Interfering With the Natural Order Since [Redacted]

Took my final-final exam for my AS in Accounting yesterday (unless of course I flunked it, which is not quite as unlikely as I'd like) and am working Craigslist into my daily routine. Intending to send out fleets of resumes, or perhaps solitary boats depending on how many fall into the Experience Paradox.

In recent weeks, finally started playing the Neverwinter Nights 2 package I got in a Steam sale. Nearing endgame of Storm of Zehir. Played a little bit of the original campaign with a half-drow sorcerer, then started over with a full-drow favored soul. Recently learned that the half-drow option was introduced in the expansion, which explains why now I'm finally getting dialogue like "AAAHHH DROW oh wait it's just you." I don't know how long I'll be chugging along on that. Judging from spoilers, the endings of both the original and Mask of the Betrayer do not sound like ones I'd be particularly eager to see.

In somewhat related news: paged through old debate between posts of a Let's Play on the ethics of the Wall of the Faithless. One particular poster kept insisting that Realmsian atheists were idiots who deserved to dissipate in agony and Super Overgod Ao made the rules so you're not allowed to say the rules are rubbish. Then it came out that they're one of those religious types who thinks about the same thing of real life atheists. Yeah, well, screw you too.

A bunch of pre-chapter quotes I've devised for Remembered Realms; you may notice a lot of them have the same subject. Might as well put them out here, since I doubt I can use them all in any case.

( Sadly, we lack your impressive martial history. In keeping with our faith, we have resorted to stealing some. )

Title:: Officer Helm
Fandom: Forgotten Realms
Summary: Cyric, Iyachtu Xvim, Selvetarm, and Vhaeraun air their Issues.

Notes and Warnings: This is a songfic of West Side Story's "Officer Krupke" that I wrote a few years back. It's a scriptfic as well, so I didn't want to risk posting it on fanfiction.net. Instead I put it on a webhost which has since gone down. I'm reposting it with a couple tweaks. Hope someone enjoys!

( Dear kindly Tyr, your Honor/My parents treat me rough/With all their divine power/They won't give me a puff )

Title: Walls and Woes
Fandom: Forgotten Realms
Rating: PG
Word Count:~1200
Summary: In a world where evil is good and lawful is chaotic, Jergal is a mooch and Kelemvor Lyonsbane does what he wants.

Notes and Warnings: Part of the bizarro-verse I hope to write more in. Game-stats wise, Kelemvor and Jergal are Chaotic Neutral, Cyric is Lawful Good, Mystra is Neutral Evil, and Shar is Neutral Good (as was Myrkul).

Contains shameless irreverence and playing fast-and-loose with cosmology.

( What is that wall doing here, anyway? )

... I have been expending way too much thought (thought that would probably be better spent on continuing the original thing) on a Remembered Realms AU-off-AU wherein all the reincarnated gods are genderswapped (Male Luthic who by their own religious tradition is suddenly "above" the rest of the orc pantheon! Female Bane fighting with his own sexism! Male Eilistraee taking up Assimilationism in frustration! Female Selvetarm thinking it's pretty great to be a girl!). I guess there's potential for fiddling round with questions of gender roles and coding and such, but I suspect the real reason is I get to visualize rampant cross-dressing.

Probably rehashed and stale by now, but eh.

( Spoilers )

ETA: Also, they manageed to impugn Shevarash's honor in passing. I mean, he was bad enough already, but Eilistraeens were the one group of drow he was not supposed to kill. Unreliable narrator, sure, but "unreliable narrator" didn't help with Wendonai Does Ilythiir.

Because I was feeling nostalgic (see the little icon?) and just can't accept death. That garden ornament about dragging your loved one back from heaven that Elaine Cunningham thought was so creepy? I'd snap it up.

More than a year ago, while working on my wannabe Realms magnum opus/divine soap opera, I did character sketches of a dozen various folk I intended to use. That fizzled, and now I busy myself reusing their names in the Remembered Realms (Shardax the snarky Vhaeraunite spy is now Shardax the bereaved boyfriend of an Elaith Craulnober wannabe) and working them into the history and the flavor quotes.

Chaszyrd Thenduk is the latter case, and right now he gets a line at the start of Tarlyn's next chapter. Have his introduction from my old opus, tweaked slightly, in which the Selvetargtlin of Eryndlyn brainstorm new sacrificial rituals in the aftermath of Selvetarm telling Lolth to stuff it.

( Selvetarm smiles on a death in battle against overwhelming odds, not a death in battle against a chit of a faerie priest waving a knife. )

Now in Remembered Realms his god's been offed, as per the book that Jossed my late lamented opus, but Chaszyrd lives on under the radar another couple hundred years, gets to be city "Weapons Master" after a number of bloody riots once Lolth's apparently followed suit, and goes on to have to an unreasonably long life, during which he produces a bunch of quotables.

Tsabrak in Remembered Realms timeline, I think, probably didn't live to see 1376.

Had time to kill on a cross-country flight recently, so I sketched myself up a Kiira and now I'm Paint.NETing it and inflicting it on the world. Cut for size.

( My friends say I should act my age/What's my age again? )

Incidentally, Thirdborn Sun (Son in the original Undercommon, pun inserted in translation*) is a rock band, based in Eryndlyn and big on the random religious symbolism. (Cue Veldrin: "Do you even know what that means?" Well, he could figure out what the lyrics are actually saying, but he usually doesn't care)

*Incidentally-incidentally, I'm aware of a school of thought that thinks English-based puns in fantasy worlds are twee, with possible reason. All I can say is if a published Realms writer can have their character make cracks about "trends of tren" then I feel I can proceed somewhat at will.

Pointless tidbit of the day: When I was a kid and scouting out information for my school-assigned autobiography, my parents told me, among other things, that I was born later than scheduled (by less than a week, as it turned out, so not medically late) and joked it was because I didn't want to be a Halloween baby. Perhaps I was a psychic fetus and didn't want to set off any future delusions.

... as it is, I have to settle for the fifth of November.

(Can you spot the Death Note trivia semi-relevance? Huh? Huh?)

(ETA: And I thought of myself as a Pisces ever since I knew what they were. I kept nodding along with the descriptions of them in the astrology books, even the less flattering ones. When I finally did up my own star chart I was bitterly disappointed)

Now for a couple of crackdrabbles of "Remembered Realms meets selected bits of Death Note," to try and get it out of my system (though introductory psych tells me that venting, for example violence, makes it worse. Eh, anyway). Quasi-spoilers.

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( Kiira and Veldrin pinch-hit for L and Light, circa episode 12 )

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( Double drabble featuring Red Knight incarnation versus Cyricarnation, who in the regular 'verse are coming soon (for a given definition of soon) to a fanfic near you. Language )

Some guy's been posting his take on various Realmsian gods on the Wizards board. Apparently Cyric = Loki and Hoar = Pyramid Head.