Inspired by the most recent Fireside chat, here’s my first piece of fanart for Worlds Beyond Number! (hopefully first of many, but that’s gonna require bending inspiration to my will, soooo)
This story is and has been and will continue to be one of my favorite things in the world. Crackle Crackle 🔥✨
[insert very clever chess reference here] Decima Aquila to Garavellir Viraan Bards of New York - Dark Age: Chapter 36 “Peace in Our Time”
Here’s the audio I sent Will that played at 2:31:35 [YT] since it was a little hard to parse in-stream.
“I think often about our game. It’s all one game in the end, I think. The only one that matters, at least.
But in the penthouse, my blunder - I prefer fianchettoed bishops, flanking to disrupt the center of the board. I know you know that.
But, for whatever reason, I opened this time with my knight - a knight instead, and all of my play thereafter was changed. I let you make me risky, and I lost.
But I only bring this up here, because I’m still feeling risky. Or maybe I owe you a better prize for your victory last night.
Someone in chat during the chapter 36 live said I should draw this! Garavellir and Decima “As you wish” from the Princess Bride, which is my favorite movie so ofc I had to <3
I love the two bards, trading inspirations…. ough they make me crazy.
I’m DEEPLY *unwell* about these two, and this is one of my favorite movies! 😭
Rewatching misfits and magic 2 and realizing how many hints about cannibal island I missed the first go round. Aabria was slipping in clues about how predatory they were around magical items as early as Sam’s cocaine energy charming Boudy (●__●)
Okay, I just had a lovely Bards of New York fan that does not play DnD herself ask about the Detect Thoughts that Decima cast on Katari in episode 35. Since there are specific mechanics I was leveraging to twist the narrative knife, let me explain here rq!
What Decima knows:
Having been warned by Valor (and then briefly speaking on it with Katari too,) Dec knows Katari is particularly bothered by psychic magic.
How Detect Thoughts (2024 version) works:
Once the spell is up and running, you have this as an option: “If you probe deeper, the target makes a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, you discern the target’s reasoning, emotions, and something that looms large in its mind (such as a worry, love, or hate). On a successful save, the spell ends. Either way, the target knows that you are probing into its mind,”
So the spell never actually was about knowing Katari’s thoughts (though that would have been nice both as Decima’s player and a Synntari fan) — it was always just to disrupt their moment. In Decima’s calculus, Katari remaining off-balance between herself and Synnove keeps her more firmly in the camp of accepting Beatrix’s mission. She can’t risk Katari moving back into alignment with the party and potentially being dissuaded by JB, so the plan was to use the DT and tearfully run off, hoping Katari would follow her into the lift. That would have been a much more overtly manipulative scene, and who knows if it would have worked given Katari’s insanely high Insight.
I actually ADORE how things shook out instead: Garavellir’s counterspell, Synnove following, and the later conversation between those two? INCREDIBLE.
I love that Decima’s best path to achieving her goals as Lord Inquisitor was to stir up drama in the group. If they weren’t going to trust her, she had to make sure they didn’t trust each other too much either. It’s a fun double-fake: her change in tone outside of the throne room suggests that she is the good cop to Beatrix’s bad cop, but in actuality she knows she’s the bad cop to Garavellir’s good cop (hence her eagerness to take off with Katari and leave the rest of the group alone with him to consider the offer, knowing full well that both the bar and penthouse were well-surveilled.)
What a FUN episode! That chess scene has lived rent-free in my mind since Wednesday, and I’m so happy to have finally met the rest of the Bards!
1 day ago
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