Bonus:

Hello! I have an interesting villain idea, but I'm struggling with how to integrate them as a recurring character. They are a Changeling Swarmkeeper who made a deal with a devil in their youth, and have regretted it ever since. They now carry out their patron's will with ruthless, but dispassionate efficiency - even seeming reluctant at times. The players can attempt to kill this slippery foe who so easily vanishes in a crowd, but they could also try to help find a way to break their contract...

Villain: Yves the Envenomed, Assassin of the Zicivaic Swarm

“Grisly deaths are to be expected when mages are involved, but all the same I can’t help but pity the old geezer. All the power of the cosmos at his hands, names of gods upon his lips: and some freak decides the best way to off him would be “Eaten from the Inside out” “

-Darvu Karn, lead investigator for the magocratic tribunal, persuing the death of Igirius the imaginator, a murdered archmage. 

Adventure Hooks

A serial killer is on the loose, one who favors flesh eating insects as a murder weapon and always seems to target powerful scholars or arcanists. Years will pass between the killings, but invariably a body or three will be found devoured by innumerable tiny mouths, the premises stripped clean of evidence as well as any scrap of paper.  After one of her colleagues is found in such a state, the party is hired by archmage Orisa hearthweaver to find the assailant and ensure she’s not the next one to feed the swarm. 

Whether recovering antiques from a dungeon or heisting them from the manor houses of the well to do, the party comes across an ornate lockbox sealed with arcane means that seems almost unnaturally enticing. The box contains no treasure, merely a desiccated hand, crudely severed, home to a number of small unidentifiable insects. If any magic is used near the open box ( including in the opening of it) the beetlelike things begin to multiply at an alarming rate, seeking to devour the caster in question. The only other thing contained by this deadly trap is a symbol: a diamond like shape composed of crude, inward spiraling scratch marks, seemingly etched into the interior box by the hand itself. 

A friend of the party’s caster and former fellow apprentice writes to them with some concerns: after acquiring an innocuous book they seem to be followed everywhere by a hooded figure that seems nothing to do but stare, twitch, and scratch. Driven by anxiety, they’ve decided to flee their home and attempt to evade this stalker, and hopes the hero may be able to lend any sort of aid they can.  When the party finally catches up to them, the friend is on the verge of being attacked by a figure who’s wounds drip black ichor and skin crawls with innumerable vermin. The assailant flees, but will most assuredly will be back unless the party does something. 

Setup:  Less an actual assassin than the implement of a sinister, alien intelligence, the man who sometimes knows himself as Yves is perhaps one of the most dangerous and selective killers at large today.  Working his day to day life as a simple criminal and hired blade, Yves is every so often overwhelmed by a sickness he calls “The Itch”, a demonic compulsion that turns his blood into viscous poison and grants him supernatural insights and abilities that make him into a perfect living weapon for the killing of mages. 

Yves has no control over when The Itch strikes, or who it targets, for those are chosen by his patron: the devil-swarm Zicivaic. This devil is at once a vast horde of bettlelike creatures sharing a vauge intelligence, the vast floating hive-islands they occupy in their particular hell dimension, and the mummified body of the original Zicivaic entombed at the center of the largest and oldest hive. 

The devil-swarm has only three wants: isolation, propagation, and knowledge. All of these are fed by targeting mages, whether they be ones who learn a means of contacting or summoning Zicivaic, or merely those who accumulate a sizeable enough library to make a meal for the lore-eating legion.   When such a target is found, Zicivaic sends Yves ( or another of those it has inflicted with its curse) to slay the mage and feed their arcane libraries to the swarm, the innumerable tomes pulped down to make more hive, the magic contained within spreading throughout the swarm. 

Background: Yves first came into contact with the devil-swarm when he was a boy, apprenticed to a two-bit sorcerer who’s only real talent was passing off the scraps and scribblings of more obscure mages as her own. One day his tutor bought a book of Arcanum from a group of traveling adventurers, who had liberated it from the lair of a nameless cult they’d recently slaughtered. The youth was inflicted by Zicivaic’s curse in a botched summoning ritual, one that saw his tutor devoured and Yves left a confused and traumatized wreck. 

Since then the envenomed assassin has made his way in the world, forced to adapt to his frequent “illnesses” that come over him like a debilitating fever and leave him with only hazy recollections of the time or deeds he performs while under its sway. 

Far away in some rank and buzzing hell, the original Zicivaic exists in a similar wretched state, body all but wasted away as it forms the core of an archipeligo of fear and disgust and hunger. Zicivaic was once a scholar among devil kind, one summoned by petitioners for polite discourses on the nature of philosophy and the arts. His pretentions and genteel nature angered a rival fiend, who conspired to slip a cursed tome into their possession, one that would burden the scholar with a literal hunger for knowledge. Compelled, Zicivaic ate the tome, then their apprentices, then their library, then sent shards of their being out to seek more. Reduced to little more than hunger and the need to know more, the newly formed devil-swarm now operates primarily on instinct, displaying flashes of infernal cunning as the ghost of the original Zicivaic’s original personality stirs from its devouring torpor. 

For the asker: Hey friend, sorry about the delay, the holidays have been wild and my inbox has suffered for it. 

One of my key pieces of advice when designing content is to make sure that you don’t mix too many different “influences” into a project, as keeping things trim will ensure you can fit a story element into different setups until you find something that really works. 

In this instance you’ve got: 

A Changeling: faceswapping doppleganger heritage, mistaken identities, identity crisis

Swarm Imagery: notes of pestilence or famine, mindless consumption, disgust, 

Bargins with devils: damnation, souls, elements of contracts and all that religiously fun stuff. 

I hope you don’t mind, but I decided to focus in on the devil-swarm aspects, as I think it makes for a unique antagonistic force compared to your usual, silvertongued, pitchfork and hellfire type devil. Likewise, I think Yves will be an interesting mystery to pick apart as his killings, as his motivations are more “occult” than “homicidal”, forcing a party to look further in their investigation than your usual conspiracies or crimes of passion. 

Art Source 1

Art Source 2

I've been said to have "mom friend" vibes by at least 3 people, two of which affectionately call me "Ashmom."

Just yesterday I had a discussion with my husband about my fashion as a trans girl. He's witnessed so many mtf transitions, because he's been in the community much longer than I have, and his general observation is that trans girl clothing fashion tends to be any combination of young, showy, slim, and thin. My husband was reflecting on this because I gravitate to items he calls "grandma fashion". He wondered why I wasn't the same as other trans women he's seen/met. The thing is, I don't really know. I enjoy what I enjoy.

Now. That being said. On the same day, my Mom, Dad, and little brother, all separate of one another, said I look like a Grandma when they noticed my new glasses chain from the queer market yesterday.

Is this my fate? To be the Grandma trans? I love being motherly and I enjoy caring for the people I love. But grand-motherly? I don't think so.

I have this arbitrary line I need to cross before I can congratulate myself and come out as trans to my friends and family. I just need to think im pretty for longer than a fleeting second. I need to live a day feeling pretty and go to sleep feeling pretty and wake up again to feel pretty again. And then maybe I'll be able to say "I'm ready".

But what if that agency is taken from me? What if I am pushed before I'm comfortable. What if my breasts grow too large to keep hidden. Or my parents ask me about my girlish tendencies before I even begin to think about how to discuss it with them?

I dont know what to do then. I'll bumble through it and need to live uncomfortably until I hit that arbitrary milestone that dictates when I can be myself, unapologetically, anywhere and everywhere.

It hurts being called a son. A boyfriend. A nephew. A grandson. Referred to as a "Lord" at a renfaire instead of a Lady. It makes my heart sink and my gut wretch. Whatever positive energy I have flushes away.

But I can't bear the discomfort of living my truth in a way that makes myself cringe, because if I cringe others will too. It's silly. So many braver souls do it, and with such confidence that I am jealous and dream fantasies where I live their lives.

It's fine. I'll manage. Someday I'll meet my arbitrary milestone. One day my mother will have a daughter.

I said this months ago but I'll say it again: if you're transgender you HAVE TO LIVE

Come to Brazil, we have real, actual happiness.

In Brazil people were like this waiting to see across the spiderverse

Source

My Complete Homebrew Catalogue

In the past I have made master list posts whenever I added a large brew to my portfolio… but that got to be a huge hassle. People would reblog it, and then things wouldn’t get updated evenly.

So, after some work, I’ve made a spreadsheet. This sheet will have a static link that I can update on the sheet side so that when something new gets added the link will be the same and people can find it relatively easily. I’ll still post things here when I complete them, but it’s nice to have a little treasure trove of just my things.

HERE IS THE LINK TO ALL MY BREWS

And I’m talkin’ classes, sub-classes, spells, items, creatures, books, and everything else too. Just click the link above.

An added bonus is that I (and I guess you, if you trust me flat out to balance things well for your games) can just pin this link to a discord channel and my players can reference it super easy if they are using any of my homebrew content.

Saving for later💜

Hey hello hi, this is the most important piece of media I’ve seen all month. You absolutely need to watch it.

I taught my boyfriend how to play Magic The Gathering and Ive never beaten him :(( I'm not even good at my alternative gratification activity anymore!!!!!!!!

sure, that transfem might not be very good at sex, but she can totally beat your ass at yugioh, and those two activities are practically synonymous for her at this point.

Can confirm. He was literally wearing the exact same collar at the comic con me and my husband saw them at yesterday.

(We bought the large bleached dye shirt with the beautiful Luna moth(?) on it. Absolutely loving it 💜)

im actually a puppy dog irl this is me btw

Lamia 5e Player Race

Artwork by QueenChikkibug and me!

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- Tuz