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Writing for next chapter is done, content extraction/creation is underway. I'm posting that now so it'll motivate me to stop watching anime and actually finish.
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Sep 1, 2020 19:24
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Glad to hear of your progress. Hope to see results soon.
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Sep 1, 2020 21:20
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KataraniSword posted:Technically there is a remake of the first game. https://www.romhacking.net/reviews/4450/ There is an english patch.
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Sep 2, 2020 07:18
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Curse of the Azure Bonds, Chapter 12: Eye of the Etc.    Oh dear. Maybe he's not so bad once you get to know him? Journal Entry 30 posted:So, these are Fzoul's little secret. Very interesting. As the representative of the TRUE priests of Bane, I shall deliver you to Mulmaster and to the grand Imperceptor. Once in Mulmaster, I will examine these bonds in my laboratory, to your extreme discomfort, I'm afraid. But, you may be comforted that during the final procedure, the one that will result in your death, the pain will not go on for more than two, or perhaps three, weeks. Once I have uncovered the secret of these bonds, the Impercentor will be most angry with his dear little Fzoul, and we may finally rid ourselves of this heretic and his precious mages. Maybe I'll even knock it down to one week! See? It's fine! Shut up, Sternn. Journal Entry 7 posted:I am Fzoul Chembryl, high lord of the Dark Shrine. My precious mages, as you call them, have allowed me to follow your minion. Dexam, you overstep your authority. My mark is on these people, and the Imperceptor will know of my work in due time. It is I who work for the greater glory of Bane. The powers granted us by Bane, combined with the power of the secular magic-users, will bring about a Banite Hegemony in the Realms, and these bonded tools are central to the consolidation of our power. With them I hope to be able to control and avoid the traps set in magical items by the lawful and the good. The bonded ones are under my control and authority and will remain so for as long as I live.  ... Really should've worked on your phrasing there, chief.    Listen, Dexter— Dexam. Whatever. We need that amulet. If you think we're scared of your little eye beams— Then you are absolutely correct. Shut up, Sternn. Watch your back, Dexter. I'll find you. And I'll kill you. Dexam! It's Dexam! You know, like the cough syrup! ARGH Heh. The perfect cover. ? All we have to do is sneak out of here while they're busy fighting each other. Hey! Aren't those the guys we're all trying to kill, regardless of whether we like each other or not?  You just had to say something. I do one thing, and I do it well.So, good news and bad news. The bad news is, you're stuck underground gods know where with an evil mook war raging around you and a beholder you're forced to chase down. The good news is, I lied about the good news. Our initial fight here is pretty straightforward. That mage is within Hanover's punching distance, and the rest are the usual bevy of armored meat sacks.   Should we feel bad about hiding? You're kidding. Right? Of course I am!   No sense in endangering the mages if the fighters and cleric have it on lock. The next fight, however...   BLAMMO sternn you asssssshollllllle ... You know, we have to stop doing this. *smoulder*I don't know what it is about Justine, but she draws ridiculous amounts of damage in this game. Granted, part of it is I can't aim fireballs worth poo poo. Oh well, it seems to work out in the end!  Let me get that for you. Thanks, friend!  Hold person charisma   This was the section where I experimented with Sternn using Charm Person instead of Magic Missle. The results aren't consistent enough to keep doing it, but it sure is funny in the meantime!  Okay. Now we can get back to—   Oh for gods' sake. In addition to being one of the weirder mythological animals, manticores have a spined tail they will use to launch about 4-5 barbs at your guys for around 1D8 apiece. A couple of manticores with really good aim can knock holes in your party without you realizing it. Fortunately, they can't fling spines while you're standing next to them, and they're soft targets with low HP. The real concern is the High Priest up there and the Dark Elf Champion just offscreen. We just have to grin, bear it, and use the manticores as blockers until we can stick Hold Person on the Dark Elf. As for the other one...  I know your anger, I know your dreams, I've been everything you want to be~ I'm the Cult of Personality~ Omigod! I didn't know it was karoake night again! Oh man. Just wait until they hear my Katy Perry. Can we please move on?  Finally. Now we can get back to —   Are you making GBS threads me Get used to this bullshit. This entire area is stuffed full of Zhentrim, and you'll be bumping into them constantly. You can get away with camping a surprising amount of the time, but they're still going to jump you sometimes while you're resting. We need to get HP back fairly regularly, or we're going to eat a whole lot of poo poo. As always, save to one slot, try to rest, then save to the main slot if it's successful. This is a technique you should commit to muscle memory if you're going to make it through any of the Gold Box games.   Let's just examine these remains. Hmm. I think we should open the bag. In fact, I think we should open the bag without checking. Yes, I'm sure it'll be fine.  OH MY GOD I CAN'T BELIEEEEVE IT HOW COULD THIS HAVE POSSIBLY HAVE HAPPENED  You can pick up a map and some Magic User scrolls here, neither of which are particularly useful. I mean, the map probably is if you're playing the game for the first time, but I've obviously already got one. This side trip is strictly a completionist visitation. On that note, there is nothing else down here that's worth going out of your way for. These caverns are chock full of death and Hold Person spells and death by Hold Person spells. We need to find the main walkway and get our asses out of here, pronto.  Look, I want to say something interesting about this section. Maybe a pithy joke about a fireball, or some friendly banter between Shanna and Heather, or something. But there's just nothing to work with. It's tedious fight after tedious fight after tedious fight, and if enough clerics take their turn before our mages, we'll have to reset back to our last save. This is probably the worst part of the game. Zhentrim wouldn't be so bad if they didn't come with huge mobs of magic users. This will not be the first time Zhentil Keep will frustrate the poo poo out of our attempts to travel across a map without dying. Not by a long shot.  Another fight. That's a lot of ogres.  Reminder that ogres have 20 HP tops   And Sternn throws in a successful Hold Person on top. I gotta say, Sternn's really coming into his own during this segment. I'm relatively certain both he and Rezen have hit the level cap at this point.    Otyughs. I'm looking at my notes for this section, and it literally just says "otyughs." That's it. I cannot stress enough how boring this entire thing is.   Seriously, how do they fit all these people down here? They've got to be standing shoulder to shoulder.   Welp. Looks like this is where the beholder is. It is? How can you tell? That's remarkably helpful. I know, right? You, shut up. You, shut up. We need a plan, or we're gonna roasted. Why don't we— Nope. How about we— No. Okay, I've got an— Absolutely not. No, no. Hear me out. uggggggh fine Hey, Heather! ? Remember that time we went shopping? You're, like, going to have to narrow that down. Okay, let's just assume it was the last time we did it. Remember what you were saying? Uh, yeah? "Why don't they have any coffee?" Well, check this out! Here, newbie, read these arcane glyphs. *cast?*  Drink up, everybody! Whew. That'll put hair on your chest. And take a year off your life. Totally worth it, though.    On the list of fun things to fight in D&D, beholders are not on it. I do not give a poo poo about those minotaurs. They are beyond cannon fodder. We need to get to that beholder and end it before it gets a turn. Fortunately, Chokes Has Played the Game Before™, so we're coming in prepared. First of all, there are actually two places you can bump into Dexam on the map. You will want to fight him in this open room. The alternative is a corridor, where you will have to hack your way through a fourth of his army to get to him. You do not want to do this. It is a bad idea. Secondly, since I know what room we'll meet him in, I have time to buff everybody up right before: Prayer, Protection from Evil, Strength, the works. And thirdly, I have a secret weapon to finally break the seal on. It's called Haste, and it's a goddamn nuclear warhead. See, normally in D&D, your fighters are so-so. I mean, between the heavily armored targets and special monster effects, they're really only there to block while your mages fire off their artillery. All of that changes when you cast Haste. If you remember from the spell lists, everyone's attacks per round double. It doesn't sound that powerful... until you cast it on a high level fighter, who already get two to three attacks per round as a baseline. Now, even with all his powers, that beholder still doesn't have a negative AC. Our THAC0 is insanely low. He's a sitting duck. All we have to do is get through the meatwall to him, and Haste will take care of the rest. Granted, casting the spell costs us a year off each character's life, but we're only casting it during big ticket boss fights. We're talking 4, maybe 5 years tops over the course of the next games. Who loving cares? As far as I'm concerned, it's not even happening in our story. Anyway, the meatwall. Hacking our way through isn't a great option. But as it turns out, Haste has another feature for that! Yo, Dexter! It's us again! It's Dexam Sure. Hey, remember that thing we said the last time we saw you? I'm an all-powerful aberration from the Underdark. I literally have not given any of you a second thought since I left. Well, you probably should've! ...what's that noise? A springloaded Heather. BLAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH WHAT PART OF I'LL KILL YOU DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND Man, she's havin' the time of her life. You love to see it!The other thing about Haste is that it doubles your movement rate. I am utterly unconcerned with eating some free shots from those minotaurs as we go by. Their aim sucks, and their axes aren't exactly devastating. Heather launches our opening gambit by dashing across the entire battlefield and dropping 35 HP of damage on Now, the next thing—  ... Anyway, like I was saying. The next thing we have to do is get another fighter through to   First up: Sternn softens up the herd with a solid fireball. Note that the beholder will take absolutely no damage from a fireball, because of course he won't. If you're shocked by that, you really haven't been paying attention. Justine's the next fighter up. That's great, because she's also closest. Only thing to do is go straight through that minotaur below.  Two hits later, he's dead. Things are working out great so far! Now we use her last two attacks to kill off Dexter.  ... How do you miss from behind    AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Hang in there, buddy! You're doing great! I WILL KILL ALL OF YOOOOOOOUThis is why you need that beholder dead. Here's the list of things it blasts out its eyestalks every single turn:
That is a lot of savings throws. How Justine didn't end up zapped into a pile of ash, I'll never know. The good news is, that's the only time he'll get to do that. A Rezen fireball has already cleared out most of the minotaurs, so we're free to run the entire team at him.  Even Shanna's getting in on the action! For a whole six damage, but still.   Hanover finally puts him down for good.  The rest is mopping up the minotaurs, which would be easy without Haste. This fight is such a dick move. It's literally "kill him in one turn or else." That is three different instakills you have to resist, every round, and it's not exactly easy to save against them. Even better: botch the disintegrate roll, and your character's gone! Not dead, GONE! Beholders are just the absolute worst.   Well fought, Dexter. You were a worthy foe. It's Dexam. It is? ...you know, I'm honestly not sure anymore. Look, we have what we came here for. Let's just get the gently caress out of here. Why? What are they gonna do, throw another beholder at us? OH NO IT'S DEXTER JR. KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT Shut up, you loons! He hasn't seen us! Just sneak around. Whew. Good call, Justine. PREPARE TO MEET THE REAPER, BEHOLDER *cast* Should you be wasting one of those? It's for her own good.Speaking of dick moves, here's some classic D&D fuckery! This monster looks like a beholder from a distance but is very much not. Attack this thing and you'll find out it's a gas spore, which will then detonate and do sizeable damage to the entire party. You don't want that to happen, because beating Dexam does not clear this area, and you still have Zhentrim up in your business. Walk around this thing and just keep hacking your way through.  Hey, it's Olive! So, you made it. I'm surprised. Pretty impressive, huh, doll? I wouldn't say "impressive" so much as "improbable."  Well, be seeing you! Gah! Where the hell did you come from?! I've been here the entire time? Where? Hiding behind Heather. So that's why I couldn't turn around! Well, we've done it. Another city is plunged into chaos. Good job, everyone.  I'unno, all the fighting should make for a pretty good distraction. Let's git while the gettin's good. I'm just glad to be done with that rear end in a top hat city. I swear to loving God, if I see one more Zhentrim—   Yeah? Whaddya gonna do? ... That's right. Nothin'.Next Time: What Could Possibly Go Wrong
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Sep 2, 2020 22:28
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Nice of them to give us the Beholder's name right off like that. Realms Lore: Mulmaster, the city Dexam mentions, is a large dictator-ruled metropolis at roughly the opposite end of the Moonsea from Zhentil Keep. It is a center of Bane worship, but its priests are opposed to that of Zhentil Keep. Bane, you see, is a god of strife and evil, so he likes to encourage rivalry rather than cooperation between his churches. The Grand Imperceptor is the title given to Mulmaster's dictator. The city also has a strong relationship with Beholders- several live in its adjoining caverns and it has hired them as mercenaries in the past. Dexam is one such mercenary, I suppose. We talked plenty about Fzoul Chembryl last update. I'm pretty sure his death here is non-canon to official Realms history or at least not permanent. I think he died really easy too, considering his level and position in the Banite Church. Ah well, we all can score badly on our saving throws. So Dexam wants to study our bonds, but once one is gone, he doesn't want to study those that remain? Are Beholders usually such fickle and chaotic creatures? Whatever. LOL at the karaoke. Agreed on that save slot advice. The reason the Beholder is immune to magic is its central eye emits an anti-magic field. I'm glad it just kills magic targeting the Beholder itself and not Minotaurs standing right next to it. The saving throws we gotta make every round against Beholders are awful too. Like Chokes said. If there's one D&D monster I absolutely hate, it's Gas Spores. You can for sure guess why.
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Sep 2, 2020 23:44
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achtungnight posted:So Dexam wants to study our bonds, but once one is gone, he doesn't want to study those that remain? Are Beholders usually such fickle and chaotic creatures? Whatever. Canonically beholders are all racist idiots. Like, they're so racist you wouldn't believe it. They're even racist against other beholders and finding more than two of them working together is an incredible rarity since they literally always find something to fight and backstab each other over. On top of that, they're incredibly fascinated with how hyper-intelligent they consider themselves to be, while also being terrible micro-managing bosses. A canon book on how beholders behave, I, Tyrant, has beholders sneaking around to listen to their minions' chatter just so they can make notes on loyalty, illoyalty, etc. rather than getting on with their actual schemes. They are incredibly bad at ever accomplishing anything for this and a variety of other reasons. It also states that beholders, despite their supposedly high intelligence, can literally be gotten rid of by pretending to be a chicken polymorphed into an adventurer or claiming that you saw another beholder just a mile down the trail that looks ever so slightly different, at which point the beholder you're dealing with is likely to fly into a frothing, racist rage and ignore you to go chase down and kill the wrong-beholder.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:43
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achtungnight posted:We talked plenty about Fzoul Chembryl last update. I'm pretty sure his death here is non-canon to official Realms history or at least not permanent. I think he died really easy too, considering his level and position in the Banite Church. Ah well, we all can score badly on our saving throws. Yeah I was kind of shocked they just killed Fzoul like that. He is known to be kind of a big deal. I know in universe he dies years later, but he is raised as an extarch of Bane after that. (Pretty much he got made into a Demigod.) Heck Greenwood and some others just released a D&D source book about the Zhentarim, and Fzoul is featured very prominently there as a Demigod, Chosen of Bane and founding Zhentarim member. His statblock there was the type of one for a final boss of a campaign.
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Sep 3, 2020 00:52
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Just checked the module this is based on. You actually meet Fzoul before the Beholder, who attacks in an ambush while you are meeting with him. Fzoul says he will remove the bonds if you deal with the Beholder then teleports away. In fact checking the section of the Module Fzoul is more of an ally to the party then villain.
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Sep 3, 2020 01:00
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In cannon, I think that Fzoul dies several times and just gets resurrected - nice to have a lot of mates who are high-level priests, I guess. Resurrection is weird in a lot of D&D genres; the availability of it ranges from "impossible" to "requiring a massive undertaking" to "what's the big deal?" in service to the plot. By the way, how did Heather reflect that beholder gaze? I must have missed some bit of gear or defensive spell.
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Sep 3, 2020 01:20
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It was the medusa's gaze Heather reflected, not the beholder's. And she probably had a mirror. I think Chokes covered that mechanic with the medusa from last game.
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Sep 3, 2020 01:54
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MonsterEnvy posted:Module Fzoul is more of an ally to the party then villain. I mean, he took the ultimate One for the Team here, and you really can't be more of a bro than that.
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Sep 3, 2020 02:37
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I just picture him having one of those medical alert buttons, except instead of triggering when he falls, it triggers on death.
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Sep 3, 2020 02:42
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achtungnight posted:It was the medusa's gaze Heather reflected, not the beholder's. And she probably had a mirror. I think Chokes covered that mechanic with the medusa from last game. Yeah. Off camera I equipped everyone's mirrors because, well, you know.
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Sep 3, 2020 02:43
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EDIT: Wrong thread. That's a first for me.
Robindaybird fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 02:52
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achtungnight posted:
Yeah, the module of this game,TSR 9239 FRC2 says that "If Fzoul is slain at this time, the Zhentarim will be demoralized and retreat into the tower, letting the heroes escape. Lord Fzoul will be Raised at a later date, weakened in power and prestige, and angry at the heroes." Pretty sure a Disintegration requires True Resurrection and not just Raise, but it's mostly just more cash.
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Sep 3, 2020 03:13
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Piling on the beholder hate. My experience was slogging through the whole den of them in Baldur's Gate 2. You better have found the mirror cloak, or else you are going to be reloading and not having a fun time. Even with the cloak, it's not fun. (And still involved lots of reloads, just not nearly so many as would have been required without the cloak.)
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Sep 3, 2020 06:27
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Bane is a Lawful Evil god so why the Banites are bitching about "The Lawful" is beyond me.
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Sep 3, 2020 06:54
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PurpleXVI posted:Canonically beholders are all racist idiots. It *also* states that if you try to circumvent a beholder's eyebeams by throwing a big blanket on it and jumping on top to hold it down, it will levitate upside-down and use the ground to grind you into a delicious paste, which it will then eat. I, Tyrant was a fun splatbook, I should hunt down my copy.
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Sep 3, 2020 07:27
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As part of Spelljammer being the best D&D setting, it also included some notes that Beholders were supposed to be super-great wise beings who could help out everyone and be super-useful while doing so, but they hosed it all up by being incredibly racist jackasses. One beholder climbed the highest mountain on his planet and was granted True Enlightenment, and got to achieve Proper Beholderhood. Alone, though, the only thing this ended up being good for was becoming a bartender in space.
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Sep 3, 2020 08:17
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Bane is a Lawful Evil god so why the Banites are bitching about "The Lawful" is beyond me. I think Fzoul is just using more words than necessary to bitch about lawful good. We've all been there. MonsterEnvy stole my usual schtick of talking about the differences between the module and the game, so I'll just expand on what he said. In the module there were three different factions fighting each other here, with two separate groups of priests (Fzoul's faction and a separate faction headed by a dude named Ginali, who hired the Beholder) and the Zhentarim mercenaries all out for each other's blood. Also, Fzoul heals you and removes any curses on you after you get brought to him, with the exception of the bonds themselves, unless you robbed the temple vault, in which case he demands his money back before removing the curse you got from it. Then he starts experimenting to see if he can get bonded party members to kill each other, and then casually asks you to come to his lab so he can examine the bonds in better detail and then later kill that pesky inquisitor who's after his job, like he didn't totally just try to have you killed by your allies. quote:Fzoul does not think anything wrong of his action—he is evil, though not in the same dogmatic sense as High Inquisitor Ginali. There's being too evil to understand right and wrong, and then there's complete and utter failure to understand basic human interaction.
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Sep 3, 2020 08:38
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So, assuming that the minotaur footsoldiers were working for or with the beholder, it follows that they were in some sense sworn to the service of the throne of Mulmaster. And, of course, one wouldn't want slow footsoldiers working with a beholder, lest it get impatient and bored and start disintegrating them for fun. So these are, one would assume, fast minotaurs. Which would make them Dexam's Min Knight Runners.
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Sep 3, 2020 12:42
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Per Docbeard- The Medusa is now named Eileen and she should have been wearing a white dress.
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Sep 3, 2020 15:09
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Kacie posted:Piling on the beholder hate. My experience was slogging through the whole den of them in Baldur's Gate 2. You better have found the mirror cloak, or else you are going to be reloading and not having a fun time. Even with the cloak, it's not fun. (And still involved lots of reloads, just not nearly so many as would have been required without the cloak. They're one of the three options for a quest you needed to do to appease the group you're pretending to serve - and let's put it this way, the fact there's an Illithid den is what makes the Beholders only the second-hardest of the three options. Of course most players are going to do all three for all the loot and XP
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Sep 3, 2020 15:46
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That's it, I don't even care if this is the wrong place anymore. <throws carp at docbeard and achtungnight. And another at FeyerbrandX for starting it.> In my defense, I never cared much for that song.
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Sep 3, 2020 16:01
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Chokes McGee posted:Curse of the Azure Bonds, Chapter 12: Eye of the Etc. I assume you mean "last time?" Also, you seriously did that entire update and never once used the new beholder emoticon?
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Sep 3, 2020 16:06
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DGM_2 posted:I assume you mean "last time?" Technically I'm still right!  e: Also don't you worry, I'll still have a chance to use it. Chokes McGee fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Sep 3, 2020 |
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Sep 3, 2020 16:13
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Truthkeeper posted:I think Fzoul is just using more words than necessary to bitch about lawful good. We've all been there. I thought from my glancethrouh he just tried to have you murder one of his random minions in the room.
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Sep 3, 2020 18:41
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Next time, not for the first time, but definitely not the last time, but definitely not the first time.
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Sep 3, 2020 20:11
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FeyerbrandX posted:Next time, not for the first time, but definitely not the last time, but definitely not the first time. I immediately thought of this (first 15 seconds): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPkWZdluoUg
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Sep 3, 2020 21:44
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Yeah it was that and the one 8 bit theatre comic where Black Mage is crazier than usual.
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Sep 3, 2020 22:36
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FeyerbrandX posted:Yeah it was that and the one 8 bit theatre comic where Black Mage is crazier than usual. ...You're gonna have to narrow that one down for me.
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Sep 3, 2020 22:43
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DGM_2 posted:...You're gonna have to narrow that one down for me. wow the archive is butt http://www.nuklearpower.com/2005/03/03/episode-522-the-descent-into-sanity/
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Sep 3, 2020 23:17
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achtungnight posted:If there's one D&D monster I absolutely hate, it's Gas Spores. You can for sure guess why.
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Sep 6, 2020 01:45
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There is no update here. Merely staying that tonight, I'm going to a drive in to see the Mummy, and will literally be wearing a mask to stave off literal  DREADED MUMMY DISEASEWe live in interesting times
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Sep 12, 2020 00:48
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A big Boris Karloff fan?
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Sep 12, 2020 04:48
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Gonna try to have an update out this week. I know it's hard keeping up with this blistering place so I appreciate your efforts.
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Sep 20, 2020 22:48
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Look after yourself first, Chokes. Your updates are always great, but don't burn yourself out writing them.
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Sep 20, 2020 22:52
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Yeah, take care of yourself. I look forward to the update also, however long it takes.
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Sep 20, 2020 23:18
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Take your time. Worst case we make our own content. ... ... .......... Hurry back as soon as you're in a healthy place.
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Sep 21, 2020 00:32
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We could always go back to making undeath puns while Chokes is away. ...Or would that be considered thread necromancy?
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Sep 21, 2020 15:58
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