I was laying in my bed, staring up at the ceiling. Kenner’s Eye was pushing off sleep, and would continue to do so for another week before it started to wear on me, and another month before I would be forced into sleep, by which time we would hopefully have something to replace it with […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 163: Level Heads
“Something else the matter?” asked Raven. I really didn’t want to get into it. What I wanted was to ignore the entire conversation and continue on as I’d been before, and I knew that if I said something, there would be an endless analysis of the specific phrasing the Dungeon Master had used, as well […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 162: Deus Ex
There were three major priorities. The first was finding a cure for sleep, which would allow Instinctive Halting to be active indefinitely, and Meta Stilling to keep Prince’s Invulnerability active, as well as the boost from stilling all the debuffs. The second was rescuing people, both the living and the dead, which was being accomplished […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 161: Reimer
All the best conversations happened around the game table. Maybe it was just the idea that everyone was supposed to be doing something else, that these were digressions rather than the main topic, or maybe it was just that Juniper was terrible about reining things in. Sometimes the game would go on pause for a […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 160: On the Merits of Oblivion
Six seconds was an eternity in any kind of combat scenario, but it still wasn’t long enough. She hadn’t seen Prince’s Invulnerability happen, and she hadn’t seen the explosion coming, and it was only while she was in the air that she was able to put the pieces of the simple puzzle together. She was […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 159: The Dome Away From Home
After I was done talking to Val, the only bit of business left was to go over our plans, which we did around a simulacrum of the targeted building and its environs, which Bethel had helpfully provided for us before locking us in. Finch seemed impressed, but I was certain that if Bethel were with […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 158: OP
I was worried about Amaryllis, though I was pretty sure she wasn’t dead, at least based on the line to her soul. There wasn’t much to be done though, so instead, I focused on my new powers, their implications, and the ways that I could use them. Meta Stilling was the capstone, and by implication, […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 157: The Bird on the Fence
Raven felt an overwhelming rush of sheer physicality as Juniper began to burn through the giant monster’s bone, a sensation doubtlessly provided by the Anklet of Reactive Radiance. It was raw physical power, an immense amount of it, whose like she’d only felt perhaps a dozen times before (Uther’s many adventures being what they were). […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 156: Mome Rath II
When the bats showed up, my first thought was, “Oh, of course there are bats.” We had never done a giant, multi-legged kaiju in my games, but if we had, I would have included mooks like that, because you have to have mooks. Because Mome Rath was so tall, and probably wouldn’t be taken down […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 155: Mome Rath
“Alright,” said Arthur as we sat in the theater, waiting for the movie to start. “Dumbest possible cinematic universes, go go go.” It was his third time seeing Captain America: Civil War, and my second. I had been feeling weird about our friendship, mostly because I was seeing Tiff behind his back. Every time it […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 154: Above From Below
“Assume people know what they’re doing” is often a pretty poor heuristic, but I didn’t really have much of a choice as far as meditation went. The instructions I’d been given were vague, describing the pillar and saying that I should keep it in mind for the duration. Because that was all I’d been instructed […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 153: The Temple
Long ago, the Li’o’te Temple had been buried by people who had wanted to put an end to still magic and couldn’t get around the temple’s inviolability. When the still mages had recovered the temple, they had left it where it was, deep underground, and done little more than excavating down to it, largely because […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 152: The Time to Talk
There was a hiccup in the Demon-Blooded Festival, right at the last second: apparently the prisoner that they were going to execute escaped from custody shortly after what I can only assume was an absolute farce of a trial. The committee decided to instead use an entad, helpfully donated by Oberlin, but everyone was well […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 151: The Mind’s Eye
Arthur had always been a fan of pointing out time compression in media, wherever he saw it. There was a part in The Dark Knight Rises, Batman escapes from this big pit somewhere in either India or Morocco, and then has to travel back to Gotham City. He probably has enough time to do this, […]
Worth the Candle, Ch 150: Than One Innocent Suffer
The sun had gone down while we ate dinner, but Li’o seemed no less busy, and the temperature hadn’t seemed to move all that much, thanks to a warm wind that was blowing through the streets. Amaryllis and I had talked to the lawyers earlier in the day, enough to get a sense of what […]