(here’s my artblog btw)

Keeping rats has been tremendously rewarding, and I don’t regret it one bit, but the emotional burnout from their short lifespans means I’ll be taking a break from it for a good long while after Nicodemus passes.

In our original-setting, ‘Godbound-in-system-only’ campaign, my character, Epsilon-Beta-Delta-Beta (who we will call Deeb for the sake of this anecdote) is a slimy little weasel whose Words (the concepts of reality he has relative divine command of) are Knowledge, Deception, Shapeshifting and Hunger. He generally kind of sucks at direct confrontation and gets most of his wins by Tricking People. Tonight our pantheon was investigating a weird giant soul-eating tree that some rivals of ours have been growing out of the ruins of what was once Seattle, but one of their number had created a giant mechanical eye that sees through all acts of Deceit specifically in an effort to counter Deeb and his ability to sneak into places easily, foiling easy access to the inside of said giant tree.

However, another of their number is a bored god-tyrant called No-Name, master of the Words of Might and Command, who perked up immediately upon our arrival because we were new, interesting people to do shit with. And somehow, it came up that one mortal thing he’d always wanted to try was 'golf’. Deeb immediately was like. That’s a REALLY good idea. We should ALL play golf. You know what you should do? You should go tell your friend with the cool mechanical eye to come play golf with us too. No Name says no, he’s not sure, she’s pretty standoffish. Deeb assures him that’s fine because (cosmic lie) “it’s an important part of golf to play with at least one person nobody likes very much so that you can all have a collective enemy.” No-Name goes and does that, and manages to Command her into agreeing to play golf with us, but she’s canny enough to insist that she’ll just play golf from up at her vantage point, and No-Name doesn’t know enough about golf to argue. So strategy number one doesn’t work. Time to improvise.

No Name comes back and is like “she’s going to play from up in the tree” and Deeb is like “Ok. Fine. Whatever. Anyway you’re a man of culture who knows what golf is, and so am I, so of course you know that a very important part of golf is that you hit a ball into a series of different holes over a large course. I think it would really lend an impressive touch if the final hole in our course was inside the-” No Name interrupts to be like “What? No, that stuff’s not golf. Golf is like this,” And whips out an immense tetsubo and slams Deeb as hard as possible in the stomach with it, and Deeb has to succeed a save to not get sent flying into Puget Sound. Deeb, wheezing, is like “THATS GREAT MAN. Cool! That sure is golf! And I think that it would be really, really impressive if you did that again, but instead, this time, you hit me towards that giant tree over there. I bet you can’t do that, actually.”

It’s at this point that another party member, Gecko, speaks up and suggests before anything further can happen that No-Names version of golf is really good, but what if instead of hitting Deeb with a huge club he hit Deeb with a nine iron, and what if instead of Deeb being a person, he used shapeshifting to transform himself into a small white ball? And they played that version of golf? And its a compromise because he’s still hitting Deeb? No-Name thinks this a preposterous idea, but is intrigued. He agrees. Deeb asks Gecko why he is doing this to him; Gecko’s answer is honest and simple: he’s just really always wanted to try real golf.

And Deeb proceeds to take half his health pool in damage in a single wicked blow. But it works. It works.

Goddddd I love tabletop gaming and i love playing my horrible little shithead