Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Lark's Landing Summary

Colonial Caerdia: Lark's Landing is a story being told through a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign I'm running at a local hobby shop called the Devil's Bench. I started recounting the story with videos on YouTube but the videos were taking 10 hours per week to make and there wasn't enough interest to make it worthwhile. If interest somehow spikes, I may give it another shot, but until then I'll be continuing the story here. And this the summary of what's happened so far (for a more detailed account, pop over to Once Upon a Tabletop on YouTube):

Lark's Landing: Summary of episodes 0 through 15

The continent where the characters started was being overrun by the evil Somvidian Empire, leaving people with two choices: stay to become a slave or die, or flee. The trouble was that, after reaching the western coast, the only place left to flee was across the Endless Ocean. There were rumours of a land called Caerdia across the ocean, but no one had ever been there or proven it existed. It may have been nothing more than a fairy tale. Yet, the possibility offered a hope for life and freedom, so people took it - taking any boat they could find out to sea.

One such boat was the Noble's Lark, departing from the southern port city of Krorheart. The Noble's Lark was one of the largest ships ever built, painted in garish colours with images of animals - because it used to be a zoo. However, the people being loaded onto the ship found that all that remained of the animals (apart from a few farm animals) were a few bloodstains in the pens where the people would spend their journey.

One mismatched group of people travelling alone were put given a small room that had once been used to store food for the animals. These were Shend (a dwarven ranger), Stor (a goblin monk), Kordak (a half-orc fighter), Balasar (a dragonborn cleric), Gilligan (a human mystic), and Kalon (an elven druid). In the room with them was a dwarf named Deltria, who was excited to get to the new world where she hoped to start a mine.

The journey wasn't easy. First it was discovered that the ship was being controlled by pirates who, instead of taking them across the ocean, were taking the shipload of people so sell to the Somvidian Empire as slaves. With the help of some sailors and some of the other passengers, the adventurers had a successful mutiny, took over the ship, and set her back on the proper course. The troubles didn't end there, though. The pirates had planned on a much shorter journey, so they hadn't packed enough food - a situation the adventurers helped remedy with weaving fishing nets and hanging half-barrels over the side of the ship to grow potatoes.

After more than 3 months at sea, everyone's spirits were flagging - food was still in short supply and people were beginning to doubt they'd ever see land again. Overnight, a huge storm blew in, taking the ship by surprise first thing in the morning. They had no chance to escape it. The adventurers stayed on deck, helping wherever they could to keep the ship afloat. When the storm cleared, the Noble's Lark was heavily damaged and taking on water, but it hadn't sunk yet. It limped along for the rest of the day and, in the night, the ship shuddered as its bottom was torn out by a coral reef. Luckily the lookout called out that there was land ahead - they were just a short trip from solid ground!

They landed and the adventurers put together an impromptu militia in case there were dangers in the area. A bit of exploration revealed that they were on a sandy beach along the edge of a dense jungle. They also found a limestone outcropping with a deep pool of fresh water.

The Noble's Lark had left port on the 34th of Waxing Fall with 2130 people on board. On the night of the 3rd of Waxing Spring (135 days, or 3 months and 15 days later) there were 1570 people left to go ashore. In the morning, those people set about building their new life.

The adventurers, now missing Kalon from their number, started exploring the local region - searching for resources and dangers. They found some of each, the most notable being old footprints from some massive beast and a large stone in a clearing from which music was emitting. They nicknames the rock the Singing Stone but, though they experimented with it, they couldn't figure out exactly what it was or why it existed. They did, however, determine that this might be a good location to start a mine.

Over the next few tendays, the settlement grew. An impromptu council, made of the most influential members of the society, formed to guide the work as best they could.
Shend had his 71st birthday and received a magical coin that appeared to have come his god, Rotar - something even the most religious of them had never heard of. The same day, the adventurers took Deltria out to the Singing Stone to decide if it was where she would start her mine. On their way they ran into some trouble with some giant boars, but came out victorious with plenty of food to bring home, as well as a small herd of piglets - but they'd also seen a giant reptile - the same one whose tracks they'd seen before - carry off one of the adult boars. Deltria agreed that the stone would be a suitable location for a mine, but not until the settlement was more established.

The adventurers continued their scouting (determining that there didn't seem to be any other civilisation around) until an overnight rainstorm that made them decide to build a house. They did so on the top of a hill that the militia had been clearing and building a palisade around.

Not long after building their house, they received a message from a mysterious stranger that drew them out into the jungle, where the found a cliff with a ton of rubble at the bottom - it looked like something had, long ago, destroyed the entire side of the hill. In amongst the rubble they found two gravestones, guarded by a pair of ghostly humanoids. They brought these back home as proof that there had once been other civilisation here, but they only shared the news with Deltria for fear that the news might cause problems if it was widely known.

However, this sparked a new interest in the group. They recruited Akta, a tiefling warlock, and set out on a longer expedition to the north-east to see if they could find more civilisation. They didn't, but they did break free of the jungle to find savanna grasslands and, later (after almost being killed by cockatrices) a desert. They followed the edge of this for a while, turning off to head for the coast when they came to some hilly lands.

They followed the coast back home, arriving just in time for the Spring Festival, where they won every game (even acquiring some magical prizes). Akta was permanently accepted into their group and invited to live with them.

Kordak and Stor, having made a deal with Wyatt (a young half-elf on the council who was building a tavern), began brewing a batch of mead. Akta and Balasar planted some rats in the shop of Naldor, a racist man whose success was bothering them. The group decided to settle in for a while, but that plan got disrupted when Stor was accused of murder.

In the night, a goblin had murdered a militia member, and Stor was the only goblin around. Using the tombstones as proof that there might be other civilisations around, the adventurers got permission from the council to head out and find evidence of Stor's innocence. They headed out (except for Gilligan, who was out hunting when this occurred), found goblin tracks, and tracked the three creatures. However, by the time they find them, they were already dead - one killed by some strange living plants, one killed by one of the other goblins, and the third killed and dragged off to a large pride of lions living in a field of long blue grass. Kordak claimed the heads of the first two as their proof of Stor's innocence.

However, before heading back home, they explored something remarkable that they noticed on the far side of the blue grass - a white stone building. After killing the ogre that lived there (and her two pet bears) they discovered that it seemed to be an old, desecrated monument to the founder of something called the Empire of Drovinaar. No one had heard of this empire before, but they did recall that there was a city-state on the continent they came from called New Drovinaar. They wanted to stay and explore some more, but they knew they had to get home to clear Stor's name.

On their way out, they caught two goblins spying on them - Ilk and Darg. They were from a nearby tribe of goblins, so the adventurers arranged a meeting with their leader to take place on the full moon, in about a tenday. At last, they went home.

Upon arriving, they discovered a food shortage being caused by rats that seemingly came out of nowhere. They cleared officially cleared Stor's name - though he continued to receive some mistrust from some people - and helped where they could before they had to leave for their meeting.

While waiting for the goblins, they cleaned up the monument building. Rather than the goblin leader coming, Ilk was sent to bring the adventurers to the goblin camp, where they were ushered into an enormous tent filled with goblins surrounding Grubfrub, the bugbear that was leading them. The goblin Darg was suspended above the fire as an example to Grubfrub's other scouts about what happened to scouts who were seen.

Kordak negotiated a vague alliance with Grubfrub, to which the bugbear agreed on the condition that the adventurers help him claim a hobgoblin city to the south. He then sent the adventurers on a scouting mission, dropping Darg into the fire as a not-so-subtle threat to remind them that they shouldn't be seen.

The adventurers grudgingly went, following the edge of a low mountain range into some jungle until they heard some marching feet. They spotted a hobgoblin patrol, and ambushed them, killing them and stealing their gear, but keeping the leader alive. Just as they were ready to start questioning the leader, they noticed heard another patrol that had noticed something out of place. The adventurers fled into the jungle with their prisoner, passing a strange upright stone loop on their way.

The next day Kordak and Akta tortured their prisoner while the rest - unable to stomach it - head back to investigate the stone loop. The hobgoblin didn't give up any information and was dead by the time the rest of the party got back. That night, they discussed plans and insecurities. They decided that they were in over their heads and that they needed to go home to warn the council about the goblins, hobgoblins, and something Grubfrub mentioned called the Soggy Alliance that apparently claimed all the lands within two or three days of the coast.

That's what they did - returning home to find the rats taken care of thanks to someone summoning imps, which had gone wild and been taken care of by the militia. They delivered their report to the council, then began settling in to spend some time around the settlement - they even went to the first ever service at the recently completed Temple to the Four, where Gilligan was recognised for his help in constructing it.

Of course, with the farms not yet ready for harvest and the food shortage caused by the rats, they decided they needed to go out hunting. That's where this summary end - on the 32nd of Waning Spring, after the adventurers just killed another giant boar and a strange, black cat with long spikey tentacles extending from its shoulders.


Where will the story go next? Find out in Episode: 16

Monday, February 26, 2018

Spoiler Free Black Panther Review

            So, I just got back from watching Black Panther and I’ve got to say I was blown away – and I don’t say that much. While I do enjoy the Marvel series, they often lack the deeper meanings and plots I most enjoy – not so this time.

            Since not everyone has seen it yet, I’ll keep this as spoiler free as possible. The plot, for the story lovers out there, was very enjoyable – the movie did a good job of keeping the audience guessing, with the perfect balance of foreshadowing. The jokes came at the right time, and none of them were overplayed.

            The characters were fantastic, with each and every one given a complex personality that drove their actions. I feel like I should say more than one sentence, but, honestly, that covers everything.

            However, what is truly great about this movie is the underlying messages – these are there throughout the story, yet they remain firmly in the subtext without preaching, exactly as they should. There was social commentary on sensitive subjects, yet they were presented so flawlessly that they came across as just another part of the entertainment. They even showed various perspectives, in a manner that made them all relatable.

            On the whole, the Marvel movies are action movies. While Black Panther did have that aspect to it, it didn’t take up nearly as much screen time as we’ve come to expect. Instead we were treated to a journey through myriad cultures, political struggles, and character growths that, while fictional, also have their roots in reality.


            If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you really should. Not only is it excellent entertainment; it’s a mind-opening experience.





Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.



Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Monday, February 19, 2018

Kenku

            After staying up too late playing a D&D game my wife is running, I’m quite tired and having trouble coming up with something to blog about, so I’m gonna tell you a bit about the character I’m playing in this game. I apparently have a knack for making fairly unique characters, so you may hear about some others in the future.

            I try to build characters suited to the game I’m playing, and the unique situation surrounding this game forced me to be more creative than usual. You see, I originally wasn’t going to be playing in this game due to a scheduling conflict, and so I started off helping Colleen brainstorm and flesh out her ideas for the story. That meant that when the situation changed and I was invited to be a player, I already knew far too much.

            Now, this in and of itself isn’t too much of a problem. I could simply pretend that I had no idea what was going on – but that makes it complicated when it comes to having my character help figure out mysteries and such. If a situation arrived where I knew what was happening, I’d have to carefully navigate around the treacherous waters of guessing what I would figure out without my prior knowledge. It would be better, I thought, to have a character that was generally unable to help with such matter. And so I set to work.

            At first, I considered simply having a stupid character, but instead I landed upon the idea of playing a kenku. A kenku is a race of humanoid crows that were cursed long ago, having their wings removed, the “spark of creativity torn from their souls”, and, most importantly, their ability to speak removed – they can mimic sounds they hear, like a bird, but they have no ability to actually speak. For someone who knew too much about the plot of the game, it was perfect.

            And so I put together my kenku rogue whose name was the sound of a bird’s wings fluttering. He was a strange creature raised in a life of crime, situated perfectly for being dragged into any adventurous situation. And then the fun began.

            Because of the kenku’s ability to mimic sounds he heard, I began listening to the other players very carefully. Any time they said a sentence I felt might be useful in the future, I wrote it down in a way that would indicate the inflection – with a note of who said it. With these carefully selected phrases, I began my rudimentary form of communication.

            At first the other characters were somewhat confused at hearing their own words mimicked back to them, and a little annoyed, but the strange bird-man proved useful in battle (even if he did have a tendency to steal eyeballs) and he kept following them around. Eventually they were able to figure out that he could actually understand them and think for himself, and even that the strange fluttering-wings sound was the name he was calling himself.


            However, lacking the ability to mimic the sound, the more “normal” characters decided to give him a name they could pronounce. Thus he was fully accepted into the group with his new name: Rustle Crow.





Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.



Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Monday, February 12, 2018

Laughing at the Pain

            It has occurred to me that in our culture there is a distinct link between humor and bullying. Or, rather, a lot of out humor comes from one form of bullying or another – and it just might be that this leads to bullying for the sake of humor.

            Let’s start with the most obvious one: slapstick. This is a type of humor based entirely around pain being caused to other people in humorous ways – such as accidentally getting struck from behind by someone carrying a long plank and getting pushed headfirst into a bucket of whitewash. Although a more modern version would be the videos of people accidentally hurting themselves that make up a large portion of the viral photos on the internet. We watch these things, and we laugh, believing it is harmless – either it was staged, and no one was really hurt, or it was some hurt to someone in the past and it wouldn’t have been posted on the internet if it wasn’t okay to laugh at them.

            Is it so harmless, though? We are witnessing pain, and laughing. More than that, we go on to share it with others – family, friends, children – and encourage them to laugh as well. It seems to me that this could very well desensitize people to the pain of others, and even encourage violence – because it’s funny. Especially when it happens to someone we think deserves it.

            Teasing is another one – it’s very common for people to playfully tease those they are close with. Again, it’s often harmless – or at least meant to be. But sometimes it goes too far. Sometimes the person being teased doesn’t even mention they’ve been hurt, so no one knows that it’s gone too far. Other times, the person says something and proceeds to get teased for having been hurt. We cause pain or embarrassment, then we laugh. It might not be so bad if we kept it to ourselves, but we then pass it on to the most impressionable people around us, who carry it on and spread it. Causing pain in certain ways then becomes synonymous with amusement, and leads to bullying.

            We can see more examples in the comedies we watch. We have shows that normalize making fun of certain cultures. How often do you see nerds being made fun of for being weird? How often do you see jocks being made fun of for being stupid? How often do you see mental illnesses being used for comic relief? And we take all of that back out into the world and spread it around – because it’s funny, and if it’s funny, it can’t really be bullying, can it? Meanwhile mental illness is stigmatized and people find themselves ostracised because of their interests.

            I think we all need to take a very good look at the things we find funny and consider, why are we laughing? More than that, we need to consider the harm that might be caused by passing this specific sense of humor on to younger generations – keeping in mind that they won’t necessarily understand the subtleties of the joke.


            Above all, we need to ask, is this humor, or is it bullying?





Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.



Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Monday, February 05, 2018

Mob Mentality

            It always boggles my mind how easily people’s opinions are swayed, particularly in this age where information is so accessible. Discovering the truth of a situation is a bit of quick research away, and only requires a little bit of critical thinking to figure out the truth.

            For example, word reached my ears this week that J.K. Rowling is homophobic. I laughed, because anyone who knows anything about that woman knows this to be untrue. However, a lot of people – even professionals in the literary world – were buying into this rumor. So I did my research – and I still can’t believe that people are believing this rumor when all they have to do is read.

            The evidence for J.K. Rowling being homophobic is that someone involved with the latest Harry Potter movie said that Dumbledore (known to be a gay character) will not be openly gay in the movie. So people immediately assumed that, since Rowling wrote the screenplay, she was chickening out from presenting the character as gay. The mob mentality roused and people began haranguing the Rowling about it.

            Her response was quite simple and to the point. She muted people on social media, saying that she wasn’t going to accept abuse from people who read an interview that she wasn’t involved with about a screenplay they hadn’t read – incidentally, a screenplay that was the first in a five part series.

            Somehow, people took this as proof that Rowling is homophobic, when it is quite literally staying the opposite. It’s almost explicitly stating that Dumbledore, while perhaps not portrayed as openly gay in the first movie, will become so over the course of the series.

            Yet, the rumor has been started – and people are believing it. Why? It’s so easy to find the truth, but people are so eager (as with political situations) to believe the first thing they read that they don’t go digging. They would rather believe a falsehood and flip their opinion about a person or a subject than do a bit of research.

            Why? Is it simply not worth the effort to fact check? Is it mob mentality – everyone else is saying it, so let’s not go against the crowd? Is it pure emotion – has the internet given us such a safe place to lash out at the smallest provocation that we no longer show any restraint? Is it simply that people care so little about their opinions that they don’t care if they change their mind about it, so they go with the clickbait headlines rather than the facts?

            To me, it speaks to something rotten at the core of our society. What it comes down to is that news is viewed as a form of entertainment – not by those who consume it, but by those who create it. This has come to be because, given a choice between news that is boring and news that is entertaining, people will always choose the one that’s entertaining – so the news has become more entertaining, more dramatic, to compete. The result is that facts and truth get lost amid a swirl of opinions and misdirections intended to draw people in.

            And, slowly, the truth has stopped mattering to us. It’s the entertainment that matters. People believe what they read, because they trust the source – or, conversely, distrust what they read from sources they don’t like, regardless of accuracy. Many even believe satirical articles that they didn’t realize was satirical.

            So, is that all it is? Do people no longer care what’s real? Is it too difficult for us to figure out what’s real?


            Or is it just easier to follow the crowd? After all, when has a mob ever been wrong?





Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

To see the chainmaille my wife and I make, click here.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.