The Agrinautica

   A number of goblins are gathered around a small fire in their lair. On a raised ledge above them the largest the largest goblin, Yeemik, sits next to a barely concious human prisoner and rants about how he would be a much better boss than their leader, Klarg, not present. Suddenly another goblin comes running in helter skelter exclaiming "intruders, intruders!!"
   The goblins grab for their scimitars as the one who just ran in babbles about some party of intruders who have come in and killed everyone in all the other rooms.
   "Don't despair, there are many of us here, and we have this hostage!" Yeemik reminds the goblins, holding a knife to the prisoner's neck. Just at that moment a hulking bugbear strides into the room enters and tosses Klarg's head no the floor, which rolls towards the the assembled goblins. Yeemik can't help but feel a sense of optimism. From behind the bugbear a ferengi steps out [yes in my canon they are also a fantasy race] and announces confidently "Klarg is dead, is dead, we have killed him and all goblins who didn't surrender! He declared Rag-nok Sharp Ear to be his successor!"
   Yeemik and many of the goblins quickly glance at the cook. What! Rag-Nok himself, holding a ladle mid air, looks as surprised as anyone. Next a human enters wielding Klarg's morningstar and using it to herd two tied up goblin prisoners, Snik and Brek, blinking and wide eyed.
   Yeemik swallows. Then he raises his free hand. “Wait! Wait! Truce! Truce!” He points down at Klarg’s head as if it disgusts him. “Yeemik… Yeemik always wanted Klarg gone. Klarg bully! Klarg bad boss! Yeemik is… friend of new boss. Friend of Rag-nok.”
   Rag-nok slowly straightens, ladle still in hand, eyes shining with the first real power he’s ever tasted. One of the goblins near the fire mutters, “Rag-nok boss now?” and another immediately shushes him.
   Yeemik quickly tries to control the narrative: “We can talk. We can make deal. Human still alive. We give human. You go. No more kill goblins. Othwise, human dies” he holds a knife up to the captive's throat.
   The Ferengi seems to ignore this and addresses Rag-nok: "Okay we need help moving the supplies from Klarg's room to a cart outside, Rag-nok please appoint three of your esteemed senior associates to begin moving the materials outside."
   Rag-nok’s eyes flick to the other goblins near the cookfire. For a half-second he looks like he might refuse on principle—then he remembers the head on the floor, and the bugbear's huge shape.
   He straightens his greasy apron like it’s a cape.
   “Uh—yes. Yes. Rag-nok says… you three! You work!” He points at three goblins on the lower level—quick, arbitrary picks, the kind a new boss makes to look decisive. Two of them start moving immediately. One hesitates until he sees the bugbear glowering at him very specifically.
   They grab sacks and crates, hoisting them with grunts and mutters, and begin shuffling toward the passage, careful, submissive, eyes down.
   After a moment, as kind of an afterthought, the ferengi adds “Yeemik, are you just going to stand over there? Shall I write 'lacks initiative' in your quarterly evaluation??”
   Yeemik’s knife hand tightens… then loosens. What use is a hostage these people don't seem to care about. Maybe it would have worked on humans and elves, notoriously sentimental beings, but a bugbear, a ferengi, there seems to be a tiefling --red skinned, yellow eyed, horned-- behind them, this doesn't seem like a group that would be overly precious about collateral damage. As the three goblins tasked with helping out warily troop past them the tiefling gives them an exagerated thumbs up.
   The Ferengi begins walking around seemingly evaluating the goblins in the room. "Now I need someone very responsible and trustworthy." he announces. Settling on Yeemik he announces "ah yes, you look like senior executive vice middle manager potential. I need you to take this the Miraculous Sword of Chimbo -- he draws an ornate sword and holds it up, it seems to glow and sparkle, and guard these two prisoners." He then hands the sword to the prisoner Snik, who awkwardly holds it with his hand that are tied near his belly. The ferengi gestures to the prisoners and they shuffle towards Yeemik.
   Honored, confused, greedy to wield this sword, Yeemik steps forward and accepts it from the prisoner. While he is thus occupied the ferengi, whose name, they learn, is Margin, pulls out a ledger and writing implements and begins taking reports from the goblins present. He asks their names, duties, what they consider their greatest accomplishment in their current role is, where they see themselves in five years, any inefficiencies they can identify in the organization. While this is going on the tiefling in an unhurried manner releases the human prisoner and leaves the room with him.
   Presently the party seems to have finished its business. "Thank you everyone for your good work," Margin tells the goblins, "upper management will be sure to hear about this and I'm sure there will be promotions all around. Yeemik if you could please untie the prisoners and hand them the sword to bring it back to me, thank you for your good work."
   Yeemik retains some dignity by directing another goblin to untie the prisoners while he retains the sword. He thinks for a moment of making a wild attack on someone while he still has this sword, the party of intruders? Rag-nok? But ultimately he suspects it would just be suicide. He hands it back to the prisoner who carries it reverently back to the ferengi, who is standing by the door to the cavern with his party.

   "You know, actually, you have all done such a good job, if any of you would like to join us, our party boasts some of the highest quarterly loot earnings in the industry." The goblins all look at eachother, and then to everyone's surprise Snik the erstwhile prisoner tentatively raises his hand, followed shortly after by fellow erstwhile prisoner, Brek.

   Mosk the bugbear groans as he slowly regains conciousness. He's in a world of pain with several sharp sword cuts. He hears the sound of... dice? He blearily blinks his eyes open. He's in the Redbrand's common room. These ruffians, who work under him, while away enough time playing dice games at the table here but when he first opens his eyes he thinks he must be hallucinating from his injuries -- he sees one of the redbrands, Fletcher, at the table, and one of his bugbear lieutenants Clodd, sure enough, but also at the table with them is an unfamiliar ferengi and... that unnatural aberration that lived in the crevasse of the big cavern, eith its one stairs eye on a short stalk, the Nothic. Clodd and Fletcher look miserable. The Nothic is unreadable but appears to have all the winnings in front of it. A growl catches Mosk's attention, and he turns his head to see a big bugbear sitting in a chair stairing at him, with a big sword across his chest, and Mosk remembers the last thing he saw before blacking out was actually this bugbear and this sword...

   [I really didn't know how this battle would go as Snik is NOT a powerful character and if Targor and his allies got first initiative they could kill him and throw everything topsy turvy. Fortunately Vexira my tiefling wizard got top of the initiative and cast "fear" on him causing him to look scared and then Snik really did roll a nat 20 on an attack on him right before the Nothic dropped him. It was a picture perfect ending to this coup and entirely the result of letting things roll as they may. In clearing the castle, since Snik and Brek were from the same general clan, for each goblin they met I rolled a d20 for goblin relationships, for both Brek and Snik -- above 13 they didn't know eachother but 1-12 were things like "sibling's friend's cousin, owes him money, almost bought something from on cragslist, ex-girlfriend's brother, and... 1 itself was "ex-girlfriend." Very amusingly ex-girlfriend's brother came up exactly once and then one of the last group of goblins rolled the 1 for "ex-girlfriend."

   But the funniest coincidence of all was that since Snik and Brek will be departing the party I wanted to recruit a replacement. We recruited a gruff hobgoblin who had been initially skeptical of Snik's rule and when I asked Claude to name him what name should Claude randomly choose from the depths of the internet's ideas on goblinoid names? "Krusk." KRUSK. The name of my half-orc paladin from a prior campaign. I couldn't believe it. I'm taking this as Krusk's origin story.



   When I had first had Snik join the party I asked my then-DMbot ChatGPT to generate hobbies, aspirations and fears for him and this is what it had created:

Snik
Role so far: First volunteer, pragmatist, survivor
General vibe: Nervous but observant; wants to live long enough to profit from it

Hobbies
   Whittling bone and scrap wood into tiny, sharp figurines (mostly animals, occasionally exaggerated bugbears)
   Listening at doors and then confidently reporting half of what he heard
   Collecting buttons (he insists some are “lucky”)

Aspirations
   To one day run a small, quiet ambush spot with clear escape routes
   Dreams of being promoted to something like “Logistics Goblin” instead of frontline muscle

Fear (d100 roll result: 37)
➡ Fear: Being buried or trapped underground
   This makes sense for a cave goblin who has seen collapses and floods.
   Bees and wasps

   So leaving him as king of the whole clan seemed the perfectly fitting ending of a plot arc.

   Finally have all the entries of the long distance telephone pictionary game in

   Presently I'm tied for last in the LJ Idol poll! Which of course means I'll be eliminated unless I get some more votes!!! Please go vote for me, even if you don't have a dreamwidth account you can still vote over there with your livejournal account.


And here's a random saber toothed cat kitten and adult. The adult looks like he needs coffee.


Meanwhile in the Dungeons and Dragons came my character has bought an elephant (which I've named Bartleby). Its not something I had contemplated in the slightest until the dungeon master said a stablekeeper had one for sale and I was like.... yes! My character has also bought a lance to use on it and switched out his javelins for bolas so he can entangle people. I'm really looking forward to getting to use my new toys!


Also in the D&D game some kind of discussion of centaur anatomy inspired me to doodle this centaur trying to preserve her modesty by covering her human breasts and her horse teats.


But seriously, please go vote for me (:

   The trail seemed to abruptly end amid some shrubbery. On either side a white skull gleamed atop a stake driven into the ground. A small song bird twittered atop the one on the right but flew up into a tree as they approached. They stopped briefly between the skulls and Percival, looking left and right could see more stakes with skulls spaced out to form a border between the darker forest ahead of them and the cheery forest they had been traveling through.
   "There is no path to the temple," Krusk, his large companion, explained. "It's symbolic, it's all symbolic. We have to find our own way there"
   "And we must tread carefully so as not to make a trail?" ventured Percival.
   "Ah, yes." answered Krusk, "very good."
   They carefully picked their way in the general direction the trail had been headed, careful not to disturb the grass overly much or walk where it appeared maybe someone else had. Percival reflected how this necessity made one more considerate of the natural environment and felt pleased with it. The forest past the skulls was thicker and darker but not really in a depressing way. There were if anything more birds about and generally the environment seemed more undisturbed. Percival noticed Krusk had taken his kite-shaped shield off his back, and was holding his flail at the ready.
   "There's some dangerous creatures in here," Krusk explained, "that can surprise the unready."
   Percival put his hand on the hilt of his sword. Technically Krusk's sword, but Krusk almost never used it, probably only owned it for symbolic reasons. Designed for an orc like Krusk, it was a bit big for Percival, a teenage human. Percival wondered what kind of "creatures" lurked in this forest. Sometimes the difference between a monster and an animal seemed very subjective, and Percival disliked killing things he didn't have to.
   He thought back to some of the creatures they had recently encountered. The undead creatures he didn't doubt were worth scourging away, but what about that giant vulture thing, the "vrock?" [illustration of the event] It had attacked them sure, but maybe it felt they were threatening its territory or was hungry? Percival looked forward to visiting the Geographic Society in town where he could converse on this subject with people interested in natural history.
   "That group of thieves we encountered," began the usually untalkative Krusk, "do you think we should have fought them?"
   "Oh, um, uh, I don't know?" ventured Percival, mildly surprised how closely Krusk's question matched the theme he was already thinking about.
   "Why not?" prompted Krusk, not looking at him.
   "They hadn't attacked us, there were more of them than us?"
   "Yes but they were clearly thieves, it was our duty to oppose them. We probably could have taken them"
   "Maybe?" offered Percival meekly. He thought back to the time the previous day when they had hidden in the bushes as nine humans who looked very thievish had come down the road. Krusk had wanted to confront them, but Malek, the lizard-man had held Krusk back urgently hissing to just stay hidden. Percival had to smile recalling how Krusk's cup-bearer Davidge had skillfully defused the situation by thrusting a horn of strong mead into Krusk's hand at just the right moment to console him.
   "But the rest of our group didn't want to fight them" offered Percival
   "Yes but they would have gone with it if it came to that." speculated Krusk. "I think we should have. One must have courage to fight one's enemies but also the courage to go against what others think is best for you" mused Krusk. He wasn't usually this philosophical, thought Percival, but since they were on their way to Krusk's initiation into the Third Degree of the Order of Azetlotlex, Percival supposed he was thinking a lot about his duty. Percival briefly questioned whether he really wanted to follow in Krusk's footsteps and become a paladin, the path his parents had proudly put him on. His chest swelled with pride as he thought of the honor of the righteous path and he squashed his feelings of doubt.
   "What if they weren't thieves at all?" asked Percival
   "Well I would have confronted them and probably if they were criminals they'd fight or run. If they had nothing to hide we could have discussed it." Percival nodded, remembering how Krusk had tried to talk to the goblins they had encountered, before others had taken the initiative and attacked.

   Presently they came to the temble complex, delineated by another row of skull stakes. There were a few stone and wood buildings around a square with a grove of trees in it, and the imposing blocky edifice of the temple building beside it. Many members of the order of various races, human, dwarven, elven, orcish, and more, stood around or sat at tables, wearing black robes. Several cheerfully greeted Krusk, who soon disappeared into one of the buildings to change into a black robe himself. Percival noticed an attractive human female not much older than himself and found himself wondering if she was wearing anything under the robe, which caused him to be particularly flustered when a dwarf with a fiery red beard introduced himself ("Tyler") just then with a friendly but overpowering handshake. The dwarf then introduced Percival to the "dread master" of the lodge, a grey haired centaur whose face was lined with age. As Percival was introduced around everyone was very friendly, though he felt meek and intimidated. He was grateful that despite his feeling of awkwardness no one seemed to talk down to him. Some meat was roasting on a spit, which smelled delicious. Percival recalled being told their the Dread God Sithrak, whom the Order is dedicated to, was said to particularly love a good barbecue ("even now Sithrak oils the spit!" being one of their common sayings), and had even forbade them to eat an entirely vegetarian meal. On a table near the middle several gold coins lay apparently unattended, which Percival suspected was another symbolic test of the order. As the evening darkened, tallow candles were set out for additional light.
   "These are tallow candles, laddie, but inside the temple I can tell you we use only beeswax candles," offered Tyler.
   "Oh," answered Percival, watching how the twenty-sided gold coins glinted in the candle light.
   "The beeswax burns bright and doesn't splutter or smoke" continued Tyler, "but Sithrak is pleased by tallow candles as well. So tallow candles without and pure beeswax candles within"
   Sithrak does like burning animal fat Percival thought to himself.
   Just before midnight the members of the Order entered the temple (The Dread Master seemed to determine the time from the stars). Tyler took a position beside the great door with his sword grounded. "Your role doesn't begin just yet" he explained to Percival, "so yea may as well sit." Percival gazed at the large carving of an upside-down skull above the door, lit dramatically by the flickering candle-light.
   After about half an hour several members of the order, including the young woman, exited the temble. "They are the one's who aren't yet of the Third Degree themselves laddie" explained Tyler, "but now the ceremony begins, so you come up here and take position on the far side of the door. Percival took a posiiton in mirror of Tyler on the other side of the door, grounding the sword between his feet. He had hoped the young woman would stick around but the members who had exited departed didn't hang around. Over the next several hours he sometimes heard chanting from within the temple and at one point he thought he heard a muffled scream abruptly cut short. Tyler didn't seem opposed to talking but after awhile seemed to settle into an abstracted thoughtful state. Percival himself was soon lost in thought. Did he have what it takes to join this order himself in time? Would he join a different order? Aspects of it terrified him but he urgently wanted the respect of Krusk and the friendly members he had met tonight. And that woman..
   Finally just as the sun rose, the members of the order started to leave the temple. Krusk looked tired but pleased. He appeared to have a steak of blood smeared across his forehead.

   So I thought I wrote about this but maybe I didn't. After a lifetime of being vaguely d&dcurious, and even writing at least one seemingly d&d inspired entry without having actually played, my friends and I got around to organizing a weekly game. I found it involved a lot of being a fictional jerk to my friends (it helped that my character was a roguish hobbit I named Dillweed Tosscobble), such as, drawing a dick on my friend's character's forehead when at the end of a boss fight he was unconscious (Dungeon master: "okay roll, ummm performance, to find out how well you drew it"). Apparently on a night I missed Trent, who always plays his characters like some kind of psychotic chaotic jar jar binks, "used an old woman as a surf board to descend some stairs into a crowded bar, immediately angering all the occupants." Another achievement I'm particularly proud of is when I found my character with a bottle in hand when a battle broke out so I threw the battle, rolling a natural 20 (ie a critical hit, ie double damage), killing the shit out of the goblin it had hit.

   Well, while I was gone they started a new adventure, and having returned I just was inserted into it. The dungeon master is my friend Mick, a very technologically inclined character, has made a wiki for it, and a shockingly professional looking map, and a really cool little intro video which doesn't appear to be up yet. Anyway he happens to be encouraging us to record log entries about the sessions, I think enticing us with a samll amount of experience points for it or something, I don't know, I don't need much encouragement to engage in creative writing. The others have written pretty short straightforward little entries. I of course, this is not my way. Related aside: in 9th grade my english teacher had us write sentences with lists of vocab words, there was no expectation other than that each sentence would generally make sense, but I of course had to craft the whole thing into an actual story, because that's what I do. Anyway, the account I wrote is as told by my NPC retainers (apparently as a knight my character gets three retainers!), as recounted later that evening in a tavern. It contains lots of wild inaccuracies or outright lies:

( The Balladeer's Tale )

   Just as I pulled into my driveway Friday, my friend Mick pulled up in front of the house. He had had business in nearby Colac. Mick works as a "machine programmer" for a laser etching company. I haven't been to his work but I picture it as some wild sci fi scene with lasers shooting everywhere. I always have very interesting conversations with Mick; soon we were discussing why I can't cut things while holding scissors in my left hand -- I hadn't realized it's actually because of the way the blades are set up, and thought it was just something existential about scissors. He mentioned there's even left handed and right handed tin-snips, and that the left handed ones are always green, to which I objected, that the left should be red and the right should be green, as the running lights on a ship are.
   Then we moved on to the symbols I was using on my beehives. If they have the highly contagious and deadly-to-bees disease of foulbrood, I mark them with unmistakable red Xs made with red duct tape. After 75% of the hives I got from this one beekeeper came down with foulbrood I automatically places a quarantine on those hives of that batch which didn't even have foulbrood symptoms, and marked them with a red slash of tape, ie half the X. It's interesting to note that a red cross and a red X look VERY similar, but I try to make sure my Xs don't meet at right angles. Once a hive has been infected with foulbrood, one must put the bees down immediately :( , and then either burn the equipment or you can send it to get irradiated at a commercial sterilization facility. Since there's a general ban on burning things outdoors here throughout the summer, and I had a lot of affected equipment, I've decided to take it down to the sterilization center east of Melbourne. I picked up the first batch of sterilized hives on Thursday, now how to mark them so they don't get confused with nonsterile hives?? I googled around for insternational standardized symbols for sterilized, you'd think there'd be one, but other than a circle with "STERILIZED" in it, there didn't seem to be one. So I got some green duct tape and slapped an = sign on each hive -- I figure that's as opposite of the red X as I can get.

   While Mick and I were chatting on my back porch, my dear friend Koriander called me (via facebook) from Washington state, where it was 2am and she couldn't sleep. We put her on speakerphone and for the next three hours she was part of our conversation, it was kind of fun having a long rambling group international conversation. When I sent Koriander the picture of the hives marked with the symbols, the sterile ones on the left and the nonsymptomatic quarantine ones on the right, Kori wrinkled her nose and said "that's alright but... the red ones should be on the left."



   I had been vacillating wildly all week about whether or not I'd go on this camping trip with the Invertebrate Group five hours drive from here. On Friday I got so far as opening an email to apologize to the organizer that I wouldn't be able to make it after all ... and it was at that moment that I decided I would go. To shorten the journey just a bit I crashed at Mick's place that night, since he's about an hour in the right direction. I'll spare you the overwrought travelogging on this occasion since I can only talk about rolling eucalyptus covered hills so many times (theory: writing every day will help you avoid cliches because the cliches will become your own cliches), but the last hour was winding up a very pretty lightly forested valley. And very excitingly, a goanna --a lizard nearly two meters long-- (possibly a lace monitor) darted across the road. I had seen goannas every day when I used to live in subtropical Queensland up north, but hadn't seen any down here in cold Victoria.
   Since the itinerary I'd been sent for this trip noted they'd come back to camp at lunch on Saturday, I'd timed my trip accordingly, leaving Geelong just after 7am and arriving at 12:46. The campground was a nice quiet place by a river in the forest. There was no sign of anyone, and no reception of any kind. I pitched my tent in a nice grassy spot under the trees, idled about a bit till 1:16 but still no sign of anyone. Consulting the itinerary, they were going to walk along the river before and after lunch, so I set off up the river.
   No sign of anyone but it was pleasant. It was maybe 80f, sunny but with a nice breeze and I was wading along upriver since there weren't really trails on the banks. Returned to camp around 6pm to find the group sitting around a table under the awning of an RV, listening to classical music and eating cheese on crackers and wnie. They had flipped the itinerary and had driven for the day to a nearby location they had been going to visit the following day, due to weather considerations. I had been feeling annoyed, as one might imagine, having driven five hours to join a group that hadn't been where they said they'd be, but they said they had waited in the morning and I realized I was probably entirely at fault myself since I never told them I w as planning on catching up at lunch not morning. The members of the invertebrate group turned out to be a bit on the older side, when I went out with them the next day we had to restrict ourselves to relatively even tracks. I greatly enjoyed talking to them though, and it was nice to be able to say things like "when you say 'European Wasps' you mean Vespula germanica I believe?" without feeling like the colossal blow-hard I'd ordinarily feel like for dropping scientific names into a conversation. Because common names often vary between countries I find in Africa it's often only by resorting to the binomials that we can be sure we're talking about the same plant though.

   I haven't had a lot of campfires while camping in Australia because I'm never sure if it's allowed. I would have thought it wasn't but a ranger had happened by and said it was, so that evening I had myself a little campfire by my tent, with a glorious panoply of stars visible in the gaps in the trees overhead. When I put the fire out and turned my flashlight on to my tent, there was ... what I can only imagine was a fox but I swear it was bigger than a fox, its tail was longer and less bushy. It moved like a fox though, darting away a bit, turning to look at me with it's eyes sparkling in the light, then darting further away. Maybe it was the Tasmanian tiger ;)



Yesterday, Sunday, March 18th - First I led the group to see the colony on the underside of a nearby bridge wihch I had first taken for bees, but were in fact wasps. I think they were Ropalidia revolutionalis as that's the only I'm seeing on a list of Australian wasps that matches their mostly dark brown appearance. With the group we examined many little beetles and other bugs but I found I definitely am mostly interested in wasps and bees. We found some clusters of "green and gold gnomia bees" roosting on some plants (they look kind of like honeybees, indeed one of the volunteers said she'd sent a picture to an entomologist who, granted, wasn't very interested in bees, and he'd said they were honeybees). Also a spider wasp trying to haul its hapless prey, a spider, back to its burrow.

   The weather was overcast, on and off lightly sprinkling, temperature in the mid 70s, it actually felt perfect. During the lunch hour during which we were back at the camp I enjoyed just sitting in my campsite reading, thinking about just how serene this place in the forest was.

   Ducked out around 2:30, though the rest of the group will be there through today. Drive back home was uneventful. On both the way in and the way out I was listening to Paul Theroux's semiautobiographical book My Other Life. I love his writing, which includes several book length travelogues, but his travelogues are so much more than travelogues, but philosophical journeys. His writing always inspires me to try my utmost to write as best I can.



   I went straight back to Mick's actually, since we had made plans to play D&D. I've never played D&D before, though I like to make D&D references, and I've been saying I was D&D curious for awhile. I think the rest of my friends were similarly interested and inexperienced at it. We'd been meaning to get together to do it for awhile, and they'd finally done so on some recent occasion when I was out of town. So this was the first time I was able to actually catch up with them. I played a criminal halfling (hobbit?) which I named Dillweed Tosscobble, and was disappointed to find my friends had all given themselves boring names. During the evening I slaughtered two wolves and a goblin. I'm looking forward to playing more so that maybe I'll have some ideas to write a sequel to the D&D entry I wrote awhile ago that I'm quite pleased with (set in our contemporary time, as envisioned by people in the distant future). I also have an idea for a story where the protagonist is a naturalist in the style of the great 19th century expeditionists, and journeys around a D&D style world studying and writing about the specific ecological attributes of the fantastic beasts of the D&D universe. Explore ideas like how does a sphinx fit into it's ecosystem? A cockatrice? What's the natural balance between roving bands of orcs and elves?


Next Adventure: I've signed up for night shift Tuesday night volunteering on the continuing wildfires about an hour West of here. I think I'll start work early tomorrow, sleep till the shift starts, and then just survive as much of Wednesday at work as I can.