On the second day of Christmas...
Dec. 26th, 2025 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseToday did not get off to a good start. How do I put this without being too gross?
OK, let's just say I'm inclined to retain water. On one side. To the extent that I own a couple of bra inserts, a larger one and a smaller one, and yesterday I needed the larger one. It augments the side which is not retaining the water by two cup sizes. And this morning, if I were going out (I don't bother with an insert if I'm not), I could pretty nearly get away with not wearing an insert at all. We're talking about maybe a couple of hundred millilitres of water which stopped being retained overnight, and that water, naturally, had to go somewhere.
Sibyl is a water hog. That's why, if I want to take in more liquid than usual, I have to diddle her by sipping it very slowly from a flask, so that she doesn't notice. Last night, she water-hogged in a pretty big way.
And now, there is unscheduled laundry. I really hate Sibyl sometimes.
Other than that, however, things aren't too bad. Yesterday was a pretty good day; I felt a bit woozy after lunch (I hadn't overeaten - I think it was just the excitement of finally being able to get to church which had caught up with me), but I wasn't too bad and I perked up later, which meant I could do a bit of knotwork practice and some knitting. And I have Ideas, courtesy of Ingvar.
Ingvar was the chap I mentioned a few posts ago who turned out to know Porthos; after a while it occurred to me that I probably knew where they knew each other from. It took me that time because I was around there too, but I don't recall Ingvar from those days (having said that, it was a long time ago now, so I can't remember everyone). We were all on the alt-fan-pratchett IRC chat, back in the day; that's how I first got to know both Athos and Porthos, and Porthos introduced me to d'Artagnan very shortly after that. (To my knowledge d'Artagnan was never on #afp, but he is a Pratchett fan too, nonetheless. It's the one thing, apart from very high intelligence, that all three of them have in common.) So Ingvar and I were talking about all that and trying to see who else we could recall that we both knew, and somewhere among all that he linked me to something called The Tale of Westala and Villtin, an epic comic fantasy tale about a pair of adventurers based on the two authors, with several characters in it based on other #afp-ers. Porthos is in there, with a sex change (it really can't be anyone else). Ingvar is in it too. I have not yet found anyone I recognise as being Athos, but I have come across a few other people I recognise, including Porthos' friend the tenor (who isn't d'Artagnan). It's perhaps telling that I think of him as "the tenor", but the writers of the tale thought of him as "the biologist" (he's both, of course); in the tale he appears as a mad doctor who does some fairly odd biological experiments.
I am enjoying this tale very much; and it is also making me think that I'd like to do a D&D-based fantasy story of a similar nature, with the adventuring party based on the Three Musketeers and myself. And, of course, if you're going to do D&D-based, then you need a race and a class for all your main characters. None of us is a natural fighter, but I thought of a way round that: I could have Athos be a cunning artificer who specialised in making fighting automata. That'd suit his technological bent. Obviously d'Artagnan has to be the bard, and if I'm not the bard I'm the cleric; that neatly left Porthos handling the magic, and I think he'd make a great wizard.
As for the races... there is no actual half-dwarf in D&D, but since there are half-elves, there seemed no reason why there shouldn't be, and it would entirely suit Porthos; so that's what he'll be. Half-elves and gnomes make the best bards, so I was going to have d'Artagnan as one of those (there are good arguments both ways), until it occurred to me that Athos would really enjoy being a tiefling (half-infernal). And I thought... well, if we're going to have a tiefling, it'd be a lot of fun if we also had an aasimar (half-celestial) so that we could have some Aziraphale and Crowley vibes in the mix, and aasimar would very much suit d'Artagnan; which also means that I get to be the half-elf (yes, you can have more than one in a party, but it is fun to have a mixture). And I do like playing half-elves. They're great negotiators.
Having established the characters, the next question is: what exactly is this lot going to do? That was easy enough. I decided that Lord Smallpiece of Ashwood's great-uncle Algy had gone missing, and he was very keen to get him back, not merely because of the obvious family ties, but also because Uncle Algy did such a great job of guarding the manor house at night.
Lord Smallpiece is in his sixties.
Yup. You got it. Algernon Smallpiece is a vampire.
So I was already churning this stuff round in my head when I found a few people who were interested in an actual D&D campaign. I thought "oh no, I can't write two at once... oh, right, I'm being stupid, I don't have to!"
This is brilliant. The story will feed into the campaign. The campaign will feed into the story. Both, I think, will be better for it.
All I need now is for Sibyl to behave!
OK, let's just say I'm inclined to retain water. On one side. To the extent that I own a couple of bra inserts, a larger one and a smaller one, and yesterday I needed the larger one. It augments the side which is not retaining the water by two cup sizes. And this morning, if I were going out (I don't bother with an insert if I'm not), I could pretty nearly get away with not wearing an insert at all. We're talking about maybe a couple of hundred millilitres of water which stopped being retained overnight, and that water, naturally, had to go somewhere.
Sibyl is a water hog. That's why, if I want to take in more liquid than usual, I have to diddle her by sipping it very slowly from a flask, so that she doesn't notice. Last night, she water-hogged in a pretty big way.
And now, there is unscheduled laundry. I really hate Sibyl sometimes.
Other than that, however, things aren't too bad. Yesterday was a pretty good day; I felt a bit woozy after lunch (I hadn't overeaten - I think it was just the excitement of finally being able to get to church which had caught up with me), but I wasn't too bad and I perked up later, which meant I could do a bit of knotwork practice and some knitting. And I have Ideas, courtesy of Ingvar.
Ingvar was the chap I mentioned a few posts ago who turned out to know Porthos; after a while it occurred to me that I probably knew where they knew each other from. It took me that time because I was around there too, but I don't recall Ingvar from those days (having said that, it was a long time ago now, so I can't remember everyone). We were all on the alt-fan-pratchett IRC chat, back in the day; that's how I first got to know both Athos and Porthos, and Porthos introduced me to d'Artagnan very shortly after that. (To my knowledge d'Artagnan was never on #afp, but he is a Pratchett fan too, nonetheless. It's the one thing, apart from very high intelligence, that all three of them have in common.) So Ingvar and I were talking about all that and trying to see who else we could recall that we both knew, and somewhere among all that he linked me to something called The Tale of Westala and Villtin, an epic comic fantasy tale about a pair of adventurers based on the two authors, with several characters in it based on other #afp-ers. Porthos is in there, with a sex change (it really can't be anyone else). Ingvar is in it too. I have not yet found anyone I recognise as being Athos, but I have come across a few other people I recognise, including Porthos' friend the tenor (who isn't d'Artagnan). It's perhaps telling that I think of him as "the tenor", but the writers of the tale thought of him as "the biologist" (he's both, of course); in the tale he appears as a mad doctor who does some fairly odd biological experiments.
I am enjoying this tale very much; and it is also making me think that I'd like to do a D&D-based fantasy story of a similar nature, with the adventuring party based on the Three Musketeers and myself. And, of course, if you're going to do D&D-based, then you need a race and a class for all your main characters. None of us is a natural fighter, but I thought of a way round that: I could have Athos be a cunning artificer who specialised in making fighting automata. That'd suit his technological bent. Obviously d'Artagnan has to be the bard, and if I'm not the bard I'm the cleric; that neatly left Porthos handling the magic, and I think he'd make a great wizard.
As for the races... there is no actual half-dwarf in D&D, but since there are half-elves, there seemed no reason why there shouldn't be, and it would entirely suit Porthos; so that's what he'll be. Half-elves and gnomes make the best bards, so I was going to have d'Artagnan as one of those (there are good arguments both ways), until it occurred to me that Athos would really enjoy being a tiefling (half-infernal). And I thought... well, if we're going to have a tiefling, it'd be a lot of fun if we also had an aasimar (half-celestial) so that we could have some Aziraphale and Crowley vibes in the mix, and aasimar would very much suit d'Artagnan; which also means that I get to be the half-elf (yes, you can have more than one in a party, but it is fun to have a mixture). And I do like playing half-elves. They're great negotiators.
Having established the characters, the next question is: what exactly is this lot going to do? That was easy enough. I decided that Lord Smallpiece of Ashwood's great-uncle Algy had gone missing, and he was very keen to get him back, not merely because of the obvious family ties, but also because Uncle Algy did such a great job of guarding the manor house at night.
Lord Smallpiece is in his sixties.
Yup. You got it. Algernon Smallpiece is a vampire.
So I was already churning this stuff round in my head when I found a few people who were interested in an actual D&D campaign. I thought "oh no, I can't write two at once... oh, right, I'm being stupid, I don't have to!"
This is brilliant. The story will feed into the campaign. The campaign will feed into the story. Both, I think, will be better for it.
All I need now is for Sibyl to behave!
