the_genderman

Ah, I missed this. The sheer chaos of going off on a tangent that no one expected that ended up with way too many "roll deception"s ... within our own party.

Villager: "Someone has murdered Petunia!*" (*Petunia is a goat)

Exzune: "We'll get to the bottom of this. I think it was lions."

*Daar and Mark go outside*

Mark: *looks at half-eaten, half-acid-melted goat* "Daar, did you eat this goat?"

Daar: "No."

DM: "Roll deception."

Daar: *fails deception check* "It was lions."

Mark: "Yeah. Acid lions. Why did you eat their goat?!"

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And then, later on, Ears is talking about how he ended up in Krezk and mentions a werewolf attacking the town. Mark, whose father was abducted (?) by werewolves, asks Ears about said werewolf. Exzune immediately took the opportunity, while Mark was distracted, to try to release a humanoid spider-bat creature from where it had been chained up. We're not sure why it was chained up, other than probably because it's a humanoid spider-bat and mildly terrifying. Like, Island of Doctor Moreau levels of "this is an abomination against nature."

This is Jaguar's Ears (Ears for short), my Tabaxi wizard who will be replacing Augh in our campaign. When you choose a background, you get to choose some traits and motivations and flaws, and whatnot. But if you choose Tabaxi for your character race, you also get to pick Tabaxi-specific traits (or let the dice pick them). Such as "You are a font of random trivia from the lore and stories you have discovered." Which, ok, is the entire reason I chose Tabaxi in the first place for my (first) backup character. Heck yes special interest cat-person. More details about him after my other rambles.

And yes, Tabaxi do appear to be inspired by Mesoamerican cultures. There may be D&D published adventures set in the Tabaxi homeland, but I don't know enough about D&D as a huge entity to say so for certain. From what I have read, usually, in the Forgotten Realms, if you encounter a Tabaxi, they're currently on their knowledge-gathering travels (some Tabaxi are hit by a sort of wanderlust which drives them to travel and learn as many things as they can, then return to their homeland and share their knowledge with the rest of their communities).

The way I see it, Tabaxi are not replacing Mesoamerican humans on whatever planet the Forgotten Realms are found on, they're just another culture who lives alongside them. And the Mesoamerican elves and dwarves, etc. So in the D&D version of Tenochtitlan, you'd have a human city, but since it's such a large, cosmopolitan city, you would also have non-human communities and neighborhoods within the city. Some elves would be only visitors, returning to their own cities after visiting, but others might stick around because it's a hub of culture and commerce. And then there would be the Tabaxi communities, always changing as new Tabaxi come to the big human city to learn human lore and arcana and see how the humans run their wizarding schools and such (and how different human cities compare to each other), and the Tabaxi who have been there for a while, move on to visit new places.

I gave Ears a headband with an Ocelated Turkey feather on it instead of a traditional European wizard's hat because one: it's kind of awkward to draw a wizard hat on a cat, and two: he probably wouldn't wear one of them. He may be traveling through the Forgotten Realms, might wear their clothing because it's more suited to their cooler climate, but he certainly wouldn't give up his culture's wizarding accessories for someone else's. Sure, he'd learn about them, learn about why wizards in these lands like pointy hats, but he probably wouldn't take to wearing one himself. As a wizard, he'd probably be allowed to wear feathers that are usually reserved only for the nobility, but not in such great quantities. So he's got his single turkey feather.

(And I get to play a cat.)

In other news, I have built character sheets for all of my backup characters in our group's campaign on D&D Beyond. Mostly because I could. I will probably never use most of them, but they're there.

I should probably play my wizard next (a tabaxi, aka a cat person) because we need another primary spellcaster, but honestly? There's an opening right there in the game as it stands for my tiefling druid, except she doesn't have the spells necessary for potentially countering this hag if we can actually track her down again.

I don't remember if I've said it yet, but Augh is a wild mage variety of sorcerer, and therefore has occasional wild surges where random magical effects happen because they sometimes lose control over their inner magic.

I had one such wild surge near the very end of last night's session, but I was busy updating my character sheet for something (probably spells cast?), so the DM rolled the surge for me. The interaction went something like this:

DM: Sixty-seven, no, wait, that's a one. Sixty-one. No. Sixteen. I can't read.

Me: Ok, finding the table. Sixteen is "For the next minute, you regain 5 hit points at the start of each of your turns." Aw, I'm already at full health. Well, sixty-one is "For the next minute, you must shout when you speak." You want me to do that instead?

DM: ... Odds or evens?

Me: Evens.

DM: *rolls a d6* You get sixty-one.

Me: OK!

If Augh lives long enough to level up high enough to learn the spell Prismatic Wall, they are absolutely going to cast it with "Anyway, here's Wonderwall."

From our 14DEC18 D&D session:

Augh, upon finding a pile of teeth: "I don't know how many teeth you mammals usually have, but this seems like a lot?"

Today our DM asked those of the party who work in the lab together who delivered the killing blow on Night Hag number 2? After I answered that it was Augh (my character), he then went on to explain that, eh, it probably doesn't matter. After all, it's not like the hags were named characters (Morgantha, Bella, and Offalia) who are known to hold grudges (prior to Mark killing Morgantha, the three hags were free with attacks, going after whoever was closest or easiest. After Mark killed Morgantha, Bella and Offalia turned all their spells on him).

Which absolutely means there's a night hag out there somewhere (Offalia teleported to safety as soon as she realized she was both injured and outmatched) preparing for a grudgematch against Mark and Augh.

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Brief refresher for anyone who may have forgotten or anyone new, the party consists of Auntie Fah (LG? LN? human cleric 4/monk 1), Exzune (LN human fighter 5, Fah's favorite drunken pirate nephew (who is also CN when drunk, which is often)), Daar (CN (leaning towards CE) dragonborn warlock 5), Mark (CG half-elf ranger 5), and Augh (CN kenku sorcerer 5). We are currently also escorting Ireena (human fighter 3) because we kind of killed the people she was going to stay with in the town of Vallaki. They were kind of bad people, it turned out, so win-win?

We didn't end up playing as long as some nights (we started after 8 and finished before midnight), but we did fight some hags and free some children (and some toads and some chickens) from said hags.

And while investigating the property on which the hags were squatting, Augh (my kenku sorcerer, seen in my icon) decided to investigate a cart. And rolled poorly. And caught a raccoon to the face. The raccoon had been sleeping peacefully in the cart until my bird-person came along and was like "Ooh, what's in this cart? Oh no, a raccoon!"