mulch gland tingling

hi I'm bungus they/them!! I've been dming for about 8 years and dnd is one of my main passions (alongside music and zoology). my primary points of mechanical interest are monsters, building and running encounters, character creation, and overly elaborate worldbuilding. I'm quite partial to Planescape and anything to do with the plane wheel, and currently running a 1.5 year long campaign with my own from-scratch homebrew setting, the Shimmering Isles. this blog will contain musings, ideas, DM tips, homebrew content, and anything else that catches my fancy. asks always welcome!!

He does, with an unbelievably stupid grin on his face, so Pauling glares at him until he gets the point and pipes down a little. "What?"

"You can never tell anybody this happened, ever."

"I won't, I won't."

She keeps eye contact with him as she scrambles out of the bed, pulling her old clothes off of the shitty motel carpet, wincing at the amount of plainly visible stains there are in the shag. "No, Scout, I'm serious. I will actually kill you. Don't tell Sniper, don't tell Demo, especially don't tell Engie, don't tell your mom, don't tell your friends, nobody. This did not happen."

"I don't get why this is such a big deal. We're both hot people, hot people have awesome sex, it happens--"

"Scout." She finally finds her pistol in its holster buried under the limp fabric puddle of her skirt and pulls it out, gesturing loosely with it and hoping that gets the point across well enough. "I'm not fucking kidding."

Scout laughs at that, which seems like the wrong reaction, until she realizes he's looking up at the mirror above the bed and she can’t believe it, why did she just do it with Scout in a shitty fucking motel room with a mirror above the bed? 

"Yeah, Miss Pauling. I won't tell anybody. Jeez."

—

Scout gives up and taps him on the shoulder. "Snipes, brother. You'll never guess what happened last night."

"I probably won't," Sniper mumbles. He's got his nose shoved in the paper. There's a joke Scout can make here, about Sniper’s jars and tiny dogs pissing on newspaper, but that's not as important right now.

"Let's just say--she should probably change her name to Hit Pauling."

Wait for a second--cross his arms a little--Sniper just glares at him. Why was he expecting him to get that?

"Instead of Miss, y'know."

"What?"

"'Cause I--'cause I hit that last night."

That gets a little raise of the eyebrows, not exactly what he was hoping for. "You punched our boss?"

"Snipes I had awesome sex with Miss Pauling last night, are you stupid?"

"Just like that time you backflipped out of a moving car?"

"I keep telling you, that happened, and it was awesome, and I'm serious. We totally banged. All over the place. In a motel room with a mirror above the bed. Can you believe it?"

"Not particularly."

Spy, lips pursed into a thin line, digs through his pockets a little longer than necessary to retrieve a metal case—one of those fancy ones, and Engie’s fingers brush an unnecessary velvet-lined interior as he tugs out a cig. It’s probably Spy’s intention to play to the stereotype, but he still finds it funny.

“Asking me for a favor, Laborer? You must have given up.”

“Hardy har.” He feels Spy’s gaze cutting into him as he flips open his lighter. Spy’s making an exaggerated show of digging through his pockets, absolutely conscious Engie’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye (there was a time they tried to hide that they were looking at each other—imagine that). He almost chokes as the smoke that floods into his mouth turns out to be flavored—clove or something. Probably really should’ve expected that. Spy’s stupid grin vanishes as soon as he tilts his head a little more.

“Lookin’ for something, Slim?”

“I seem to have misplaced my lighter.”

He’s probably lying. Engie starts getting the beginnings of a really, really stupid idea.

He lets himself smile, just a little. “Oh no. What are you gonna do now?”

“Well, seeing as you now possess a debt…”

Engie stares at him and waits until he puts the cig back between his back molars—and then grabs him by the collar, feels soft silk and crumples it just a little for good measure, and pulls him way too close until the tips of their cigarettes touch. Spy makes some kinda noise—something between a gasp and a laugh. They stay there, probably a bit longer than necessary, and then pull away, and they get back to sitting there and pretending they’re not looking at each other.

“… That seemed unnecessary.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Of course they both know what it meant, and of course the blush that tears its way across Spy’s face makes him blush a little, too. And it’s not like either of them are oblivious to the fact it hasn’t really been a professional relationship for a while.

“That’s it?”

Spy opts to let out a stupid little hum, instead of any kind of proper response.

im talking, like... engy pulls spy's collar down to talk to him every time they speak. spy is an endless supply of prissy cigarettes, all of which he lights with his own (still trapped between his back teeth) if engy chooses to accept, which he always does. they both memorize everything they can about the other person: their habits, backstories, feelings on anything and everything, and then they let it slip in regular conversation without breaking a sweat--i know more about you than you'd like, and i know you do, too. a mutual silent acknowledgement of i know you aren't what you say you are.

He picks it up, mourning the loss of heat as he sits up out of the covers, yawning into the receiver. A feminine voice says something incomprehensible, so he says: “Huh?”

“Scout, listen,” Pauling curtly replies—something bangs in the background, maybe a gun. Is she still working? “What kind of, um, citrus… helps you dissolve corpses?”

His brain feels like wet goop, pooling out of his ears. He clumsily cradles the phone between his head and shoulder so he can rub the crust out of his eyes. “I don’t… Ms. P, it’s like, two…”

“Quicklime. It’s quicklime. Haha.”

“… Slow down, dude.” He yawns again, makes sure to make this one a little extra obnoxious. “What?”

“It’s a joke. Because it’s like—lime. Like a fruit but, um, also like quicklime. Oh fuck,” and then what Scout imagines to be a little kitten heel driving itself through someone’s eye, as another scream rings out, alongside a sickening squelch. “You know? Heh.”

He slides the rest of the way back under the covers and sighs. “… Oh.”

“Was it funny?”

“I think—“

“Be honest. Constructive criticism, stuff I can really use. Hit me.”

Scout’s sinuses feel like they’re full of cement. “Is this all you called me for?”

“No. Yes. Please just answer the question. And do you think it’d play to an audience?”

Scout thinks about Demo saying something along the lines of ‘if anyone breaks that poor lass’ heart by telling her that none of her jokes make any sense I’m personally gonna destroy everything you hold dear or whatever’. He opts for the reasonable copout: “I liked it.”

“Honestly.”

Shit. “Okay, jeez.“ Scout yawns again, mostly to stall for time. “… You could workshop it a little, kinda. Maybe.”

The line goes dead, immediately. Scout clatters the phone back on the hook and rolls back into the covers, groaning, and then the phone rings again, and he quickly picks it back up and doesn’t bother to open his eyes this time. “Hey, Ms. Pauling.”

“I’m sorry. I got upset.”

“I know.”

"I'll… take it into account."

"Okay." When Pauling doesn't say anything back, he adds: "You're gettin’ there."

"… Thanks, Scout."

He considers saying 'call me at seven next time', like he always considers, but like usual he just feels some part of that would be kind of cruel. “Goodnight, Ms. Pauling.”

"Um, sweet dreams." About half of a shrill shriek somewhere around her gets cut off by her hanging up. Whatever.

It takes just a moment to pierce those goggles—and then a hollering laugh that fills the room, a bit of unnecessary table-banging, and Marcel doesn’t get his handkerchief to his face in time to properly hide the grin that splits his face.

Then, almost eerily, in the same fashion Marcel’s seen over and over through the past few days, Dell snaps back to neutral form like on command—and he looks over, still smiling, and chuckles: “A joke at your own expense?” He slaps his shoulder with the gloved hand, and it stings more than it should. “You’ve changed.”

“I imagine I deserve some sort of peace prize, yes.”

He’s back to staring straight forward, hands templed, watching Scout stumble through yet another brain-melting pickup line to the poor woman at the front desk. “Ah, there it is.”

It doesn’t matter how big it is; Demo has the rare talent make any space feel like a labyrinth if he has access to enough thrift-store antiques, which if he drives far enough, he will. Ash-covered tables, assorted suits of armor, grandfather clocks and couches cluster around what could barely be described as exceedingly narrow corridors of space, every flat surface in the room covered in bizarre statues, presumably haunted amulets and snowglobes, seashells and nerd shit action figures, a tiny useless trinket borrowed from everywhere he’s ever visited; ancient jade figurines, vials of mysterious powder, fantasy playing cards. All painstakingly arranged in a way only remotely decipherable to himself, of course; delicately balanced so a spare gust of wind could send just about everything in the room careening at once to the floors, but that’s alright, he seems to manage. The walls are covered in thrift-store paintings and weapon racks, the favorites of his swords hung proudly above the chaos, the rest shoved haphazardly in a golf bag under the singing fish. A grand bookshelf sits off to one side, more expensive-looking than anything else and painstakingly taken to every location the mercs visit, filled with ancient history volumes, spellbooks, and exceedingly dense fantasy novels.