My apologies; I thought I'd posted here before I left. My wife's parents are both ill and we've been dealing with hospital stuff and trying to get them set up in long-term care. I'll be out of town for several more days, should return late Friday. I do finally have a laptop with me though so will try to get back in the swing. Again, sorry for the disappearance.
Just a heads-up that I'm traveling for the next few days and weather has been a mess so far. Online access will be intermittent; feel free to autopilot or direct Sasha as needed.
What time is it? Is it bad out there? "You've been gone maybe an hour. Seems like a sleeping spell, or something like it. Things are … well, busy. That's Merelda. She's … " she points just as that corner of the bar explodes in profanity. "…helping?"
Agreed with all so far -- Silverado was a hoot, though I haven't watched it in years. Music is also part of what I love about The Magnificent Seven, and though that isn't a sad movie, the last scene (and even moreso in the Seven Samurai) has a bit of the melancholy that's present in some of my favorite Westerns — Unforgiven and The Shootist and even Butch Cassidy — that these characters and these worlds are fading, about to be swept away by modernity. In that, this style of Western has a lot in common with old-school fantasy, whether it's Arthurian tales or Tolkien.
Terrific! I’ve been hoping for a Reign of Winter group for a while; I’d written up the skald Elyn Fisker for a game years ago that never got rolling and always liked her. The Skalds’ combat utility depends a lot on who else is in the party, of course, but she’d provide strong melee support for sure, along with social/knowledge skills and an insatiable appetite for folklore. Long-term, she should be a pretty good diviner with the Fated Champion’s version of spell kenning and (way later) the Skald Saga of the Witch Queen. intro: https://www.myth-weavers.com/sheet.html#id=1887664 Some people have their stories written right in their skin. Elyn Fisker does, though it's hard to tell sometimes. Elyn gets sunburned a lot. She owes her complexion, and she supposes, her stature, to her father, a ship's pilot who raised her when he could between trips across the Inner Sea. He was from the north, plainly, but never said exactly where. It didn't matter, he'd reply when queried; he could never go back. Elyn often asked him why; he said he'd tell her the story one day when she was older. He never did, but not a day went by that he wasn’t spinning some tale for her — poems his mother taught him, seafaring adventures, songs he seemed to make up as he went along. Now he was a storyteller — not a drop of actual magic in his whole body, but he had forgotten more tales than many a bard with a fancy college behind their name. She’d watched town drunks, spellbound as her father told a particularly long tale in a tavern’s great room, stopper their whiskey bottles lest they pass out too soon and miss the end. That’s how good he was. And then, when Elyn was in her teens, he packed most of his belongings — save for his flute, which he gave to her — and sailed for the north again. Whatever he couldn’t go back to, he must have changed his mind. He hugged Elyn before he left and told her he hoped he see her again, but made no promises, and she respected that. He left her with Mara, one of the many women he’d befriended in his time in the south and a true bard, with one of those fancy college names after her own. Elyn’s magic was much rougher than Mara’s, but the older woman agreed to take her on as an apprentice and for nearly two years they’ve traveled the coasts and beyond, playing for whoever would listen. Until a week ago, when they finished up a set late and one of the men got fresh. Mara would’ve handled it better; Elyn had seen her chasten a crowd of rowdies with just a raised eyebrow. Elyn didn’t know the eyebrow trick, so she used her elbow. After the brawl ended, a furious Mara visited Elyn in jail and told her she was leaving. If Elyn was serious about her training, she could try to catch up once the constables let her out. But Mara would have the horses, and a long head start. Which brings Elyn to Heldren, on the trail of her estranged mentor — unless a better path presents itself. |
