Mercy 

Painted me as Buts, cosplay one day? idk

Chain of Acheron, Helltrooper Hawthorn “Tha plan? Don’t die, and tha least bloodied buys drinks.”

Stout, loud and spiky best describes this Khemharan Desert Dwarf.  Hailing from the eastern side of the Granite Mountains, Hawthorn was formerly part of the shock troopers known as the Khoragad, or Dust Devils (or Cactus Men, but don’t say that in front of him). He and his flails would tear through the battlefield and none could ignore him.

He joined the Chain a while back, towards the beginning of Ajax’s conquest of Khemhara. Doesn’t do well with plans, prefers the tried and true method of “whack it until it falls over,” or, the true Dwarven way. Likely didn’t make it onto the Rosso Cielo because, uhhhh, who travels by water? 

He will have to, eventually, but he isn’t going to like it.

Has strong opinions on stoneworking (sandstone or it’s not worth it) and ale (cactus based), but is otherwise quite civilized. Just… Don’t stand to close to him in a fight. And close is a relative term.

In game terms he’s absolutely a Mountain Dwarf Battlerager barbarian. I like the idea that despite the obvious cactus imagery, when he joined the Chain, it was mostly Vaslorians who hadn’t ever seen a cactus before, so they called him their spiky plant (they weren’t going to call him rose, that’s for sure).

I was having a hard time thinking of him, but then suddenly he came to me all at once and now I desperately need to do something with him.

“See? It all turned out in the end. What do you mean, ‘stealth operation?’”

Alternative explanations for why your fantasy setting has powerful magic items just lying around where any random schmuck can pick them up:

Up until a couple hundred years ago, the world’s magical background radiation level was much lower than it is today. Most of magic items were once minor lucky charms and simple household conveniences; being designed to function in what’s now considered a low-magic environment, their effects have not only increased considerably in power, but have also become warped in unexpected and frequently ironic ways.

It’s impossible to create a magic item on purpose. Random objects just become magical, and nobody really knows why. Living things are never affected, and the phenomenon seems to favour manufactured objects over natural ones, though it’s unknown whether this is a real trend, or a reflection of the fact that people rarely “use” natural objects in ways that are likely to trigger any powers they might possess.

Magic items are actually the larval form of monsters. They spend the first part of their life cycle sessile, feeding off of the heroic destinies of the adventurers who carry them. When those adventurers eventually TPK, it triggers the next stage of the items’ development; shortly thereafter, the items “hatch” into a new colony of monsters and spawn the next generation of magic items, continuing the cycle.

There exists a possible future where the forces of Order and Chaos fuck up so badly that the world is torn apart and smeared across its own past. The wreckage of that future are/have been/will be raining down over the entire span of history leading up to it. Being indestructible, magic items comprise the bulk of the debris, but sometimes creatures, buildings or chunks of terrain make it through, which is where dungeons come from.

The world’s supply of magic items is actually very limited, but is constantly being manipulated by the gods to place them in the paths of people who will make best use of them – where “best use” is defined roughly as “hey, you know what would be hilarious?”. The random magic item tables the GM rolls on aren’t a game-mechanical conceit, but a completely literal modelling of the gods’ decision-making process.

There are no such thing as magic items. Sometimes ordinary objects just do things when adventurers pick them up. Almost no-one knows this.

be nice to goblins or taste my blade

I went through a mimic phase a while back :D

why do wizards and mages and shit in stuff always have to use a fucking stick or staff to do magic. what’s so special about a gotdamn tree bone

I'm kinda meh about roof gardens/ grass roofs bc they can accumulate a lot of weight and collapse/ cause leaks

But living walls? Mighty sexy

They provide natural insulation, which not only keeps the heat in during cold days, but keeps the heat out during hot ones. It's better planned and maintained than vines (depending on the plant ofc).

Flooding in urban areas can be reduced since the roots and the growing medium will hold in moisture. Air can be purified, and heat can be reduced because of evaporation.

I just love living walls

Bear with my shitposting. Here is my current Paisley playlist. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1CgXup19ksY1bZaey7tbCn?si=dwuqRVIdRSa_JG8fZhbNoQ Infinite Mirror - Lite. Originally I didn’t think I would put this on the playlist but this is what trial and error sounds like when I think of Paisley. Pushing limits, reinterpreting notes, making new ones. He’s got a knack for illusions, and there’s something about this which makes me think of the potential times he would have tried something new, had it work, and then spent countless hours trying to replicate it, asking the Khoursirian for help. Man O To - Nu. Coffeehouses, warm evenings, second-rate wine, singing with friends on the docks, picking fights alongside them, running from the ones they couldn’t win, that half-impressed , half-cautious smile on dad’s face when he saw those tricks of the light, and those days spent talking to the Khoursirian. It’s a sweet and nostalgic look back on a youth well spent in Capital. Flight Over Venice 2 - Jesper Kyd. I mean, come on. The entire AC2 sountrack could fit Rioja, but there’s something about this piece which really fits The Stays. Feeling’s Gone - Cat Empire. Everything went to shit in Capital, and the kid who would become Paisley left. It’s not like everyone at home is gone, and these Helltroopers seem like a decent lot. In some other life, he probably thought in those earlier years, perhaps he would have liked to be a bard. He can sing as a soldier, though, and he’ll always have the knack and his spellbook, and with company like this, that’s good enough. Brother - NEEDTOBREATHE. The kid who became Paisley was no stranger to being “the sensible one,” even if only in comparison to his goon squad. Who would have thought a bunch of young folk with hangups become mercenaries? Guess someone has to be the adult in the room, even if this hypothetical adult has to occasionally fight hooligan instinct. Randy Dandy-Oh - The Dreadnoughts. Gotta love the way a room sounds singing. It has to be some unique quality of soldiers to know how to carry a tune. Whisper - The Dear Hunter. Who knows, maybe he could have been important if he didn’t sign on to The Chain. He doesn’t really care, though. Everyone here must have made stupid decisions to end up in the Fuck Up Squad. Even if the scholars don’t remember the name of the man who is now Paisley, the Chronicle will. The Tragedy - Pax Cecilia. Blackbottom really shook things up. Dozens of Helltroopers dead, the contract left unfinished, the officers all on board that boat which got away. Time for a few hard, straight-faced weeks of picking up the pieces and getting everything back together. Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits. This is next to The Mercenary by Iron Maiden on songs that have become inseparable from the Chain of Acheron in my head.

saturday D&D tip: write all your lore from the woefully confusing world of Academia™. The whole argument depends on a tenuous citation of a guy who wrote about an event 100 years after it happened. The biography of the lich was written by one of his greatest enemies and so we have to treat it as a questionable source despite being the only primary source we have. The translation out of Old Draconic might be “sword,” or maybe it was “thorn,” but then the Draconic for ‘thorn’ was also often used as a euphemism for ‘usurper,’ etc. the academic text they were relying on is actually a fringe theory that may or may not have any basis in fact.