Rushu42

"With my looks, that's not a high bar. Would you point these mysterious wanderers out to me when they come in? I'd be much obliged."

Aln walked behind Poller, dropping her disguise to conserve Stormlight. With the questions swirling in her mind, she didn't notice Folorian until she nearly smacked into him. Thankfully for her pride, it appeared that he hadn't noticed her, either. "Folorian!" she said, tapping him on the shoulder. "Stormfather, it's good to see you. A lot has happened." She looked at Poller, still leading the way towards Cassandra's. "Would you follow me, and I can tell you about it? The Guild's not safe at the moment." @mathiau @Ookla Fell From The Sky

I look up, taking off my glasses as I do so. "Well, that question is a bit complicated, seeing as how getting lost cost me quite a bit of mileage. I'm from the Hunsthalls, though, so just add a day or two of wandering to however long it usually takes, and you'll have my journey. Are there any adventures to be had around here? I'm currently seeking one."

I trudge into the town, looking weary from the long days spent travelling. I'm a relatively young, female dwarf with the stocky build characteristic of my race. My hair is short and black, and currently speckled with bits of overlooked mud. I wear simple dwarven scale mail and travelling clothes, and carry a shield and a mace. On my face is a pair of tinted glasses. I also wear a rucksack, and around my neck is a stylized amulet, such as would be worn by a priest of one of the various gods. However, rather than bear the god's symbol at the center, it has been left blank. With the aid of the townsfolk, I make my way to the tavern and sit heavily in a chair, resting as I order a drink.

Well, the story goes like this: The party had found a mysterious key fairly early on, but none of them had Identify, so they had never bothered to find out what it did. I dropped a few reminders about it, eventually, and they ended up asking their NPC wizard friend to cast Identify for them, after several months in-world and nearly a year out of world. She informed them that it could transport them into an infamous, dangerous demiplane. This was at the end of a day of adventuring, which had included a battle and a dungeon, so they were half-spent. Upon hearing this, the rogue went, "cool", and activated the key right there. So all of them, including the wizard NPC, were launched into the demiplane without a long rest. I ended up being merciful and giving them a rest anyway, but she still got some flak from the rest of the group for that one.

This is very accurate. Our rogue has a habit of sneaking off alone and getting into trouble. (This did involve being thrown in jail one time, yes). Just last session, she followed a suspicious character all on her own, and ended up getting captured by a major villain without the rest of the party knowing about it. So that should be fun to resolve. Edit: oh, I nearly forgot the time that she launched the party and a friendly NPC into a dangerous demiplane because she couldn't wait for a long rest. That was interesting.

Oh, no! I thought I'd be clouded out, but we managed to snag 45 minutes of clear sky - it was very pretty. Will your weather at least be good for the conjunction?

Theorizing about the general Cosmere arc: Edit: Oh no, I missed the typo. I don't think I can change it now, so "BBEF" it is.

Yup! I actually caught a glimpse of a meteor last night, so there are already a few out.

I don't know if D&D is a great format for a forum game, is the thing. You need very quick responses, and a DM who's online the entire time. It would be possible to organize, say, a voice call with people from the forums, and just start up a regular game online, but I think trying to do it via forum posts would go poorly.

How would that work?

This song gives me huge Kaladin and Syl vibes: (Said vibes are strengthened by the events in RoW, but the song certainly does not spoil them.)

*hugs* to everyone else in this thread. My day hasn't been a terrible one, but I'm pretty swamped with homework at the moment, and I'm supposed to clean the kitchen today, not to mention study for a Quizbowl tournament on Saturday. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed - maybe posting on here will make me feel better.

On a site full of fantasy fans, I figured that a fair number of us probably play Dungeons and Dragons. So here's a thread to put all the wild stories about the shenanigans your party gets up to. Here's a favorite story from my campaign: The Letter Bunny So, one of the characters is a very wholesome warlock of the Demigod of Cute Fluffy Animals. This is relevant because it meant that he had a bunny costume in his inventory. The party was at a tavern on a journey when they overheard a drunk messenger bragging about how he had a letter to the leader of a nearby city - someone that the party was already suspicious of. So naturally, the party decided to steal the letter and read it. Before they could figure out how, though, the messenger left the building and got on his horse. Not wanting to let him escape they started to chase after him, but the horse was much faster than they were, so they had trouble catching him. Then the warlock, Kjørfraexx, had an idea. Kjørfraexx first changed into his bunny costume, and then got the wizard to cast Fly on him. So garbed, he shot after the rider and quickly caught up. He used prestidigitation to scatter sparkles around, and announced that he was the "Letter Bunny" - a being that he explained as being like the tooth fairy, but for letters rather than teeth. Remember, this messenger was very drunk, and being a warlock, Kjørfraexx had very good Charisma. And then Kjørfraexx rolled a nat 20. So the befuddled messenger handed over the letter, received a silver piece in exchange, and was sent on his way. Imagining him explaining this to his superiors was one of the highlights of my week.

"That sounds like an excellent place," Aln said distractedly. "Lead the way." Aln didn't notice his somber expression as she finally began to comprehend the scope of the problem before her. Mysteriously implanted memories in her own head were one thing, but if the Dark Alley were real, they could be facing a conspiracy that encompassed the whole Alleyverse. Don't jump to conclusions, she reminded herself. There was still so much that she didn't know. But whatever was going on, it was looking more and more likely that the old children's bogeymen were somehow involved.

You know you're a Sanderfan when you're reading a book and all you can think is "That name is symmetrical. Blasphemy."

Yep, I've been counting down to both of those! And keeping a nervous eye on the weather (I think the Geminids have a good chance of being clouded out here). Most articles reporting the conjunction claim that it's the closest in 800 years, but I'm pretty sure that that's just because the one in the 1600s wasn't very visible due to the sun. Do you know more on that?

I don't have a ton of evidence for this, but a nice idea I had was "I will allow myself to be protected".

Navani is the obvious choice. She already leads Urithiru, and has shown to be very competent. And she's the other Bondsmith, not to mention Dalinar's wife. If she's still around then, it doesn't seem like it'd be much of a question.

I love so much about this book. In no particular order: All the Cosmere lore. Most of what we saw was just more obvious examples of things we already knew (other planets exist, Seons, Awakening, etc.) but there was enough new stuff (like the new Shards) to make me very excited. We're really moving into the next Cosmere Era, aren't we? The Fused having distinct (and sometimes awesome) personalities. It makes me so happy that even the insane warriors of pure passion are real people, not cardboard cutouts. Raboniel. She gets her own bullet point because of how much I loved her character. In many ways, she's a terrible person, but somehow you can still care about her at the end. She's exactly what the book needed. All of the science. This is a book about war (I mean, see the name) but the most important parts of the book were scientific discoveries, diplomatic missions, and personal revelations. I love that there are Radiants who don't fight, and I loved learning more about how Stormlight works. Of course, this leads directly into the next bullet point. All of Navani's scenes. I love her so much. Almost everything she did felt like something I might have done in her place, and her experiments were fascinating. In the previous books, I hadn't paid much attention to her, since her biggest role in the story was just Dalinar's love interest. I'm so glad that Sanderson didn't just leave her like that, because her character now is wonderful. Kaladin's work with depression. Roshar really did desperately need a reformation of mental health treatment, and it's wonderful to see him using his influence for that. The starspren. This one is really just because I'm an amateur astronomer, but the starspren were one of my favorite little pieces of worldbuilding in the book, so a CR appearance of one was a fantastic surprise. Eshonai's death. I wish she'd been able to live, but we already knew that she had died. That ending was heartbreaking in all the right ways. Kaladin listening to Rlain, and apologizing for what they did with the Parshendi corpses. It had always bothered me that he had never said sorry for that, even after Rlain's reveal, but I had assumed that it wouldn't come up again. Another great surprise. Also, to the OP, thank you for this thread! I was getting bogged down by some of the arguments that came when I tried to talk about characters I love (specifically Navani). I'm glad to have a place to enjoy things without having to defend why.

I'd guess that that's meant to be a Starspren in the Cognitive Realm.

It's obvious that I'm not going to change your mind on this, so perhaps we may agree to disagree? I personally understand a lot of Navani's motivation, and think that her choice was a tactically valid one, and you don't. If I continue to explain my perspective, though, I suspect that we'll fall into repeating ourselves.

I just realized that Navani's ardents could easily become Bondsmith squires next book - hype for Radiant scholars! (And of course I've got to love a potential for Rushu screentime).