with arms” but has delivered no new weaponry.

After it is quiet once more, Axina goes back outside to see the elves have again successfully fought back the crabfolk… or so they think. Mechanical noises emanate from the ocean, followed by a heavy bass thrum they can feel under their feet. The ocean rushes away from shore, grounding fishing boats on the rocks, and Axina’s father tells her to run as fast as she can to the temple of Sai-Rovah in the distant mountains. She does so, followed by her parents and many other elves, until all but Axina are overtaken by a tsunami. It crests as she reaches the foothills, and she turns to see nothing but ocean where her village once stood and her father’s notebook amongst the rubble at her feet. 

All of this comes back to Axina as she surveys the remains of her village, the vague shape of ruins under years of plant growth. She feels these memories worming their way into her consciousness as Gørg sees a tent in the distance and Lillith sees an elf standing behind that tent, staring at them. As they approach he introduces himself as Nelluon (nell-loo-win) and welcomes Axina back to Crescent Bay, or what’s left of it. She does not remember him, but he remembers her, and claims to be one of the villagers who lived here all those years ago and has recently returned to the area to settle again. 

He asks if they came here on the boat, indicating the ship over in the harbor, and as they look they see two figures walking toward them. Axina doesn’t recognize them either, but the rest of the party certainly do. The shorter one is Ungar, Gørg’s cousin who started this whole thing, looking haggard (but not sick). The taller figure in fine leathers and a goatee is none other than The Chronicler, that asshole from the doppelgänger village who disappeared. He sheepishly admits that he used to be tracking them for revenge but Ungar bought him off and now he’s tracking them for him. 

It seems things in Bea’s Hollow are not good and all mining has ceased as most of the dwarves (worshippers of Saurëmät) have contracted the Algadeer plague. He begs Gørg to come back with him, and after some squishy tentacle hugs, Gørg’s player’s temporary hiatus from the game is explained. The Chronicler says he never actually did anything wrong; he was paid to observe and report and modify memories, and offers a “no hard feelings?” Lillith counters with a “get fucked” and throws the magically-tracked platinum payment bag in his face. He offers the platinum inside for recompense, and instead they split it with Ungar to help with the current issues back home. 

The three of them depart, and the remaining adventurers discuss Nelluon, who has returned to his tent. Upon reflection, Axina finds it odd that he used that name as everyone else in her village knew her as Axilcyne (Ah-hwil-sin-uh). They’re also curious about the big lumpy duffel bag they saw in his tent, which now that they think about it are traveler’s accommodations and gear and not what someone returning home to stay might use*. They sneak to the overgrown garden that used to be Axina’s back yard and hide, Axina crouched in the same exact spot she was hiding on that terrible day.

With no one around, or so Nelluon believes, he drops his elven form and becomes a pale thin figure with a featureless face and two black-ringed white eyes. It is Kringi who recalls hearing stories about beings that can change their shape and knows that this must be a changeling. Nelluon leaves to go foraging and the group sneak into his tent to rifle through his bag. They find things that someone scavenging the ruins would collect, including the metal plate from above the door of her home. On the back she finds a message from her father saying some of them survived the flood and are now living in the feywild. 

Axina’s father is still alive.

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*After the game, the DM revealed that the wisdom saving throw Axina failed upon coming out of her reverie were not her memories worming their way into her consciousness but was in fact Nelluon reading her mind to get her name and history, but she thinks of herself as Axina, not her full name.

Gray

I’m a man of my word

The concrete that I walk upon

Slate hued slabs untouched by dawn

Asphalt icebergs nearly gone

Still clinging to the cold

Charcoal cotton clouds above

Faded silver mourning dove

Haunting call that sounds like love

A memory grown old

Pewter billows from my face

Ashen footprints I retrace

Past angel statues bowed in grace

Or so I have been told

Morning fog now burns away

Colors pour into the day

Pallid face no longer gray

My tears reflecting gold

C1E43: Hand Jive, or Troubles Against a Sea of Arms

Welcome to Dunia, the world of my first D&D campaign. I will be posting summaries of what happens in the weekly games here. My players and I (the DM) built the world ourselves using Mappa Imperium, a worldbuilding game, and now they’re living in it.

<- Previously on

The gang Scooby-Doos around a corner (Kringi, Gørg, Axina, Lillith from bottom to top) and they all see what’s been making the distressing prints everywhere. It’s a distressing ball of arms, skittering and slappering along the floor, walls, and ceiling like Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a sub-subconscious hotel. It disappears around a corner and our heroes quietly make their way down the hallway and decide not to go in any more rooms no matter how much time the DM spent preparing them. They sneak past the cracked “Specimens” door while the hand monster is inside and turn another corner.

Here they find a big metal door on the left marked “Exit”, a round hatch opposite in the right wall marked “Maintenance”, and further ahead a door marked “Power”. The exit door is sealed electronically and refuses to budge, so Power it is. Inside this door is a large cavern with four large water wheels against the far wall, each with a large pipe above them and a large lever next to them. All the larges are relative. The first lever is up, the second and fourth are down, and the third is missing. Instead of trying anything at all, they decide to go looking for a replacement lever in Maintenance.

Unfortunately the squeak of the hatch opening alerts the hand monster, and it slaps over for a fight. This is when they discover that each palm contains a teeth-ringed hole. It somehow got worse! A mighty battle ensues in which no one actually does any slashing damage, so the DM can’t have any hands come off and become their own individual monsters. At least it gets to vomit acid from all of its hand holes once. It somehow got worse ! In the end though, the heroes beat the monster… handily. Gørg and Lillith go wait in the Puzzle room, I mean Power room, while Kringi and Axina crawl into Maintenance.

Which leads to that catwalk above the gelatinous cube. The door on the far side is declared safe by a low investigation check, and then upon opening inward causes the catwalk to start retracting in the opposite direction. For the record, this was a mechanical trap, in case anyone cast Detect Magic on the door, which they did not, so it’s irrelevant. In a split-second decision, Kringi decides to leap for the open door and totally biffs it, heading instead for the top of the gelatinous cube, which Axina casts Banishment on, so Kringi tumbles 15 feet to the floor instead. Kringi can’t catch a break.

In an excellent show of solidarity, Axina biffs her acrobatics check and tumbles to the floor as well. Dusting themselves off, they look around to see steaming bones and debris laying around and the pristine immovable rod still hanging in the air. Kringi gets on Axina’s shoulders and nabs it, and then they have to decide which door to get through before the gelatinous cube returns around them. They pick the maintenance door they came in, and elevated Kringi scampers into it with no problem. The cube reappears around Axina’s legs, but Kringi pulls her up with a satisfying SSSCHHLUUUK.

They reconvene at the waterwheels and start pulling levers. The first one goes down and water gushes out of the pipe, moving its wheel. The second lever does nothing in either direction and the pipe seems like no water has flowed through it for a long time. They stick a crowbar in the hole where the third lever should be and pulling it allows some water on its wheel but the rest squirting out of a hole in the pipe, which they quickly mend like the Flex Seal guy and that wheel also starts turning. The fourth lever sounds like water flowing, but is blocked by something in the pipe. 

Gørg pokes and prods and finally stabs upward with a sword and dislodges an ooze which lands on him with a splash and starts attacking. They dispatch it in short order and three out of four wheels are now spinning. They cluster around the second wheel and start talking. Discussing. Deliberating. Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ and finally Axina just starts turning the wheel by hand and the puzzle is solved. With power to the lab restored, the exit door slides open and they follow a hallway as it morphs into natural cave and leads past some crates and small barrels of wine (taken, of course) to a simple locked door.

Kringi picks it open to reveal… a basement. A green, plant-overgrown basement lit too brightly and a skeleton next to the door with an arm outstretched. Excellent medicine and investigation checks by Axina and Lillith respectively uncover that this was an elf who didn’t reach the door handle in time and drowned. The basement, or what used to be a basement, is bright because most of the ceiling is missing. They climb out to open air and blue skies, ground level for the first time in days, seeing assorted humps of plant growth and old crumbling stone. Axina sees the ruins of Crescent Bay, her home. 

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C1E42: High Rolls Ruin Everything

Welcome to Dunia, the world of my first D&D campaign. I will be posting summaries of what happens in the weekly games here. My players and I (the DM) built the world ourselves using Mappa Imperium, a worldbuilding game, and now they’re living in it.

<- Previously on

The first and third watches are uneventful, but in the middle of the night there is some slapping on the other side of the door. The bottom, middle, and top of the door; occasionally all at once. The following morning finds all party members fully healed of their wounds (and one level higher) but still magically depleted. It seems sleeping in an anti-magic field does not allow spell slots to regenerate. Also, Lillith’s sword is a hilt again and no egg is waiting for Kringi to roll on a chart. Gørg’s arm remains a tentacle. An absurdly high perception check hears slapping in the distance along with rolling glass vials.

After entering the hallway, they learn what happens when your spell slots refresh all at once instead of regenerating slowly over a long rest like usual. The three magic users reel and Axina is knocked to her knees, albeit quietly enough to not alert whatever may be slapping around. The first door on the left, marked “Workshop” in Elvish, leads to… a workshop. Various old, rusted tools are lying about, there is a cold kiln or stove with corked bellows hanging next to it, and a layer of dust covers everything. There is also a set of crabfolk chitin armor, which Axina promptly burns to ashes with sacred flame.

Smoke lays heavy in the room with no air movement, which Gørg in true Dwarven fashion realizes is odd because a kiln would definitely have some kind of ventilation system. They open a locked inner door marked “Supplies” and find a room of beds, almost as if the DM had a suitable resting place planned post boss fight. They are all occupied with piles of bones, which an absurdly high medicine check reveals were once mostly humans with a couple other humanoid species (no elves) and all are missing their arm bones. Also two crabfolk, minus chitin. All were restrained before time rendered it moot.

Missing arms, slapping noises, and handprints floor to ceiling in the dusty hallway paint a delightfully vivid picture. Returning to said hallway, the next door down marked “Disposal” opens to a square room, 10 by 10 and 15 high, seemingly empty. The room is hazy and various objects seem suspended in the air, with a metal walkway crossing the room perpendicular to them 10 feet up. Two absurdly high perception checks reveal the objects to be bones, pitted and eaten away, but a rod about a meter long is still in pristine condition which the magic users know means enchanted in some way. Unfortunately, those absurdly high rolls make it so no one faceplants into a gelatinous cube. 

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C1E41: The Mid-Season Finale, Part 2 – How’s it Hanging, Death?

Welcome to Dunia, the world of my first D&D campaign. I will be posting summaries of what happens in the weekly games here. My players and I (the DM) built the world ourselves using Mappa Imperium, a worldbuilding game, and now they’re living in it.

<- Previously on

A mighty battle ensues, spanning three sessions and two real-world years. Continual lair actions – I mean, pulses from the magic hole in the wall – with increasingly difficult CON saves cause different characters (usually Kringi) to roll on a wild magic table and have random things happen to them. At one point Kringi’s tongue turns into a talking fish and all of Lillith’s clothes fall off. These two events are unrelated. Sometimes good things happen too, like magically imbued weapons and spells that go off in the right direction. Also some spines, also Kringi.

Lillith finds herself in the crystal beast’s jaws and gets to see close-up its intraoral sets of shards start to spin together as it prepares the special attack “Triturate”, but manages to wrench herself free before her face can be triturated. Gørg is not so lucky; choosing to attack rather than remove himself, and the DM finally gets to roll 12 D8s at once. Twice. Luckily Gørg is raging so only takes half damage both times. Kringi gets some sneak attacks in, Axina summons spiritual guardians AND weapons, but it is her sacred flame that finally finishes the job.

Unfortunately, this golden light refracts throughout the creature, brighter and brighter, and releases the magical energy saturating its form all at once in a huge explosion. Gørg is the only one who fails the DEX save, and instead of being obliterated, finds himself with his face up against a big chunk of crystal, frozen in the air. Everything in the room, including all the shrapnel from the explosion, is frozen. Through it, distorted, Gørg can see a short cloaked figure in black studded leather armor and hood concealing its face, who beckons for him to come out from behind the crystal and approach.

To Kringi, the short hooded figure is in black travelling gear. Axina sees a tall, lithe figure in a black gown. Lillith’s mysterious figure is in a black dress with long trailing sleeves (think Stevie Nicks). The one thing similar between them all is a hooded black void for a face. Lillith sees two points pushed up from the top of the hood where horns would be. He asks if they know who he is, to which Gørg replies, “How’s it hanging, Death?” Death offers his hand, but before Axina can take it he laughs and says he was kidding; that would kill her. Bit of a silly goose, this one.

She asks if she is addressing Sai-Rovah, the goddess of life and death, but he shakes his head. She may have dominion over life and death, he explains, but she doesn’t usher souls to the afterlife. He does the work. “Us forces of nature were here before the gods, and we’ll be here after. Even Gods can die,” he says. “You’ve already lost one of yours.” They neglect to inquire further, like every other time that has been brought up. He says that forces of nature can personify themselves in times of great need. Entropy, he continues, is the only one with delusions of grandeur.

Death is taking this moment, instead of taking Gørg, to explain the stakes. “This IS a time of great need,” he says, “and it looks like you chucklefucks are our only hope.” If Algadeer (or “Al” he says with great sarcasm and vigorous skeletal air quotes) wins, there will be no more need of Death. No more souls will be taken to the afterlife, and no new souls will take their place. Everything will remain in an unending state of decay. No pressure. After they collect some pure chaos magic, they can start making their way (makintheirway) toward the final battle. Algadeer, he says, cannot handle randomness.

He finishes by gesturing around the room. “This,” indicating the frozen blizzard of deadly shrapnel, “won’t happen again. I’m not going to say you’ll never see me again, because you’ll all see me again. Once.” With a snap, he disappears and the room explodes (or finishes exploding) in a crash. After all is quiet once more, the hive queen (her face currently at the end of a long coiled neck) asks why they didn’t have Death release her from her endless torment while he was here, and Lillith decides to just take care of it herself. Mama Hertzog dies with a smile on her face. Even Axina approves.

Death didn’t say exactly HOW they should go about collecting the chaos, though. Lillith remembers her magic hilt that creates a sword out of any material it touches, and after a careful dip she now has a mirrored rainbow Lisa Frank blade of pure magic that keeps looking like other things from the corner of her eye. Gørg goes to get a steinful, biffs his DEX roll, and pulls back a full cup of magic and a tentacle where his hand used to be. Gørg is now extremely popular with a specific subsection of his fanbase. Kringi helps him transfer it to some vials from his bandolier.

They open the door maked “Laboratory” in Elvish to see a small cubic room with runes on the floor and another door on the far side. Axina and Lillith both recognize the runes to be an anti-magic field; a sort of airlock keeping the lab safe from the source behind them. Opening the next door (that says “Source” in Elvish on the other side) reveals a long, creepy abandoned hallway disappearing into darkness. Lillith also hears the faint sound of slapping in the distance, and everyone decides to barricade the door shut with crystals and make camp in the airlock. It’s been a long day.

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Mmmm… Eyes

I wrote this poem almost 30 years ago. Still have it memorized.

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Eyes are so delicious 

Small round balls of taste

They also can be real nutritious

When nothing goes to waste

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Fried in garlic butter sauce

Dipped in sweet fondue

You won’t get any flavor loss

When made into a stew

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Eyes and bread can be really great

Stuffed into a turkey

When pound and left to marinate

You can make eye jerky

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I like to drink the eye goo

And chew on optic nerve 

When unexpected guests come through 

Eyes are what to serve

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Candied eyes are what I desire 

Instead of apples at the fair

“Roasting chestnuts over open fire”?

Stick some eyes in there!

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Eyes instead of cherries

When I am given pies

Chocolates, grapes, I’d be so merry 

If they could all be eyes

Haiku for a Colossus

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I remember you

Silhouette against the sun

A beauty, a song

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Slicing through the air

Peace and quiet both broken

Supposéd hero

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Another one gone

Phalanx only wanted sky

Now Silence remains

~

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In Shadow of the Colossus, Phalanx is my favorite colossus, and his accompanying score is my favorite video game music. The title of the track is “Silence”

C1E40: The Mid-Season Finale, Part 1 – Mama Hertzog

Welcome to Dunia, the world of my first D&D campaign. I will be posting summaries of what happens in the weekly games here. My players and I (the DM) built the world ourselves using Mappa Imperium, a worldbuilding game, and now they’re living in it.

<- Previously on

Gørg axes the boards and tears them away like it’s nothin’, leaving a surprisingly normal-looking door with a brass knob. It’s not trapped and not locked, but there is immense magical energy seeping through the frame around it. The group turns around to see Splat and about 19 more kobolds holding hammers and wooden boards, ready to close it back up behind them. The kobolds won’t be talked out of it, so our heroes head into the next chamber. Gørg says can always get out the same way he got in, after all.

The next chamber is a bright cavern chock full of strange things. There are giant multicolored crystals sticking out of the walls, like being inside a giant geode, with a particularly big cluster to the left. Further down to the right is a fancy-looking ornate door with what looks like Elvish writing on it. The far end of the chamber funnels to a small circular opening filled with bright multicolored light, including colors none of them have seen before or could even imagine. On all the walls are curved flowers of the Bismuth-like crystal fungus and no remaining Algadeer green stone anywhere.

To their immediate right, however, is where most of the strange things in this chamber are all at once. There is a giant mass of random things that all seem to be merged with each other and the wall itself. It’s part insect queen, part plant, part marble statue of a nude human male, part abacus, and many more anachronistic parts beyond those. They wonder if this is Algadeer, but the lack of green stone in this chamber seems to indicate otherwise. Then the half of the insect face that isn’t a bowling ball opens its eye and addresses them in Werner Hertzog’s voice.

It explains that it may have been the locust queen, once, but the bright, low digeridooing hole on the other side of the chamber is a rare source of pure magic and prolonged exposure to the raw chaos has changed her. These rare, hidden sources provide all of the magic that permeates reality. It has also provided her with telepathy and partial omniscience. She says that if you look at it mathematically, with the X-axis of reality considered physical space and the Y-axis as levels of consciousness, while most of her untethered mind travels freely up and down the graph, the piece of her physically addressing them in this fixed location is the X-position.

Thank you.

This x-position also explains that she sent her brood (the testament to the stupid instinct to perpetuate one’s own species and cruelly force them against their will to live in the pain of reality, Werner Hertzog’s voice says) out of the canyon in an attempt to save them when the magic source was uncovered during hive expansion, which led to the historical swarm that instigated building the wall they climbed down. It also informs Axina that the elders of her village had access to this source of magic, and the raiding crabfolk were coming to take it from them as crabfolk society has no magic of their own. 

Most importantly, it explains that entropy is bound by order, rules, and scientific laws. It is predictable and calculable. Magic is the opposite of that because its essence is chaos. Magic can make something from nothing and break the physical laws that bind the universe and bind Algadeer. It reminds them that Sai-Rovah told Axina they would need both faith and magic to stop Algadeer, and this is a source of magic they can draw from for that battle. In Pokémon terms, Algadeer is weak to random. However, they must be careful because pure unfettered chaos magic can be extremely dangerous. I mean, this thing has the Statue of David for an arm.

Speaking of dangerous, this is when the cluster of giant crystals they saw breaks away from the left wall and uncurls itself to reveal a massive crystal-plated insectoid guardian that scuttles toward the group in a glittering rainbow blur.

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