Staring into space 24/7

it's more than halfway through pride month and i realized i never shared these fun little galaxy flag edits i did!! i originally made the trans flag one to use as my icon, but then it didn't look as good at a small size (the white stripe blended too much with his hair. could've maybe added an outline around him or something but i didn't think about it) so i made the bi flag one to use instead. 💖

Thank you @lucretiouswept @archduchessgortash @scoldingdarjeeling for the WIP tag 🫶 Tagging you back sweeties!

Also tagging: @ranger-jahen @missfortunetherogue @elceewunjo @burnt-by-marigolds @optimisticgrey @riddlerosehearts @lilhumanoid @spillingteanotpermitted @quinthebard @gortashsrighthand if you want to share your WIPs 🌟

Still working on that EllithxAstarion piece -- And that's what I meant when i said the smut was turning into angst.

TW: PTSD, mentions of Astarion's past abuse

Back at work tomorrow and going through the incomparable joy of meds increased - hope I'll still be able to write. Tagged by @optimisticgrey and @deianestormborn (you're both reverse tagged!) - using this for both a self-indulgent snippet (the Harpers don't get an ingame earful for their attempt to surrender to Ketheric, fixing that) and a self-indulgent photo of my blorbos just looking dramatic in the nice light.

“My dear, you usually inspire in me a renewed appreciation for life,” Astarion sighed. “At present, however, a stake through the ribs hardly sounds like the worst of possible fates.” “All right, all right, don’t start falling apart on me now.” Ethery gave his arm a reassuring pat. “We still have to find out what was running around those ruins the scout mentioned. Imagine if nobody was there at all and the poor fool merely breathed in something unfortunate. Not that I can blame anyone for reaching for a bottle in these lands. The temptation must be considerable.” “If one of my scouts ever decides to seek courage in a flask, they will not enjoy the consequences.” Jaheira’s voice came from behind them. She had approached quietly enough to overhear every word. “They know that perfectly well. Any Harper foolish enough to leave the inn drunk would find themselves stripped of rank before the day was out. Our task is difficult enough without adding carelessness to the list. Better unpleasant duties in company than facing these lands alone.” Halsin’s head snapped up - Ethery felt the change before he spoke. A moment earlier he had been staring at the ground, now his gaze was fixed on Jaheira. The silver in his eyes darkened into blue. “Would you truly cast someone out for taking a swallow to steady their nerves?” His voice remained calm and controlled, which somehow made it sound even more dangerous. The question appeared to catch Jaheira off guard. She stood silent for several moments before answering. “I don’t know, Halsin,” she said at last, slowly and quietly. “I honestly don’t know what I would do if one of my rangers found himself in that position. But I know this much: nowhere is it more important to understand the risks than here. A single mistake can mean death. Or worse.” She folded her arms. “What if a drunken ranger drops their torch? What if they step into the shadows for even a moment? What if they stumble into a ravine and break a leg? Most likely they die - and take the rest of their patrol with them. Better they fear me than underestimate this place and walk willingly into their own graves.” “Do many of them underestimate it?” Some of the edge left Halsin’s voice. Only a little. “Fortunately, I haven’t had to find out,” Jaheira replied. “And I hope I never do.” She raised her head and met his eyes. Neither of them looked away. For several long seconds they stood still and silent. “I know what you’re thinking,” Jaheira said at last. “And I know what you’re remembering.” Her voice had become very quiet. “The druids of the Emerald Grove carrying our wounded toward the mountain pass as bears and panthers while we retreated along the road to Baldur’s Gate after our attempt to surrender. The curse preventing us from regrouping. It was you, not anyone else, who led the survivors to safety. Some of them were Harpers left behind by their own command.” She swallowed. “I have no defence for that. No excuse.” A pause. “If the decision had been mine...” She stopped herself but never broke eye contact. “If the decision had been mine, it would have been different.” She turned away and wrapped her arms around herself. For one strange moment she reminded Ethery of Arabella. Then she walked back toward the inn. Halsin didn’t follow. Didn’t call after her. A few moments later he lowered his head heavily, as though the weight of the last hundred years had suddenly settled on his shoulders once more. “This may be a terrible time to ask,” Ethery said quietly, “but what was she talking about?” For a long while he said nothing. The silence stretched so long that Ethery began to think he might not answer at all. “When we fought Ketheric Thorm,” Halsin said at last, “the Harpers attempted to surrender shortly before the battle turned.” His voice was flat. Distant. “Ketheric refused to accept it.”

Prompt originally posted by Amai on bsky, we yoinked it for our Discord prompt because it seemed like so much fun ;d

Your Tav/Durge and their LI have been body swapped for 24 hours! How do they deal with it? What problems/issues arise?

Thank you for the tag @wild-surge c: I'm tagging @origamihoshi, @ranger-jahen, @starlit-serpent, @optimisticgrey, @selunitejeanne, @druagaa, @wasted-sam, if anyone would like to do it/share their response here~

Spooky Deet struggles with the change, used to being taller and broader and steeped in his Mother's magic; now he's buffeted by currents of wild magic at all hours and, as insult to injury, he has to squat to pee.

At least he can paint his face as normal.

Thanks for the tags @optimisticgrey and @gortashsrighthand

What passes for self indulgence with me…is making the magic make sense. My sense of Gale’s whole story arc is that the Act 2 “celestial canvas” scene is the most important scene in his character arc. It’s everyone’s favorite and the devs say it’s the best work they’ve ever done.

I, being me…count the spell slots and the amount of concentration spells and am..annoyed. Nonetheless, DnD 5.5 circle casting to the rescue ! One mage can hold the concentration for another, so I give you…the horniest…filthiest thing in wizardom…the intimacy of casting together.

From Marginalia at the Edge of the Divine

~ Intermezzo

I reached for a familiar volume from the side table. “This one here is called The Art of the Night. It details the first thousand nights of a newlywed king and queen.”

Lily laughed. “You’re going to read me dirty stories from Amn?”

“They turned everything they did into an art. The art of conversation. The art of taste. Time-honored and newly acquired. What say we take a page from their book?”

I opened the volume between us and laid my hand upon the page.

“Let me show you.”

She placed her fingers beside mine.

The Weave answered us at once.

It rose through the spell in luminous strands, first along the lines I had prepared, then beyond them. Light ran through the terrace stones and climbed the balustrade in branching filaments. The music from the piano softened, each note acquiring colour and shape until the air itself seemed strung with harmony.

My magic had always possessed architecture. Even in passion, I sought pattern, correspondence, the hidden geometry by which one impossible thing might be joined to another. I opened that design to her carefully, revealing each working as I might reveal the pages of an arcanabula no hand but mine had ever touched.

Lily entered without hesitation.

I had expected to guide her.

Instead, she answered.

Magic lived in her according to another law. It did not gather itself into ordered formulae before obeying. It moved with the instinctive precision of Corellon’s ancient art, with thought and body joined so completely that distinction between them became meaningless. Where I had built structure, she found music. Where I had drawn boundaries, she moved through them and made them part of the dance.

The spell changed around us.

Not weakened. Not broken.

Completed.

The walls of the tower opened into immensity. Waterdeep fell away beneath us, its lights becoming stars, its streets the shining lines of some vast celestial sigil. The terrace remained beneath our feet, and yet we stood also beyond it, suspended where distance and flesh had surrendered their ordinary authority.

I felt her presence within the spell, unmistakable and undiminished.

That astonished me more than anything.

The Weave is capable of swallowing the unprepared. It overwhelms the senses, strips thought of its mortal proportions, and makes even accomplished practitioners seem small before the immensity they seek to command. Lily did not vanish within it. She shone more clearly.

I had brought her into my magic.

She found me there.

Her hand rose to my chest.

The orb stirred beneath her palm, a dark hunger awakening within the radiance. Karsite power tore a wound through the harmony, its appetite reaching instinctively for everything I had conjured.

Lily did not recoil.

Her fingers spread over the mark. Her magic answered mine, holding neither the orb nor the Weave in submission, but holding fast to me between them.

For the first time since that ruinous fragment entered my body, I did not experience it as a secret carried alone.

I drew her closer.

The distance between us vanished in every form at once. Her body met mine upon the terrace; her spirit moved beside mine through the spell. A hundred luminous reflections unfolded around us, possibilities given shape, each touch echoed through another configuration of light and longing.

I told her everything in words, in touch, and most of all in magic, the language we had shared before either of us dared trust words or touch.

She answered without fear or pretense.

I released one careful measure of control, enough that the spell might have faltered.

She caught it.

The Weave gathered around her hands and passed back into mine transformed, silvered by her presence, carrying the bright, fierce cadence of her soul. Magic moved between us as breath did, given and returned, until I could no longer say with certainty which of us sustained the working. My casting entered her spell without diminishing it, giving weight to grace, structure to song. I felt, absurdly, exposed. Not because she had taken anything from me, but because the spell had received me so naturally, as though some part of her magic had made room before either of us admitted what we were becoming.

There was danger in that surrender.

There was also ecstasy.

Excitedly tagging @archduchessgortash @missfortunetherogue @kcwriter-blog

Don't you want US to last for eternity? Until the whole world dies and rots?

(a mini-fic for bg3 pride month day 13: "blue - harmony")

a day late, but this is the fifth of the fics + matching VP i plan to post for the rainbow flag days! it's 1,223 words and can be read below the cut. or on ao3 here if you'd like to leave a kudos or comment, which i always really appreciate! and as usual ty to @worfs-glorious-hair for hosting this event.

for this one, i leaned heavily into the alternate "serenity" meaning of the blue stripe on the flag because i just kinda forgot that wasn't part of the prompt tbh. but i'd say it still fits harmony well enough!

fic taglist: @ranger-jahen @nerdalmighty @starsthoughtsonthings @starlightweave @lilhumanoid

tagging for my pride month stuff: @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream

(if anyone ever wants to be on or off that list, or if anyone would like to be tagged specifically for my pride month mini-fics, just let me know!)

Part One // Part Two // Part Three // Part Four (you are here)

Now with multimedia! tl;dr below the cut, but I tried to make this as easy to follow as possible despite the branching options.

Recruitment Scene

So you've survived the Nautiloid crash. Now you find yourself wandering a ravaged beach, searching for other survivors.

Whether or not you've joined forces with a certain semi-mysterious cleric, it won't be long before you encounter another half-elf:

Narrator: * The stranger is thin, stained with blood both old and new, and rooting around some poor dead fisher's belongings. They smell faintly of iron and silkroot, and they mumble to themself as they go. *

Approach the half-elf. (See Approach)

Back away slowly. (See Leave)

Approach

Option 1: Jamie informs you that "most dead don't rest, but sure," and ends the conversation, grumbling about you being uppity. See Leave.

Options 2-3 make Jamie feel that they can be honest with you:

"Look, sometimes the truth is all you got, so: I just fell off that thing. I barely even know how I ended up there. You too, huh?"

Tell them the truth, and they'll say: "Thank the gods. I mean, not that you got 'got' by mind flayers, that's... bad. But thank the gods that it's not just me, 'cause that's normally how shit goes." / "Hey, you seen me just now, right? I'm better than anybody I know at findin' supplies you wouldn't even think to look for. We band together, and I'll keep us stocked 'til we yank these worms out and move on. You in?"

Lie to them, and they'll frown and say: "Don't fuck with my head, pal. There's enough going on in there already. I know I saw you." Then use the same line as above: "Hey, you seen... You in?"

You can join up with Jamie, reject them, or roll a Persuasion check to help you decide:

(Persuasion) "Show me you found something useful and I'll consider it." Pass: Jamie, amused, proudly shows you a slightly waterlogged cigarette. "Score, right? You can hit it if you want." (Agree: +2 approval. Casually decline: they shrug and light it up for themself. Appear aghast or offended: -2 approval.) Fail: "Ha! I respect that. But I'm not letting you take stuff I just found. Maybe if you're cool and not, like, too much of a murderer, one day I'll show you how I do what I do."

Team up with Jamie. They'll tell you their name, ask yours, shake your hand a little too hard with the "wrong" hand (their left), and fall in line behind you.

Leave them to their looting. See Leave.

Leave

They say cockroaches are unkillable and unavoidable. Jamie Cross might be the same way.

You run into them again where you least expected to find survivors (though really, it makes some sense for this particular one): the swamp.

Even dirtier than they were before and still mumbling to themself, this is the last opportunity to recruit Jamie. Recruiting them here is more or less the same as recruiting them on the beach (see Approach).

If you don't recruit Jamie at either point, you'll find their exsanguinated body in the sewer between the Szarr Palace and the entrance to the Undercity.* The only blood left in/on them is streaked down their face, like tears. They've been killed by (redacted) 👀

*Will expand on "my" Undercity later; it's located at the end of the little raft route in the sewer.

Durge-specific dialogue and overall recruitment tl;dr:

Welcome to the first part of a series of WIP for the creation of a custom doll of my beloved Durge: Caedus. I love so much the poisoner's robe so I decided to create Caedus as the red sorcerer doll. The size of the of the doll will be 1/6, it's the size of Barbie doll. For the doll, I used an articulate ken. Some of material are second hand materials, it's so important for me to use second hand materials: Ken used for Caedus, some fabrics for exemple. disclaimer: I'm not a professionnal sewer, I'm just passionate to create doll.

PART 1: the creation of the under burgundy robe.

WIPs and Snippets and Indulgences

~ The wild is wounded, the wardens of the old world are failing, but the sacred roots still hold and the first druid is coming ~

Apex, Chapter 3 is posted, and we are LIVE! + chapter theme song — 🎶 Sanctuary, breathe it in, scream it out 🎶

Thank you so much for the tags: 🌻@perpetualmaladaptivedaydream, 🌻@bloodsol94, 🌻@unovafarm, 🌻@cinder-rellish181, 🌻@wasteful-sam, 🌻@woundedsoul12, 🌻@litsenn, 🌻@lucretiouswept & 🌻@thecampjuicebox! Everyone gets an Uno Reverse!

Thank you so much for the tag, @deianestormborn (post here), @carnivaley (post here), and @perpetualmaladaptivedaydream (post here).

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