This is the last of my daily CQ release.

I might still release a CQ now and then but not on a daily basis.

My pool of quests is depleted and I'm kind of fed up with creating them for a while now I guess.

I hope you had fun trying out a few of my custom quests ;)

[Chapter 1] ; [Previous Chapter] ; [Wiki + Discord]

Chapter 45 – At the bottom of things

High-Matriarch Tua scowled, as she looked down at the hundreds of messages that she had gotten in the last hour alone. People were so needy these days.

Well, admittedly, she had, out of necessity, chosen a rather unfortunate moment for her departure from the station, after James’ escapades had caused so much chaos for its people, but honestly, things had already been back in working order even before she had left. And all in all, damages had been on the low-end of her estimations.

There really wasn’t any reason to push this thing up like she had just abandoned them in the middle of some world-ending event. Yet still, message after message came flooding in, from people seeking her advice on the station as well as the scavengers from the press looking for any crumbs of information.

But that was the toll she had to pay for the fact that it seemed out of character for her to be anything but restlessly dutiful over her many years of service to the people who voted her into her office. And she would gladly pay it for them. The service to her people was a matriarch’s duty, that had been instilled into her from a very young age, and that duty extended to her role as the Leader-Supreme.

Still, sometimes, very rarely, she felt like she could do without the constant need for attention some people seemed to have. If she had wanted to comfort a horde of children, she would have borne her own and become a herd-mother like her dear sister. But that life had never been for her. And even if she was and felt responsible for them, she expected a bit more than whining and complaining out of the very much adult people she had the watch over.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a loud knock on the door.

She put down her assistant and looked towards the door.

“Come in!” she loudly ordered, uselessly making a welcoming gesture with her trunk, which the person on the other side of her door obviously couldn’t see.

The door was opened by one of her guards, allowing entrance to a much smaller figure who meekly entered the room; her gaze lowering respectfully as soon as it had met with that of Tua.

“Ah, Doctor!” Tua happily exclaimed, delig

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The lights of the stage dimmed until there were only two circles of illumination, highlighting the two figures on the stage. On the left was a Rigellian in a full body leotard, falsies on her chest to simulate breasts, a long tail with an arrowhead end flowing behind her. She was painted completely bright red to match the leotard, the 'nipples' were painted dark red, the same with the vee between her legs. She had long dark red hair that whipped around her as she twirled and spun toward the second figure. That figure, another Rigellian, was dressed in a Confederate Armed Services Army Officer's dress uniform, black hair cut short, her legs and arms and half of her face painted bright chrome.

"What wilt thou give unto mine hand?" the red Rigellian asked, twirling in place and laughing with a booming voice. "What sin and vice shalt thou confess unto me, oh man?"

The uniformed one raised her face to the spotlight as she stood to her full height, standing on one leg. Gentle illumination came up behind the uniformed ones, showing the shadowy figures of Rigellian females dressed in dark and torn Confederate Officer uniforms that danced slowly in unison with graceful movements.

"All that thy asks of me, oh Evil One," the chrome painted one sang. "For there is still a battle to be won!"

"Wilt thou consign unto me thine immortal soul?" the red painted on asked, prancing about the chrome painted one.

"I shalt willingly pay thy toll," the chrome one said. "If thou shalt save the dead soldiers of mine sin."

"Then willing sealed and accepted be our bargain!" the red one laughed.

Smoke billowed up and the two dancers vanished.

The slowly moving dancers, too dimly lit to see clearly, stared out of the darkness with red eyes as they slowly came to stop and stood swaying, the clacking sound of chattering teeth the only sound to be heard.

The curtain came down as the orchestra slowly went silent, the last sounds the slow tapping of a steel drum.

--"The Honor and Agony of Saint Manuel" as performed by the Bongistan Cyberqueen's Royal Rigellian Ballet Company, Rigel-7, 8679 PG.

------

They had held power for centuries in the outside world, longer than that in the ma

A new series where we analyze arguments for Mad Queen Daenerys Targaryan. Let's start by covering Dany's darkest act in Dance of Dragons, the torturing of the wine seller's daughter.

Point #1 - The Wineseller likely did poison the Unsullied.

>"Your servants were set upon as they walked the bricks of Meereen to keep Your Grace's peace. All were well armed, with spears and shields and short swords. Two by two they walked, and two by two they died. Your servants Black Fist and Cetherys were slain by crossbow bolts in Mazdhan's Maze. Your servants Mossador and Duran were crushed by falling stones beneath the river wall. Your servants Eladon Goldenhair and Loyal Spear were poisoned at a wineshop where they were accustomed to stop each night upon their rounds."

Eladon Goldenhair and Loyal Spear suddenly dying at the wine shop on the same day that the sons of the harpy killed nine Unsullied seems rather weird. Moreover, how could the Unsullied have been poisoned without any involvement of the Wine seller? It is very unlikely that a son of the harpy would be able to spill in some homemade poison without the Unsullied noticing.

It is possible that the Harpy threatened to kill him should he not comply, yet why not admit that instead of claiming ignorance?

>They plead their ignorance and beg for mercy."They all plead ignorance and beg for mercy.

It seems very likely that the Wineseller is indeed part of the Harpy's son.

Point #2- The Daughter or a child?

The idea that the Daughter is a child doesn't actually have any textual evidence.

For one, the daughters were arrested along with the Wineseller himself.

>"Your servants have arrested the owner of the wineshop and his daughters."

Two, Dany refuses to harm her child hostages just a few chapters later in arguably a worse situation.

>The Shavepate has a harder heart than mine. They had fought about the hostages half a dozen times. "The Sons of the Harpy are laughing in their pyramids," Skahaz said, just this morning. "What good are hostages if you will not take their heads?" In his eyes, she was only a weak woman. Hazzea was enough. What good is peace if it must be purchased with the blood of little children?

Three, just because the daughters were supposedly unmarried, doesn't mean they were children. Highborn children were wed early due to political reasons, and many didn't actually consummate their marriage until much later. A wine seller's daughter has no reason to be wed

Many of you might remember 2008 as a year of ugly, overwrought designs in F1. It was the peak of the winglet era, and not everyone was a fan of shark fins, razor vents, and wildly curved double wings.

For me, however, these cars were beautifully aggressive, and the Ferrari F2008 in my opinion the most beautiful car of the lot, but the McLaren MP4-23 too would give the F2008 a run for it's money! I imagine many disagree, and I certainly don't seek to change their minds, but I feel inspired to explain what it is that gets me about this car. Feel free to correct me and add information, as I am certainly not an F1 historian and my memories may fail me.

First of all, there was the livery. 2008 was the second year of the darker red coloring for Ferrari, which replaced the lighter Marlboro red in Monaco 2007.

This darker "blood" red looked menacing; more sinister than the cheerful "fire engine" red of 2006 and earlier Ferraris. 2008 was also the third year of the controversial Marlboro barcode, a clever bit of subliminal advertising designed to alleviate public pressure to get tobacco branding off F1 cars. At speed, the barcode looked remarkably like a blurred Marlboro logo, and at rest, it made the F2008 look like an evil supercomputer from the future. It was a fitting accent for the livery of one of the most technologically advanced F1 cars ever devised. The Etihad logo on the rear wing was pretty striking as well. Overall, despite some very distinctive features, the livery could be described as minimalistic. There was a lot of red space that really showed off the sculpted contours of the car.

The car's combination of fat, wide, short wheels with a wide and short body and a super-low rear wing gives it a very powerful stance. It has the look of a cat ready to pounce, as opposed to the longer, narrower, more stretched out profiles of some Ferraris that came before and especially, after it.

At Hungary 2008, the team introduced a [shark fin](http://cdn-2.motorsport.com/static/img/mgl/700000/700000/706000/706900/706952/s8/f1-jerez-july-testing-2008-felipe-massa-scuderia-ferrari-f2008-try-

Hello everyone. If you're confused as to why this is Chapter 28 and not 27, please go read the previous post, which explains why. The long and short of it is, there is a changed release schedule, we have jumped up to thursday/sunday releases now.

This is a much longer chapter than 28 was, and will lay out the upcoming plot stuff you can look forwards to, as well as just some fun stuff anyway. Hope you all enjoy it, it was a blast to write. Foster does get massively shortchanged in this one, I will admit, but I didn't want to duplicate scenes across both characters.

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Kittaning, Pennyslvania

Tergelyx stood waiting, under a tarpaulin, the rain outside too heavy for anyone to want to stand out in it. A few members of 2 Platoon sat, either on random chairs they'd been able to find in the nearby town, or on the grass, while the rest stood. They were waiting, Lt Faulder having called a meeting, without having given much explanation. The situation, naturally, gave rise to much chatter, but when Lt Faulder stepped out of the small building that now served as Company HQ, most went silent.

Faulder walked up to the side of his Warrior, the one he always used for his mission briefings. Given there were no photos, maps, or anything pinned to it’s side, Tergelyx had a distinct feeling this wouldn’t just be preparing for some random mission. No, something big was probably about to happen. Before he could begin, Sergeant Fletcher walked over to the last few soldiers who were talking, looking over menacingly until they went quiet. With that dealt with, Faulder began to speak.

“Yes, to get it out of the way. The rumours are true. The war on Earth is close to over. At 0200 this morning, the president of the United States announced the complete collapse of organised Hekatian forces in North America. The last Hekatian pocket in Britain, in Bexhill, was announced destroyed yesterday, at 1600. Hekatian forces in India are sustaining heavy losses, and word from on high is they’re sending Combat Cell 4, so the Indians can get their little bit of pride in. Expectation is that the Hekatian forces there will not survive the next two weeks. Meanwhile, the Iranians, Syrians and Israelis are reportedly in the middle of a large counteroffensive that has driven the Hekatians out of Jordan and Kuwait. We

Part 1 | Previous Part

Preamble

"How do we lose three flights?" I asked. Strange to think of myself as a part of a we. It'd been a long time as lone wolf. Not a pleasant time, but it'd settled into my bones and my brain had a hard time wrapping around it. It'd change with time, assuming this we had enough time. Train wrecks probably lowered lift expectancy a fair bit.

"One at a time," Alix replied as we began to walk along the platform beside the train. Yuliana tagged along a few feet behind us, her fingers tracing along the overlapping plates of the train. Every so often, the circuity on her EXO suit would light up and she would speak to the hulking beast in gentle coos. "It isn't the sort of thing the Intendant gives us much explanation about. Beyond our 'scope of mission.'" The last few words weren't uttered with much affection, and I got the distinct impression that our dear Chartermaster had a different take on things.

I tended to agree with her. The fact that something out there appeared to be destroying every attempt to get to Domina seemed to be pretty fucking relevant to our mission. "I take it the Intendant is the boss then?"

"One of them. Mission logistic and operations administrator." Alix tapped the insignia on her left breast, where a small scroll appeared in raised gold weave. "He oversees the Charter here on Earth. Reports into the Superintendant who manages all Domina missions. After a few more bosses, we get to Twine's President."

No surprise there. Something as complicated, and expensive, would need layers. After the Corps, I wasn't any stranger to complicated hierarchies. No matter how big the pyramid, it pretty much always came down to who you were going in to. Good commanding officer and you might get some shit done.

Bad one...well. You didn't want a bad boss.

"They any good?"

"We don't always agree," Alix shrugged, "but I'm not very agreeable. Hard to complain too loudly when he's the one who granted me the Charter."

"His call?"

"His call. Approved by the Superintendant." Her voice took on a more distant tone, eyes focused loosely down the platform as her pace slowed some. "Competition was fierce. Not many Charters come through. Twine just doesn't land many ships. I was an," she searched for the word, "unorthodox choice."

"Why? Because of the..." I drifted off. The

[Part 1]

The Gathering Place

I did my best to make myself presentable. You should read that as finishing pissing, rubbing a finger back and forth across my teeth and then spitting in my hand and scraping it through the mane I'd developed over the last year of bouncing between vet shelters.

Once I'd had enough of that, I pushed against the door of the SOS and stepped out. Escort Weaver and Escort Priam were waiting for me. They led me a to a white transpo idling a few feet away. The hatch unsealed as we approached, revealing a perfect white interior.

I glanced over at Escort Priam. "White uniform. White car. White people. At least you have a theme."

Escort Priam offered a slight smile. "It is a company brand color. Of course, the fact that Escort Weaver and myself are both white is merely a coincidence. The Twine Traveler Company prides itself on its inclusivity initiatives and engages in best practice blind-hire protocols for all United Sovereignty citizens."

Somehow, I hated corporate speak more than military speak. That was pretty fuckin' impressive given the fact some asshole CO was yammerin' corps chatter in my ear half the time I was getting shot up along with my troops. I didn't bother explainin' such to Escort Priam, mostly because they had bigger problems given the size and length of stick crammed up both of their asses. Instead, I ducked my head through the hatch and plopped myself down on the pretty pretty interior and hoped my piss didn't it stain it.

Too much.

We passed the ride in silence. Escort Weaver managed to look only vaguely disgusted and Escort Priam had some bullshit grin plastered on his face that I think was supposed to make me want to punch him less. It had the opposite effect.

After a few minutes ticked by, the transpo came to a stop, the hiss of compressed gas accompanying the dull thud as the skids hit terra firma once more. Escort Weaver tapped a button and the hatch swung open. She followed it out, taking a pretty loud inhale once she had made her exit. Apparently my stench had offended her delicate sensibilities.

I followed Escort Weaver and Escort Priam brought up the rear. Outside the transpo was still inside. Some sort of large landing bay. Around me I could see other transpos with other Escorts. Some were getting in, others were just arriving, always with some other confused soul along with them. I imagined I didn't look any better than the

Previous

#Zirak

Joseph treated us to shops, and to culinary delights, including a concerningly frozen delicacy called ice cream. Warlord Xhikaat grew sluggish when she ate hers too quickly, and we had to wait for Joseph and her suit to warm her back up.

As we were waiting, my eyes were drawn to a screen playing videos. Hmm. This must be human entertainment. Fascinating.

A human youth wearing short leg coverings fell and injured their knee. An adult female hurried over, and said, "Johnny! Oh! You skinned your knee! I just wish bandages could stay put, but you're so active, they keep coming off!"

A male in what appeared to be a fine suit of clothes stepped closer from off screen. He held up a small, bright blue bottle with a spray handle. "Have you tried Napalm™ brand polymer bandages?"

The female asked, "Napalm™ brand? But bandages just won't stay on Johnny. He's too active."

The male said, "No child is too active for Napalm™ brand polymer bandages! They're the flexible bandage that keeps dirt out, and won't come off."

The female said, "Even with water?"

The male laughed, "Even with water! Just watch!"

He knelt down, and sprayed the scraped knee with some fluid, "It goes on wet, to fit every crevice and seal the wound, then it becomes a flexible polymer seal! Apply water for a faster seal!"

He poured some water over the knee from a bottle.

The youth said, "Wow! Thanks, mister!"

The male said, "Don't thank me, thank Napalm™ brand polymer bandages! The finest in care for all the scrapes and scratches that active children get!"

An enlarged image of the product appeared on the screen as female voices sang.

🎵"Naaapaaalm™!
Nothin' heals better!
Napalm sticks to kids!"🎵

An advertisement? And these polymer bandages sounded interesting. Perhaps something like that could be used to seal cracked scales. I pulled out my personal device and made a note to ask about that later.

Joseph saw me watching the screen. "Zirak. You like our advertisements?"

I turned to him. "Yes. Those polymer bandages sound fascinating. It's not an avenue of medicine the K'tari have explored."

Joseph said, "Oh! Napalm commercials! I remember those!" His voice changed a bit.""Napalm brand polymer bandages are for your active life! Even jumping in a river won't wash Napalm away!" It really works, too. You can go swimming with those, and they don't leak or crack or anything."

I said, "If it's not

I don't want to step on anybody's toes here, but the amount of non-dad jokes here in this subreddit really annoys me. First of all, dad jokes CAN be NSFW, it clearly says so in the sub rules. Secondly, it doesn't automatically make it a dad joke if it's from a conversation between you and your child. Most importantly, the jokes that your CHILDREN tell YOU are not dad jokes. The point of a dad joke is that it's so cheesy only a dad who's trying to be funny would make such a joke. That's it. They are stupid plays on words, lame puns and so on. There has to be a clever pun or wordplay for it to be considered a dad joke.

Again, to all the fellow dads, I apologise if I'm sounding too harsh. But I just needed to get it off my chest.

Spill a freezer box full of frozen sample tubes on the floor? Don't bother organizing them as you pick them up, just scoop them all up and refreeze them immediately to buy some time. Later, put the freezer box and the jumble of tubes in the bottom of a styrofoam ice box with a block of dry ice, and let a nice cold layer of CO2 settle in there. You can fiddle with the tubes (reorganizing them) in the cold gas layer without having them thaw in room air.

So a while back ago I had bad (very bad) art block. It was unpleasant, And I wanted to draw something different. Unique.

So enter the tophat. Yes, a tophat. I had a tophat in my closet (no I don't know where it came from) and had a spark of an idea. I took random scraps of paper and wrote all the WoF tribes on them and threw them in the hat. I jumbled them up and would pull out two. Now let's say I got an IceWing and a SeaWing. I have two tribes and make a hybrid, then I pull another scrap of paper from the hat, with a personality (ex. Spoiled). I'd draw my new OC with a matching expression, and since I'd have spoiled I would draw tons of treasure of them to match with that.

Now I have an OC, and have drawn something. Win, win right?

So I decided to share The Hat of Hybrids (what I call it, because I'm uncreative) with this subreddit. If you want me to pull for you, go in the comments and ask for me to pull two random tribes and a personality (did I mention I don't look. It's quite random). All you do is take the two tribes and draw it out. Everything else, like the color scheme, is up to you!

This hats concept is silly, but I've gotten some pretty cool hybrids from this mystical tophat, and ended up with OC's that I cherish. And who knows, maybe you will too!

Edit: I'll be pulling tribrids now!

Hi all- I was looking for skating discussion on the internet and this sub looks to be the best/most active place. So hi, here I am. 41yo, getting back into skating. I artistic skated from 1987-1996 in the New England area. Since then, I: completely f'ed off from ages 16-27 (and honestly it was what I needed. I had a lot of life stuff to figure out.) Then I discovered trapeze/aerial silks at 27 and went HARD into that. I have been performing aerials professionally/semi-professionally since 2011 and it is literally my reason to live. I am in the studio at least 4 days a week and I LOVE performing. Anyways- I injured a shoulder a few years back and it grounded me for a bit. I can't stay still for 5 minutes, so I decided to go ice skating. And that turned into some single jumps and spins and the desire to compete. I realized that I still love putting skates on my feet and doing pretty tricks, which is something I swore I'd never do again. And also- being able to skate opens up more opportunities for you as a circus performer. I always said I wanted to build a set of rollerskates again someday just for fun and I kinda fell into that on Friday: I found my ideal setup used and I bought it. Which leads me to artistic skating... which is something I swore I'd never do again.

This is where it gets weird, probably. I spent the last +/- 25 years absolutely RESENTING artistic skating. HATING IT. I actually had an aerial friend ask me about it recently and I had to put a lot of thought into explaining it. Basically- I had some really abusive experiences happen to me skating, and also outside the rink during that time, and I do not look back on those years fondly at all. In hindsight as an adult- I can say that the coaching I got was generally awful, and also I had a handful of coaches do and say really terrible things to me as a kid. I had a hard time progressing. I had coaches that would only let you do freestyle if you did dance and figures too, which I absolutely hated. And so, I ended up getting yelled at a lot over figures and dance (by my coaches and my mom) and I had to do things I hated for 2/3 of the time. I got made fun of at school for rollerskating ("why don't you ice skate like a normal person?") so I kept it mostly secret. (I had enough things I was being bullied over, I didn't need one more.) My mom was the worst toxic rink mom ever- I mean, we had a lot of bad parents saying and doing terrible things, but getting dragged into that as a kid was bullsh

So I started getting super into indie perfumes around September 2021, and I randomly started thinking about what types of perfumes my family members would wear. I started coming up with ideas of perfumes based on things they’re interested in and thought it’d be funny to find a perfume that replicates that thing in uncanny indie fashion. My family members never really wear perfumes so I was mostly guessing how to go about it, but it was still a fun experience, so I wanted to write down some reviews for what I ended up getting them. IMAM was my greatest source for ideas, so big thanks to the saints who write up reviews/suggestions.

My idea was to get them two perfumes each: one being a “weird”/realistic perfume that’s trying to replicate something specific they like, and the other being a general perfume that I thought they might like. I knew I was only going to get sample sizes because a) I was guessing what they might like, and b) they don’t really wear perfumes so my assumption was they would sniff it, say “neat” and then tuck it away on a shelf. Which is fine by me as this was mostly for my amusement anyway.

---

For my mom:

• Fyrinnae: Hyakinthos - sweet hyacinth dominates gentle notes of patchouli, resins, Himalayan and Atlas cedarwoods, oud, and amber

One of my mom’s favorite flowers is hyacinth, so I decided pretty early that I wanted to get a hyacinth perfume for her. I honestly thought that would be a pretty simple task, but there’s a surprisingly limited amount of perfumes that both focused on hyacinth and were currently available (I was looking for this during the fall, after all, and not the spring). I found several perfumes that did have hyacinth, but it seemed to be a secondary note or the perfume just seemed like it would smell like a jumble of flowers. I also don’t really know what hyacinth smells like. I’ve definitely smelled it before, but it’s hard to remember, and it’s only a spring flower so I couldn’t really sniff for reference. When searching for hyacinth perfume recommendations, Alchemic Muse’s Ostara (a mix of hyacinth blossoms, myrtle, and wild heather fused with the soft green foliage of moss and ivy, gently grounded by a warm and earthy base of clove, cinnamon, and myrrh) was the one that kept popping up, so that was the first one I tried. However, when I got it it smelled rather soapy to me, so I looked for other ideas. Alkemia’s Floralis (*spring rain, a breath of fresh aldehydes, a mist of water musk sett

For context I'm a Refuse Driver (Garbage man) & today I was on food waste. After I'd tipped I was checking the wagon for any defects when I spotted a lone pea balanced on the lifts.

I said "hey look, an escaPEA"

No one near me but it didn't half make me laugh for a good hour or so!

Edit: I can't believe how much this has blown up. Thank you everyone I've had a blast reading through the replies 😂

It really does, I swear!

Because she wanted to see the task manager.

Heard they've been doing some shady business.

They’re on standbi

BamBOO!

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>And then I saw, I saw a billion stars, and I remembered,
>
>I remembered the cost that mankind, no, that humanity and its allies paid for peace,
>
>I remembered the dandelion's seed blowing in the wind,
>
>I remembered the fire of war
>
>I remembered the number of times humanity was brought to bend but not to break,
>
>I remembered that at each bending a breath was taken, and whit each of these breaths, dandelion seeds were cast away.
>
>And then I ask thee, How many seeds found soil? how many germinated? how many grew? how many reach adulthood? how many cast new seeds?
>
>And I ask thee, HOW MANY? for that is an answer that all the galaxies now must know, for only one of these seeds might have survived, but what if all did? how many civilizations of mad Terran are there, how many systems, how many? I fear the answers more than I fear Death.
>
>Because know this, The Mad lemurs of Earth are coming. And the survival of this galaxy and of the universe depends on how many of these seeds failed. And I ask Thee, when did the mad primate fail?
>
>Because for each unknown star I fear that earthlings, not Terran, not TDH, earthlings are hiding there biding their time, and now their time has come. The time of Madness has come
>
>---------MADNESS FOLLOWS-----------

The Canticles of Fear, Chapter 8, Section 8, Soothsayer u/ThatKriegsGuard, 8568 PG, Hivehome Institute of Philosophy and Soothsaying'

Captain J'vetip leaned forward and watched the viewscreen nervously.

The entire bridge was hushed, everyone concentrating on their consoles or just not wanting to break the intent silence. Amber lights were the only illumination, the whole ship at Stage-2 Alert. The debris shields were up and at full strength, hull integrity shields were at maximum power, and the battlescreen projectors were powered up but not running the emitters yet. Passive targeting systems were running at a full 11% of the ship's computing power, the weapons of the battle cruiser were on standby. Boarding parties were suited up, armed, and ready on the tra

I've purchased Strixhaven and have been reviewing it over the course of the past few days (It was shipped early) and I must say I'm very disappointed.

First, a school of magic- THE MAGIC SCHOOL supplement adventure- has five spells. A school of Magic offers 5 new spells. The balance of these spells is all over the place. (I've seen the discussion of Silvery Barbs over the last few days. It is objectively the best spell.) It feels like only three out of five of them are really even usable that being Silvery Barbs, Vortex Warp, and Wither and Bloom. Borrowed Knowledge is awful. This spell gives you proficiency in a skill you lack for an hour and is second level. Why it's this high of spell level will confuse me for some time, especially since it cant be stacked with multiple uses. I see some uses for Kinetic Jaunt but it's for classes that will tend to be in the back like the Wizard or Sorcerer- classes that have Misty Step, which gets you away from danger and doesn't require concentration. Do you really need a spell that you have to concentrate on for one minute that just lets you move faster when you can just teleport for the same spell level? Perhaps if you are an Artificer, but taking the feat Magical Initiate and getting Misty Step (the better spell) is, in my opinion, more optimal. But to each their own.

There are two new feats in this book. One of which can be snagged as freebie in all the new school backgrounds, which makes them the strongest backgrounds in the game due to their utility. It allows you to pick one of the five schools from Strixhaven; you now know two cantrips and one level one spell from the Strixhaven school of your choice (which can be from outside your class’s spell list). If you can't cast spells, (e.g. no spell slots) you can cast the leveled spell once per long rest. A level one variant human now gets what is effectively two feats at level one. Now I know people are gonna say "you can outlaw it at your table if you don't like it." This isn't a valid argument, as rules are put in place to help newer DMs and players understand the game. This throws the game even further out of balance. This is just power creep, and it's legal in Adventure's League modules- all of them. I know a lot of people in this sub dont play AL but it is vital for some people to even play the game. Not taking these backgrounds is just hobbling your character. “Do they have any background features as a counterbalance” you say? No, they just give you spells

Pilot on me!!

Nothing, he was gladiator.

Dad jokes are supposed to be jokes you can tell a kid and they will understand it and find it funny.

This sub is mostly just NSFW puns now.

If it needs a NSFW tag it's not a dad joke. There should just be a NSFW puns subreddit for that.

Edit* I'm not replying any longer and turning off notifications but to all those that say "no one cares", there sure are a lot of you arguing about it. Maybe I'm wrong but you people don't need to be rude about it. If you really don't care, don't comment.

Unedited; questionable language.

Previously: Pole dancing, cat fighting, et cetera. This show is nothing if not consistent.

It is morning, or perhaps early afternoon. Our heroines sleep peacefully. Until, that is, Big John bursts into their room -- well, "bursts" might be a little strong. "Lumbers" is more accurate. Big John lumbers into their room and says this is rock n' roll, not rock n' sleep, so they should get up. You could use that catchphrase for anything. "This is rock n' roll, not rock n' stand there like you just snapped into a Slim Jim." Or, "This is rock n' roll, not rock n' refill your Valtrax prescription." Brandi wants to punch Big John in the balls. I kind of do, too, just to see if they squeak like a dog toy. Bret tells us that these girls need to step up and give him their A-game. So far he likes Jes, Heather and Lacey, but hasn't seen much from girls like Magdalena and Mia. He wonders if they will ever let their guards down and let him see who they truly are. They will as soon as you take off your bandana-front weave, Telly Savalas. Big John delivers Bret Mail: "From New York to L.A. I've rocked and I've rolled / But a cross country tour can sure take its toll / Today one lucky lady will show her road skills / but the other five honeys will end up roadkill." Chickenman, chickenman, chickenman hold my hand.

The girls head to meet Bret, who is wearing his favorite flame encrusted American-themed cowboy hat with blue tie-dye bandana/flat ironed weave underneath, and what appears to be a puka shell necklace. Turns out it's his special birthday outfit! Heather is of course the first one to yell out, "Happy birthday, Bret." You know that the whole way over she was like, "Tell him happy birthday first and he'll love you, tell him happy birthday first and he'll love you." In her head, of course. Except her lips were probably moving. Bret tells us that later there will be partying, but first there is a challenge. He's looking for a woman who can handle life on the road with him and all the insanity that comes with it. In each "city," all of which are set up in one big parking lot, two girls will compete head to head in a rock tour related challenge. The winner of the challenge will jump back on the bus, while the loser gets left behind. The ultimate winner will get a killer date. Hopefully with a cameo appearance by Jason Voorhees. Bret interviews that for the last 22 years he's spent six to nine months out of the year on a tour bus. Oh yeah

What did 0 say to 8 ?

" Nice Belt "

So What did 3 say to 8 ?

" Hey, you two stop making out "

I won't be doing that today!

There's an old well located in the middle of the woods that border Pennville. It's made of crumbling grey stone and partially hidden by moss, a wide ring in the ground that threatens to swallow the unwary.

According to local legend, the well is haunted.

Pennville was founded in the late 1800s by the Fenbys, an English family that came to America to build a prosperous community. The family daughter pretended to be pious, but secretly worshipped the devil. One night, she made a pact with a demon: in exchange for eternal beauty and youth, she agreed to murder nine children. Six kids in this town were butchered like hogs, and their remains scattered throughout the woods.

Before she could complete the ninth murder, the townspeople discovered that she was the one responsible for their children's deaths. They dragged her out of her home, tore out her eyes, and threw her into the well to die. She treaded water for nearly half an hour, and before dying of blood loss, she promised them that she would finish her bargain eventually.

We found the well entirely by accident.

It was a cloudless summer day, one we should have spent lounging by the public swimming pool and eating popsicles. Instead, Quentin and I followed James deeper into the woods. Stifling heat pressed down on me, and the toolbox James had ordered me to carry seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. I could hear Quentin panting harshly behind us as he struggled to keep up with James' pace. He carried the stack of wooden planks that would form the base of our treehouse.

Even though I suspected we were lost, I knew better than to say anything. Before James transferred to our school, Quentin and I had been bullied relentlessly by a group of upperclassmen, with Quentin getting the brunt of it. And although I'd stood up for Quentin whenever possible, I hadn't been able to stop them from mocking his weight or his tendency to babble in stressful situations.

James had. He was nearly as short as me, but the handful of times that same group of upperclassmen had tried to bully James, their insults bounced off of him as though he wore an invisible suit of armor.

Quentin had promptly latched onto James. Since Quentin was my best friend, I'd had no choice but to follow him, even though his hero-worship of James bothered me. Frankly, I wasn't even sure whether I liked James; the price of his friendship was that he always bossed us around. More to the point, it increasingly felt like James went out of his way to make

Part 1 | Previous Part

Preamble

"How do we lose three flights?" I asked. Strange to think of myself as a part of a we. It'd been a long time as lone wolf. Not a pleasant time, but it'd settled into my bones and my brain had a hard time wrapping around it. It'd change with time, assuming this we had enough time. Train wrecks probably lowered lift expectancy a fair bit.

"One at a time," Alix replied as we began to walk along the platform beside the train. Yuliana tagged along a few feet behind us, her fingers tracing along the overlapping plates of the train. Every so often, the circuity on her EXO suit would light up and she would speak to the hulking beast in gentle coos. "It isn't the sort of thing the Intendant gives us much explanation about. Beyond our 'scope of mission.'" The last few words weren't uttered with much affection, and I got the distinct impression that our dear Chartermaster had a different take on things.

I tended to agree with her. The fact that something out there appeared to be destroying every attempt to get to Domina seemed to be pretty fucking relevant to our mission. "I take it the Intendant is the boss then?"

"One of them. Mission logistic and operations administrator." Alix tapped the insignia on her left breast, where a small scroll appeared in raised gold weave. "He oversees the Charter here on Earth. Reports into the Superintendant who manages all Domina missions. After a few more bosses, we get to Twine's President."

No surprise there. Something as complicated, and expensive, would need layers. After the Corps, I wasn't any stranger to complicated hierarchies. No matter how big the pyramid, it pretty much always came down to who you were going in to. Good commanding officer and you might get some shit done.

Bad one...well. You didn't want a bad boss.

"They any good?"

"We don't always agree," Alix shrugged, "but I'm not very agreeable. Hard to complain too loudly when he's the one who granted me the Charter."

"His call?"

"His call. Approved by the Superintendant." Her voice took on a more distant tone, eyes focused loosely down the platform as her pace slowed some. "Competition was fierce. Not many Charters come through. Twine just doesn't land many ships. I was an," she searched for the word, "unorthodox choice."

"Why? Becau

[Part 1]

The Gathering Place

I did my best to make myself presentable. You should read that as finishing pissing, rubbing a finger back and forth across my teeth and then spitting in my hand and scraping it through the mane I'd developed over the last year of bouncing between vet shelters.

Once I'd had enough of that, I pushed against the door of the SOS and stepped out. Escort Weaver and Escort Priam were waiting for me. They led me a to a white transpo idling a few feet away. The hatch unsealed as we approached, revealing a perfect white interior.

I glanced over at Escort Priam. "White uniform. White car. White people. At least you have a theme."

Escort Priam offered a slight smile. "It is a company brand color. Of course, the fact that Escort Weaver and myself are both white is merely a coincidence. The Twine Traveler Company prides itself on its inclusivity initiatives and engages in best practice blind-hire protocols for all United Sovereignty citizens."

Somehow, I hated corporate speak more than military speak. That was pretty fuckin' impressive given the fact some asshole CO was yammerin' corps chatter in my ear half the time I was getting shot up along with my troops. I didn't bother explainin' such to Escort Priam, mostly because they had bigger problems given the size and length of stick crammed up both of their asses. Instead, I ducked my head through the hatch and plopped myself down on the pretty pretty interior and hoped my piss didn't it stain it.

Too much.

We passed the ride in silence. Escort Weaver managed to look only vaguely disgusted and Escort Priam had some bullshit grin plastered on his face that I think was supposed to make me want to punch him less. It had the opposite effect.

After a few minutes ticked by, the transpo came to a stop, the hiss of compressed gas accompanying the dull thud as the skids hit terra firma once more. Escort Weaver tapped a button and the hatch swung open. She followed it out, taking a pretty loud inhale once she had made her exit. Apparently my stench had offended her delicate sensibilities.

I followed Escort Weaver and Escort Priam brought up the rear. Outside the transpo was still inside. Some sort of large landing bay. Around me I could see other transpos with other Escorts. Some were getting in, others were just arriving, always with some other confused soul along with them. I imagined I didn't look any better than

Do your worst!

I'm surprised it hasn't decade.

When I got home, they were still there.