Diary of a White Blue Red Mage

OH MY GOD.

“I was 14, I didn’t know what I was doing.”

whaT THE FUCK

yes yes you’re very beautiful. Bewitching, even. AWFUL parking job, by the way

The adventures of CJ

Reblogging this again for an update

You are a guard in a fantasy world. You notice a man in elegant armor kick a chicken in the streets. In your lawful rage, you manage to kill this man in the name of justice. To your dismay, you realize you just killed The Chosen One. You just doomed the world.

In my defense, it was self-defense.

I saw him saunter through town in his expensive, fancy armor, nearly bowling over Granny Fairchild when she didn’t get out of his way fast enough.  I didn’t think much of him - no one did, that I knew - but what was I going to do?  The man was clearly some sort of lord or higher, and I’m just a guard.  Not even a captain or sergeant!  Just a normal, everyday run-of-the-mill guard.

In short, there’s nothing special about me.  No special training, no special knowledge - unless you count laws, which I memorized - nothing whatsoever.

I didn’t say anything when he demanded prices to be lowered, and forced his “goods” on us.  Spoils of adventures, he said.  You can’t get them anywhere else.  What are we going to do with forty preserved wyvern eyeballs!  It’s not something any of us can use.  I don’t care how much some wizard in a city we’ve never been would pay for them.

I didn’t say anything when he aggressively flirted with all the women, to the point that little Maria started crying and her brothers looked for sharp objects.  Thank the gods that Maria’s wife is so quick-thinking, and got his attention elsewhere!  It would have been a very ugly, very deadly brawl, and Maria would have lost her brothers.

I didn’t say anything when he co-opted the blacksmith’s forge to make a few daggers to push on us - because his skill is so legendary, however were we to survive without his priceless daggers?  Ahmed was unable to fulfill his orders that day, and will now have to work twice as hard to catch up!  And I wanted him to look at my gauntlet, too, because it was starting to look a little warped at the wrist.

But when I saw that man start to kick around Granny Fairchild’s chickens, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.  Those chickens are all she has!  Every morning, Granny Fairchild comes to market with a basket of fresh eggs, and we all buy some - even if we don’t need eggs - to make sure she doesn’t go hungry.  Like most of us, she refuses handouts and charity, preferring to get by on her own.

“You can’t do that,” I told him, using my sternest voice.

“Do what?” he asked, kicking a hen and sending her scuttling.

“That,” I said.  “Kicking chickens.  Or any animal.  You can’t do that.”

“Who’s going to stop me?” he asked arrogantly.  He looked me up and down, mockingly.  “You?”

And just to be an ass, he took out his sword and killed one of the chickens right then and there.

Now, killing someone’s animal isn’t necessarily an arrestable offense.  You get a fine, you pay it, and you go on your way.  Especially something small, like a chicken.  A cow, now, or a horse, that’s a different story.  But a chicken - no. 

But by this point, I was so tired and so fed up with his attitude.  Who was he to walk into our village in his fancy, expensive armor and harrass our people?  Making our shy girls cry, assaulting our widows and grandmothers, nearly robbing us blind by forcing his “goods” on us in exchange for ours, and putting good people out of work for his barely average daggers?  An entitled ass, I tell you.

So I took out my sword and intended to bash him at the back of his head to bring him to his knees.  It’s not a very brave act, to attack someone from behind, but you must understand that even then, he was some mighty adventurer while I am a lowly village guard.  In a fair fight, I had no chance.

Apparently, I hit him too hard, or just right, because he went down like a sack of potatoes and didn’t get up.  I looked him over, then call for our healer.  When she arrived, she pronounced him dead and congratulated me.

Imagine that, being congratulated for being a murderer.

Well, we gathered his things and I sent out a report to my sergeant in the next village over, who must have forwarded it to the captain, because the next thing any of us knew, we had an entire garrison marching on us.  The captain demanded to see me, and I reluctantly made my way up.

I murdered a lord’s son, I thought.  They’re going to arrest me for murdering a lord’s son!  There goes my career!

I hadn’t murdered a lord’s son, of course.  I did something much worse.

“You killed Adam Draxon, Hero of a Thousand Lands?” the captain demanded.  He looked me up and down, much like the man did, but less mocking and more incredulous.

“I never knew his name,” I managed, nearly biting my tongue in two I was stammering so bad.

“He wore the Crest of King Ellifry!” the captain said.  “How could you not know?”

“Is that what it was?  I thought it was a fat eagle…”

The captain and all his men stared at me for a long moment, where I was certain that time must have stopped, because it lasted an eternity.

“He was on his way to slay the vicious dragon plaguing Balewood Forest!  And you killed him!”

“It was an accident!” I protested.  “I was trying to arrest him.”

“Arrest him?!”  The captain was apoplectic.  “You were trying to arrest the Hero of a Thousand Lands?  For what?  What could he have possibly done to make you arrest him?!”

“He, ah, well, you see… Hm.  It was like this…”

“Go on, I’m listening.  I’m very eager to hear your reasoning.”

I took a deep breath.  “IwasarrestinghimforkillingGrannyFairchild’schicken.”

“What?”

“He killed Granny Fairchild’s chicken,” I said again, slower.  I didn’t dare look up.  The captain wears some nice boots.  Shiny.  Tailored.  “So I was arresting him.”

“You murdered Adam Draxon, Hero of a Thousand Lands, Defender of the Free People, for killing a chicken?”

“It was an accident!” I protested again.  “I was just trying to… subdue… him…”

“And who, pray tell, is going to slay the dragon plaguing Balewood Forest?” the captain asked me scathingly.  “You?”

“I can’t kill a dragon!” I said.  I’m pretty sure I squeaked, too. 

“You killed the Hero of a Thousand Lands,” he told him, sarcasm practically dripping from his voice.  “You must be a mighty warrior, so a dragon can’t be too difficult a task for you.”

I stared at him in disbelief for a long moment.  In that moment, I saw something.  Okay, a lot of things, but mostly the one.  I saw fear.  Not of me, gods no.  The captain was afraid.  I had - accidentally or not - killed our only hope against the forces of darkness in our world.  Who was going to slay the dragon?  Certainly not me; I’d be lucky if I got close to the beast.  And certainly not the captain.  Really, there was only one person who was capable of such a feat, and he was moldering in an unmarked grave in our village cemetery.  

The next few hours went by in a blur.  I was given the Hero’s old things - things we had carefully packed away and inventoried to prevent theft - to protect me.  I was told some of it had magic, like protection against evil and the like.  It looked pretty, but ultimately worthless.  What would a shiny ring do against a dragon, except make it envious and eat me for the ring?

Really, what else did I expect?  If I had stayed, I would have been hanged for murder, at best.  At worst, I would have been drawn and quartered in some public place while my entire family was arrested and enslaved for my crimes.  In a way, the captain was saving me.  This was a chance to redeem myself - albeit a very small, very dangerous, and very, very stupid chance.  But it would keep me from a very public execution, which was generally better.

It’s not like the thought of chucking all of the Hero’s things the minute I got out of sight and running never occurred to me.  It did.  Numerous times.  I thought about it as I lay awake at night.  I thought about it as I heard story after story after story of the Dragon of Balewood Forest.  But someone had to try, damnit.  Someone had to at least try.

I never did get my gauntlet fixed.

When I had finally made it to the dragon - which, by the by, involved talking wolves and a bargain with a witch that I’m pretty sure she now regrets as you can’t exactly extract a dead person’s first born if they’ve never had children - I was tired, and hungry, and terrified out of my wits.

The mountain wasn’t as big as I pictured.  It was a large hill, at most, with a shallow cave.  I climbed up - a feat, I assure you, that sounds more daunting that it was.  I mostly walked, and like Balewood Forest, it was a pleasant walk.  And when I reached the mouth of the cave, I mustered all my meager courage to shout my challenge to the Dragon of Balewood Forest.

“H-hello?” I called out.  “Anyone home?”

A roar echoed from the cave - a massive sound that had me quaking - and smoke curled out.  I felt a blast of heat roll out of the cave.

“Look, I’d just like to talk for a bit,” I said.  “If you have time, that is.  I can come back tomorrow, if now’s not a good time for you!”

Heroic bravery at it’s finest, I tell you.

I felt an impact that was like being hit by a mountain.  I thought at first it must be some sort of cave-in or avalanche, but not.  Just dragon.  I rolled down the hill a ways, losing the sword and shield almost instantly along with my bearings.  I had barely stopped moving when a clawed paw pinned me to the ground, and I was face-to-face with a wall of long, sharp teeth and sulfuric breath.

“Adam Draxon!” the beast roared at me.  “You murdered my parents!  You have left me an orphan!  Do you have anything to say for yourself before I kill you?”

“Um, I’m not Adam Draxon,” I said.

“What?!” the dragon screeched.  It pulled back just enough to look at me with one beautiful sapphire eye.  Really, if you get the chance to look at a dragon’s eyes, you should.

“I’m not, um, I’m not Adam Draxon,” I repeated.  “I’m not anybody.”

The dragon pulled away, glowering at me.  “You’re wearing his armor. You’re wearing his Crest!”

“I still think it looks like a fat eagle,” I muttered as I took the Crest off and tossed it aside.  “Look, I know you were expecting Adam Draxon, and I’m sorry, but I’m here.  So can we talk, please?”

 “Where’s Adam Draxon?” the dragon demanded, arching itself up to look bigger.  For all the stories I’d ever heard, the dragon was really about the size of a large draft horse.  Certainly not the size of a house, like I was told.  And it’s scales - while very bright - weren’t exactly what you’d call shiny.

“Um, he’s, uh… well…”  How do you explain that the Hero of a Thousand Lands is dead?  Especially to someone who wants to cook and eat him?  “He, uh, he died.”

The dragon cocked it’s head to look at me with one eye.  “Dead?  You expect me to believe that the Slayer of a Dozen Dragons and Terror to the Dark is dead?” 

“Yeah, I was surprised, too,” I admitted.  “It was an accident.”

“Accident?” the dragon roared.  “An accident?!”

 “Well, how else was he going to die young?”

The dragon lowered itself and stared at me for a long, long, long time.  “You don’t smell like you’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“But you don’t smell like you’re telling the truth.”

 “It’s… complicated.”

 “Tell me.”

 I took a deep breath.  “I was trying to arrest him.  His back was turned, and I hit him too hard with the pommel of my sword.”

 “… he’s really dead?”

 “He’s really dead.”

 “But he killed my parents!”

 I walked up and patted the dragon on it’s shoulder.  “I know, I’m sorry.”

 And that’s how I “defeated” the Dragon of Balewood.  He told me his story, and I listened for a while, and when night fell, he invited me to stay with him.  A dragon lair is surprisingly clean and comfortable, and we talked most of the night.  The dragon - Lorcanthan - was in need of a permanent home.  The terrorizing was merely to get Adam Draxon to his location, so he could get revenge for the murder of his parents.  There was very little terrorizing, I learned, as Lorcanthan mostly showed up and bothered the horses and maybe burned a field by accident.

 That morning, I decided to go to the villages around Balewood Forest.  For the better part of a season, I went to each village and spoke with the people.  In truth, very little actual damage occurred, and even then, it was mostly by panicking animals.  The mayors and headsmen were very reluctant to speak with me about the matter, at first, but slowly listened to what I had to say.

 Later, I went to Lorcanthan and had him come with me to the outskirts of Balewood, where the mayors and headmen were waiting.  I helped negotiate a deal for them, between the dragon and villagers.  And so the Dragon of Balewood went from plague to protector.

 Really, that’s how it started.

 Afterwards, I went to speak to the witch about the bargain, and she was willing to wait.  Being as the bargain was struck when I was under extreme duress, I managed to talk her down to shared custody.  We’ll figure out the details when I do have a child, I guess.  She sent me to talk to her sister, who was across the country, about a matter involving kidnapping.

 That was a horrible, horrible case, where I discovered the the Wicked Sorceress of the North was being blamed for the actions of a vile man.  The less said, the better, but when I had settled that matter, word go around.  

 And when a Horde of Orc Barbarians led by Thorid the Bloodthirsty threatened, I was sent to deal with them.  I don’t know how, exactly, it happened, because I had a few drinks with Thorid, but I ended up accidentally challenging his eldest to a duel and - purely by chance, I promise! - killed her.  Which made me, by Orc law, Thorid’s heir.  Somehow.  And second-in-command.

 When Thorid died from gangrene from an untreated injury by boar, I became the leader of the Horde of Orc Barbarians.

 From there, things got complicated fast.  And now I’m the Leader of the Dark Forces, and it’s the eve of war.  I sent King Ellifry a letter asking that he meet with me to negotiate this matter, but I haven’t heard back yet.  I’d really rather avoid the whole war thing, but honestly, when you actually sit down and listen to the Dark Forces, you learn that there’s a lot of inequality and oppression that really needs to be addressed.

 And as a guard sworn to uphold the law, it’s up to me to see that it is addressed.

Never did get my gauntlet fixed.

Jesus fuck this was an adventure and a half

I have had this on my mind for days, someone please help:

Why are dogs dogs?

I mean, how do we see a pug and then a husky and understand that both are dogs? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a picture of a breed of dog I hadn’t seen before and wondered what animal it was.

Do you want the Big Answer or the Small Answers cos I have a feeling this is about to get Intense

Oooh okay are YOU gonna answer this, hang on I need to get some snacks and make sure the phone is off.

The short answer is “because they’re statistically unlikely to be anything else.”

The long question is “given the extreme diversity of morphology in dogs, with many subsets of ‘dogs’ bearing no visual resemblance to each other, how am I able to intuit that they belong to the ‘dog’ set just by looking?”

The reason that this is a Good Big Question is because we are broadly used to categorising Things as related based on resemblances. Then everyone realized about genes and evolution and so on, and so now we have Fun Facts like “elephants are ACTUALLY closely related to rock hyraxes!! Even though they look nothing alike!!”

These Fun Facts are appealing because they’re not intuitive. So why is dog-sorting intuitive?

Well, because if you eliminate all the other possibilities, most dogs are dogs.

To process Things - whether animals, words, situations or experiences - our brains categorise the most important things about them, and then compare these to our memory banks. If we’ve experienced the same thing before - whether first-hand or through a story - then we know what’s happening, and we proceed accordingly.

If the New Thing is completely New, then the brain pings up a bunch of question marks, shunts into a different track, counts up all the Similar Traits, and assigns it a provisional category based on its similarity to other Things. We then experience the Thing, exploring it further, and gaining new knowledge. Our brain then categorises the New Thing based on the knowledge and traits. That is how humans experience the universe. We do our best, and we generally do it well.

This is the basis of stereotyping. It underlies some of our worst behaviours (racism), some of our most challenging problems (trauma), helps us survive (stories) and sharing the ability with things that don’t have it leads to some of our most whimsical creations (artificial intelligence.)

In fact, one reason that humans are so wonderfully successful is that we can effectively gain knowledge from experiences without having experienced them personally! You don’t have to eat all the berries to find the poisonous ones. You can just remember stories and descriptions of berries, and compare those to the ones you’ve just discovered. You can benefit from memories that aren’t your own!

On the other hand, if you had a terribly traumatic experience involving, say, an eagle, then your brain will try to protect you in every way possible from a similar experience. If you collect too many traumatic experiences with eagles, then your brain will not enjoy eagle-shaped New Things. In fact, if New Things match up to too many eagle-like categories, such as

* pointy * Specific!! Squawking noise!! * The hot Glare of the Yellow Eye * Patriotism?!? * CLAWS VERY BAD VERY BAD

Then the brain may shunt the train of thought back into trauma, and the person will actually experience the New Thing as trauma. Even if the New Thing was something apparently unrelated, like being generally pointy, or having a hot glare. (This is an overly simplistic explanation of how triggers work, but it’s the one most accessible to people.)

So the answer rests in how we categorise dogs, and what “dog” means to humans. Human brains associate dogs with universal categories, such as

* four legs * Meat Eater * Soft friend * Doggo-ness???? * Walkies * An Snout, * BORK BORK

Anything we have previously experienced and learned as A Dog gets added to the memory bank. Sometimes it brings new categories along with it. So a lifetime’s experience results in excellent dog-intuition.

And anything we experience with, say, a 90% match is officially a Dog.

Brains are super-good at eliminating things, too. So while the concept of physical doggo-ness is pretty nebulous, and has to include greyhounds and Pekingese and mastiffs, we know that even if an animal LOOKS like a bear, if the other categories don’t match up in context (bears are not usually soft friends, they don’t Bork Bork, they don’t have long tails to wag) then it is statistically more likely to be a Doggo. If it occupies a dog-shaped space then it is usually a dog.

So if you see someone dragging a fluffy whatnot along on a string, you will go,

* Mop?? (Unlikely - seems to be self-propelled.) * Alien? (Unlikely - no real alien ever experienced.) * Threat? (Vastly unlikely in context.) * Rabbit? (No. Rabbits hop, and this appears to scurry.) (Brains are very keen on categorising movement patterns. This is why lurching zombies and bad CGI are so uncomfortable to experience, brains just go “INCORRECT!! That is WRONG!” Without consciously knowing why. Anyway, very few animals move like domestic dogs!) * Very fluffy cat? (Maybe - but not quite. Shares many characteristics, though!) * Eldritch horror? (No, it is obviously a soft friend of unknown type) * Robotic toy? (Unlikely - too complex and convincing.) * alert: amusing animal detected!!! This is a good animal!! This is pleasing!! It may be appropriate to laugh at this animal, because we have just realized that it is probably a … * DOG!!!! Soft friend, alive, walks on leash. It had a low doggo-ness quotient! and a confusing Snout, but it is NOT those other Known Things, and it occupies a dog-shaped space! * Hahahaha!!! It is extra funny and appealing, because it made us guess!!!! We love playing that game. * Best doggo. * PING! NEW CATEGORIES ADDED TO “Doggo” set: mopness, floof, confusing Snout.

And that’s why most dogs are dogs. You’re so good at identifying dog-shaped spaces that they can’t be anything else!

OMG

ASEXUAL BIRD??

the Birb says Ace rights

Ace flag color picked from the Violet-backed starling

a car alarm thats just the “bill!bill!bill!bill!” part of the bill nye theme song

We all know that Hoth was a simmering mess of hormones and stress and I would pay good money for a soap opera about them. Here are some things which Definitely Happened: 

STABBY THE SPACE ROOMBA!

I am torn between wanting Stabby to be grabbed and evacuated along with the Rebels and make it to the next base, and wanting Stabby to get Vader.

Compromise: shortly after losing the Millennium Falcon, Vader, storming through the Rebel base, is startled to feel a sudden jolt of pain from the artificial sensors on his left leg prosthetic: a sharp sensation on his ankle. Surprised, because he sensed no threat–is the limb malfunctioning?–he looks down, and there is a cleaning droid with a knife taped to it, a little painted-on Rebel lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY written on it.

He stares down at it, completely and utterly taken aback for the first time in over a decade. Fearlessly, it chitters back at him, sounding very triumphant.

He picks it up.

Off in the fractal weirdness of hyperspace, Rebels on several ships are surprised to find an update on Stabby’s kill-update feed, and then thoroughly shocked at the accompanying image: the upward-pointing camera has captured an image of Darth Vader staring down at the droid.

It’s the fastest news ever to travel through the Rebel grapevine, the mix of triumph and loss that is, they are certain, Stabby’s heroic last stand.

Until a day later, when the thing updates again, this time showing an extremely confused Imperial officer. And another, and another, and another, day after day.

They cancel the funeral.

Vader hasn’t done much just for the fun of it in two decades. Watching Imperial officers swear and clutch their ankles as a cleaning drone with a knife taped to it, an Imperial emblem, lieutenant’s insignia, and the word STABBY painted on it, bumps into them and then chatters triumphantly, he’s figured he’s earned.

me irl

What’s your Eggmood today?

the kicker is he was being asked if his work was coming from the approach of man vs. nature aka “THE ENVIRONMENT STRIKES BACK” but no. his literal words were along the lines of “sharks are not very scary if you are never in the water so i had to make them scarier, and now they have legs.”

Junji Ito has the best fucking take on horror, which is ‘wouldn’t that be weird’ and then he draws it into the most terrifying thing possible.

One of his strangest stories is about a cursed type of honey that, when ingested, is guaranteed to be the best thing you’ve ever tasted. But, if you consume it, you have a 25% of being flattened like a pancake by a giant tree demon. Characters eat it, get addicted, and that addiction forces them to risk it over and over again until they eventually get turned into a gory puddle by this ghost tree thing. 

It’s a weird story, but the funny part is that Ito wrote it because he thought it would suck to be a mosquito.

some people have no taste

ok i just wanna check something.... reblog if you've never watched/opened tumblr live

Some of my favorite magic side effects:

-Nosebleeds. Never gets old.

-Coughing up blood. The good ol’ “cough into your hand and pull it back to see blood” also never gets old.

-Headaches. You keep fighting as your head pounds, desperately telling you to take a break. At first they fade within minutes when you stop using magic, but overtime, they become chronic.

-Fatigue. After a big battle, you stand triumphant, and then just fall asleep on the spot.

-In a similar vein, overuse causing you to straight up faint rather than just fall asleep. Darkness begins to overtake your vision in the middle of battle, unconsciousness abruptly looming over you.

-Any of the side effects happening to another person. Maybe two close characters are connected, and whatever side effects character A would normally endure are transferred to character B. When A uses a blast of magic B screams loudly because holy shit that hurt.

-Magic gradually deteriorating your mind. Using it too much eventually caused hallucinations and an inability to retain memories, or even larger scale memory loss. 

Feel free to add more, I’m looking for some to steal

this scene is so fucking funny the english dub of this show is so good

loud warning

first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line

second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all

third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below

fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?

fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves

sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it

seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him

eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night

ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him

tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk

eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important

twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go

thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme

fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader

fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that

sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why

Hello tumblr, im doing something of a mini survey so i have two questions:

1. Did you know before reading this that there was mercury present in thermometer fluid

2. Regardless of your previous answer would you say this was common knowledge

Reblog to cast