No more adventures!

Okay, so these were pretty cool people and I was happy to help them... until now. I mean yeah, okay, a wood elf with glowing runes imprinted on his face; a dragonborn berserker who thought he was a lizardfolk; and a humanoid frog with poisonous skin who acted as their priest. It was a weird group. But they saved me when my magic ran wild and the insects I was enlarging became huge instead of just big. So I threw in with them. 

It worked out pretty well. I could enlarge the dragonborn and let him do his thing with the flaming sword, and  then hang back and throw the easier spells that didn't require my concentration. That was right up until we went down into the Sunken City, and started dealing with all the mechanical beings they'd left behind. 

Alvedes was the guy who'd hired us, and he was pretty cool but he wasn't a warrior in any sense. He wanted Ahriman's Tome, the grimoire of the long-dead witch-king.  He led us in, directed us to the Planetarium and took the mapping crystal from it. Then we discovered the Sunken Palace, where we found several useful things, but also a lot of mechanical defenders... and for the most part, we were doing well, until we got close to the King's Library. 

A thousand tons of fallen stone had closed it away, and a Steel Predator roused itself to chase us out. I've never come so close to dying in my life. 

We made it back to Riftguard. I'm going to join the college here, and stay the hell away from any ruins in the Rifts. 

Iran

And now we're bombing Iran. 

I'm just sitting with that.

We're not At War, because the President can't do that by himself, and Congress hasn't even been informed, let along declared war. Instead, we're just... at war. But at least we have good reasons for going to war, even if nobody's actually managed to say what they are or what the plan actually is. 

And of course the first reports I'm hearing is that we've already managed to bomb a primary school full of little girls, with eighty-five dead.

I hate this. I hate it so much. It's going be Iraq all over again, on steroids.

The things I would be doing right now if I had Vast Supernatural Powers... 

Update: the air strike killed more than one hundred children.  

Friday morning thoughts

In addition to the sleeping and dreaming issues, I've just generally been off this week: not feeling entirely well, stuffy head, and difficulty concentrating. Turns out cedar pollen is back up, plus we've had some high winds, and that certainly explains a lot. 

(That difficulty concentrating may be partly because of what I've been trying to work on, which is studying for a certification that I meant to complete back in December. The course material is this weird combination of helpful insights and way overthinking some pretty basic things, and the online course has been... fraught. Chunks of text that aren't in the right place, videos that won't play in the course, obvious typos... and really no excuse for it. It's just sloppy.) 

The other part, I think, is just moral injury from watching some of the worst people in the world trying their damnedest to break the country and everyone in it. (I did not watch the State of the Union, just followed along with some people who were commenting on it.) CBP and ICE -- our homegrown American Gestapo -- are still busy terrorizing anyone they can, some heinous fuckery just went through in Kansas, and  House Republicans are pushing for a national book ban. I'm trying to limit my exposure because being simultaneously heartbroken and incandescently angry isn't good for my mental or physical health. And it helps to help out where I can, even if that's largely been limited to donations for mutual aid.

I still think the whole thing falls apart as soon as Trump has a major medical event, and given how he's looked lately I can't imagine that will take too much longer -- but dear ye immortal gods, the damage that's being done in the meantime...

I'm so tired.

Sleep and Dreams

Had trouble sleeping earlier this week. I woke up a couple of times, which I don't usually do. I think I was having some stomach issues, and also I need to get back in the habit of using the CPAP machine. 

Weird, disconnected dreams, too. I was trying to get to some kind of family for dinner, for a holiday where I hadn't had the day off, only all I had was name of the place -- no directions -- and I kept forgetting the name. I had Secondborn with me, except much younger than she is now, and she kept wandering off. Then I got frustrated and went walking off into the pouring rain. (Not so much leaving Secondborn behind as just... she wasn't there anymore.) There was a Kung Fu fight, or at least a brief tussle in there somewhere, too. 

None of it made much sense, which I suppose isn't all that unusual, but my dreams are frequently pretty coherent -- more coherent that this, anyway. I think I'm just back to having a lot of frustrations in my life right now, and not enough spoons to deal with them.

DoT: Abomination

Lloroth turned in his cave, drifting towards the entrance before he thought better of it and stopped. The boy was dead, and his eyes sought to return to him, but their way was blocked. Cloth, he thought, remembering their last sight. Fear tore through him, unexpected and unwelcome; this was a danger he had never anticipated. Should he go to retrieve them? Should he wait, and send a bargainer instead? There were risks to waiting, but also risks to breaking his cover. 

He should have known better than to make a compact with the boy, he decided. For all his swagger, the child had proven weak and inept. He'd been desperate to bargain, though, and the idea of a dedicated servant, one he could experiment on... Lloroth had been unable to resist. 

The shock, when it came, was sudden and absolutely unexpected: blinding pain, and then the slow, throbbing ache as his two borrowed eyes reappeared at the ends of their tentacles. Dispelled, somehow. That was another risk he hadn't expected; how had the mortals managed it? If they'd done it to the boy's corpse, they could do it to any of his bargainers, and that was unacceptable. He'd have to refine his techniques, improve the magic he used for implants.

Trading out his eyes was only the beginning, a convenient way to gather resources and prepare. The lesser creatures on this island were not to be trusted; they might rise up against him at any time. No, he needed to continue his research, master his arts, and create better servants -- more loyal, more reliable, and better placed in what passed for local society. 

DoT: After The Job

"Ah, you made it," said Melia, as Werril opened the door. She kissed him quickly on the cheek, half shy and half secretive, then drew away. "Any trouble?"

Werril shut the door behind and heaved a massive sigh. Their hideout was a small set of rooms on the upper floor of a boarding house about halfway down the lowest northern spoke. "Gods-damned Red Blade," he said. "One of the cultists. I had to charm her to escape."

"But you made it, right?" asked Melia. 

"Yes, but she saw my face. My magic..."

"Your magic isn't the problem." Sairen said, stepping up behind Amelia. "Your control is."

Melia turned. "It's wild magic, Sairen. By its very nature, it's not controllable."

Sairen sniffed. 

"Worry about it later," Werril said. "I need a bath, and a good night's sleep, and I don't want to argue until sometime after breakfast."

"As you wish," Sairen said. "The job is done, and none of us were caught. Nobody followed you here?"

"No." Werril was fair certain of that.

"Then yes, we should discuss the risks and benefits of your sort of magic later on." The dark elf actually smiled. "At least you kept your wits about you." 

DoT: Searches and Seizures

"Where do we stand?" asked Mad Hettie.

They were sitting in the dark around a central fire; Hettie considered it the best spot for deliberations, and always held their meetings on a mid-sized ledge just off to the side of lower spoke south. There was an established firepit here, and sometimes their arrival chased other people away. 

"I've contacted a team of sea elves down at the docks," Gorak said. "They usually work for the Stevedores or the Gleaners, but they're willing to work for us. If his body went into the water, they should be able to find it."

"The Mist Eyes," said Storm, and Malice -- sitting beside him -- nodded. Those two acted as a unit, leading their portion of the Red Blades together. They might squabble with each other, but they closed ranks immediately against any threat from outside. "We know the Stevedores and the Gleaners wouldn't have been involved with this, and the upper-level gangs think us beneath their notice."

Verity braced herself, but Mad Hettie said, "Later for that. If Varna was killed, I want this specific group. Hound them, hunt them, harry them. Let them know no rest. We'll wring the truth from them, sing it free from the marrow of their bones."

"One of my people came to me, a personal confession," Verity said, looking at the flames so as to avoid having to meet Hettie's red-eyed gaze. "She believes she met one of the attackers, but he charmed her and sent her on to investigate that mist that they left. She says he was likely a half-elf, possibly an elf, and handsome enough."

"She let him leave?" asked Gorak, then shook himself. "No, if she was charmed, of course she did. I should be more surprised that a professional would be caught at all."

Verity nodded. She liked Gorak, despite herself. He was more quick to anger than Varna, but he caught himself quickly too. He needed time and tempering, but he wouldn't be a bad replacement. He was doing his best to step up, and he seemed to have the support of Varna's people. 

"I want to send the Mist Eyes a warning," Malice said quietly, rubbing her scarred hands together. "Just a little thing."

Mad Hettie considered that, then shook her head. "Not yet. Not unless it becomes widely known that Varna is missing. Better if we can bring him back without notice."

Gorak nodded immediately. "If you can think of any other ways to find him, let me know."