Grrl Power #1240 – Puzzle a possessor
Welp, Sydney’s mind has gotten bored with the situation. Really, that’s no surprise, seeing as how they stuck her in a light beige room. Would it kill them to maybe print a nice landscape on the canvas? Sure, if someone is having a proper looney-tunes freakout, you probably want to minimize their stimulation. It would be foolish to stick someone having hallucinations in a room where one wall is a 10×10 foot print of van Gogh’s self portrait, another wall is a high-res picture of a nebula, another is a silhouetted forest, another is a giant M.C. Escher, the floor is a print of a photo taken of the ground from the top of the Eiffel tower, and the ceiling is one huge eye. That would not be therapeutic.
By the way, anyone think it’s weird that it’s “Looney Tunes” and not “Looney Toons?” They were cartoons not a band. So why was it “Tiny Toons” and not “Tiny Tunes?”
Anyway. In Sydney’s head, and mine too, admittedly, there’s a sort of height hierarchy, where races are clumped together based on size category. The problem is it kind of breaks down beyond a few examples unless you really go digging around in extensive monster manuals. Halfling to human to giant is an easy matchup, but what comes next in the Kobold to Lizardman chain? Are there 9 foot tall mostly anthropomorphized dragons out there? Probably, but you probably have to look in Monster Manual 8 to find them. And then there’s the problem of gnomes and dwarves. Why is is halfling to human and not dwarf or gnome to human? Or maybe it goes halfling -> human -> hill giant, and dwarf -> human – > stone giant? It could be a multi-dimensional chart.
Or it could just be that some races are shorter than others, and myself and Sydney have spent entirely too much time thinking about it.
For the record I hugely prefer the mini-lizardman version of kobolds. They’re so cute.
(Not my art, clearly. First pic is by Sorc at FurAffinity, who seems to like lizard Kobolds more than me. Second one is Nisnow from reddit.)
It amuses me that if you look up hobgoblin on the DnD Wiki, each edition of the game has them becoming better and better looking. Like the first edition one looks like some Mongolian Oni, and evolves through different stages of demon gorilla until the 5th edition where they look like cool, red lion men. Baldur’s Gate 3 has pretty amazing artwork and 3D design, but the first time I met a hobgoblin in that game, I was like, why isn’t this handsome race available for character creation? They look like Bruce Campbell with a slightly shorter, wider, downward pointing nose. I wanna play as one of those! Or I would if I hadn’t been playing a badass looking gold fucking dragon guy. Though I will say, as cool as he looked, the player avatar’s primary function is being surprised in the reverse angle shot when a big monster is revealing itself in a dialog/cut scene, so my awesome dragon guy was like (;ʘöʘ) half the time I was looking at him.
The new vote incentive is up! This is a bit of a weird one as it’s a character that hasn’t appeared in the comic.
It’s my Ifrit Pathfinder 1e monk, Fray! Ifrits don’t really make great monks in Pathfinder, as player characters they get a +2 to Dex and Cha, but -2 to Wis. For monks, Dex is good, Cha is largely irrelevant, but Wis is important as it can add to your AC and also has something to do with Ki points I think. But I didn’t care. I wanted a character with dark blue/gray skin and glowing orange hair, so that’s what I picked. (I don’t think Ifrit even really have dark skin, so maybe she’s 1/4 Drow? Don’t care. I think she looks cool.) Will she show up in the comic? I mean… maybe? Probably in a Dabbler flashback, but who knows?
As usual, Patreon has her in delicto flagrante.
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There are some brains you might not want to live in or be roommates with!
I get it. Sydney’s embracing her insanity to show her little hitchhiker exactly WHAT kind of accommodations she’s working with here. She’s going to be BEGGING to be removed, since Syd likely hasn’t been able to have her meds!
If only. I think we’re just seeing Sydney being Sydney.
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What do you mean insanity? I am SO there for Sydney & derailing the ‘hostage negotiations’ with gaming rules neepery! I want to be there, contributing to the chaos!
That’s one of my two theories.
The second theory is that it’s more a general strategy of smack-talk to throw baddies off their game. (Yeah, you’re not smack-talking about THEM in this case, but the disrespect is real.)
If it’s the former, I think the next step is to tell Lapha “Actually, this is what counts as normal for Sydney. Check her memories for ALL the weird conversations she’s had if you don’t believe me.” Cue memory check and an accompanying San check for Lapha.
I give Lapha 30 minutes until she is BEGGING to be taken out once the meds run out.
I’m pretty sure they already have.
And there it is, Sydney’s lack of meds has kicked in and both Max and Dabs and feeding into it. Lapha is already getting tired of it, once Sydney is amped up enough they will leave her alone to suffer the randomness of Sydney’s thoughts until she begs to leave, which won’t take long. She’s already whining “pay attention to me!” no, not really, you’re just dumb.
Given the kitchen-sink setting, all these species probably exist in-universe. So there’s going to be actual answers to be found.
And since in the Grrlpowerverse D&D was probably inspired by real species anyway, it makes sense to adopt the real answers back into their D&D, in order to offend the least amount of alien gamers…
Given the totally haphazard way folklore was included in D&D in this universe, I’d wager that Gary and Dave half-assed it just as much in the Grrlverse.
In that case, throw away the D&D Monster Manual and read some Hans Christian Anderson. If the creatures are real, they are older than D&D and have been well known of and described in the old fairy tales. Goblins are a type of Elves, Hobgoblins are Kitchen Goblins, other types of Goblin are Kobold, Schrat, Mar, Redcap, Kabauter, Gnome….
I choose to believe, however briefly it may be, that the actual plan is to chat with Sydney until the villain is so sick of this nonsense she willingly surrenders and leaves Sidney’s body.
well the next several months of the authors life will get better has he reuses the same images with new text.
Loony Tunes = by in the 1930s with the advent of ‘sound’ in movies, and Disney’s success of Mortimer (Micky),. they were adding “shorts” at the start to “sync up the sound reel.” the shorts were so popular that they started to add time and plot,. to where they became their own.. later they became Merry Melodies, but went back to Loony Tunes
modern Tiny Toons, got the name “so” they didn’t have to explain to the kids.
But, hobgoblins are goblins who have been robbed, or in other words, hobgoblins are the results of a castrated goblin.
“Yeah, you *better* run! Go find a name that’s not just another creature’s name plus ‘hob’!”
~Community, “Advanced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons”
yes i prefer the kobold being mini-lizards draconics not dog people. one version i’ve seen tries to say that Cobolds are the dog ones and Kobolds are the lizard ones.
The funniest thing is that cobolds/kobolds were originally little poison gnome fairies that lived in mineshafts. Absolutely humanoid aside from their size.
Maybe gnomes aren’t the halflings of humans; maybe gnomes are the halflings of elves.
Sydney: You know what? I’m kinda liking these eyes. I think I’ll keep ‘em!
Lapha: What? You can’t, there a side effect of Aetholith possession. They go when I go!
Syd: Nope! Keeping them, ditching you!
Lapha: You… you make no sense! I am a threat to you! Fear me! Capitulate to my demands!
S: Bitch, I’m a superhero! I fear nothing!
L: That… CAN’T be true! What about *rifles thru memories* Icky Bugs?
S: *twitches* WHERE? I mean, those are just gross, not scary!
L: *more rifling* ninjas!
S: *hisses* They’re everywhere! *glares about furtively* BUT. Archon has Good Ninjas, so not scary!
L: But what about… DEATH??
S: *pfft* Been there, done that, got the cheevo!
L: *checks memories* Dammit!
“playing a badass looking, gold fucking, dragon guy” sounds like a plot setting for some BDSM D&D game :D
Wait, wait, wait. Just to make sure I’m reading this right, is your dragon guy a gold dragon, or is he literally fucking gold? Which I’m assuming is painful.
You know how Scrooge McDuck would go swimming through his money? It’s kinda like that.
You are NEVER getting this mental image out of your head again!
he could swim in the gold because most of it was liquid assets
ok, I’m liking this version of golden handcuffs more…
Hob is a diminutive – like a hobnail is a very short nail (for the sole of a boot). So a hobgoblin should be SMALLER than a goblin. I don’t know why we’ve taken to making them extra large goblins.
And Goblin and Kobold are the same word (Gobelin is Latin for the Greek word Kobold).
They’re carryovers from the legends where goblins, elves, etc. do chores in exchange for the occasional bowl of milk. Hobgoblins were a variation of cobbler spirit who make shoes.
My favorite version of a hobgoblin representation is the ‘yaga-yaga’ doll from Karen Black’s ‘Trilogy of Terror’: tiny, fast, & vicious.
Considering half-elves and half-orcs, half-lings are definitely the mix of humans with a race called lings. Which are probably very small beings, akin to pixies. They like to raid pantries and are great musicians, but mostly keep to themselves, which is why you don’t see them around.
Thing is, why does everyone assume the ‘half’ is automagically ‘hyu-mon’?
In YAFGC, you had a half-Satyr, whose parents were an elf and a satyr (his half-elf brother had the hyu-mon parent)
Maybe the assumption is that the human parentage doesn’t contribute anything of value to the offspring ;) Like being called “half a man”. They’re not a full anything, just half of whatever race the other parent is.
Yeah, but hyu-mon isn’t even always part of the package
Plenty of half-elves whose other parent was an orc
Because usually the story is being told from the perspective of humans (since players are human) so the default for ‘half-‘ is half-human.
I think most of those terms are contextual and pejorative, rather than objective, disinterested labels. If someone wanted to classify them neutrally, they’d probably incorporate the races of both parents. In most cases, however, half-breeds are outcasts, not really accepted by either race, and considered tainted by their mixed heritage. And the same term can be disparaging either way: half-orc, coming from an orc, might suggest that they’re less than a full orc, while coming from a human or an elf might carry the tone of being lesser on account of them being part orc.
Yeah, the “half-x” is used because the “x” is the dominant indicator, so slightly more of “x” (at least physically and visually) than the other parent
Standard in D&D is that the half-elves and half-orcs are explicitly human crosses.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Hobgoblins are orc cooks. It says so right in the name HOB which is British fore STOVE
You signed on for this when you planted yourself on Sydney’s head, Lappie.
Welcome to your new life as an amusing anecdote.
As for the Looney Tunes question, it is because the original was very focused on music for the basis of the toons.
Yeah, it was a parody of the “Merrie Melodies” cartoons.
It’s of an era with Disney’s Silly Symphony shorts, the ones like the famous skeleton dance animation.
Yup, time to feed the ADD/ADHD. Let the geeky/nerdy tangents go WILD. Bring Leon in and some others and take shifts around the clock and just let it go full bore. She will beg to be removed from the insanity in 24-48 hours.
“one wall is a 10×10 foot print of van Gogh’s self portrait, another wall is a high-res picture of a nebula, another is a silhouetted forest, another is a giant M.C. Escher, the floor is a print of a photo taken of the ground from the top of the Eiffel tower, and the ceiling is one huge eye. ”
I may have to do tht to my mancave.
MEDS WORE OFF! ‘ERE WE GO! ‘ERE WE GO! WAAAAGGGGHHH!
Are you ready for an E-ticket thrill-ride, Lapha? :3
Wikipedia tells me that Looney Tunes was a play on Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies.
Lapha remember that Fel ship that was destroyed leading to your interest in super human procurement? That was a novelty and you are not even close to being a warship.
Dabbler picks up some energy when Maxima plays with her huh?
@DaveB, The kobold on the right is Mishon, done by Nisnow
The one on the left is Ixen the rock merchant by Sorc.
“but what comes next in the Kobold to Lizardman chain? Are there 9 foot tall mostly anthropomorphized dragons out there?….” I’ll ask my buddy’s overly large Dragonkin Druid, the next time we play.
I’m not sure what I’m amused by more. Sydney’s ADHD fueled diversion or Dave’s perfectly normal, completely coherent blog post that I agree with.
I guess this is how they’re going to solve the problem then. Just wind her up until she angrily agrees to return to “her” body in order to be spared any further indignity.
(Using D&D as the basis here.)
Gnomes are more like the halflings of elves, and there are D&D-derived settings and games out there that do lean into this.
Traditionally, orcs are not goblinoids; the sequence there is goblins-hobgoblins-bugbears.
There are no halflings to orcs because orcs are the halflings to ogres, who are the halflings to hill giants.
I’d put kobolds as the halflings to dragonborn (as more explicitly draconic) rather than lizardmen.
Also grungs are halflings to bullywugs.
I’d probably put dwarves as halflings to goliaths who are halflings to stone giants.
Artists appear to be:
Nisnow
TWITTER: twitter.com/phantom_nisnow
INSTAGRAM instagram.com/phantom_nisnow
And Sorc: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/31017902/
I think? You’re right, super cute!
Yeah, you got them. Though the second was a commission, so I’m not sure if it’s the artist or the Patron you’d credit?
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/dczk1a/oc_art_mishon_the_kobold_commission_for_ukriten85/
Psychiatric beige is a thing. A lot of time and effort goes into picking the colors on a psychiatric ward. You end up with a lot of off-whites and light pastel colors. There is an exception. Back in the late 80’s or early 90’s there was some research that indicated that Pepto-Bismol pink was the most calming color. In actual practice, no. Just no. A lot of effort goes into keeping things from looking grubby. The time-out/seclusion rooms were padded with the same materials that are used for tumbling mats. It was even that same shade of blue. While there is always an exception that tests the rule, most of the psychotic people I dealt with were more caught up in their internal stimuli that what was visually going on around them. Sound was generally a much bigger problem. Some folks needed a quiet environment while others needed a little something to focus on other than the voices. There is a reason loud sounds are used in hostage/torture situations.
Dave, Dave, Dave… the “Looney Tunes” question shows your lack of age!
They’re called Looney TUNES because they were always accompanied with some of the best classical music of all time. (Slick way of getting kids to appreciate the stuff, honestly.) But with “Tiny Toons,” it wasn’t the *music* that was shrunk, it was literally the cartoon characters, hence Tiny TOONS.
(Did I just earn my first Geezer point? I think I did!)
And then there are Pathfinder goblins, which are the halflings of hot-air balloons. (Giant heads and frequently on fire.)
I love that Sydney would actually think to weaponize her immaturity (or juvenile antics, if that sounded too harsh.)
You are assuming Sydney is doing this deliberately and intentionally
Runequest had a clear path of lizard people to dragons through reincarnation. And a Gloranthan Dragon was something to be seen. Entire mountain ranges were made of their spines as they slept. I think even Godzilla would tread lightly around one. So Kobold, something, Lizardman, One of either of the DC or Marvel lizard hybrids, hyper intelligent raptor, 2000 years of sleep, dragon.
Oh, rare sighting of a fellow Gloranthian !
Yeah indeed, the “Pass of the Dragon”, an 8 kilometers long and 3 kilometers wide chasm in a mountain range was made when the SMALLEST know dragon woke up from his millenia-long nap and flew elsewere.
The whole eastern “continent” of the Thousands Isles, roughly triple the size of the Europe-Asia landmass, is rumoured to be dirt and rock accumulated on the tip of one scale each of a sleeping Dragon somewhere deep at the bottom of the sea.
Nobody really “sees” Dragons in RuneQuest / Glorantha, in the starter adventure of the second edition, the player find themselves deep in a cave network that opens up to a grotto roughly the depth of the Grand Canyon, and a WHOLE WALL of the thing slowly opens to reveal ONE EYE of a Dragon, that seems the judge the characters before closing again.
The only entry in the Bestiary about Dragons, besides the whole line of evolution of the “dragonkin” (forgot the name in english) is about the MANIFESTED DREAMS of real Dragons, and even those are twice larger than Smaug and usually much more destructive …
All that in a setting where the actual MOON is a sentient entity !
They really went totally overboard with gigantism in that setting …
Last note, Glorantha as a setting and an “indie” RPG was actually released two years before the first version of Chainmail (precursor to D&D by Gygax) was photocopied and distributed for free on an university campus so that people could play “mock battles” with lead/pewter miniatures instead of huge honking wargames on ginormous paper maps with several pounds of cardboard tokens.
Development of Glorantha started in the mid-60s by Greg Stafford as a way to deepen his thoughts on mythology
The first game released was White Bear and Red Moon, a board game, in 75
1st ed Runequest came out in 78
So the setting predates D&D but the RPG is after it
We already know Lapha doesn´t have 100% control over Sydney brain and it came as a surprise to her and it most likely because of her adhd so what makes her so sure she can follow throught with her threat of mind wipeing when she doesn´t have proof that she can
Is the plan to overwhelm her with trivial data so she HAS to leave?
This is your new life now Lapha… stop screaming.
Three words: Cute Monster Girl.
We don’t judge, Dave. Your dragon guy can have his gold fetish. It seems uncomfortable, but I suppose dragonborn physiology makes things more durable down there.
“TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!”
“No.” *resumes inane & distracting chatter*
I love the fact that Max trusts her people enough enough to go along with spontaneous and seemingly inane nonsense.
I think Sydney also remembers how much she effected those “Crimson hood” guys and just gave Max the idea, we will see… When have we seen Max act silly like that while on duty? Dabbler is a softer version of Sydney so it’s less of an effort for her.
Definitely, Max should be enough of a nerd to be up to speed with D&D 3rd edition lore. Assuming the Dragon connection to kolbolds doesn’t predate that.