Well, this isn’t supposed to be an NSFW blog, so I won’t link to the image that Darvan now matches perfectly. Instead, I’ll just post this long-ass “story” about our third D&D session – from Darvan’s point of view.
She walked dejectedly away from the body of the guard and holstered the Glock. She now understood fully the meaning of the word ‘disillusioned’. She’d had such high hopes for being a Paladin. Now she was just another uncontrollable force of Chaos.
She needed a drink. Something stronger than ale. She looked down at herself as she made her way back towards the tavern. Maybe if she’d had some sort of official Paladin armor that guard might have been more helpful. But she’d been so pissed off. Maybe the tavern would still have a bottle or two left. With the barkeep dead, no doubt her ‘friends’, as well as the other patrons, would have helped themselves to everything they could put their hands on.
As she rounded the corner she saw smoke.
“Figures,” she thought morosely.
The tavern was on fire. Undoubtedly by someone she knew. Most likely the Tiefling Anarchist. He did so love to blow things up. There would be no strong drink in her near future after all.
She took a deep breath and headed towards the tavern anyway. Paladin, sexual deviant, and now a murderer… it didn’t matter. She couldn’t help who she was, and whoever that was wanted to help anyway. She saw people begin to stagger out of the tavern, and a few of her band milling around the side where her fellow Reptilian had disappeared down a trap-door. She headed over there, not caring that she was now caked in mud.
The little gnome came hobbling around the corner, bleeding from a self-inflicted stab wound.
“Dammit, you little fucker, come here,” she said, and laid her hands on him to use her healing ability. It was meager, but it did stop the bleeding. He was as mad as the rest, but he was hurting and she could help.
He muttered something about his “Italian Stiletto”.
“Little boys shouldn’t play with knives,” she laughed, then noticed another of their party holding an odd sign.
“Will Do Magic for Coin!” it declared. The wizard. Milthorn.
She looked to the trapdoor, and back to the mage.
“Sure! If you can get that door open, I’ll pay you!”
Suddenly her outlook brightened. Maybe she might find that guy after all. He did look cute.
Instead, the stupid man set the trapdoor on fire.
“What the fuck? We’re standing beside a burning building here, and you make MORE fire? I wanted it open, not burnt!”
“Hey lizard,” he complained. “It’ll be open… eventually! Where’s my money?”
“Fuck,” she said. “Here. Here’s one shiny copper. And I’m not a lizard!”
The little gnome came up beside her. Uncomfortably close. Fucker.
“Thanks for the healing Darvan,” he said, and turned to the trapdoor. Suddenly water appeared and doused the flames, and he did something else – freezing the water around the latch mechanism and trying to smash it open.
Darvan smiled. The little fucker remembered her name! That was unexpected. He thought they all just knew her as “The Big Titted Lizard”.
The others had caught wind of what they were up to and joined in, attacking the wooden door, eventually hacking a hole in it at least though they couldn’t free the latch. One by one they passed through, all save the Centaur who clearly couldn’t fit.
Darvan eyed the hole, then her hips. Maybe, but it would be a close thing.
She inserted her tail first, then tried to wriggle her way through. Amazingly, she got her lower legs past the hole and felt the rungs of a ladder. Using her clawed feet against the ladder she was able to get through after a lot of struggle and ripping of clothing.
Almost.
Her hips were past, but her boobs wouldn’t cooperate. She should have thought about that.
Fuck.
She looked up at her companions. “A little help here?!”
They looked at each other, not quite knowing what to do, but obviously enjoying the show immensely!
“Goddammit, you all want to grab my boobs anytime except when I want you to! My arms are stuck! Just squeeze ’em through wouldja?!”
A couple of them tried to comply, but they didn’t seem to understand.
“No… don’t. Not like that! Don’t just grope me, stuff em through the hole!”
Suddenly she was doused with something wet and slick.
“OMG!” she shouted. “Please don’t tell me one of you just…”
But then she realized it was olive oil. “Oh! Nevermind… Good idea, whoever did that!”
A little more wriggling and she plopped through, landing on her ass – but fortunately the fall wasn’t far.
“Well,” she thought. “At least the olive oil got rid of most of the mud.”
She rubbed her butt and felt her clothes in shreds. She’d ripped the hell out of them trying to get through. The gnome was going to love that.
“Well, fuck it. Cheap stuff anyway,” she concluded, and she followed the others to a locked door not far away. She did not miss the eyes of the others, especially the gnome. Was that drool?
They all heard noises coming from the other side of the door and some time was wasted trying to open the lock. While the others were working on that, she knocked on the door and shouted.
“Hey! You in there! You’d better open this door, because we’re coming in anyway!”
There was no answer, but the conjurer had come up with a good idea and created an axe he handed to Cleetus, who proceeded to hack away at the wooden door. In short order the door was open and they all entered a smallish room. There were cards on the table and all signs of a hasty exit through another door beyond.
“Oh shit. They were just playing cards. I’ve led a bunch of murdering crazies after a perfectly nice guy,” she thought. “Oh well, no help for it now.”
The others were ransacking every box in the place. The crazed wizard (as if anyone here wasn’t crazed) knocked over a crate full of playing cards. Thousands of playing cards! They covered the floor and made walking treacherous immediately.
“OH FUCK!” she screamed. “What the hell did you do that for fuck-face?”
But the wizard was holding a piece of paper from another box that read, in green letters, “Fuck You”.
And then the wizard lit the paper on fire. Bad move. It turned out that the playing cards were actually quite combustible, and as the flaming scrap hit the floor, Darvan just had time to look down at her shredded, oil-covered clothes.
“SHIIIIIIT!”
The flames spread quickly and she just managed to rip the remaining rags off herself before they actually burnt her through her scales.
“Great,” she thought. “Now I’m naked, surrounded by a bunch of crazed men. What could possibly go wrong?”
Though really, she’d always been an exhibitionist anyway. As one of a very few reptilian females with boobs, she knew their effect on most men, and flaunted them every chance she got. It wasn’t the first time she had been in a similar situation – though usually she was far drunker.
Wizards are not known for wisdom. Intelligence, sure, but usually they are sadly lacking in wisdom. The wizard Milthorn had already proven that multiple times over. However, he now discovered a hidden font of the stuff and conjured up a huge mass of water just over her head. Darvan had just enough time to look up at it before it came crashing down, snuffing out the flames but dousing her completely.
She stood there shivering as the gnome came up to her and she looked down at it, eyes wide.
“Lizard Lady, you’re naked! Let me clothe you in something appropriate!”
“I’m not a lizard!” she protested, then saw he was casting some kind of spell.
Wait!” she shouted, too late.
She felt something thin and gauzy cover her. She looked down at herself.
“A maid outfit?” she thought at first.
Then she realized that it had no back. Basically it was a super-thin apron. If it’s translucence wasn’t revealing enough before, her wet scales completed the transparency where they clung to it. For all the modesty it provided, she might as well have been back naked.
The gnome was making gluttonous noises as the gauze clung to her in the obvious places.
She rolled her eyes. “Thanks Wowee. Thanks a LOT.”
She wasn’t sure which was more embarrassing – being ogled by the little runt or actually pronouncing his name aloud. Wowee WeeWow. Either he had made that name up, or gnome parents had a terrible sense of humor.
“Don’t mention it!” he said lustily, angling around behind her for a look at her rear.
She turned to keep facing him. Little fucker. They danced around each other till she backed up to the wall, preventing any further attempt.
She’d have ripped the wet apron off, but it was a little warmer with it on.
The gnome gave up with a happy shrug and went back to where the others were working on getting the other door open. Between the Anarchist Tiefling trying to blow it up, and the wizard casting Magic Missile at it, they were having no luck.
“GUYS! GUYS!” Darvan called from behind them.
They all turned around to face her. She felt a little thrill at a bunch of men looking at her in this wet and clingy thing, but she’d never let them know that.
“Have you… you know… tried OPENING the door? I don’t recall anyone actually trying.”
The strange man with the wild eyes known as Cleetus turned back to the door latch. It opened without a fuss.
“Oh,” he said and stepped within.
Darvan just shook her head, following them.
The wizard Milthorn held his hands out to the sides shortly after entering, halting the party. They were now in a long hallway of perhaps 30 feet, with a torch at the far end.
“Let met check for traps,” he declared and produced a heavy ball of perhaps 16 pounds with finger-holes in it. He proceeded to arc the ball back before letting it go up the hallway.
It rolled to a stop maybe 8 feet away.
“Oh.” he said
Suddenly the Tiefling grabbed him and pushed him bodily up the hallway, using the wizard’s body as an impromptu trap-catcher.
“You wanted to check for traps!” he called, but the wizard was casting again. Suddenly the wizard stepped aside as the Anarchist continued up the hallway, smashing into the wall at the end and falling on his back – legs still whirling.
The wizard chuckled. However, no traps were found.
To the side at the end of the hallway a large room opened up, lit with fungus on the walls. The wizard looked at the fungus, grabbed a piece of it and ate it.
“Oh-oh,” Darvan said, immediately looking at her old friend the Myconid. His face, if it could be called that, showed no emotion – but his communication spores were lighting up, and they were not happy.
“He doesn’t like people eating his kind!” Darvan warned, too late.
The Myconid’s Meteor hammer hit the wizard’s stomach like… a Meteor hammer. The bit of fungus was expelled immediately, along with presumably his most recent meal. The wizard was left unconscious after the blow, sprawled on the floor.
“Lets… not eat any more. Okay guys?”
The Anarchist then tried to awaken the wizard with some sort of liquid. She’d assumed it was water, but the strong odor indicated otherwise. It did awaken the wizard, but he awoke angry, turning to Shitake the Myconid.
“Why you dick-less mushroom!” the wizard shouted, summoning a fireball.
Bad choice.
The liquid dripping from his face and hair ignited in a quite impressive fireball that had the wizard engulfed within seconds.
“Sure. Why not. More fire. It seems to be a theme,” Darvan thought to herself.
Shed become inured to the stupidity of these people, but as the wizard rolled around on the floor trying to put the flames out, she sighed again. Insane, they were, but was she any better?
His writhing had stopped, but he had at least put the flames out. She touched him and used her last healing touch.
“Boys, don’t fight,” she said as he was restored nearly back to normal. “Now, where are we?”
One of the walls of the large room they were in now was covered with runes and intricately carved buttons and levers that no one could read. Besides that, there were two doors on the other side, once with an oddly shaped window inlaid in it’s upper half.
The others were debating on what to do, but Darvan was fascinated by the wall and looked at it closely.
She felt something behind her grab her ass way too intimately! She kicked it away instinctively, then turned to see which of her companions had succumbed to their instinct.
The gnome. Of course. Now sprawled where his kick had knocked him to the ground.
“Wowee, I’m really not in the mood…” she started, then noticed the little chubby he was sporting. She couldn’t help but snort derisively.
“Oh… My… God… You really ARE happy to see me!”
But the gnome’s eyes started to water and she took pity on him.
“Sorry little man,” she said, helping him to his feet. “You’ve got to know I wouldn’t even feel that tiny thing! Look, no touching, but you can gawk at me all you want, and take care of yourself later. But for now, put that thing away before you put out someone’s eye! Why don’t you make yourself useful and help me with this wall instead?”
That seemed to cheer him up, and the two started pushing buttons and pulling levers randomly. Lights lit up, but other than a phallic form that emerged from the lit buttons, nothing much else seemed to happen. The others joined in. Then, one of them said an obnoxious, racist phrase. Behind the wall, something SQUELCHED.
She turned around to her companions to see which one had said it. Then another said it. Behind the wall, the squelching noise happened again, louder.
She looked back at the wall as they began to chant the obscenity and began to back away from it. Something was certainly happening back there.
She wasn’t at all sure she liked where this was going. She tried chanting an opposite phrase – just as vile but at least opposite – hoping it would counter their chanting. It didn’t help. The noise grew louder until a terrible crashing noise was heard beyond the wall, shaking the solid floor. Then it stopped and their chanting, no longer causing any effect, stopped as well.
“Idiots! You have no idea what you were doing!”
Cleetus turned to her and shrugged. They then began to try and break through the wall to see what was on the other side. Multiple explosions and magic spells later, they’d managed to knock a gnome-sized hole it the thing.
Wowee was through in an instant, heading towards a chest within. They all saw him gather up a few gold coins off the ground as he stepped around the gigantic beanstalk within that had obviously pierced the roof of the cavern.
Soon the gnome had the chest open and was filling his pockets with gold. He returned to the hole and handed a bottle of glue he’d found to the wizard who promptly squeezed some onto his tongue.
Wisdom… not a wizard thing. Darvan had to laugh as the wizard struggled to free his tongue.
Maybe it was the situation. Maybe it was the insanity. Most likely it was the supreme idiocy of the wizard that caused Darvan to think of an awful idea.
“You know,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Lizard urine is said to be a universal solvent!”
The wizard looked at her and nodded, laying back with his mouth open.
She applied the universal solvent. It didn’t do anything to the glue.
“Told you I’m not a lizard,” Darvan said and started laughing maniacally till the wizard spat her own pee back at her, apparently trying to return it to it’s original owner.
“Hey! I just got clean!” she complained between guffaws, using her wet apron to clean herself.
Meanwhile the others worked to widen the hole and she saw the gnome heading towards the other side of the room where a door with a similar window in it stood locked. From behind the door there was a sound of shuffling. Darvan watched as a skeletal face came into view.
“My bean! You better not touch my bean!” it threatened, pounding on the window. As if on cue, a huge bean fell from the stalk and the gnome held it up to the window, taunting the skeleton.
The gnome smiled a wicked smile and took a big bite out of the bean before passing it through a hatch in the door to the skeleton. Within, the skeleton appeared to be satisfied, until it noticed the big bite taken out of the bean and became truly enraged. Then it opened the door, which apparently wasn’t locked from it’s side, and proceeded to brandish a wicked looking sword at the horrified gnome.
By this time the hole was widened enough for the others to pass through. The wizard conjured another bean that fell at the feet of the skeleton, who bent to pick it up. The gnome, however, took this opportunity to drive his stiletto deep into the thing’s neck-bones. The skull fell off, but the body continued attacking the gnome.
The Anarchist and Darvan approached warily, the latter drawing her Glock.
“How much gold will you give me to blow that thing away?” she asked calmly as the skeleton advanced on the trapped gnome.
Wowee attempted to deny he had gotten any gold, “Gold? What gold?”
“The gold we ALL saw you stuff into your pockets from that chest! How much?” she demanded, now leveling the gun at the gnome.
“Er…”
“How MUCH?”
“35?”
Darvan nodded and moved her aim to the thing’s pelvis. The shot severed the spinal chord and it went down in a heap, still flailing it’s sword wildly but now ineffectually. The Anarchist finished off the rest of the body, but the skull was still screaming about it’s bean.
“NO! You can’t!” it protested as the gnome affixed the skull to his belt with the glue.
“Mr. Bean,” he named it, inscribing it’s new name into its cranium.
As a final insult, the mad wizard conjured a can of beans and poured it into the skull cavity, whereupon the skull quieted down at last and the gnome now sported something more substantial than his little chubby on his pants.
As the others began to argue with Wowee over their cut of the gold, Darvan stepped to the remains of the skeleton’s body and retrieved the sword and shield. She might be wearing the barest and lewdest of clothing, her back, tail and hindquarters open to all the world, but the weapon and shield felt good in her hands and far less alien than the gun.
“Perhaps…”, she thought. “At least it’s a little more Paladin-like. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. If I can ever get away from these nut-cases.”
We had another D&D game and Darvan was in it. So another Darvan sorta-story. Sorry, I don’t go into much detail here about what happened in the game. More about what happened in her head. Darvan is a 1st level lizard-girl Paladin. Technically, she leveled up at the end of this session so she goes into the next as a Level 2 Paladin – though what her kind of Paladin means, I guess we’ll have to find out!
She sat dejected in the tavern. The last few weeks had been absolutely awful, and she knew she was here primarily to drink those days out of her memory.
It had started out so promising too. When she met up with the Myconid, Shitaki, things were going so well as a Level 1 Paladin. Of course, at that point she had only the most limited set of skills, but her aspirations knew no bounds. Justice and order she would sow everywhere she could. She would hear her name, ‘Darvan’, whispered in the corners of the land where lawlessness and anarchy ruled, by the little people who dreamed of order and law.
But she would have to pay her dues first. To become the bastion of hope would require years of relentless training, experience and dedication. Still, if there was one thing she had, it was determination. Whatever might come, she would not deviate from her course.
And then it had all gone horribly wrong.
She opened her eyes, talons still grasping the large mug of ale and peered up over it’s suds-covered rim. Cleetus. It was going so well till HE came through that weird sink-hole. When she’d acquired the gun and he’d shown her how to use it, she thought meeting him was the start of her rise to fame as she used its 40-caliber justice throughout the land. Instead, she hadn’t fired it once since her training. Most times, she considered using it against him. He was chaos. Ultimate Chaos.
Since that day, their little band had grown. The gnome was every bit as bad. The horse seemed to have at least some sense of morality, even though she’d just shat on the floor of the tavern. Massive shit too! Still, at least she was embarrassed about it. Cleetus wouldn’t have been.
She eyed the reptilian man that was in the middle of some argument with an elf of some sort. Not a member of her party, but he was a nice looking guy to her own reptilian eyes. She wondered idly if he would be turned off by her boobs. Most reptiles were. And that turned her on all the more.
She knew she was fucked up in the head in matters of love. That’s why she’d become a Paladin in the first place. Her uniquely self-defeating libido drove her nuts if she thought about it too much. She was as lusty as any woman in existence, and yet, the minute the object of her affection might actually show some interest in her too, her lust turned to disgust. She couldn’t help it. She knew it was fucked up, but she wanted only men who didn’t want her.
She’d tried other females, but that didn’t work either. She just didn’t have the passion for her own sex. In the end the frustration had become so great that she just decided to enter religious life where the inner conflict at least would be suppressed by lack of opportunity. But they had sent her out into the world as a Paladin of justice. She’d taken the position with pride, finally seeing some point to her self-conflicted life. A goal she could strive towards that didn’t require sex, even if it started out doing little odd jobs and looking for loot. Every great Paladin started that way, didn’t they?
Then came Cleetus. What a fuckup he was. Addicted drughead that was always looking for the next chance at mayhem. But the gun was worth it, she’d thought at first. A ‘Glock’ he called it. 40 caliber justice. And now she was running around with a band of misfits, thieves and worse. And a big horse. Centaur technically. She liked the Centaur well enough, but then, compared to the other crazies, how could she not?
She looked at Shitaki. It – ‘he’ as she’d come to think of him despite a lack of qualifications – had become just as bad. He wielded his Hammer at the slightest provocation now. “Meteor Mallet” she called it. She’d liked him too. As a Myconid, he’d shown not the slightest interest in her sexually. She loved that about him. Too bad he was unequipped for anything else. But now he swung his Hammer around like Cleetus swung his bat at any provocation.
And then the fighting started. Of course. She knew that it would. She just sat nursing her ale, every minute feeling worse as she got drunker and felt what little remained of her self-worth oozing away as she – the supposed fighter for the common man – watched like a spectator as innocent patrons were rousted and beaten by her own ‘friends’. When they set fire to the barman, she’d had enough. As she downed the last of her ale, she watched the reptilian slide out the door and followed.
She saw him round the corner and she gave chase. Maybe… this time maybe…
As she turned the corner herself, she saw a trap door close in the ground. Curious!
Nearby was a man watching. She was about to ask him if she knew the guy when some of her ‘friends’ came around the corner following her. Yup, there was Cleetus.
“Tired of murdering innocent people?” she thought to herself.
As expected, they began to pick a fight with the poor guy. When Cleetus raised his bat, something in her snapped.
“ENOUGH!” she screamed at him, and she levelled the Glock straight at the meth addict.
“Drop the bat Cleetus. This stops now!”
Of course, the bat was Cleetus’ lightweight weapon. His real power was in the double barrelled shotgun she’d seen wielded once before. While her Glock could put a hole through anything, that boomstick would make things disappear into a shower of red and grey glop. She’d seen it bark once before, and the more she knew of Cleetus, the more she knew that he was the last person that should wield that kind of power.
And then she heard the gnome behind her. She looked out of the corner of her eye for just a second. It held a shotgun exactly like Cleetus’ and it was aimed at her own head.
“Drop it, Boobs,” the little man said, laughing all the while.
“What the hell?” she started. “Where’d you get…”
Then the shotgun disappeared and the gnome began laughing maniacally. It had been an illusion. But the click that came from Cleetus’ direction was no illusion.
She lowered the pistol and sat down on the ground and began to cry.
“That’s better,” Cleetus said as he returned to the innocent man.
Her friends had all gone back to harassing the guy – for no reason whatsoever. But she’d gotten an idea. There were guards here! She’d seen some when they entered the town! She was off before they even saw her, looking for a guard. This lawlessness was more than she could handle, but it was their JOB to handle it! She might be only a level 1 Paladin, but she could alert the Authorities!
She left quietly and soon ran across a couple of people that could have been help, but their responses quickly made her realize that – even if she could enlist their help – they would probably be dead within a matter of minutes. No, she needed some real guards. So instead she asked and they directed her to one of the town entrances. There she finally found a real guard with armor and everything!
“QUICK!” she said as she screeched to a halt in front of him, not even caring at the way her body jiggled at the sudden stop. This was an emergency – no time to worry about niceties like that!
“There’s a (huff) brawl at the tavern!… People (huff) DEAD!… Need (huff) help!”
“Can’t,” the big green guard grunted. “Gotta watch the road.”
“But…,” she heaved, trying to catch her breath. “DYING! MURDER!”
The guard’s eyes turned back to the road. “Get off with you, bitch. I’ve got to watch the road.”
Sanity left her then, but nature took over. Here was a man… a BIG man. And he did not want her. Her perfect man.
She caught her breath and began stroking his massive arm, making sure her breasts did just as much stroking as her talons.
“How about if I just sit here with you and we can watch the road together?”
The guard looked down at her as if at a cockroach. “Fuck off cunt! Get the hell away from me!” he screamed and flung her away bodily.
She hit the ground hard but in ecstasy as the mud splashed all over her face and body. His physical repudiation of her had sent her over the top. She felt both humiliated and perversely satiated at the same time as she sat in the mud of the road looking at his back. Her eyes rolled back as she felt mud drip slowly down her scales and she shivered involuntarily. She was in a sick and perverted heaven momentarily.
But after a few seconds her consciousness returned and her sex drive had turned into something else. Everything she’d been through came rushing back to her. The guard didn’t see her eyes go narrow as his concentration returned to the road. She felt something on her hip, cold and metallic and she looked at it. She looked back at the guard, oblivious to her now.
She thought of the innocent people back there, dead, maimed or wounded from her own band of ‘friends’. Her own sexual frustration. The mess that her life had become. She had put everything into this last thread of hope that she could salvage something meaningful from this, and this goddamned guard couldn’t take his eyes from the FUCKING EMPTY ROAD.
She stood up, feeling the mud dripping from her tail and stepped 5 paces back.
She turned back towards the guard and knelt, drawing the Glock.
She aimed squarely at the back of his head.
She pulled the trigger.
It wasn’t as spectacular as the shotgun had been. But it was just as effective. And with that, she gave up her concept of what a Paladin was. She would invent a new kind of Paladin. She still would fight for justice and law. But she’d also fight against incompetence and beaurocratic ineptitude just as hard. Maybe harder. And who knows? Maybe she’d evenutally figure out a way to get laid even with her self-defeating psychosis. There WAS still that reptilian who’d gone down that trap door after all…
Perhaps… just PERHAPS… the anarchists had a point.
I’d like to put out another APB – this time for the artist who drew this:
Because I really went to town on this one. Once again someone suggested it but he didn’t know where he got it from – so if you know, pls let me know so I can credit appropriately!
I’m getting better at doing linework, and this time every single line in the finished work was one I did – based on the above of course. Not in any way slighting the work of the original! But I wanted clean lines on this one so I redrew them all. If you didn’t know, I don’t own a tablet. I do everything with a mouse. So I’ve gotten pretty good at using the Curvature Pen and the Fade setting on brushes. Someday I really gotta get one.
Obviously I filled in the negative space quite a bit… So then I added flat colors…
It was right about here that I thought to myself… hey… that little thing she’s supposedly “wearing” would probably be transpa…. wait… WAIT! I can make that happen!
So I did. I’m naughty boy. Not only did I make it transparent, but it’s dual-layer transparent with one where the cloth is resting right up against her scales and the other where it’s farther away. I liked the result. Yeah, technically that means I actually drew something. A little.
Added shading…, put a reflection in the window. (Which, if you think about it, is wrong. It would be the left side of her face, not the same view we have. But for that I’d have to actually be able to draw something new. So heck with it, I don’t think it jumps out as WRONG anyway.)
And finally… my signature shiny…
At this resolution, you cant see it but most of the reflections on her are bordered with a scale pattern. In fact, she really deserves to be seen at higher res than this.
I’d like to put out another APB – this time for the artist who drew this:
Because I really went to town on this one. Once again someone suggested it but he didn’t know where he got it from – so if you know, pls let me know so I can credit appropriately!
I’m getting better at doing linework, and this time every single line in the finished work was one I did – based on the above of course. Not in any way slighting the work of the original! But I wanted clean lines on this one so I redrew them all. If you didn’t know, I don’t own a tablet. I do everything with a mouse. So I’ve gotten pretty good at using the Curvature Pen and the Fade setting on brushes. Someday I really gotta get one.
Obviously I filled in the negative space quite a bit… So then I added flat colors…
It was right about here that I thought to myself… hey… that little thing she’s supposedly “wearing” would probably be transpa…. wait… WAIT! I can make that happen!
So I did. I’m naughty boy. Not only did I make it transparent, but it’s dual-layer transparent with one where the cloth is resting right up against her scales and the other where it’s farther away. I liked the result. Yeah, technically that means I actually drew something. A little.
Added shading…, put a reflection in the window. (Which, if you think about it, is wrong. It would be the left side of her face, not the same view we have. But for that I’d have to actually be able to draw something new. So heck with it, I don’t think it jumps out as WRONG anyway.)
And finally… my signature shiny…
At this resolution, you cant see it but most of the reflections on her are bordered with a scale pattern. In fact, she really deserves to be seen at higher res than this.
Some friends and I were testing a little light-D&D game last night over a Discord server. I don’t play nearly enough D&D, but it was fun as hell. I sort-of wrote up a little story based on it. The characters may never be used again – it was just supposed to be a test run of the D&D-lite system one of them came up with. But it was fun anyway!
And I appear to have settled into playing reptilian women. I probably have some mild psychosis. Technically she’s an Argonian, but staying in the D&D universe, she’s an unusually large kobold instead. Level 1 Paladin. Large in height and… other ways as well.
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The Myconid she called Shitaki was worried. It didn’t say so in words, of course. It didn’t talk. A mouth would be required for that. But she knew how it felt all the same. It’s communication spores were just another kind of magic to her. She did know a thing or two about magic, but not it’s kind of magic. It didn’t talk to her in any way that could be called ‘talking’, but nonetheless she somehow knew what it wanted her to know. And right now it was upset. Apparently it sensed something WRONG in this old, weird place. Something was coming, but it couldn’t tell her more than that – not because of the communication spores, but because it didn’t know itself.
As for the place, even she could sense it had once been a place of some sort of arcane power. The fixtures and pedestals indicated that it once housed a lot of people working at something. The scraps of writing were unintelligible, but the illustrations were enough for her to gather that they made something here. Something alchemical, which was not her expertise. Still, it seemed likely there might be something left of value here, which is why they came in the first place. So far, though, nothing. It had obviously been picked clean in the intervening centuries since it was occupied.
She watched the mobile fungus climb the stairs to the roof in order to scan the surrounding area while she stayed in the relative darkness inside. Though her companion was odd, somehow the silence within became even more tomb-like. It bothered her, and she didn’t like that. She was a damn Paladin now! She shouldn’t be bothered by just being alone. Her darkvision was more than enough for this place. It wasn’t really that dark anyway. But when her tail accidentally knocked over some unknown metallic tool onto the floor, she jumped involuntarily and spun around, hands readying the spell she always kept prepared.
“Okay,” she thought as she dropped her hands back to her sides. “Maybe I am just a level 1 Paladin, but no Paladin should be so skittish just because she’s alone. Besides, I’ve got fucking SCALES. I’m not some goddamned skin-bag that bleeds at the touch of a fucking feather!”
She picked up the tool. A long thing, fashioned with metal. Tongs, she decided, though rust had long ago locked the joint up tight. Garbage now.
“What the fuck did you make here anyway?” she thought.
No answer came to her, but she heard the ceiling creak overhead as her partner moved about, obviously not in a hurry. Whatever it was worried about, it had found nothing yet.
And then she noticed a glow begin from the sink. She didn’t know what else to call it but a sink. The design was odd, but it obviously had been made to catch some liquid and pour it down the hole in the center. Only the volume of that liquid must have been massive. The sink’s hole was huge. And now it was glowing blue from deep below. She stepped away from it and called to the Myconid.
“Hey Shitaki! You better get down here. Something’s happening!”
Sounds began to emanate from the sink-hole. A voice, she realized. It wasn’t Draconic, but it wasn’t the language of the humans either – though it sounded like a human. She looked around for a hiding place and saw a sort of large table, solid to the floor. She got behind it and ducked low, making sure to keep her tail out of sight as well. Something WAS coming, and it was coming through that sink-hole. She made a mental note. The Myconid was weird, but it was right yet again.
And then an oddly dressed human came running through the hole. Not climbing, running sideways as if the ground was on her right. It was all she could do to keep from laughing as the man’s orientation immediately changed and gravity took hold. He fell, but his momentum carried him out of the sink and onto the floor.
“Holy Shit!” he said in an oddly accented, but now perfectly understandable, human tongue as he shook his head. His entry may have been unorthodox, but the man that came out of the sink was clearly human. He was wild-eyed and with an accent that bespoke more than just coming from a different place. Somehow, the twang of it struck her as pure backwoods ignorance. But the wild eyes were obvious enough. This man was high on something. His clothing was well-worn and stained from who-knows-what. He did not spot her, watching from low at the edge of the table. Of course, without darkvision he would have to be looking very closely to spot the head of a very large kobold watching from her vantage point. Large, that is, from a normal kobold’s perspective. Even at full height she still stood a little shorter than a human.
But he wasn’t much interested in his surroundings. Once he’d reoriented himself after coming through the sink-hole, he turned back towards the sink. In one hand he held a smoothly-tapered wooden club of strange design. In the other, something even more strange that she didn’t recognize. It was somewhat longer than the club, but twin metal tubes ran the length of it back to a curved wooden stock. She realized quickly that it was some sort of ranged weapon – the design of the stock was too similar to that of a crossbow to mistake.
Suddenly three more figures came through the sink-hole. More men. Fat men. They took the same odd, parabolic route through the open air that he had before falling to the ground in a pile of fat.
The first man laughed. “Pigs in a Pile!”
Then he turned away, obviously looking to run, but one of the three threw something at him and he went down with a curse.
He wasn’t down long, but it was long enough for the three to untangle themselves and come at the wild-eyed man in earnest.
She got angry. She had no idea what was going on here, but her native sense of balance told her that three-against-one was simply not a fair fight. As she watched it progress, it was clear that the three in identical clothing were gaining the upper hand. In fact it was only due to their own ineptitude that the wild-eyed man survived thus far. One even threw his belt at the guy. It hit him squarely on the head. For his part, the wild-eyed man had swung his club at another man’s jaw, and she winced in sympathetic pain as the man was left with less teeth inside of his mouth than out.
Yet they wouldn’t stop. It was clear this fight was going to be to the death.
Suddenly she felt the Myconid’s question. “Where?”
She did her best to picture where the fight was, and she heard a noise above as her partner moved over their heads. It jumped, hard. She realized Shitaki was trying to break through the roof and fall directly on them. Unfortunately he only managed to break some boards, and she saw what passed for its foot dangling from above. The fighters below didn’t even look up.
Another blow and the wild-eyed man was staggering, clearly succumbing to superior numbers. The man who’d thrown his belt was standing now, looking ridiculous as his pants fell to his ankles.
“This can’t end with them winning,” she thought. “No one THAT stupid should be allowed to win a fight like this just because there’s more of them. It’s time I did something about this…”
And then the roof fell in. Shitake’s aim was true. What was left of one of the three men in uniform was no longer recognizable as human. Shitaki, though not THAT tall, was still a massively heavy mushroom.
She’d had enough. She stood up and ran over to the man in his underwear. Both of the men left standing in uniform just stared at her as if they’d never seen a reptile-woman before, as did the wild-eyed man. But she didn’t hesitate. She ripped the underwear from the man and grabbed his penis.
“Drop it now,” she said clearly and distinctly to the other uniformed man who was poised to club the wild-eyed man yet again with a small truncheon, “…or I swear I’ll rip it off.”
He just continued to stare at her, as did the man she held.
“Oh fuck. You don’t believe the word of a Paladin? You will,” she said and pulled. Hard. The scream was pretty much what she expected and she felt the blood spray across her hand and leg.
The wild-eyed man laughed and threw his club at the man in front of him. At the same time, she loosed her magic missile at him, assuming the emasculated man behind her would no longer be a threat. Unfortunately she miscalculated and the missile flew wide. But the club did it’s job well enough anyway. Though not dead, the uniformed man in front of the wild-eyed man was down. She spun around as the scream behind her changed in pitch, and she saw the emasculated man running at her, murder in his eyes and apparently oblivious to his own pain. She had no time to react, but she saw the wild-eyed man raise the odd weapon. She fell to her knees.
Her ears rang with the sound of thunder at close-range, as she was blinded by a flash of light from one of the two tubes of the weapon. Instantly the rain began to fall as well. It took her a second to realize that she was unhurt herself. Then she looked behind her. Where the man’s head used to be, there was nothing. The rain she felt was blood and gore.
“Holy fuck!” she said, eyes wide, as she turned back to the wild-eyed man.
“Put HIM the hell out of his misery! Fuckin’ pig.”
She looked at the wild-eyed man behind the weapon, her own eyes wide.
“I’d say so! What the hell IS that thing?”
“Aw, this? It’s a shotgun. You want a taste? I don’t know what you are, but I got another round.”
“Hell no! Look mister, I don’t know you. Me and my partner were just here to see what we could scavenge.”
“Partner?”
The Myconid moved towards the wild-eyed man, towering over him menacingly.
“That’s my partner, Shitaki. I suggest you put that weapon down. You can’t kill us both and…” she smiled a toothy grin as she dropped something at the man’s feet. “If you don’t kill me, I can perform instant gender transformation on you, too. But I warn you, my friend is meaner than me. It can do things I have no idea of!”
Which, technically speaking, was true. She liked the Myconid, but she knew little about their kind. They were just too different. But it had stayed with her the past few weeks since they met, and she was happy to have it’s company.
“Aw shucks,” said the wild-eyed man as he lowered the weapon. “Didn’t mean nothing by it. Not every day I come across a big-boobed lizard and a mushroom man!”
She instinctively looked down at herself, trying to decide if she wanted to be offended or not. Other than her admittedly big tits, she was covered in blood and gore. She smiled. Even in his drug-addled state, she must look pretty wicked to his eyes. She decided not to be offended. This time.
She put a hand out, in the standard human method of greeting. “Well then, if we’re going to be peaceable, I guess introductions are in order. What’s your name, human?”
He took the hand and she breathed a sigh of relief internally. That weapon was awesomely powerful.
“I’m Cletus. I’m from Tennessee! Where the hell am I now? You don’t look like you’re even from Kentucky!”
She cocked a head at the strange words and looked back towards the sink-hole. “Tenasea? Is that down there?”
“Fuck if I know!”
“Well, Tenasea Cletus, I’m Darvan and this, I think I mentioned, is Shitaki.”
The man reached out a hand to the Myconid.
“He doesn’t shake. Or talk.”
“Damn, this is some GOOOO meth! I ain’t never had no trippin’ this bad-ass before! Where the fuck am I?”
“As best we can figure, this is some sort of achemical shrine. I think thousands of years ago some alchemists made something here, though I’ve no idea what. But enough of that, I want to see what your friends were carrying.”
Cletus look around, then back to her as she bent to rummage through the pockets of the dead men.
“Wooohoo! Ain’t no lizards got a booty like that where I come from!”
Darvan rolled her eyes. Humans. He might use odd words, but his meaning was clear enough.
“I get it. I’ve been around humans plenty. You want to fuck me. Do yourself a favor, Tenasea Cletus. Keep your penis in your pants and stop calling me ‘lizard’ or I’ll make it so that is an impossibility. Now, what are these?”
She showed him what she’d found on the dead men, but she watched his eyes closely. They went instantly to an odd L-shaped object that had a triggering mechanism similar to his ‘shotgun’.
“Oh, that’s nothing… Here, let me take that off yer hands…”
“Ah-ahh… No, I don’t think so,” she said, her eyes narrowing. Instead she packed the object into her inventory and turned back to him.
“Tenasea Cletus, do you trust me?” she said, an inspiration hitting her.
“No,” he said, rubbing the blood from an eye from a gash over it.
“Well, I don’t trust you either. But I’m a Paladin. Do you know what that means? A Paladin?”
“Um… like a knight?”
“Yes. Like a knight.”
“You look more like a dragon than a knight,” Cleatus said.
That surprised her and her head retracted a bit in surprise at the unexpected complement.
“Well Cletus! That’s very nice of you to say! Thank you!”
Cletus smiled. The gaps where some teeth once were didn’t bother her too much. All humans were pretty disgusting anyway. She continued…
“Anyway, it also means I have some magic ability of my own. I can heal you, if you let me. But I have to touch you.”
“Well, hell yes! Heal away dragon-lady!”
She put a hand to his head and mouthed the words of the spell. Instantly the wound over the eye healed itself as well as other other wounds that weren’t as apparent.
“There,” she said, but didn’t take her hand away. “You’re not completely healed. I’m only a level 1 Paladin, but it should help.”
“Sure! I feel great now.”
Then she cast another spell, while she had him under her hand. Just a little charm spell. She needed something more from him.
Unfortunately, it failed to cast. “Dammit,” she said.
“What? What was that?”
She looked at him hard. She was going to have to trust him to learn what she wanted to know.
“Cletus, that was a charm spell. It didn’t work though. Cletus, I need you to show me how these things work I got off that guy. I know it’s a projectile weapon – that’s pretty clear by the mechanism on the bottom. It looks just like yours. I also know you want it. Well, Cletus, I want it too. I need to trust that you’ll show me how to work it, and then give it back.”
Through the drug-induced haze, it appeared Cletus was struggling to decide if he wanted to be trustworthy or not. But it wasn’t long before he came to a decision.
“Sure, dragon-lady. I’ll show you. It’s called a pistol…” he said, and she reluctantly handed it to him.
A few minutes later, she felt confident she understood it’s functionality, as well as the loading of the magazines that held the bullets that he showed her how to use. And, fortunately, he handed it back to her.
“Thank you, Tenesea Cletus. For a drug addict, you’re not a bad guy.”
“For a lizard…” he began, but she held up her clawed hand with one sharp finger raised.
“I mean, for a dragon-lady…” he corrected.
She nodded happily.
“You’re okay too.”
“Well”, she said, turning to Shitake. “I think this qualifies as a successful scavenge, don’t you? This ‘pistol’ is a powerful weapon! It’ll come in handy when I’m out of spell power. It’s a shame it will stop working when I’ve run out of bullets. But till then, this is better than anything I hoped to find here!”
The Myconid sent out spores and told her that it agreed and was satisfied.
“Well, Cletus, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry. You got any gold?”
“Gold? No. No gold. I have about thirty dollars to my name.”
“Dollars. Can I see one?”
Cletus fished out a wrinkled up, rectangular piece of green parchment from his pants and handed it to her.
“A piece of paper?”
“That’s YOU-nited States money right there!” he said proudly. “Legal tender for all debts, public and private!”
“Maybe in the YOU-nigted States. But it’s not worth shit here,” she said, tossing it to the ground where Cletus scrabbled to pick it back up.
“Come on, let’s go find a tavern. I’ll buy for now. I’ve got a little coin left.”
This is really getting ridiculous. I truly hope I’m missing something here, but damned if I can see how.
I hope what I’m about to rant on is obvious, but I feel the need to do so anyway. What The Serious Fuck?
#1 – How the hell does choosing which roll of toilet paper to use to wipe my ass with make one iota of difference? They’re both going to be used anyway eventually.
#2 – Putting a sticker on a roll of toilet paper DOES waste paper. That of the sticker, and that of the first few sheets that are wasted when you have to peel the damn thing off.
Please, PLEASE, tell me I’m missing something. Sure, it’s a trivial, first-world problem. But it explains so much too. Like why so many people no longer have any faith in anything environmentally conscious.
I firmly believe in supporting REAL environmental issues. And waste of anything bothers me intensely. But so often the solution is worse than the problem. Someone PAID to put this sticker on toilet paper rolls. Hell, there was probably a committee meeting where they discussed it and came up with the language and printed the stickers and implemented some automating sticker device to apply it.
Yet nowhere in that whole chain of environmental feel-goodism did someone step back and say… “Hey. You know… Really, this is stupid.”
And it’s not the first time. But it stares me in the face and screams, “WE ARE STUPID! AND SOMEWHERE, SOMEBODY PAID US FOR THIS!”
bluedraggy 