Bridgetown Part II

Made some very slight improvements to Bridgetown's images, and made a major decision; Bridgetown is going to be where Alpon von Lechfeld lives, Revecca's father, an important sage-like NPC in DARKNESS IN THE HILL COUNTRY, and a raison d'etre for what happens in CULT OF UNDEATH. I also want to change Alpon's first name, since I believe that I subconsciously got it from the original Carrion Crown adventure path, although it applies to a very different character there, so I'm going to go with some similar like Anton or Albrecht von Lechfeld. 

Bridgetown will be a large town, as you can probably see from the image, although rather crammed. Not much more than two hundred feet wide, and about three quarters of a mile long, crossing the Humber River at nearly it's widest point; but at a relatively flat one. A number of hamlets and villages are within just a few miles, or even less than a mile in some cases, but they are simply farming communities that support the "greater Bridgetown" region, north of the Copper Hills and Haunted Forest and south of the Golden Wolds, which is what the farming frontier gives way to in the south and north respectively. The waters around the wide spot in the river on either side of Bridgetown are also rather slow and shallow, as the water spreads out and eddies in its especially wide channel, making for rich fishing.

Professor Anton von Lechfeld and his only daughter Revecca live in a townhouse, as nearly everyone does, but as a relatively wealthy fellow, his is wider than most and actually spans the entire width of the bridge (minus the walkways up against the water on either side, of course) and occupies every floor of his building (a real rarity in a town like this) including a peaked tower where his study, laboratory and library are.

The immediate vicinity around Bridgetown is relatively quiet and peaceful; orderly and safe. But, as always, not everything is as it seems. About a year and a half ago, a serial killer stalked the streets of Bridgetown, striking seemingly at random and widely enough separated in time that it took some time to put together the clues to identify him. The man was hanged, of course, but persistent rumors of either his ghost or the ghost of at least some of his victims linger on certain foggy nights, and small attached building to the main buildings where he lived has never been reoccupied, and still gives off a sinister mien to those sensitive to such things. Worse, he seems to have been some kind of strange cultist, and persistent rumors that he wasn't the only one in town also still linger. 

Danger from hostile Tazitta tribesmen wandering further afield than normal from the Haunted Forest or even the downriver Tazitta Bandlands is one thing, but rumors of some other kind of mysterious threat occasionally striking isolated farming homesteads of ranches have started coming in to town from its more far-flung neighbors. Strange cryptids, including the skunk ape are said to lurk in marshes along the riverbanks and rumor claims that they attack lone boats late at night... although always with some degree of separation from the person telling the rumor. Strange cattle mutilations occurring out isolated ranches far from the homes of any people have also started to spread.

The most obvious ominous feature is the Blackstone menhir, a tall standing stone of dark basalt, with heavily weathered carvings or runes that are undecipherable on it. This stone stands about a mile outside of town, but can be seen from taller towers. It has a notable sinister feel to it, and even those not sensitive to occult or psychic "emanations" report feeling uneasy, light-headed and anxious just being within a few hundred yards of it. Few indeed can approach it close enough to study it up close without being triggered into a fainting spell, a panic attack, or a bout of such unease and nausea that they must withdraw from it. On moonless nights it is especially avoided, when the people of Bridgetown claim that some form of queerness from the distant (but not as distant as they may like) Plateau of Leng or from deep within the Haunted Forest approach the Blackstone menhir, although if there is any truth to this local legend, nobody has any idea what it is that they do. Professor Anton von Lechfeld may be the foremost expert on this phenomena, although he doesn't advertise his deep expertise in matters of occult.

Anyway, here's the fixed images.

AI images are all about doing enough iterations to get what you really want. Here's probably my favorite; slight variations on the ones above.

Bridgetown

I haven't quite decided where to put Bridgetown, but I really like it as a dense, yet small market town built entirely on a large bridge crossing a large river. It will probably cross the Humber River north of either Pinytop or Cockrill's Hill, or the Black River in Timischburg. The town is, obviously, built on a single bridge. I have a neighborhood of Port Liure based on this idea too, if you look up posts tagged PORT LIURE and the post titled X IS FOR RUA DE XAVIER, you'll see it. That's more of a single neighborhood in a dark, haunted hive of scum and villainy, though, whereas Bridgetown plays it more straight, as a small town built on a large bridge, and guarding a strategic river crossing, as well as acting as a funnel for river traffic; only relatively low barges can pass underneath the bridge. More often, traffic stops at Bridgetown, unloads, spends the night, assesses a toll or tax, and reloads on to either caravans or wagon trains bound by land to the various towns and villages of the Copper Hills and the Golden Wolds (if on the Humber River) or reloaded the next day on another boat or barge, and sent down on the other side of the bridge further up (or down) the river. Because of this strategic chokepoint nature, Bridgetown is a relatively wealthy town, and because of its wealth, it pays for a standing peacekeeping force that enables it to be independent of the power struggles between Garenport, Barrowmere, or Bucknerfeld, all of which would love to take control of it and bring it into their fold of control and patronage. 

Obvious threats and dangers to Bridgetown include the Tazitta tribesmen, when they're on the rise (as in the DARKNESS IN THE HILL COUNTRY campaign), queerness from the Plateau of Leng in the north seeping southwards, and just the wild wilderness around it, the Haunted Forest is nearby as well.

Anyway, here's various images of Bridgetown.

Above are the original images. I decided I wanted it both lower to the water and more contained on the bridge, without hinting at more town on the banks. The following are all the same version, but in different "moods."

This one is meant to be set during a snowless winter day, but it kind of looks dead and abandoned to me.

The standard version, without any real mood per se. Just as is, straight up.

Although I wouldn't call Old Night a cheery fantasy setting, I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to have at least one town that kind of gives off a homey and even pleasant vibe, so this is the version meant to do that; simply the standard one, but made brighter and more colorful.

An finally, the "fall colors" version, which is also meant to be more inviting than not.

I actually kind of like the last two probably the best; I want Bridgetown to be a more pleasant place the players are invested in protecting, and maybe even in setting up a homebase here that they can return to when not out doing other things.

Over time, I'll add a bit more to Bridgetown; some NPCs, rumors and other stuff to facilitate making it an interesting place.

Some images before going out of town. And a brief movie review.

Someone else's image; all I did was brighten it up, because ChatGPT tends to make stuff too dark and murky. I love this demon monster lady. I'd totally use this as a BBEG NPC.

The Highwayman from Darkest Dungeon made more realistic looking. 

An older image I had, but it had old fashioned explorers with pith helmets and stuff, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" kind of vibes. I asked ChatGPT to replace them with a D&D party, and this is what I got.

Another Revecca in her action girl pseudomage pose, but with her "vacation" outfit. Just for fun. I'm about done making Revecca variations, I think. 

A conceptopolis aboleth modified and placed in a murky underwater setting.

Three more variations of my Gloomwrought requests, although for the final one, I was kind of over the dark and foggy look and wanted a brighter variation.

Master of Vermin; one of my own Hero Forge images converted by ChatGPT to a supposedly "realistic" look. It still looks like a Hero Forge image to me, I'll admit.

Deep Ones. 

I found this on a reddit AI post, took the image, and had ChatGPT give him a different hat.

Another one of my favorite old generations.

Reading something horrible in the section of the library that he should stay out of.

Someone else's mindflayer, or illithid.

I also saw The Odyssey with my wife. I wasn't really very excited to see it, but she was, so I went. It wasn't as bad as I feared, which I kind of expected. It was even good, at least on a first pass. But it certainly wasn't great. And I think that the things that I didn't like are exactly what I expected to not like; the diversity stunt casting was annoying, and turning around and suggesting that their roles were small; little more than cameos, doesn't make that less so. The changes specifically to the character of Odysseus to make him more sad, serious, guilty, etc. was annoying. The themes Nolan added about war or whatever were unwelcome. The suggestion that Odysseus somehow "accidentally" caused the entire Bronze Age collapse was laughable. The historical Trojan War, if it happened, was at least a couple of generations before the Bronze Age collapse and the advent of the Sea Peoples, so to have Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus and Menelaus all talking about them was silly.

So, I dunno. I'm not actually a big Christopher Nolan fan. I think he's an over-rated film maker. I like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, and Inception quite a bit. I don't really care about the rest of his movies. Interstellar is his most over-rated movie, but y'know. He's over-rated in general. That said, this isn't his worst movie. I can't exactly recommend it, but I can't exactly tell you that you shouldn't see it either.

People love to talk about the Rotten Tomatoes audience score, but as it says in this video; Rotten Tomatoes isn't to be trusted. The Metacritic audience score is 5.2. That feels much more real.

Back to gaming; it looks like I am being asked to run at least some short term stuff, for this group that's losing it's GM. He's hopeful that he can continue the campaign online, at least in a month or two, but I'm skeptical, honestly, that that's going to work out. Either way, my big disconnect, of course, is that 5e is a combination of The Avengers and The Muppets, and I don't want my fantasy to resemble either. But this is a 5e group, and while, sure, I could say, "I'm running, you play what I'm running or don't play," I'm looking to be a bit more accommodating to that. Not quite sure how I'll do this, but I want a more traditional game, and I'll almost certainly offer up one of two options; a dark pirate campaign, with material drawn from the Freeport modules, or a Gothic horror campaign with material drawn (mostly) from the Carrion Crown adventure path.

Which I may need to pull ahead in my reading schedule...

Both Gothic horror and pirates in one image

Another run for the border

Yeah, I've got another trip to Mexico. This time I'll be gone for two work weeks; Monday travel through Saturday travel (couldn't get a flight on Friday, for some reason.) Sigh. I will have spent three of four weeks in Hermosillo when I get back. To say nothing of the three (IIRC) trips I already took earlier since this "crisis" started. I'm ready to retire. I wish I could afford it. I saw a youtube video months ago from a relatively recently retired guy, who stated that the real reason to retire is so you don't have to spend so much of your time with people that you don't actually want to hang out with. Man, that hit hard.

Anyway, I've still got the same books, because I didn't finish them, in my backpack. Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting, the original setting book written long before the Pathfinder game was, so it's just a 3.5 compatible book, Oriental Adventures (the 3e version) and Prisoner of the Horned Helmet by James Silke. If I don't finish at least the novel, and hopefully also one of those game books while on this trip, I'm going to be really disappointed with myself. I'm also going to, I think, pack up the 5e PHB. I've been meaning to read it, and it just sits in my other gaming backpack normally, never getting pulled out, looked at or read. Might as well add it to the physical gamebooks queue by adding it to the backpack.

I also loaded a few of my pdfs on my work laptop in a temp files folder. I don't really like having personal files on my work laptop, but in this case, it's the only reasonable way to bring them with me on the trip (I guess I could put them on my older tablet, but I'd rather have them on my laptop, honestly.) If I have time to sit at the desk in my hotel and read them in the evening, then at least I'll have the option to do so. I may not, and if not, I'll just delete them from my work laptop and read them at home after I get back, so no harm there. The books I loaded are Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, Ghostwalk, Ed Greenwood Presents: Elminster's Forgotten Realms, Underdark (4e) and Bluffside. Few of those were on my "immediate" to read list, and honestly I picked some of them because the file sizes were small enough that it would be easy to email it to myself to transfer from one machine to another. But all of them are ones that I kind of want to read or re-read. The Nentir Vale one I've actually read not that long ago (within the last couple of years anyway) but reading the Dessarin Valley description part of Princes of the Apocalypse reminded me of it strongly and I wanted to read it again. Ghostwalk wasn't really on my immediate list at all, but why not? It's been a really long time since I read that. I read a physical copy which I borrowed from a neighbor (I used to live two doors down from a fellow gamer) but my version is just a pdf. Ed Greenwood's take on the Realms is a 4e book, but I'm kind of curious to see what that's all about, and if it highlights how his original vision was different than what TSR and WotC ended up publishing. Underdark and Bluffside were on my list, although I probably wasn't going to get to them for a couple of months at the rate I'm going. If they jump ahead, that's OK.

The (New) Odyssey

A selection from the transcript of Critical Drinker's take on The Odyssey (by Christopher Nolan, not by Homer.)

The Odyssey was pretty much exactly what I expected from a late stage Christopher Nolan film. Technically impressive and commendably ambitious. Visually dark and bleak. Emotionally sterile and weirdly lacking in pace, urgency or satisfying payoffs. Populated by cold, distant characters that give nothing away and invite no empathy from the audience. Dialogue that's jarringly clunky and on the nose, often delivered by talented but miscast actors, and ultimately an ending that fails to capitalize on its incredible buildup. It's a movie about love, yearning, adventure, wonder, mysticism, and epic mythology woven together by a man who either can't or won't understand any of those things.

I haven't seen it yet, but I suspect that that's pretty much what I'd feel. I already understand that it's most likely that Odysseus in particular has been completely rewritten as a tired, guilt-ridden, depressed, PTSD veteran struggling with the after-effects of the Trojan War, which would be completely alien to ancient Heroic characters, and not particularly interested in pursuing getting home, which is completely alien to his character as written. Odysseus was curious, adventurous, bold, kind of cheeky, and Nolan has turned him into a sad-sack, broken old man, by all accounts.

I'm not surprised. Every Christopher Nolan movie tends to be that way, because those are Nolan's greatest weaknesses as a film-maker. He's big into high concept and bold ideas, but piss-poor on human emotion, empathy, character, and the day-to-day issues of craftsmanship that make a movie fun and interesting to watch. Like James Cameron's Avatar series, people go see it for the spectacle and because of the buzz around it, but they rarely tend to come away thinking that they saw something magnificent, and they tend to have already forgotten what they saw by the time they get back home and rarely think about it again. My wife wants to go see it this weekend, but I already am pretty confident that I know what I'll see. Eh, maybe with Nolan, they think about the big ideas afterwards. But not about the craftsmanship, the characters, or anything else. Just the big ideas. But the Odyssey doesn't give him that luxury. It's already been written. Thousands of years ago, even.

I also think Nolan is too in love with his own inserted symbolism and messaging, which isn't exactly woke, but also isn't at all the messaging and symbolism of, y'know, The Odyssey, which is one of the oldest works of fiction and at the bedrock of art and literature for Western Civilization. One of my sons, who is a bit of a history and literature buff (but who's also a film buff and likes Nolan more than I do) quite liked the movie, but part of what he liked was that it had a lot of literary and historical easter eggs that your typical "chud" viewer wouldn't even recognize. That may be kind of interesting the first time around, but isn't really a recipe, in my opinion, for a good or memorable movie. And, like I said, changing the nature of the titular character and the themes of the original work seems like a major mistake to me. Although it's not a great movie, Troy has been seen in a much better light lately because of it. 

To be fair, while I also didn't love Troy, I did like it. It's pretty cool. 

A few AI image modifications

A few modified AI images, including some Realm of Files modifications—probably the last ones I'm interested in making, a slight modification to "Revecca on vacation" and a slight modification of my half-orc one-shot character, originally based on a Hero Forge model I made of an Old Night orc character PC.

Mostly just got rid of her dumb arm tattoo. If I'd noticed that at first, I'd have done it right away, but I didn't notice it until later. I think it modified her hair slightly though.

Darker Five O'clock shadow on both his face and head, mostly.

Lots of ravens. Too many. But also changed the tower

A few minor changes. The dock seems to just do down into the water in this image, but I was running out of images to replace it with.

One shot

Revecca on vacation, which is what I'm cheekily calling this, even though it's really Revecca cosplaying as somewhere between Aladdin and Jasmine from the Disney movie. As I said with the earlier version, the image came from someone else, but since the face looked almost exactly the same as my Revecca, I thought I'd adopt it, load it and ask for longer hair. I should have also asked for the removal of the arm tattoo, but I forgot. Maybe I can still do that today before I run out of images. Anyway, this is just for fun; no big deal. 

This, on the other hand, is a conversion of one of my old Hero Forge images to AI, done for a one-shot character that I played last night. I imaged him as kind of a late 60s or early 70s Clint Eastwood character; a combination of Dirty Harry and The Man With No Name. In reality, my voice probably sounded more like the recentish interpretation of Batman. I created him as a half-orc barbarian (and come to think of it, I never even thought to rage...) but I couldn't help thinking about how I'd rather have had him be a Pathfinder character class like Slayer or even the Freebooter focused on class abilities from the old Assassin class. Although I'd probably have changed his weapon to a longsword or even rapier if the latter. Or maybe a saw-toothed scimitar. 

OSR folks often talk about how it's really hard to die in 5e, but in this 5e one shot (admittedly, only 2nd level, but still) we had one of three characters die outright and we were only a one or two unlucky rolls away from a TPK. That doesn't mean that I like 5e; I still don't love it, but it's not really exactly what everyone says that it is either, especially at lower level. It was a pretty fun game. I kind of wish I could play this character again, but I doubt that I will. 

I also found out that this other big group, which I've run a little bit for, but am mostly a fringe associate of, is losing their DM. He's moving out of state, and apparently rather rapidly. So, there may—and in fact almost certainly will be—some significant changes in our gaming group. I think the group is thinking that they can keep their current campaign going online with the current GM running it online for them. And maybe they can. They started during the covid lockdowns online, after all. However, there are a lot of reasons why I don't think this will be as successful as they think it will be 

• The DM is moving two time zones to the west. 7:30 PM start time on a weeknight might be great for people here in the Carolinas, but someone in the Rockies would have to start at 5:30, which is tricky. Or, if they use his schedule, they have to run until very late. If they split the difference, it might not be a very feasible spot for anyone.
• Moving is complicated. At a bare minimum, there's going to be a short term miss while he's too busy moving to run. He's starting a new job. Chances are that even if everything works well, the frequency of play will drop, which may leave folks with an appetite for more gaming than they're able to get.
• Just because they did online before doesn't mean that they'll want to again. They've been playing normally for years now. Downgrading to online just may not be satisfying enough to keep it going.

One of the players, who knows that I've DMed before, and even has recruited me to run some one-shots, made an offhand comment about asking me to pick up his campaign and finish it for them. I didn't say so at the time, but I was very skeptical about this. The more I thought about it, the more sure that I can't do it, or at least am not willing to.

• Their campaign is one of the 5e ones about the Dungeon of the Mad Mage, which is a dungeon-crawling game. I have no interest in running a dungeon-crawl.
• They're at 10th level, which is already higher than I like, and they expect to go all the way to 20. I have no interest in running a 10-20 level game.
• The DM has homebrewed a lot of stuff around the written campaign. I obviously have no idea what any of it is, but I doubt that it's the kind of stuff that I would have any interest in. It sounds like a big portion of it is a Harry Potter-esque magical boarding school. No thanks.
• The characters are obviously halfway through their trajectory, but I don't know jack squat about them.
• The group is, I hear, terrible about making decisions, and frequently takes half an hour to get through a single round of combat. Part of this is the cumbersome nature of 5e combat, the cumbersome nature of higher level combat, but part of it is the lack of engagement, for whatever reason, of the players. 
• The tone and whatnot of the campaign doesn't sound like anything that I'm interested in.

No, if I end up running something for this group, it'll be, as probably expected:

• A low level campaign that starts at level 1 and goes to maybe level 6-7 before encountering a planned ending.
• A darker themed campaign, where the silliness comes from the absurd actions of the players, not from silly whimsy built in before it even starts. As near as I can tell, these group is kind of the Muppets with bird people, dragon people, and all kinds of other weird races and classes built in. That's a hard thing for me to grapple with, honestly.
• Probably not closely based at all on anything written by WotC, although a very loosely adapted Carrion Crown Adventure Path (CULT OF UNDEATH), a very loosely adapted Freeport trilogy+ (CURSE OF THE CORSAIR COAST) or a sorta Hangover-inspired game (MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTES—or in a pinch, of some other location maybe) are the pitches that I'll probably make to them. 

Why not something based on DARKNESS IN THE HILL COUNTRY adapted to 5e? After all, that's the most developed, right? Yeah... but I don't want to. I want to preserve that one for my own game, not adapt it hodge-podge to 5e.

In addition, I'm going to have a Session Double Zero (00) before the Season 0 (which I think is a necessity in complicated games like anything based on d20, inluding 5e) where I do a character funnel. They won't be obligated to convert any of their funnel characters into PCs, but they will have the option to, plus it will foreshadow stuff in game. I guess it's like a twist on my "kill some randos who look like the Scooby gang" before introducing the PCs gambit. Plus, it'll be a fun exercise (I think) in its own right. Honestly, though, it's entirely possible that some of the people in this group will not be a good fit for the kind of game that I could successfully run. I can't just run anything, at least not happily or very successfully, and I don't want to try. I've gotten old, and I've got my way of running; any game that doesn't fit that better be a one-shor or super short mini-campaign before I get frustrated with it. 

Ideally, it wouldn't be 5e at all, but I think that that ship has sailed. Anyway, if some of them are not a good fit for my game, that's no big deal. It's a big group; I honestly don't think I'd mind shedding a few if they're going to be not really on board. We can do something else with them some other time. Ideally, I'd like to have two or three concurrent campaigns, because our frequency of play isn't great anyway.

Some AI image dumps (Revecca and Gloomwrought)

Just a few image dumps.

First, some new concepts for Revecca von Lechfeld, one of my favorite NPCs, and one that I think has a big role as an almost pseudo-PC. Or rather, I see her as a romantic interest for a PC, whether by PC I mean an actual player, or just a protagonist character.

Revecca is also kind of the iconic pseudomage a little bit later in her career, after no longer wanting to be subject to being the helpless damsel in distress. Here's some images of her sneaking around in the black market of magical items, and her also using some.

Here's an image from Ben Wooten that I've always liked. I believe it's from the 4e Shadowfell book.

For the heckuvit, I thought it'd be fun to see if I described the image what I would get from ChatGPT. Here's my first pass.

I actually really quite like it. But I decided to ask it to swap out the clock tower for something more Medieval (a wizard's tower) and add some ravens. For some reason, it completely redrew everything from a new angle. Not at all what I asked for. Fine result, but not what I wanted. When I called it out, I got the "you're right, I totally did something that you didn't even ask for. Ask for it this way next time instead. Also, you're out of image generations now." If ChatGPT were a person, it's behavior would be super toxic.

I also find it curious that this composition is, however, much more similar to the Wooten picture. 

I also did another fork where I deliberately asked for a different angle, a different kind of ship, and a lighthouse instead of a clocktower. Probably as a nod to Freeport.

One with and without the ravens. Some of the ravens are still out of scale; the gigantic one on top of the lighthouse is bigger than a large eagle.

Before I looked at the Ben Wooten image again, I had forgotten the greenish tinge of the lanterns and the ravens both, so I have some earlier drafts that have neither. My first draft didn't even get the fog right; it was more dark clouds in the sky rather than fog over the scene.

Now, it wasn't really my intention to try and recreate the image; if I wanted to do that, I'd just have uploaded it and asked ChatGPT to make it photorealistic. What I wanted was additional exploration of the same theme. So even the ones where I don't have all of the details right, like the greenish lanterns or the ravens; who cares? I'm very happy with all of these results.

From my old read-through of Manual of the Planes when I got it new (before 3.5 even came out) the Plane of Shadow was always my favorite of the alternate planes, and I saw lots of potential in the concept. If anything, 4e's Shadowfell book made it even better, adding the city of Gloomwrought to it, instead of just making it an Upside-Down or tel'aran'rhiod reflection of the regular world, but kind of a weird destination in its own right. My own Realm of Shadows plays on this idea considerably, although I'll be honest; I haven't quite figured out what to do with it yet other than a place where some of the Heresiarchs hide from each other and plot. Jairan Neferirkare is explicitly there, and in the final act of Darkness in the Hil Country, the PCs could even go face her there, although I don't honestly recommend it. They'll be unlikely to be successful at defeating her. So I still need some additional reasons and rationale to explore the Realm of Shadows, and maybe even some more development of it. I'll create a REALMS OF SHADOWS tag in part to remind me to do that when I have some time and mental energy for it.

Which I do not have today or probably even this week. I just got back late last night from an unexpected and unplanned work trip to Mexico, which after I arrived I had to change the schedule of and stay through the weekend. Before I even got anywhere close to getting back home, my white collar sweat shop boss was already "pushing" me on other work unrelated to my trip, as if I hadn't been completely occupied with the reason I was there the entire time I was there, including both days of the weekend. What a toxic environment this has become the last few months. I pushed back and took a sick day; not only am I exhausted from all of the travel and not being able to turn off for the weekend, but I think I picked something up in Mexico. I'm ignoring my work phone today and not turning on my laptop. It's just insane. 

But I did get another unexpected message from someone in my D&D group. Apparently there's demand once again for a one-shot for a portion of the other group that was full so I couldn't join it. As cool as that sounds, I'm not sure that I've got a one-shot in me with practically no notice. They want to play tonight. I'd like to do it, but I find the whole situation a little bit of a whiskey-tango-foxtrot, honestly, and I'm not 100% sure that it's feasible. On top of that tonight, my wife scheduled something for us tomorrow night while I was gone, and Friday night. All things that I should do and want to do... but sometimes when I'm just exhausted, mentally and emotionally if not always necessarily physically, it's hard to get excited about.

Other personal stresses and frustrations are mounting as well, on top of professional ones. This really, really has not been my year so far. Once again, if some independently wealthy patron or donor would like to fund both my current and future lifestyle, i.e., pay me like this is my job and  retirement, to make world-building and RPG content, outdoor content in the West, and maybe occasionally asides in other hobbies, with just a hint of social and political commentary on the side, I'd blog three times a week, have at least one YouTube video every week, and keep going into perpetuity until old age and/or senility makes it impossible to continue. If you're sitting on a multimillion dollar trust fund that can fund me professionally as a patron, you know how to reach me! Well, actually maybe you don't, because I'm fairly private online. But this blog and my YouTube stuff is part of my google account, and I use my Gmail all the time. How hard can it be?

One more image. This was generated by someone else entirely, but it looks like the same girl that I used as my model, so hey, it's Revecca again! Dressed in pseudo-Arabian Night's like gear, kind of like Princess Jasmine if she were undercover as Aladdin's "Street Rat Version" partner. Old Night doesn't really have a Middle East analog per se, but this could pass muster perhaps in one of the Baix Pallars cities, which are really more Spanish pirates than Middle East, but y'know. Kinda sorta close enough. Plus, it's a pretty cool study of the character in a different kind of look. Only minor quibble is that her hair is too short. I like long hair on girls. It looks feminine.