Post-maester - Ashmom🏳️‍⚧️

I might've added the BG3 Art Book to my dnd assets stash

It' 100% does not have things like the 5e players' handbook + 5e’s character sheet, several gm guides, critical role's explorer's guide to wildmount, baldur's gate and waterdeep city encounters, 101 potions and their effects, volo's guide to monsters, both of xanathar's guides, a bunch of other encounters, one shots, and class builds

In no way are there any pdf’s relating to any wizard who may or may not be residing on any coast

(Edit that I’ve moved the folder to the new link above! So if you catch a different version of this post that link won’t work anymore!)

I want a womb tattoo

I'm stuck in a bit of a pickle at the moment. I've been a little kinda sorta completely fucking gutted by the election results. I feel so utterly saddened for 2SLGBTQIA+ people, BIPOC, women, people with disabilities who now have to live beneath that man's shadow.

Among the sadness is an ache.

An ache to do something. An ache to take action of some kind. I have no idea what kind yet, but I can't stop thinking about it. I am brewing. Do I mean to create something? I don't know yet. I'll figure it out. But I mean to do something.

Community.

I've been reading lately. A book called "How To Think Like A Woman," by Regan Penaluna. The book tells the author's personal memoir, as well as the stories of 4 Early-Modern philosophers (who were women). I'm not a particularly smart person, sometimes I needed to read a paragraph or even a passage multiple times to really 'get it,' but some things stuck with me.

These philosophers were steadfast in their beliefs that women were deserving of education, asylum from abusive husbands, that they shouldn't need to hide their sexuality, that they should be allowed to pursue their intellectual desires just as a man could. But in these demands they each were specific. These freedoms were not meant to enable selfishness in women, as they often did in men. They believed that these freedoms, for all people, also came with the duty to better one's community - to give back. That embracing the people, valuing the people, fostering each individual, would further the community.

This point of community is where I've been stuck all day long. We all need community right now. We need shoulders to cry on, we need friends to laugh with, we need wise folk to tell us what the fuck to do now.

I don't know what I'm going to do - or make - but community needs to be a central theme.

Queerness & Transness.

I also feel like I've created nothing inherently queer. I've abandoned writing for some years now, my projects are old. Older than my realizations about identity. Older than my epiphanies about transness. I want to do something fuckin' gay as hell. I want to pour energy into something that may in some small way counterbalance the hate being screamed into the universe, infecting the pretty space-dust that I wanted to use to highlight my blush. I want to create something that whispers with a forked tongue: "Fuck. You."

Fact or Fiction.

Will it be fact or fiction? Do I want to search for beautiful, real stories to tell and help spread them? Or do I want to create something entirely new? I'm not a documentary producer, but should I be? My heart is in crafting stories, but maybe it's time to set that aside for a while in order to spread true stories that inspire good and justice. Maybe I'd better stick to what I know and make something up.

Abilities // Restrictions.

I am one person. Alone I can write, but that is difficult without an idea. I have the tinder and plenty of firewood, but I need a fucking spark. Once I have the spark I can do more.

I'm a filmmaker, I produce and edit. That's what I enjoy doing best. Not shit I can do without the idea. So for now those sit on the backburner.

I also have a(n admittedly small) rolodex of lovely queer individuals who may also feel a little distraught at the moment. Might be time to meet with them to discuss working on... something?

Budget is zero. Don't know what the project is so right now necessary funds are also zero, which is great. But nobody's getting paid for whatever the fuck comes of this, unless I can be smart.

Ending For Now.

This is all I can bear to write and word-vomit for now. I have been so full of energy and stress thinking about this all day long. I needed to get my thoughts out. If you feel the same ache I do, if there's any way I can help you make your "Fuck. You." project, or if you want to contribute to mine, please DM me and I'll be so happy to discuss and talk.

Please be safe, please be there for your fellow human beings, please be good to each other.

Beasts of the Putrid Hills, II

I won't lie when I say I'm kinda disappointed in the quality of animation for this. It's just kinda "okay" lol, instead of being excellent like Astartes was or some of the trailers for new Warhammer+ content is. Like what was the point of hiring all those new incredible fan animators if you're gonna end up using animation that looks worse than Dawn of War 3 did, damn even Dawn of War 2. Feels like they just phoned this one in despite it being a HUGE launch.

Warhammer 40,000 New Edition Cinematic Trailer

Your adventures are awesome, just getting that out of the way. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about spelljammer, due to rewatching treasure planet most likely, and I’m curious how you would handle it

Drafting an Adventure: Setting Sail in the Astral Sea 

Forgive the break from my usual format for this prompt, but as it deals with past versions of d&d and how I implement some of these ideas in my game, I figured I needed to change up my authorial voice for this one.

For those who might not know, Spelljammer is d&d’s answer to starwars style planetary adventuring, and is both its own setting as well as an “addon” to other campaigns involving a magical means by which adventurers could fly out from their homeworld into an version of space modelled on archaic views of the universe as a way of explaining why their wooden spaceship didn’t have to worry about things like gravity or vacuum pressure. 

I was never into Spelljammer myself, as it was primarily a 2nd edition thing and i started playing the game with 3/3.5. While the idea of fantasy spaceships was always intriguing, I felt that Spelljammer itself was a bit silly, with its space hamsters, British hippo gun fetishists, and reliance on “ D&D trope, BUT IN SPACE” to prop up much of its material. 

That said, we can all agree Treasure Planet, and the idea of fantasy space pirates is SICK AS SHIT, so I’d be doing a disservice to myself and the campaigns I run if I didn’t have that sort of thing running in the background. 

So lets talk first about how I run the astral sea, as I use that as my backdrop for such adventures:

The Astral Sea is an expanse of starry void, filled with glittering mists and nebulae and aurora, as well as the occasional field of crystalline coral.  It is the raw canvas of creation upon which the gods ( and other great powers) paint their myriad creations. This morphic quality is also utilized by powerful arcanists to create their own worldlets and mind-palaces, making their dreams into physical domains of impossible wonder. When these arcanists die or otherwise move on, these realms endure, slowly drifting together into ruinous archipelagos that provide habitat for astral denizens.

There is no such thing as distance in the astral plane, more of a notional geography of one landmark in relation to another. Part of the reason this great expanse is referred to as a "sea" is that navigation in such a realm requires either the following of particular " currents" that follow predictable routes through the expanse, or by the charting the relative position of various landmarks in relation to one's desired destination. One could also make use of the vast network of portals to get about, trace the boughs of the cosmic trees, or take a walk on the infinite staircase.

Its bad to be out in the astral sea for too long, as that primordial chaos can either unweave one's being or make some unwanted "Creative additions". This necessitates an astral ship for a long journey, or sheltering in a crystalline reef or other structure.

The Shallows of the astral sea reside in the realms of mortal dreams, and the phantasms of imagination and flotsam of fantasy spill over into the starry expanse.

Running Astral Adventures:

Since the Astral plane is by definition so far removed from the "grounded" state of traditional fantasy adventuring, I like to think of it as a sort of secret/background/bonus lore that's never touched on in most games, until the party starts having dealings with high level wizards and the like. A wonderous thing they get to discover when they cross over the threshold from practical heroics into the realm of the fantastical. That threshold is likely an unintentional one, as an unknown portal or teleportation mishap sends the party hurtling into the unknown, only for them to have to struggle through a strange world and find their way back to reality.

The construction, reclamation, or chartering of an astral ship is then a later benchmark where the party has taken control over their destiny, allowing them to travel between the realms by their own agency.

Adventure Hooks:

The diaspora of innumerable dead worlds spread out through the astral cosmos, survivors of realities that collapsed under their own weight or the mismanagement of their gods. These Starry pilgrims can find new homes among the reefs, or travel from world to world as astral nomads. Such an existence is a hard one, and it's not unusual for some of these peoples to turn to interdimensional raiding and piracy as a means of survival. Often the loot of these raids ends up in the markets of Leng, where the treasure of a thousand worlds flows through wicked hands of that world's miasmic masters.

In the most twisted and surreal expanses of the dreamscape, the Quori hold sway, formless tyrants incapable of creation themselves and so desperate to claim the minds of mortals to give shape and order to their nightmare realm.

The ruins of civilizations beyond count float in the astral sea, just waiting to be explored. Expeditions to these dream palaces can be great undertakings, but can provide campaigns without frequent dungeon crawls a chance to get their delve on without having to leave an important central location of a campaign.

Art 1

Art 2

Today's budget commander sleeper is one that was already featured in our series on Wilds of Eldraine, but I feel like this is the most underrated card in the set for commander, so it gets a standalone post, this card should see play beyond decks that want tapping effects.

In limited, the crown is excellent by virtue of being a tapper. Having something that removes an attacker from combat every turn at instant speed and isn't easy to remove as an artifact is stellar there. You almost never want to cash it in for card draw because it's doing its tapping job.

In commander, this dynamic flips on its head. Tapping one thing is a nice upside on the card, will keep you alive sometimes, but not something you'd use a slot in most decks for. However, the sacrifice ability scales with the number of players, it takes into account the tapped creatures of every opponent. This is really good. For a total of six mana, payable in installments, on the typical board, you should be able to draw reliably what, three to six cards? Given that the tapping is free on your turn, you can even tap an additional creature before cracking it, netting you an extra card, and if you wait before cracking it, you can pay 1 to tap a creature at end step then crack it on your turn for card draw.

Now, is it the best card draw ever? No, but as far as mass card draw effect, this beats almost everything in red and white, and a good bunch of Black's too. And you incidentally get a tapping effect while you wait on your big card draw spell, which is quite an upside.

If you want a mass card draw effect to refuel your hand outside of blue (and green), at mid-power tables that often have a lot of creatures running around, take another look at this card. It's relatively easy to deploy early and cash in later, or in the late game just cast as a mass card draw spell.

Oh, and it's a 3-drop, which means sun titan, Sevinne's Reclamation and Goblin Engineer are all able to grab it back for more card draw if you want to. It's currently under half a dollar, the set has only been out for a month, and I already got three copies that all found homes in decks that wanted one among my collection

Painted a bunch of little skulls for the Planescape: Adventures in Multiverse book, including my beloved childhood friend Morte and this funky guy all covered in stickers :)

Please notice little Mahadi, the Cassalanters' crest and Barovia postcards I allowed myself to slap on him :)

Plus the rest of the mimirs.

AD: Emi Tanji

leave your laundry on the floor for them

The Chant of Sigil : Factol Hashkar of the Fraternity of Order delivers a boring speech (as usual) at the House of Speakers