What's It Do? What's It Do?

In this continuing View feature, we show you a picture of a theoretical magic item. Then you go back to Facebook and in the comments, invent your idea for the powers that this item would have.

Here is this week's item:

What's this vintage chalice do in Realms? Head on over to social media and let us know!

Meme Monday

 by the Meme Team

The Making of Long Barney

by Jason "Aeston" Rosa

The first Ashen Adventures also marked the conclusion of the long-running Nangea storyline and to help make the event feel worthy of a grand finale, Tucker asked for help creating a "sea serpent". 

I'm not sure he or the rest of the staff expected something on the scale we created, but Rhiassa wanted to use this as an opportunity to express our thanks for the tremendous amount of work Ashenmark always does to help us with our events. So planning began to create something that really had a "wow" factor to it.

I did my best to capture the whole construction process in photographs so I'd like to take this opportunity to share with you all the journey of constructing the "Gloweed Leviathan" that we affectionately dubbed Long Barney. Team Sea Serpent (myself, Jen, Lani, Nataliya, and Nick) truly enjoyed this entire process and are very proud of the result.

A picture from Echoes of Ragnarok. These cardboard barrels were purchased with the idea that they would be a tree trunk for our event and the body segments for the sea serpent afterwads.

The barrels are cut in half, the internal structure is the "T" made out of 1" PVC. The pipe sticking out the sides is a specific engineering choice. Expanding foam is being used as the "glue".

All the barrels are now set up with the internal supports. The first fin is attached. The EVA foam that makes up the fin has a tab cut into it that is inserted into the PVC pipe on the side and filled with expanding foam in and around to cement them in place.

The initial shape of the head made of three panels of EVA foam. It was Nataliya's design and execution that gave this head a very organic shape.

Fins on both sides of the tubes are now in place.

Another view of the fins on, in the back is the tail piece that has different shaped fins just for the aesthetic.

The head is now attached to the cardboard tube with some extra panels to complete the shape and hold it in place. There is a skeleton of pool noodles in there as well to hold it together and keep it from collapsing.

The dorsal fin section, the tail, and the tail-tube with its elongated fins. Here you can see the extra texture that was created out of expanding foam to create a more realistic looking skin.

More views of the fin attachment and skin texture.

Nostrils added to help detail the head.

Spraying plasti-dip on the EVA foam fins to make them more resilient and hold paint better.

The plasti-dipped head showing the added eye sockets and skin texture.

The eyes were tap lights that were painted green.

A base-coat of latex (purple) and acrylic (green) paint goes on the body. Purple and green are the official glow weed colors but it was at this point that we starting calling the monster "Barney" because... well... purple and green.

The base coat of purple on the head.

The detail work on the fins and scales starts to get painted on.

More views of the details as they get painted in.

The lined up pieces really start to show how the serpent will come together.

Detail on the tail

Cloth added to the backs of the tubes to hide the internal structure but still allow access.

Final detail on the head.

Checking out the LED lights that were glued into many parts of the body.

All done! All the parts stacked up.

The kids were certainly impressed.

Various views of the completed Long Barney

It all just barely fit in the car after a few different attempts at Tetris-ing it in.

And here is the moment when Long Barney appears for the first time, causing exactly the amount of chaos we hoped that we would see. Enjoy!

 

Why I Want To Go - The Clontarf Shuffle III with Stacked Deck Final Table: Three of a Kind

Written by: Keith “Saegan” Cronyn

The Clontarf Shuffle is an event that is growing into a fine wine. As someone who thrives on action, adventure, and the general chaos of the battlefield, it might seem like a hard sell to someone like me.

As this year, the Shuffle is combined with the Stacked Deck Final Table, I might understand why you’d think there is no place for you, if you’re not on the main table. But that’s not the case. The event has become about celebrating the side of the game that loves games. Offering to teach newer gamblers the in and outs of the casino, with free tokens to play in the casino.

But even if that’s not your style, the event offers more, in the form of questing challenges for the mind and body, plot hooks, and the chance to help out important charities through donation.

This year the charity belongs to End 68 Hours of Hunger; which is geared towards providing meals to children who suffer from hunger between the free lunch on Fridays, and the free breakfast on Mondays. As someone who rarely goes anywhere without a plan for food, the thought of children going hungry really strikes me, and the ability to help them swells my heart.

Last year the Clontarf Shuffle surprised me with a live demonstration of field medicine, which for me will surely go down as a highlight for years to come. So I can’t wait to see what surprises the event has this year, what opportunities to help people will arise, and I can’t wait to see your smiling faces, enjoying the community, as always.

I’ll see you on the field!

Keith “Saegan” Cronyn

What You Missed - Ashen Adventures: Nangea United

By Kelly "Fern" Perfetto and Dan "N" Hudon

Fern [Friday night]:

This past weekend we once again set out to Nangea, this time in the hopes of defeating Thea Dalma, the rogue avatar of the sea goddess Calypso. Our journey began as we boarded two boats; a graciously lent Pacifican vessel, and Jack of Redwall’s ship which he had been working on for quite some time. There were not many people with me on Jack’s ship, but we fared well with a cannon primarily manned by Elric, and a good number of fighters, clashing against the creatures of the sea that Thea Dalma sent our way. That is, until a Leviathan appeared, and crashed through both ships. The Pacifican vessel sustained too much damage, and the crew had to row dinghies or ride inexplicably tamed sharks to land. Avendar did the bulk of fixing Jack’s ship as Gael, Ryu, and I baled water, before running aground. 

On land once again, we found King Skyros of Pacifica, who had also become wrecked and was missing some of his people. After traveling for some time through dangerous territory, we came across a safe haven, where some aquatic folk - Aquarians - were tending to some of the wounded Pacificans. They offered refuge to us as well, and we set out across the island to gather essential poultice ingredients to heal the Pacificans; some sort of bird eggs, pine fruits, and tropical aloe. At least one of the Aquarians, Asogill if I remember correctly, joined in our search so that we had a guide. The Aquarians were quite eager to teach us as well, and some of us went out on a brief expedition to learn how to tame giant seahorses. 

With the Pacificans on the mend, these Aquarians promised peace with the Pacificans, but asked for a favor in return. We were to slay the Leviathan, ending its reign of terror on their people and allowing us to travel the rest of the way to Nangea. Armed with harpoons and rope, which would become a line once on the ship (or boat? They were quite insistent on some terms but not others) we returned to the beach. Our primary Pacifican contact Thassos had gotten another ship for us, and once again two ships set out. I somehow ended up on the sparser ship again, and yet we had two of three harpoons. We reeled the Leviathan in many times, as did the other ship, and we hacked away at it as it trashed violently against our ship. Showing its corruption, it cast mind altering forces upon us but we managed to dodge the worst of it. The Leviathan finally succumbed to its wounds after many attacks. After some of us gathered up valuable provisions for later, we waded ashore to Nangea and settled for the night in Gundalf’s Tavern.

I have been trying to work out some sort of dish with Leviathan meat, pine fruit, tropical aloe, and eggs, but I think that might be an article for another time. 

N [Saturday]:

Greetings, mortals (and otherwise)! I have been asked to recount a tale of our (Ashen) adventures in Nangea this past weekend, so here is my account!

While I was unable to join the adventuring party on Friday night (seems like I boarded the wrong ship…) I heard that the heroes of the Realms encountered a mighty leviathan on their voyage to Nangea. From aboard their ships, they had to launch harpoons through the fins of the long wet creature to pull it alongside the hull and wail on its purple hide. I hear that leviathan meat is quite tasty, so perhaps it was worth getting sunk over!

When I arrived in Nangea after a much less eventful trip on Sunday morning, I found everyone gearing up to fight the forces of the evil Thea Dalma, traitorous avatar of the sea goddess Calypso. We gathered at Gundulf’s Tavern (where some of my companions gambled with a pirate for his treasure map) and were met by faces familiar to my companions, Tybalt of the Brimiri and Leyla, Archon of Friendship. After they declared their intentions to form a new, united Nangea, we set off to raid a glowweed lab inhabited by Narissa, an old friend of Leyla’s who had been corrupted by Thea Dalma.

After fighting our way through a maze of glowweed we entered the lab to find many potions of varying effects, as well as a complex mechanism sealing Narissa behind it. After spending quite a while arranging the wires, the lightning was able to channel properly and Narissa was released. She gifted us a number of necklaces blessed by Blue Flame, capable of pacifying and cleansing the Hollow that roam Nangea. In addition, she presented us with an incredibly useful invention: a power-draining gauntlet that could be used to absorb energy from beings augmented by corrupted ley cores. The user simply had to charge a powerful punch and strike the corrupted being to drain them, but any individual person could only use it once before side effects might take hold. Mandolin was the first to use it, draining Narissa to purify her and transfer her memories into Leyla.

Next, we went to find some Hollows to cleanse with the Blue Flame necklaces. While I tried shapeshifting into a Hollow to see if I could sneak some on covertly, it appears gifts of jewelry aren’t a common occurrence among Hollows, so we turned to the solution to all problems: violence! Corpses are much easier to adorn with necklaces than angry undead, and once we had drained a Hollow leader with an embedded ley core that could roar its fellows back to life, we had a pile of blinged-out bodies to cleanse. Unfortunately the Hollows had to be alive (undead? Er, not dead) to be cleansed, but with the power of raises and blunt force head trauma we solved that issue. We surrounded the sleeping undead and held hands while reciting a prayer to Calypso, and the Hollows were freed. We repeated this process several times throughout the day, so hopefully we made a dent in Nangea’s Hollow population.

At some point after this, while many of my companions went looking for some seafolk who served Thea Dalma, I joined several of my fellow militia members (and a few others) to go looking for the buried treasure at the end of the pirate from the tavern’s map. While Bogen, who had the map, fell a bit behind dealing with Jasper shenanigans, Kalashai had memorized the map and led us to the spot, where Yppn found the chest hidden under fallen leaves. After “liberating” the treasure, we headed back to rejoin the group, where we found J’ortsa reanimating a Sea Skrunk as an undead and much of the party concluding successful negotiations with the seafolk by dancing with them. Honestly not sure how all that ended up happening, but sometimes it’s best to just smile and nod.

The final preparation for the showdown with Thea Dalma was to destroy the three elemental totems giving her control over the storms, seas, and skies. Braving a maze of lightning, a pool of water, and a wall of wind - all while being attacked by hostile elementals and needing to destroy the buildings the totems were housed in with golem-provided bombs - we managed to break Thea Dalma’s influence over the weather.

As night fell, we prepared for our final assault on Calypso’s traitorous avatar. King Skyros of Pacifica arrived to promise aid on our western flank, the seafolk were in position to betray their master, we were ready. Thea Dalma herself, a tall, corrupted monstrosity, appeared before us with a host of glowweed elementals who could turn us against each other. A long battle ensued, as much amongst ourselves as against the enemy, but eventually we were able to enact our plan - to surround Thea Dalma in the same type of ritual circle as we used on the Hollows and burn away her influence with Blue Flames.

We coated our weapons in Blue Flames provided by Vesper’s flaming sword and attacked the avatar with great vigor, keeping her occupied and blocking her dissension-causing swings while the rest of us (aside from those keeping the glowweed at bay) formed a circle and began chanting the cleansing prayer - Blue Flame burns with cleansing fire, save this soul from fate most dire! - bringing Thea Dalma to her knees. As she was weakened, Orion charged a powerful draining punch with the gauntlet and dealt her a devastating blow. Still, however, it was not enough, and we had to repeat the process a second time. This time it was Bogen who landed the draining strike, once again injuring the avatar.

As her strength waned, Thea Dalma called out and summoned a massive leviathan, much like the one from the prior night. But this time, without harpoons to subdue it, there was nothing we could do but avoid its forceful strikes as we tried to form the ritual circle one final time, with Fern, J’ortsa, 404, and Mirren among those drawing its attention away. It was difficult, but eventually we managed, with Gordon dealing the final draining punch. The leviathan and glowweed disappeared, and Thea Dalma fell to the ground, her body shrinking and crumbling from a towering beast into a mere mortal form, then into a tiny sea snail no larger than a shoe. Despite her cries demanding the respect an avatar deserves, we gave her to Lyla to consume, ending her reign over Nangea once and for all.

We cheered for victory and a united Nangea, then returned to Gundulf’s Tavern to celebrate. Chimeron worked to create a new body for the Little Prince, Thea Dalma’s familiar who died with her, so that he could stand trial for his crimes and be returned to Sir Tara. We divvied up our loot (except the Goblin Gold, which was worthless aside from being shiny) and went our separate ways. Oh, and I got a new hand! Gonna reverse engineer that gauntlet and stick it on my arm cuz it looks cool.

Overall, our adventure was a rousing success, and I foresee a prosperous future for the people of Nangea.

‘N’ ((OOC: Daniel Hudon))

OOC: This was an amazing event, thanks to Ashenmark and all the staff and NPCs for making it happen! Even though it was my first event in the series and the series’ conclusion, I had a great time, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever comes next!

Conspiracy Monthly

By Kieran/Kyra Barry

The Three Page Spider Milk Document

Written by: Ethan "JB" Goldman

Milk Team Six, in position, ready to execute. This mission, educating the masses on the where's, whys and how's of Spider Milk Extraction and Refinement. The stakes, minimal, the resources, lower. Odds of victory: certain. 

Beginning mission.

Spider Milk, known by the scientific name Lac Aranea is a oft misunderstood substance, considered “Dangerous” or “Gross” or “Why we shouldn’t we just murder and eat all the Spiders”? However Spider Milk is one of the most powerful and versatile substances in all the Nine Realms Plus Several Others. It brings death, power, and everything in between, which is of course, everything. However how do you harness it, why would you use it? And most of all… just WHAT is a Spider Milk anyway.

To first answer this question we must contemplate the void, as we always do, look not to what a spider milk is, but what it ISNT, the answer is in the absence as always. Spider Milk is NOT a milk, its a spider milk, spiders don't have milk that would be ridiculous on the very face of it, and why would Norlund be ridiculous? 

Of course the answer that MANY believe is that there simply isn't a answer, and that Justari is simply playing a little gag upon the world, even though Justari isn’t from Norlund so that would be a weird statement… However I believe the answer is much deeper, I will provide two answers, and I will state for the record I believe both are true in a 20/80 percent ratio.

1. All spiders who are milkable serve the huntsman, the huntsman, sporting beast of the hunt he is, created a material that is incredibly useful that is only found on spiders to encourage humans to attempt to kill his very servants. The key is attempt as spiders are ambush predators. Thus the spiders are granted the opportunity to catch prey and be pray and the hunt in both its forms are venerated and his power known.

2. Spider Milk represents the liquid concentration of divine will. The Milk Gland actually exists on two different plans the divine and physical, unlike the God who exists only on the divine except in cases of avatar, and the Spider who exists only in the physical plane. From the Milk gland divine ichor can be transmuted to physical essence and allow the god to cultivate their minions as extensions of its own power. While this is normally presented in a Halo, blood, or other stigmata, because of the nature of the spider as a entity of poison and the Huntsman entity as a figure of death, this meridian forms within the venom gland, allowing it to be harvested before the milk dissolves within the body. This is why the milk can only be harvested from a dead spider, a living spider is already harnessing their Milk Meridian.

This may seem unusual, however it is correlated within the uses of milk. Milk, once properly extracted and contained within a patented spider milk storage vial, has many alchemical uses.

The first is perhaps the most easily to understand which is reintegrating within a living body. Because Spider Milk is inherently a medium between divine and physical magic, it can be reintegrated into a physical medium to impart divine abilities. Of course spider milk is toxic because of its natural ties to death essence meaning if not transmuted into different properties the milk will simply kill you. Fortunately, perhaps as according to the Huntsman’s will, Spider Milk is not a fully formulated magical essence, thus it is far easier to shape into a palatable form when compared to other magics such as TitanX. Simply put by shaping the magic using a holy rune, such as the symbol of a anvil, the magic will be shaped by the appropriate god and provide the direct, uncultivated blessing of that god as the milk opens your own Meridians to that gods divine magic. Of course with greater time and longer efforts one can truly and more permanently tie ones body to the divine form of the god buuuuut that requires being in Norlund and hanging out with dinosaurs and having fun, so I cant imagine that will ever happen again. 

To fully understand how this works you need to understand that in Norlund there are three key elements that permeate the world and thus stain its chi. There is Death, symbolized by red, Rebirth that is symbolized by yellow and of course, Blue, which is symbolized by the color blue. Blue Chi is blue chi, I don't know how I can simplify it more, its like, the manifestation of the realms artificial influence, the inherent blueness of steel and arcane magic? Listen its okay if you don't understand, but that's a whole other article and this one isn’t really gonna do numbers anyway because I didn't put a gods symbol at the front.  NOW of course there is muddled chi representing the secondary fusions of these traits, Violence, aka Blue and Death, Yggdrasil, supported by Life and Death, and finally 3 Path Stuff supported by Rebirth and Blue. By using the appropriate milk color and shaping it into a holy symbol that magic will not only permeate the users skin in the appropriate shape, but this appropriateness allows the magic to better absorb into the divine sigil created, thus forming a artificial meridian binding the milk’s power to your skin and allowing it to pull into the rest of your body and your own personal Soul. Fortunately they aren't permanent huh?

Second is, with the appropriate Yggdrasillian wood, (which, because the intense magic within the wood, can only be gathered by complicated entreatments to the spirit or most commonly, carved from the remains of Yggdrasil that form after disasters (Which Norlund was filled with)) one can imbue much more complicated benefits. The reason for this is simple, because Yggdrasil is the world tree, by shaping that trees wood with divine magic, shaped by moral desires, Yggdrasil interprets the message as a divine command, and acts according to the request. Essentially these scrolls are small Interventions, using the ink of the gods to mimic a divine seal. However because the divine stain Norlund so heavily, it can be said even the most secular magic in Norlund is a divine act. Such is the way of things. Naturally the wood needs to be bigger for dinosaurs then human, and if a dinosaur one was used on a mortal the Hero would be unlikely to survive the saturation, but that goes without saying does it not.

Lastly is Spider Milks last use as a chemical reagent. As Spider Milk exists in two planes by using Spider Milk one can incorporate unnatural levels of flavor and subtly that  take a properly trained pallet to appreciate. This naturally produces arcane phenom because the chemical process is also accompanied by a astral process within the Upper domain.

Hopefully this instructional guide has increased your understanding of the nature and power behind spider milk. Remember while spider milk requires death it DOESNT require rendering, so make sure to take care of your spiders as they take care of you. I have seen similar spider milk like glands in other species but um, it can be weird harvesting them. The closest thing for a human is blood magic but everyone gets really judgmental about that one, Milk is a lot better and there isn't a Milk Witch who gets empowered by every use of spider milk. That would be whacky. 

Anyway I hit 3 pages so I am done with my boast.