Tag: bertanis

Another one that should be every day.

Successfully made it to gaming despite the weather, then successfully made it home despite the intense weather. It, as they say on the Internets, fucken WIMDY.

Unfortunately, when I got home, I had neither Internets nor electricity. Usually PG&E gets it fixed pretty quickly, but everything was still out after I took a nap, so I went back to sleep. This was probably not the best thing I could have done, but it was easy.

Played: Librarians Errant. A two-fight session! First, as the team was seeing off the astral pirates, their ship was attacked by a dragon made of evil books and its sycophants in a literal flame war. They drove off the dragon and saved the books, but now the githyanki are stuck in Waterdeep trying to arrange transfer credit at the university. Then Shia was accosted by an origami butterfly that led the team cross-country to a deserted mill/smuggling den where Gladys’s minions were up to no good. They managed to set an ambush instead of just charging in, which was only partly successful because 5e doesn’t let you block enemies’ movement but did involve Grumman stealing a coach with a hootin’ and a hollerin’. The villains escaped, but the senior librarian was rescued in good shape and admitted the team might be worthy to be called librarians, but only very junior ones and only until next time they screw up.

Written: THWARTED.

A gaming session is like a playdate for gamers, right? Definitely a comparable maturity level!

Played: Librarians Errant. Thaïs is doing okay at rescuing herself by pushing Gladys the turncoat librarian out a window, but doesn’t mind at all when her friends show up to help. There’s a comparatively minor kerfuffle and then everyone escapes with the books Gladys bought at auction, which are only moderately helpful in tracking down the Education, but take that, Gladys! Serves you right for locking cute girls in boxes! Martin is still nowhere to be found, so the next day the group is given into the care of Garth, an extremely hard-ass Librarian Errant who immediately takes them back down to the Elemental Plane of Books or whatever it is to help clean up the hellfrog damage. Naturally, they barely get started before Thaïs trips over some githyanki book thieves and a running fight breaks out. Alas, the githyanki excel at fighting in the narrow stacks and Lily is forced to surrender when she’s the last one standing. She does talk the githyanki out of taking a book that’s not on their list of books that the library stole from them, but the astral pirates make their getaway pretty much entirely successfully. Bah!

Maybe next time I’ll remember what shocking grasp is for.

Written: 141. I may need to delete it all, but that’s a problem for Future Me.

Programmers that make software? Programmers that arrange convention panels? Both okay in my book.

The first actual gaming of the year is unsurprisingly D&D. Time to roll a d20 to confirm that nothing happens!

Played: Librarians Errant. We start with the fight against animated books that was threatened last time, and the team pretty much get their asses handed to them, since each book is about as strong as one PC and they outnumber the team three to one. Fortunately their mentor shows up to save them and forbid them from returning to the Main Branch of Library Space until they are much higher level, so nobody actually dies. He also tells them to absolutely not engage with the renegade Librarian Errant who got past them in the stacks. Naturally, as soon as they’re done doing cleanup work and get to go pillage an estate sale, they run into her again. They do try to get word back, but their mentor is nowhere to be found, and shadowing somebody is the opposite of engaging, right? They each stake out the snooty auction hall in accordance with their personal idiom, but only Thaïs, who gets a job as one of the waiters because she looks good in a uniform, gets kidnapped. Next session, villainous monologue! I’m not sure what Thaïs’s resistance to that will be.

Written: 202. A bunch is still outlining, but maybe it will turn into real fiction.

Not sure exactly what that’s about, but better not offend The Skull.

Played: Librarians Errant. We were chasing down a grad student who was using the overdue book for clues to treasure in a dungeon full of unexplained monsters and improbable traps, so it was a surprisingly traditional D&D adventure. The treasure was a book that didn’t belong to the library, so we left the grad student and visiting scholar to their tawdry het romance novel and noped out with the book we were sent for and some incidental loot. Level UP!

That was pretty much it for today.

Written: FAIL.

As opposed to yesterday, which was just my personal cat day!

The cats are still very feline. Sage is remarkably energetic for a cat who has never had a single morsel of food in her entire life, ever, although after eating an entire cat of wet food she cuddled in my arms for an extended period. Nightvale jumped onto Marith’s shoulders when she came to visit, which I can only interpret as a sign of approval.

Played: Librarians Errant. After being manipulated into alarming situations by professors and/or sororities the library had offended, and finding that the eldritch tentacles unleashed by Flint and Shia in the first episode had taken to nibbling on the town’s supply of fine confections, our librarians junior library staff head back to Koboldtown only to find it being bullied by bullywugs! There’s a big fight, but the important parts are that Flint leaps down from the rooftop and chops the bullywug leader right in half, and Lily gets swallowed by a giant frog and carried off. Once they track her down, there’s another fight, but the leader of the bullywugs escapes with the book that was the entire reason they came down here. Thaïs only used one of her spell slots, so this was obviously a less strenuous adventure than last time, no matter what the other characters say.

Watched: Helluva Boss 2.7: Another Fizzarolli episode, so sadly lacking in Loona or Millie, but otherwise good. Because seriously, fuck that guy!

Written: FAIL. There were cats that needed snuggles! But I did get caught up here and even figured out how to post pictures, so apparently the cats are less distracting.

After missing about a million sessions, we finally had Alternate Sunday Gaming and started Librarians Errant. After being assigned to get overdue books back from students and causing pretty much a riot (there were also exploding gophers involved), we got dragged into the search for a lost set of books, almost eaten by giant rants, ditched in the sewers with teenaged kobolds, almost eaten by giant frogs, and fed hot chocolate by the kobolds. There were two fights, Thaïs had two spell slots to cast thunderwave, it worked out perfectly. Surely next session will go just as well.

I was accosted by an antivaxxer at the bus stop. I told her she’s insane, but we parted without violence. (Should I have been nicer? I dunno, she was trying to kill me with covid.)

Written: FAIL.

They’re an important source of protein for bats!

Finally managed to produce a medical sample and get it to UPS. Now I can stop worrying about getting it done and worry about the results!

UPS was so efficient that I did not have to wait for a next bus and was early to gaming, but that’s okay (I say as the person not hosting). It was a special gaming session, though, because after approximately 90745934 years, Chrisber has gaming with us again! Also he brought his offspring, Teo. Chrisber has a mustache now, and a lot of white in his hair, but he is still very much Chrisber. I don’t know Teo well yet, but he seems okay for a, you know, young person.

I didn’t have any brilliant ideas, and Dave’s idea did not garner sufficient support, so Jeremy is running D&D5 again (sigh). We are playing random university bozos who are about to be recruited into the Librarians Errant where we will track down dangerous, rare, or overdue books. My character is the result of an ethical experiment that turned her into a shadow magic sorcerer, so once again I am the only one without Charisma as a dump stat.

Written: FAIL. Apparently making up one (1) D&D character uses all my creativity for the day. I definitely blame capitalism for this.