The Doug Alone

The Strange Case of the Late Returners, Episode 3 Arden spots his brother, Josef, running through the streets at the front of a group of angry blacksmiths and workers. The man they are chasing is wearing another Returner patch.  "JO!," Arden calls, hailing his brother down while others continue the chase.  "No time, Ard, we need to get the bastards. They are trying to burn the smithies and well, other things." Smoke rises from several spots around Yarlkin. People are shouting and confused. Arden knows that chaos is the enemy within, now. He points to Kate. "Junior Guardian Corazon, go with them and take out anyone either wearing a Returner patch or aiding anyone wearing a Returner patch. I do not care if they seem to be helping our side, none of them are to be trusted. Understand?" "Yes, sir!"  Kate runs full speed, easily catching up to the angry mob and running to their forefront and leads them on the chase. Arden drags Josef back towards the U...

Previously, on Eustace Delmont The year is 1996. The Rambler's Inn is an old inn mashing together multiple architectural styles and currently acting as the main tourist destination in Maidenstead, Alabama. Maidenstead is a decaying but still quite cozy town very near to the Gulf Coast while other locations in nearby Gulf Shores and Orange Beach and Mobile are complete dominating most of the tourist trade. The Rambler is for a particular type of guest, ones who prefer a sense of the past and cheaper rates over more modern amenities.  The Reeds who have owned the Rambler for generations are looking to sell.  Unfortunately for the Reeds, one of the guests disappeared while staying in the Rambler's "most haunted" room. Unfortunate for Amy Patel (the guest), as well.  Someone rigged up equipment to disrupt the security cameras on the night this happened. It may or may not be related. Likewise, a shady dog catcher - who just happens to the son of the richest family in town ...

Pictured: a photo I took of a pumpkin by a fountain where the water collected in the stop and there was this strange "blue eye" effect with lots of little bugs climbing around inside. It has been a moment since I did my last "fourth wall break" so I figured it would a good time to do another. Three topics generally have been bouncing around in my head for a minute and I kind of wanted to get them out there for myself to have a kind of marker so let's do it.  Formatting in the Technical Sense For a while the colors on this blog were rough on the eyes in some places. The text was a dark gray, links were a bright green, and the background was white + light gray. It meant some text was pretty hard to focus on and I had tried playing with changing colors and font sizes for specific posts but it was not really working out so I went back and did some universal changes to make the fonts a little bit bigger, a bit darker, and generally a more readable format and color ...

A NOTE ABOUT SOME MISTAKES It is clear I was a bit rusty on running ShadowDark combats after I went back and was checking off the notes. 1) The gnolls were suppose to be doing 1d6 damage, not 1d8. A few of the swingier parts of combat still might have gone pear-shaped but while it is likely that Inar would have been taken out it is very unlikely that Grusk would have also been knocked to 0HP. The gnolls had special spears. 2) There were several "misses" that probably should have been hits. Grusk gets a +8 to hit. He needed a 4+ to land. Inar needed a 8+. Tom needed 7+. I think I head in my head that they needed to roll a 10+ or so. 3) The enraged mechanic probably should have gone on another turn. Maybe not. 4) The gnolls should have had bows so it is likely early combat would have required the team to avoid arrows while breaking in, which also meant that the gnolls would have likely been more split by the first and second floors. All these things would have mad...

[A couple of things: (1) At this session, I finally returned back to using Mythic as my oracle, see "Doug's Notes" below. (2) If you are curious what anything said in here means, see the " Canon Dump #1 " as well as the first episode of this particular arc .] The Strange Case of the Late Returners, Episode 2 Early autumn takes some of the heat out of the waning day but the tiredness and frustration on the Guardians is present. Arden and Kate have been sweeping back and forth for hours to try and find the landmarks on the map that Izzia made based on a hypnotized Emily but it is becoming increasingly obvious the map is fraud. "Did Scholar Kor trick us?" Kate asks.  "No, the map was made with care and I saw him mentally checking the placement, probably against maps he had already committed to memory. I knew something was up when I tried to get a vision about the location Emily was talking about. It felt...weird. A simulacrum. Like a person staring a...