Food notes for the weekend: - make couscous with my homemade veg stock, which came out very fruity and savoury - half a nice green apple, hollow out, full with couscous, put some cheese on top and bake in the oven - do some chicken drumsticks in the pan and then finish them in the oven with the apple - turn apple innards into a sauce or chutney with star anise and rosemary
For ease of record keeping, some character notes on Shermih (dnd, aka LadyBug version) Grew up with money, in a noble family, so money is not a big motivator for her A much, much weaker mindmage/psychic than everyone around her (which....is funny because so far the Party has mostly seen her so mindmagic shit) and badly Trained in it, in the 'why bother with someone that weak' flavour. Related to that: seen as somewhat pitiful by a lot of adultier adults around her because of her percieved lack of ability. People her age bullied her for it in says that were hard to Trace and she couldn't defend against, such as Sending her nightmares. Party has been the first instance of someone treating her as a mostly capable adult. Also why she's so touchy about percieved bullying. Showed her first sign of storm magic when hitting ehat passes for puberty in mantids. Imagine her coming out if ger crysallis not by breaking it open the normal way but by a minor thunderstorm happening within. Her mum ensured this was kept hushhush. Her mum also repeatedly tried to tactically marry her off. So far failed because Shermih shy, and tends to Shocking Grasp her suitors. Which is why she was on that ship, mumbug going 'awrught people are talking and you NEED to learn control, ships have weather mages, go' That said, the ship was carefully chosen, and Shermih was upfront trained by one of her mum's guardsmen to use knifes and a sling to defend herself if needed Spoiler: DND PARTY AVERT YOUR EYES she's the result of a liason her mum had with an Illithid, trying to breed even more mindmagic and psychic potential into her line. The illithid in question was a mantid before getting tadpoled, so Shermih came out looking a pureblood mantid, which was a pleasant surprise to her mum. The lack of psychic oompf less so. It's also she Shermih does understand and speak Deep Speech though she doesn't know that. Yet. To be expanded as necessary.
Weekend plans: Chores: - cooking (2x) - put laundry away - dye clothes if possible (needs window open) - pick up some mess - take out trash Pleasure: - saturday strike things w/cody and Hawke - sunday/monday: IB grind, surival, gambit with kas
Spoiler: DND PARTY NO LOOKY (except ali) GOD i can't want to drop a sitch that ends in shermih realizing she can understand deep speech and i assure you. there will be such a situation coming up. it is Going To Happen also pls know that i have the mental image of aspi trying to help teach shermih magic
Spoiler: re spoiler GOD i cannot wait for that to hit her. Aspi reaching Shermih magic is so cute a concept....full caster coalition...
Cooking skills! Which of your children has them, what kind. Also, what do they always buy, gather, or forage for?
Matt can cook very well! Baking not so much, at least not outside of bread, but cooking he's really good at. Has his own herbs and veg/fruit in the garden, so that only gets bought depending on season. Things he always has in his fridge are sprouts/microgreens of whatever he currently fancies, and meat. Geme can theoretically cook. Practically, she hasn't in literal centuries. Doesn't eat, so no staples- Ariel cannot cook unless it's basic spaghet. Mostly lives of takeout and frozen stuff. Felidae cooks. Molecular cooking with energon, babey. She has EVERYTHING that's remotely edible on hand whenever she can and she will work out ways to use it Updraft has lived of basic ass energon forever and he's okay with that. Mostly. Particular to the occasional titanium shaving additons. Petric's method of cooking is 'stick it over a campfire, wait until lightly charred, eat'. He's undead, he doesn't have to eat, but not eating ever is also suspicious, so he does it anyways. ETA: Muderbug!Shermih can cook quite well actually! Darhek taught her, and she enjoys doing it. Her favourite is the meat jerky and the baryon bough tea. Ladybug!Shermih cannot cook because she's always had staff at home. She would however like to learn.
HMMM Matt is Catte, obviously. Ladybug!Shermih is one of those darling little poison frogs. Colorful! peaceful! able to fuck you up through skin contact! Murderbug!Shermih is wolverine Geme gets a king cobra Petric is worm no actually, he's a ferret. moves at night, sneaky, smart, likes a theft, good at murder. Updraft is a chicken with separation anxiety.
draft for next chapter on murderbug shermih: Spoiler: medical, hive nonsense, discussion of violence Her time was spent between waking and... unconsciousness, or something like it. The first time she surfaced out of the morass of not-sleep, she expected pain. The memories of what had happened were more than fresh enough, and looped in her head, every injury inflicted on her. And by her. But when she woke, she just felt numb, and weaker than a poisoned thrall. Her body wouldn’t move, but she couldn’t find it in her to care. She was alive, that was the important part. Survival first. Everything else second. The effort to turn her head knocked her clean unconscious again, but at least when she woke again, she could see more than a light colored ceiling. There was a machine gently humming next to her. The smell of ether was heavy in the air, and a roll of her eyes showed why: a small tank seemed hooked to her, thin line feeding into the soft flesh on the inside of her arm. The sound of a door came from the other side of her. Turning her head knocked her unconscious again before she could finish the motion. The next time the room was darker, only illuminated by the machine still humming away beside her. Her body still didn’t react to any attempt to sit up, her throat felt parched but aside from that... it wasn’t so bad. The ether-hunger didn’t chew at her. The strange captain she remembered seeing had seemingly taken her somewhere. Not a ship, she didn’t think. There were no engine sounds and the place was clean. Still, she couldn’t make sense of what she saw. There were no restraints on her. Fabric was wrapped around her arms where she could see them. She remembered how one of those had been broken enough to show bone, white and glistening. It wasn’t, anymore. Someone must have shoved it all back into plates. Her arm looked straight, after all. The rest of her was covered in a thin sheet of fabric. But her limbs were all present. None of them seemed misshapen. It made no sense at all. Why would they waste the resources on her? She had no knowledge worth the effort. The nest was dead and even if not, she’d never been valuable enough that anyone would have tried to get her back. If she was stupid enough to get captured, she deserved it. With a sigh she rolled her head back to look up at the ceiling. She couldn’t move. She didn’t hurt, but she couldn’t move. And there was nobody here to get any information from. She was trapped. It was a calming thought, in a way. Like being laid on the ritual table in the nest. Once you were flat and the wizards had chanted chains in place over you, there wasn’t much you could do about it aside from scream when you had the breath for it. This was no different. Shermih took a deep breath, as much as her wrapped up chest allowed. There was tightness that reminded her of broken ribs, but none of the pain. No, it was different. It hurt a lot less than her last visit to the tables. What had been done to her had been done in the space of unconsciousness and didn’t hurt now. She didn’t know if they’d tried to make it less painful that way, or if it had simply been more practical to do when she couldn’t struggle. Or perhaps it had needed to be done fast, if they wanted her alive. She didn’t know why they’d want that, but Fallen thought in strange ways. Perhaps they would explain it. Perhaps she would ask. The next time she was awake, she had the opportunity to. For the first time she didn’t wake up alone. There were voices as she came to, the clank and hiss of a door unlatching, opening, closing again. By the time she opened her eyes, there was only one person in the room with her. It was the big captain she just barely recalled from the day she’d been injured. They stood at the foot of her bed, watching. Or she assumed they were watching. Two of their eyes were cloudy and dull, a scar running through the left primary all the way across to the right secondary. Almost on instinct, Shermih noted that the edges were clean. Whatever had caused that wound had been sharp, and uncharged, and the wound must have been tended. She was jarred out of her distraction by the captain’s voice. “Ah, now you wake.” They still spoke the tradetongue of the Reef, but now she could notice that the accent was strange. Softened clicks, a lilt almost like it was a question but not quite. “Can you talk, little one?” Shermih nodded, realized that that wasn’t what had been asked and hurried to voice the word. “Yes. Understand you. Can talk.” Her own voice was rough, the tradetongue clumsy in her mouth and something about it stirred the captain into motion. She flinched back. She’d been too slow to answer, too inelegant, and punishment- didn’t come. Instead the captain leaned past- they were so large, taller than a broodknight and Shermih pressed back into her pillows - and picked up some from beside her bed. It was a cup. Filled with water. And the captain offered it to her, just like that. She took it, sipped, trying not to think about why this was happening, why this captain was so kind to her, and just focused on the clean taste of the water. There wasn’t a trace of dirt or plant matter in it, much less rot or even the pupae fluid that the water in the nest had always tasted like. Once it was empty, the captain took the cup and placed it back to the side. Some squint of their eyes looked amused. Did they find her confusion entertaining? That wasn’t the worst. It was better than being entertained by her pain. “Better now, yes?” Shermih took a breath. “Yes. Thank you?” The last bit felt so strange to say. You didn’t thank people, usually. It looked weak. But she’d heard the words while hiding, knew what they meant. “Good. I am Saleeks. This is my home. You are a guest here, until you are healed. A,” there was a word there she didn’t understand. One-who-makes-whole? Healer? “Will take care of you. Do you have a name?” “Shermih. Name is Shermih.” It was rare to have a name before you became a Wizard or a Knight. But the Broodqueen had deemed her worthy of one, back when she had thought that Shermih might be strong enough to be worth breeding from. It meant possibility-of-usefulness. The potential to be worthy of life. She hadn’t lived up to it, but now who would care if she kept it? Who would even know? “Shermih. Good. Welcome, Shermih.” The Saleeks squinted their eyes in that amused way again. Her eyes. There had been the markers for ‘female’ when she had given the name and forgetting might cause anger. Anger was likely to cause her pain. It was better not to forget. “You’re the Mindbender’s get, aren’t you?” “Thank you.” This time she was more confident of the word. And then Saleeks said that, and Shermih flinched back again. There was no denying it. No hiding it, it seemed. “Yes. Hiraks. Consort of In Ananh.” Who too had been confident in her usefulness, had helped when the Broodqueen had ordered her onto the ritual tables to improve her, until one of her hatchmates had shown more potential. She had not envied Xillox the attention. “He is dead.” Saleeks sounded quite matter of fact about it, and Shermih just nodded. He was. Everyone was, at least everyone who had fought the Lightbearers. “And you are not. He need not matter here, if you follow the rules of this place. They are simple. Until you are healed, you can stay here. Longer, if you wish to. There will be no fighting, unless someone attacks you. Defending yourself is allowed. But you will not kill anyone who belongs to his Enclave. And there will be no eating of people.” The last was said with some emphasis, but Shermih just nodded along. She had no power here, she knew that. Even when she wasn’t so weak that she could barely sit up. If Saleeks wanted her to follow these strange rules, she would. There would be other food to find. And she could hide. She had been good at hiding. “I will obey.”Those were words she knew in many languages. Hive. Tradetongue. Fallen, from the rare occurrences when Hiraks had spoken it. Obedience was easy. But there was something else there. Something that gnawed on her mind. She was to be a guest here, apparently. Someone had dressed her wounds. Fed her. Given her ether enough to be comfortable and clear headed. “What- What wanted in return?” Saleeks had to want something. Some reason for doing all this. There was a trade here, and she wanted to see the shape of it. “Nothing.” There was something like surprise in the Fallen’s voice, Shermih thought. Or confusion maybe. “Then why help? There were others...Fallen.” Oh she remembered it clearly. The pain. The approaching end, shaped like a sword. And now this. Clearly something had happened in between. “Ah.” Saleeks shook her head, ether hissing out of her mask in a long puff. “I have no love for the Spider’s people. I would not let them torture someone to death. And you looked Eliksni. We scattered them and took you with us. It was the choice of the Ketch. You do not owe us for something we decided without you. We only knew you for Hive when you were cleaned up.” She stood, looming at the foot of the bed. “So you are a guest. But do not call them Fallen again. Even if they are Spider’s. We are Eliksni.” With that, she turned and left. The opening door revealed another clean, bright room, more cots on either side, and a smaller Fallen hurrying up to Saleeks. This one had metal legs. Then the door closed again and Shermih dropped her head back to the pillow. “Eliksni.”She said the word to herself, trying it out. Strange word. Everyone had always called them ‘Fallen’, even Hiraks. But it was best not to offend the people here. She would try her best to remember.
I may have downloaded a body chart thing to try and plot out where Matt got his tats. I wanna see how much skin i left on d2!Matt because by now he's starting to run out.
stolen meme from the friends, so: these are my current wips, ask for snippets if you wanna What I Shall Have Been For What I Am Becoming Victory Celebrations Metamorphosis Things Folded Into Themselves Dreaming of Electric Flufferpillars
Things Folded Into Themselves Dreaming Of Electric Flufferpillars What I Shall Have Been For What I Am Becoming
