1d12 Encounters in the Riparian Forest

1. A single alder tree in a clearing, bubbling white mushrooms from its bark. If a pilgrim attempts to eat a mushroom, they must Overcome Frailty to spark up a psychedelic conversation with the lonely tree. The last human to talk with it left an offering of 35 ancient coins in a small sack under a rock. The tree has no use for these coins. If they fail to keep the mushrooms down, they Gain 1 Frailty as they violently retch up the mushroom. The tree, disgusted, refuses to speak with them.
2. The thrum of nearby bees leads the pilgrims to a calm meadow of wildflowers. By the peaceful aura in the air, they can tell that no harm will come to them while they rest here.
3. A holy mausoleum fallen into disrepair and neglect! The pilgrims can’t even make out the name: Saint something or other. Clearing the overgrowth and washing the stone takes one exploration shift, but one pilgrim finds a relic among the bramble: (The Silvertongue Necklace, +1 to persuasion).
4. A branch-bound hermit counts leaves. They are not interested in other tasks or conversation. Remarkably well-outfitted.
5. The undergrowth becomes thick and especially labyrinthine. The pilgrims may:
• Overcome Frailty to cut a path through the blocking roots. Regardless of success, this infuriates the tree spirits of the region, who will begin pilfering small items from the pilgrims’ packs.
• Overcome Clumsiness to clamber to a better vantage point, from which a clear path can be seen. A pilgrim suffers a painful medium-distance fall and Loses 1d6 Vim on a failure.
• Overcome Doubt three times to keep their bearings as they navigate the pathways. On any failures, they Gain 1 Doubt and become even more helplessly lost.
6. 2d12 wild pigs, absolutely causing a ruckus. Just terrible for the soil in this delicate ecosystem.
7. 1d12 poachers (reroll on 1 or 12), weighed down with furs and pelts—a fortune in illicit wares. They are hunting and hunted by a large pack of grey wolves, and at least half of the group wants to head back to South Kul.
8. 1d12 wolves, or something moving between the trees? Overcome Doubt to be certain. They are disinterested in the pilgrims for now, as they are actively hunting poachers, taking vengeance for a fallen sister.
9. The overgrown remains of a fishing lodge, destroyed by violence years ago. Spending an exploration shift here reveals a sturdy rowboat that survived both the destruction and the decay, large enough to comfortably seat 5. Two can easily row together; a pilgrim rowing alone is going to have a difficult time.
10. A flock of human-sized birds flow through the trees, just above head-height, passing silently and numbering in the dozens. They skirt within inches of the pilgrims, who feel a breeze and the trace of feathers across their skin. The birds pass in a moment, finding a break in the canopy, turning to the north, then up and out of sight.
11. Something has been digging in the dirt among these old, battle-scarred trees. A few feet down, large stones cover a pit with three decomposed bodies, each wearing a pristine Bolest military insignia, each impaled on a thoroughly rusted Bolest sword.
12. A hastily-vacated campsite, one wolf corpse, five poacher corpses.

---

It's not even out yet, and I'm in love with PILGRIMS OF MISFORTUNE by Nate Treme. It balances a minimal, OSR-ish simplicity with a unique take on adventurers as weak and craven fools who know it and just want to overcome their many, many flaws. Plus: d12s. You know I love a d12.

Since Nate was kind enough to make the beta version of PoM available via his Patreon, I have been periodically writing a small hex-based adventure for it. This is the first random encounter table the pilgrims will be exposed to, just outside the crossroads town of South Kul as they embark on their quest to find the great poet, Rodolfo Santiago. 

I'm calling it a "Low-Stakes Adventure." There's a big thing or two in the world, and the pilgrims would be well-off to avoid that mess altogether. If nothing else, I enjoy writing a smaller story! Our pilgrims won't be charging to the battlefield (hopefully) any time soon, but maybe they can help these wolves or redirect some feral hogs on their way up north. I even made a map!

Adorable, right? Those cool hex tiles? Also Nate Treme. The man is an inspiration, what can I say?

In any case, I'm excited to see where this one goes. Out of all of my half-finished projects and brainstormed ideas, this is the one I'm most eager to write, and I'm looking forward to sharing more on the journey!

The Bird(s) of Passage(s)

Fighting a Enormous Bird,
from Old Book Illustrations

ISSUE 1

The parchment cracks and sheds as you unroll and flatten it on the sitting-room table. Every edition has an air of antiquity about it. The Bird of Passage, volume unknown, issue unknown. Print run of two, or perhaps two hundred thousand. This one arrived today, tightly rolled and slipped into your daypack at some point during your morning errands. Who delivered it? Don’t ask stupid questions.

Some of the contents make you wince, or smile, or gasp in disbelief. Some excerpts take you back to your childhood, while others dig up ancestral memories predating your great grandparents. Still others conjure sights and thoughts from unknown distances and times yet to occur. Every word sticks like a barb, ripping parts of you away as you move to the next.

You tightly roll the parchment and return it to your daypack as soon as you finish reading, careful to not introduce any more damage than necessary. This one has three, maybe four reads left to it. Departing into the night, you meander through the streets until you find the tavern with the right look. At the bar, a silver-haired woman scribbles intently in her journal. You slide the rolled parchment into her cloak pocket as you pass and find a seat further down the bar. There’s a drink waiting for you, and it will do for now.

ISSUE 2

The marketplace is dull this time of year. It’s the same tired material by the same complacent vendors. The people of letters have grown fat selling variations of the same stories, and the new voices spend more time carousing than honing their craft. They think much too highly of themselves, and their work shows it: pompous drivel, deliberately outrageous. No chance they’d ever point their analytical eye inward to learn that lesson, though. No time spent in cultivation.

Maybe it’s time to travel again. Hire a porter and tour the exotic north. See how those people live an authentic life. I could hire the tribe’s story-keeper to return with me; heavens know those people won’t produce any high literature on their own.

“Nothing catching you, good sir?” The merchant has a wide, earnest smile. I must have made my displeasure too quiet. I continue looking through his selection with a deep sigh.

“Oh, plenty catching, but releasing just as quick.” I wave him away without raising my gaze.

“No, no, you’ll not find any substance in that pulp, to be sure. Not for a cultivated mind like yours.”

“You pandering out, I’ll have you—” I look up in a rage to see that same broad smile and the merchant holding a small, thin volume in his hand.

“What you need is something different. Something exotic. I assure you, you’ve not read these stories before.”

“The Bird of Passage. A serial journal? Never heard of it,” though there is something alluring about its weathered cover, its uneven lettering, the musky aroma of far-away lands, sweat, blood. I tremble as I reach for my purse. “How much?”

“One of those coins would be too much. Don’t you worry, I’ll take something worth far less in exchange.” The merchant smiling that big, generous smile. He sets the small text in my hand, heavier than I was expecting. My eyes flutter closed and my knees buckle. I can hear the smile in his voice before I drift to sleep. “Caught you.”

ISSUE 3

Intersession is always a quiet time on campus. Faculty members awaiting their new appointments—waiting to see if they will have a job in a month’s time—have left town in droves, and the students have been scarce since their final exams. Not that the current crop spends much time in the library, anyhow. You are of a traditional demeanor, so you prefer things this way. Quiet.

Weeding season again, and you’re taking your list through the stacks. You can’t afford to be precious about the sanctity of books when space is at a premium and so many titles are unused or overused. A pristine copy of the peaceful history of the Kesch people, long since decimated by rampaging colonists. Never lent in 20 years, not even worth being a freebie. Clean books like this make fair kindling. You check it off your list and set it on your cart. A reproduction of some controversial new critical treatise, cheap ink smeared and the low-weight paper creased and torn. You’ll order another one, and today can be a lucky day for the next graduate student you see. Or, perhaps, it too can stoke the furnace. You check it off your list and set it on your cart. The middle ground: that’s the secret for a long shelf life.

You enjoy having a steady job, a steady process. Your cart fills over the course of a few hours, and you begin to make your way back, draping a small red ribbon at the end of the last shelf you thinned. Walking at a steady pace, you glance down the aisles, more out of habit than anything. No students here to mishandle the books. No new faculty helplessly out of depth with research and instruction demands. Quiet and more quiet.

The quiet ends with a gasp: your shocked gasp at seeing a wildly disarranged section of journals, hundreds spilling off the shelf and onto the floor. You’d just been over this section yesterday! Exasperated, you shove your cart aside and stride down the row. Frayed and torn, the titles strewn about are in worse condition than any you’ve ever seen. You’ll need a shovel and a barrow for this. You grimace as you reach into the pile to see if you can find something—anything—salvageable. Immediately, you touch intact vellum, out of place among the pulp. You carefully retrieve it and gently brush it off, shed pages of other texts sloughing to the floor in wet rot. The Bird of Passage. An unfamiliar text, an unexpected loudness.

Nestled atop the mass of discard and decay, you are quite comfortable. As you open to the first page, you feel a blaze stoked inside yourself, and with a bellow, you are consumed.

---

THE BIRD OF PASSAGE was an idea I had for a TTRPG zine back before I ever really explored the existing zine scene. Born out of short-form adventure hooks and scattershot ideas, it fizzled a little because constantly writing minuscule adventures without ever building them into anything is tough. Usually when I have an idea worth putting into pixels, I tend to flesh it out a little more. These were 500-word flash fictions, and as much as I enjoyed writing them, as I explored the TTRPG space I found myself wanting to make (slightly) bigger things.

Still, there were aspects I loved and wish to continue in some fashion. Namely, the above blurbs. In my mind, THE BIRD OF PASSAGE is multitudinous. It’s something of a secret society unto itself. Plus, the zine exists in the worlds within itself. People in the stories encountered the book and found it vaguely menacing. Esoteric. Pretentious? Totally, and that’s probably why these were my favorite parts to write. In the first, the narrator is in on the secret. In the second, the narrator is unworthy of it. In the third, the narrator is engulfed by it.

The chances of me fully realizing my initial goal for the zine are low: full-time employment, lots of other writing projects, additional hobbies, and attempting to be an attentive parent and partner… these things all take time. Still, I often think of the people who get their hands on a copy. I know it affects them, as it has affected me.

CHAIN MAIL: January '22 - Day 3 - Adventures in the City of Fools

On the road and from the outside, it's any city: all walls, travelers going to and fro, all the smells and sounds of a large, varied intersection of civilization. Inside, though, it manages to be every city. Not sure I'll ever wrap my mind around it. You hear stories, of course, and they're all contradictory, but now that I've spent a couple nights, I'm never going to doubt what I hear about this place.

We landed in a surprisingly cozy neighborhood of beached coral. This whole corner feels like a snapshot of a thriving underwater reef. Lush aquatic grasses line the streets, and the massive organic structures are lived-in and ageless. You'd expect them to be cracking and faded under the weight of time—each step feels impossible, uncanny—but they're hardy and vibrant as they must have ever been. Hard to imagine them being moreso. 

I'm a little stunned that Guy hasn't been more excited to be here. There's a mushroom that blooms in abundance among the grasses and at the corners of the buildings, but they're uncharacteristically disinterested. Shit— they saw me writing about them. Have at it, I guess.

Commonplace toadstools. Non-toxic. Something big died here, and I'm ready to go, Fulton. Caravan's waiting. 

A fair point. They're right to be a little on-edge and yes, we're leaving tomorrow. While I spent the past couple days asking around for a bead on the Caravan, Denove and Pipro went off and made friends with a certain fraternal organization. Won't name them here; this hasn't been the most secure journal of late. My B! - P!

Anyhow, with the brotherhood's noted distaste for psychedelia, Guy's had to keep mum on everything that makes them Fun. A real shame, too; I can't imagine what a steady microdose would do to open up these streets. Might even fire up a comms channel to the Big Dead they feel beneath us and share some secrets about the real shit, but I digress, I'm documenting Pip and Den's "networking."

One thrown arm wrestling competition later, half of the new friends are very happy, half less-so, and Pip has two new bodyguards who can't stand each-other. That'll work itself out, I'm sure. I'm just glad she ditched her ersatz napalm. I kept having a dream where we'd catch up to the Caravan and promptly detonate the back third of it. The thing she got in exchange is a lot spicier, though, so I won't be comfortable giving much more detail until the City's a distant memory.

Clearly, the longer you stick around, the more "City of Fools" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

- Fulton

---

Hello and goodbye, City of Fools! We had a couple other carousing incidents that happened out of Fulton's line of sight, so we'll see how those play into things in months to come. This is my second play-session journal for Noora Rose's inspiring CHAIN MAIL. They're fun to write and play, so I imagine this'll become a monthly thing as the gang settles into their life on the Caravan.

Speaking of the gang, here's a brief intro! I love them all and am prepping for funnel-related devastation.

• Fulton (he/him) is a Professional Turncoat. A drug-addled spendthrift, he picked up the journaling habit in his last war as a way to calm his nerves at the prospect of being found out. He keeps himself presentable and makes a good face for the outfit, at least until someone he betrayed recognizes him. That's one of the perks of hopping a caravan into the outer spheres. 
• Denove (they/them) is a Polybody Brigadier, number 11. They keep a stoic façade, but having lived, died, and repeated ten times before, they have fragments of their former selves. Not memories, exactly, but emotions and sensations that belong to someone else. They desperately want this to be their last go-round, but are somewhat doubtful.
• Pipro (she/her) is a Pyro-Alchemist. She's, you know, a little explosive. Eager to push a plan into motion, even at great and horrible risk with lasting consequence. Most recently, she pawned off four jars of homemade napalm in exchange for a slightly damaged (and wildly prohibited) radiation-gun she knew how to fix. For all her bluster and bombast, she knows how to slink into a crowd and disappear when she needs to.
• Nico Tib (he/they) is a Ziggurat Huckster. A poor man's rich-man, he is over-the-top ostentatious (think Dan Flashes) and pushy, and it gets him into a lot of trouble. He started the game with next to nothing after a scam gone wrong, and he's wildly jealous of the successes his travelling companions have had.
• Fun Guy (they/he/she) is a Psychopharmycologist. Always in a good mood, they are a researched scholar on medicinal mushrooms, and they let their research overtake everything else to the point of curious naiveté. Long hair, loose clothes, you know who I'm talking about. They are also the financier of this trip to the Caravan.

CHAIN MAIL: January '22 - Day 0 - Outside the City of Fools

"Outskirts of Rome" by Jules Laurens

Running behind, but we'll be damned if we don't catch up.

Money's a funny thing. We claw and scrabble for it, push it around, pull some back, but there's never enough for us or our people. Never enough to reach across the deep chasm dividing us and get a good hand-hold on stability. Never enough when the debtors round the corner on our debtors. And those that got it? They act like it's our fault that we don't. So we do things for it—things we shouldn't. We spend so much of our lives on it, and... See that? Spend. It's pervasive, and I always thought it would be the thing to bring me down.

But then Guy sells a pinch of spores smaller than the head of a nail and we're all outfitted with pink bubbly wine and real meat-steaks and the means to start out for something real, something lasting. We're headed to the Caravan. Nico nearly ruined things for us at the last waystation, but he swears it'll be worth it. No small amount of fortune-jealousy there, but they're not the only one. I get it sometimes. I'm sure almost all of us do. 

"Almost all of us" is also who avoided the Flux. Just me for that one, go figure. Lovely stuff. It set us back by a day or two, and I'm taking in more water than the rest, but I should be back to baseline by the time we catch up.

The Caravan. God, I can't wait. 

The road, the routine, the shared goal. Denove is excited, too, though they'd never say. I know they're tired of marching, changing, betraying, running—and for what? The grand reward of not enough money. Well, that'll matter less, and soon. We'll be in the City by the golden hour, we'll manage our business here, stock up well, and track down our new forever lives. It'll be a beautiful thing to be still in movement, stable in our shared instability, and maybe we'll all find a way around the chasm.

- Fulton

THANKS FOR INCLUDING ME! Glad to be on the road with ppl who REALLY care! - P!

Stop reading my journal. -F

---

I hate being late. Growing up, there was no sin more cardinal than being the last one to arrive at whatever gathering was happening, and I have internalized it something terrible. I am the "gotta get to the airport four hours early just in case" drag and the "I know our meeting isn't for another half hour but I'm here now and will awkwardly wait until you're ready" burden. Even now, writing this in real time, I'm thinking, "yeah, that's not great, but it would be way worse if I made them wait a couple minutes because I didn't get there in time." Hate it.

I say this to explain the pain I feel in not getting on board with Noora Rose's CHAIN MAIL sooner. The first month has passed, and I am late and miserable about it. As the month turned, I said farewell to a couple Patreon pledges that were causing me active anxiety, and I said hello to this new play-by-mail TTRPG adventure and perhaps the closest we have to Trace Italian. It's incredibly cool, has been a lot of fun to play solo (I tend to bounce off of solo or journaling games, sadly!), and is full of all the delightful flavor-items Noora is so good at peppering throughout her work. This could be an "I LOVE THIS" post. Maybe it will be before too long!

So, naturally, I'm projecting my lateness anxiety onto my caravanners. They're late, too, but they're going to fight like hell to catch up. Today, I got to meet them for a zero session. One of the first rules in the City of Fools is "do not allow yourself to become overly attached" and, whoops, already messed that one up. I'll probably do a post about them in a few days, and I have a lot more to explore and resolve before we leave the City and head out in search of the Caravan we just missed.

I Love This: BIG BONE by Numbered Works

I love BIG BONE! It’s a one-page (two sides) distillation of lo-fi adventure by Numbered Works. It wears its references and inspirations (very MAZE RATS; extremely TUNNEL GOONS) on its sleeve, but it also has a voice all its own: one that is charming and playful, the way the best gaming groups are. With a single d12 and a few essential supplies–“pencil, paper, picnic blanket, park, snacks”–BIG BONE makes getting into the action lightning-fast for the players, sure, but it also gives the improvisational referee a wealth of inspiration. So let’s start there. Here’s what I love:

THE TABLES!

I do not hide my adoration for a random roll table. A good one conveys a lot of setting-specific information in a compact space, and each one of the NINE random-adventure-player-character-spell-building tables does the heavy lifting of dropping you into that sword-and-sorcery comfort food world you’re thinking of. I’m thinking of it, too!

The Adventure Builder section is especially inspired, and if you wanted to really mix things up, you could split each of these in half for some extra adjectival randomization. For funsies, here’s one I just rolled:

“The party discovers a crumbling (12) tower (12) located behind (6) a volcano (8). Inside there is a sad (8) vampire (1) and jealous (3) pixies (9). If you survive the Minotaur (5) room (7), you might find the kidnapped (8) portal (7)."

As a referee, my mind swims with the circumstances surrounding this decrepit tower. Is the vampire sad because of the pixies’ jealousy? Did they steal the vampire’s portal and lock it up behind a Minotaur? As a player, I want to get in and learn more before the volcano finishes the job and completely destroys the tower!

 Suffice it to say, I am a fan of the tables.

PC GENERATION!

The flip-side (literally: the inverse page) of the adventure generation holds player character generation and rules. The character types are balanced in the sense of: who cares? If you want to be a group of a fairy, a catperson, and a goblin, go for it. You can be a fishfolk sorcerer who’s gonna go cheer up the volcano-vampire, and that is beautiful. Bang your gong and get it on.

The stats, similarly, are so refined that there’s zero room for theorycrafting, min-maxing, or power gaming. Everyone gets to shoot their shot, and there are no bad characters in the bunch. This makes me think the game would be brilliant for introducing new people to the hobby. Take the simple and sensible character generation, slot everything into the adorable li’l character sheets, and you have an all-ages party ready to rip.

12-SIDED DICE

I frickin’ love a d12. Apparently Kmart sells big foam ones. I’m getting some.

GO GET IT!

BIG BONE by Numbered Works is available on itch.io, pay what you want. You might also explore LITTLE BONES, a parallel universe using 2d6. Same charm, different bones. The CC-BY-4.0 license ensures I will print a bunch of copies and stash them around town.

---

I Love This is an attempt to write some nice things about the nice things I read and see every day. Not so much a review or critique, it's an unabashed good-vibes-only love-fest because that's the sort of thing I want to write and see when I'm writing and seeing! If you like this format (not that I invented "writing nice things") and want to give it a go on your own blog, please let me know and I will be sure to give your post a boost to the best of my ability!

I Love This: BEYOND THE BURNING TEETH by Amanda P.

I love BEYOND THE BURNING TEETH! It's a 31-page dungeon crawl and adventure setting by Amanda P. designed in a system-neutral way but with handy conversion tables for popular systems. It's fast-paced, evocative, and a locale I would thoroughly enjoy moderating or dungeon-delving. Today I want to share a few things that I think will make it worth your while.

THE MAPS

Holy smokes, there are some fun maps here. The side-cut view of The Burning Teeth dormant volcanic range evokes classic landscape navigation and exploration. The nonlinear path to The Vault sets things up so if I want to really stretch this out for a longer campaign, I could easily populate the rest of the mountain and cavern system with goodies and baddies. Or, if we just want to crawl the dungeon, we can hop in the express lane while still getting plenty of flavor-rich sights to see along the way. 

The map for the Temple Depths is likewise incredibly done. Amanda's got some killer mapmaking chops, and the dungeon map here gives you just enough flavor and illustration without feeling cramped. At a glance, I can get a feel for what's happening in the room, and I imagine if I had parts of it player-facing, the room elements' would act as clever shorthand. Nobody's asking, "Where exactly are the steam showerheads on the wall?" because even though I have never once seen showerheads depicted on a dungeon map, I knew exactly what they were when I read them in the descriptive text. More dungeoneers need to bathe, probably.

THE VIBES!

Early in the zine, there's a 2d6 table (love it already) for the effects of hanging out in the Vault, and all of them made me grimace at the thought of experiencing them in-game, let alone real life. It's not the most extreme body horror imaginable, but that makes it so much creepier! I can roll my eyes/another character easily enough if, like, all my bones explode and my hair turns to centipedes in some kind of Mork Borgian case of the Mondays, but: "Your fingernails have begun to grow, visible if you watch them. It seems hasty." I can feel that in my nail plates, and I do not like it. 

This delicate hand in writing unnerving encounters carries throughout the dungeon. There's a scene of a spar between ash-men that has just enough wrongness to it to make me double-up on my caution and concern for what's coming next. There's an instability in the key foes that rightfully puts me on edge in the best possible way. It's dangerous without being blindly deadly. It's moody without going, "Look at how moody I am!"

THE TACITURN GRIMESMITH!

 He's got a couple little metalmen and I want all three of them to be my best friends.

GO GET IT:

BEYOND THE BURNING TEETH by Amanda P. is available on itch.io and Drive Thru RPG. It's rad and will certainly be fun to use in whole or in part with your TTRPG of choice! 

---

I Love This is an attempt to write some nice things about the nice things I read and see every day. Not so much a review or critique, it's an unabashed good-vibes-only love-fest because that's the sort of thing I want to write and see when I'm writing and seeing! If you like this format (not that I invented "writing nice things") and want to give it a go on your own blog, please let me know and I will be sure to give your post a boost to the best of my ability!

Immortal Festival

For me, the year 2021 has been about finishing things. Music projects, writing projects: "just get it done" has been the mantra. Rather than fighting for an unattainable perfectionism, it's been liberating to put a cap on a project and move on to the next one. It's way more satisfying to be done enough with something than to keep hemming and hawing, fussing and fine-tuning until all potential passion has been siphoned out of my brain and the thing ultimately never leaves my notebook or hard drive or what have you. You know: the way I've operated forever.

A fun side-effect has been really quick jaunts in a new creative direction, inspired by the creativity of the indie TTRPG space. We're not going to call this "OSR" territory, but, you know, similar philosophy. Example: IMMORTAL FESTIVAL is a very brief adventure of sorts. It's a mini-game that takes place over 24 hours in the fantasy game world of your choosing. Hell, I think it would be a blast of a detour in the laborious and painstakingly realistic sci-fi or historical reenactment game, but I have a bigger tolerance for genre bashing than some. The title came from a random title generator (fun) and the pitch was basically, "What if immortality was mundane?" That's it! If everyone had access to the same wild preternatural powers, who would really care?

Well, the deities who bestowed those powers would kind of care. And maybe there should be a little restriction to make it a special limited-time gift. There, the stakes are raised, and the playing field is still level. But let's assume most people would lose their shit and abandon all pretense of responsibility the instant they could fly or whatever, so who is going to do all the normally mundane things that keep a civilization rolling? This concept was very funny to me: you've got your duty or honor-bound adventurers who are suddenly no more able or gifted than anyone else, but instead of being able to have fun with their boost, they'll be the only ones capable of like going to the DMV or baking a bunch of cookies.

The rest came together over a couple evenings brainstorming powers, domains, and divine trials. And then...? It was kind of done. I like the idea of writing longer-form adventures, but this one turned into what it needed to be, and was one of the simplest layout jobs I've had in my short time playing at TTRPG design. Having the freedom to just get it done helps me arrive at the point where I know what the thing is. IMMORTAL FESTIVAL wasn't ever going to be a big adventure, and it didn't need to be written or explained to death in-text. It was going to be a little weird thing from go, and now it's done and I can try something new.