Night of the Hag

Doste peered anxiously out the window. The moon was high, and there were a scant few clouds to hide its light. There was no one about at this time of night, but he remained nervous all the same. He drummed his fingers on the windowsill.

“Is this truly necessary?” he asked over his shoulder. His wife, Brynn, sat by the fireplace with their guest, and his eyes focused on their reflection in the glass. “We could think this over another night.”

The cloaked figure sat hunched opposite Brynn, poring over items in a deep wicker basket, and paused, silently looking first to Doste then to his wife.

“We have thought on this,” said Brynn, her voice soothing and warm. “We have thought and spoken and prayed, but this will be our chance.”

Doste felt himself frown slightly and a breath hissed from his nostrils, but he didn’t offer further protest. He joined them by the fire, and his gaze fell to the cloaked figure who had begun arranging items from the basket onto a small, whittled tray and grinding them with a mortar and pestle. Some of the reagents he recognized – whiteleaf powder, blackroot stems, Kingfoil moss – but some of the others being ground made his stomach uneasy.

“Yes, well,” he muttered, “I had imagined the help of a medicine woman in more of a…traditional sense.”

The figure cackled, and what little light from the fire reached into her hood briefly showed a face with unsettling features. “What I bring you,” laughed the hag, “is stronger than any medicine or faith you will find.” There was the smell of swamp water when she spoke, and her voice cracked against the ear like broken branches. She mixed the last of her components and brushed these into a separate bowl of liquid, viscous as blood.

Doste looked to his wife, but Brynn met his eyes easily with a smile, undisturbed by the creature’s presence. Her warmth never ceased, and he took such comfort in that. He allowed himself a deep breath, and together they waited for the hag to finish her concoction. When she had, she set the bowl between them and reached out with a gnarled hand, palm up.

“My payment,” she said simply.

“Oh, of course,” said Brynn, almost embarrassed. She reached into the folds of her dress and came away with a folded piece of cloth, which she handed to the hag. The hag looked it over quickly by the light of the fire and, seemingly content, stowed it within her cloak. Doste wore his confusion on his face, but Brynn discreetly shook her head at him.

“Place it beneath your bed, leaving it undisturbed for one week,” instructed the hag. “After your next bleeding, have your husband take you. Then, you will bring the bowl into the wilderness to the north and empty its contents onto the roots of an oak which bears a scar in its bark. When this is done, well…” Though her face was hidden in the darkness of her hood, the two could hear lips sliding back over wet teeth in the way of a grin. “Enjoy motherhood,” she concluded.

Brynn nodded solemnly, though she softly quaked with an inner excitement. She searched her thoughts for a few moments, struggling for words. “Thank you,” she said finally, the start of tears shimmering in her eyes.

They exchanged nods, the hag collected her things, and had opened the door when Doste stood.

“What if it doesn’t work?” he asked.

She paused in the doorway, the quiet howl of wind behind her, and she turned to face him. Still behind the darkness of her hood, he could feel her eyes on him. She gently cackled. “Then I’d suggest you visit an herbalist, Doste,” she laughed. “Because the problem then would lie not with my aid nor your wife’s womb.”

In the time it took for his cheeks to flush and for him to blink, the doorway was empty and the two were left alone, the hag’s laughter echoing hauntingly on the nighttime breeze. Doste turned to Brynn.

“What did you give her?” he asked.

“All she wanted was a poem on something of my mother’s,” she said. “So, I wrote her an old nursery rhyme I remembered from when I was young onto a piece of her wedding gown.” Brynn shrugged. “Cunning women are strange. But what’s more,” she strode over to her husband and embraced him, “is that we’ll soon have a family, Doste.”

END

This was another character origin I wrote up for someone’s D&D campaign. The first half of it, at least. It goes on to be for a warlock who’s part hag, essentially, but I never finished that bit (gave the notes to him to complete…I think. It was a few years ago.), so the first half is more neatly wrapped up than I otherwise left it.

Anyhoo, more stuff on the way. Hope your days are treating you well. 🙂

‘Longest Road’ Thinking and Being Behind the Curve

Self awareness is an important skill, and I do think that it’s a skill. Some folks are good at it off the rib, and some of us need to cultivate it carefully through attention and practice. In my view, it’s an important skill too, maybe the most important as it relates to one’s degree of emotional intelligence, as other forms of empathy and the ability to interpret others’ actions and words can spring from your own self awareness.

And I believe much of this following an infamous game of Settlers of Catan.

I enjoy boardgames and shared tabletop activities a lot (talked about that recently, in fact). It’s a great hobby that can be social, intellectually challenging, adventurous and just plain fun. But that doesn’t mean it comes without its faults. I’m reasonably certain everyone has those family members or know a That Guy who’s either overly competitive, prone to being spiteful, or otherwise capable of ruining a good boardgame night.

One night – and what’s follow isn’t to say that Alan was being a That Guy, in fact, it might have been me in this case, but – we were over at our close friend Alan’s house for a dinner thingy and game night. On the docket, Settlers of Catan, and for sake of a cast, the players are myself, Alan, my wife Mandy, and our friend Micah.

You’re likely familiar with Catan, but if you aren’t, the short version is that you’re trying to reach ten Victory Points, and you do so by building Settlements, Cities, and Roads through collecting resources and trading them with other players. Everyone starts with two Settlements on the board, and thus, everyone starts with two points. Just eight more to go! There are also bonuses you can earn by, for example, building The Longest Road. <grumble, grumble>

So the game starts and right away Micah starts kicking the rest of our asses, to put it mildly. In a few short rounds, thanks to his admittedly strategic planning, shrewd trading, and some good luck, he rockets up to seven Victory Points. SEVEN! The rest of us all still just have our starting two. Part of that pool of points is the couple one gets for having the Longest Road.

I planned my start poorly that game, so my prospects at eventually winning are slim, but I could build roads. In fact, it was just about the only thing I could do. So I start aggressively building roads on the map to try and steal some points back from Micah, give the rest of the table a chance to catch up. In a round or two I’ve nearly surpassed Micah on roads, and much to my shock, confusion, and dismay, Alan blocks my move.

I…I stare at him. My flabbers are ghasted. My bams were well and truly boozled. And so I ask Alan, my dear friend whom I love just what the fuck he was doing.

His response: “…but you always get Longest Road.”

I discovered that night that I have a pet peeve when it comes to boardgames. It…God, it gets under my skin when somebody makes a tactically stupid play at the table. I don’t mean making a mistake, or a Hail Mary longshot, or forgets something, or has a misunderstanding, or even makes an admittedly risky choice for the sake of a big payoff or just for chaotic fun. Those things are all either understandable or are great in and of themselves. But when someone makes a decision that goes directly against even the most basic and rudimentary strategic sense…

Even writing this now, this game having taken place years ago, I shake with fury at his answer.

To reiterate, as I did to Alan then, all I was capable of at that table that night was building roads. You cannot win by building roads. You must construct Settlements and Cities to win. In blocking my road expansion, Alan only hurt our collective chances of competing with the far-and-away frontrunner, Micah. And I tried explaning that past games just cannot matter in one like this, especially with the dynamic at the table at present.

But it was cool. I pivoted, redirected my expansion and went another way…and he blocked me a second time, for the same reason.

I almost flipped that goddamn table. And it’s a heavy table. And I have a bad back.

Now please don’t imagine I made (much of) a scene. I’m not a voice-raiser or a shouter. And I don’t get angry at much. For the most part, I find displays of anger to be more embarrassing than they are likely to be justified – just my life experience. But like, I did berate him pretty good, but not with anything that was cutting or couldn’t be within the (stretched) bounds of good fun. And I still bring it up. And will do until we’re geriatrics, likely.

Anyway, what do I bring up this story and any of the rest of it for? Well I’ve come to find that ‘Longest Road Thinking’ – that is, an emotional response to a situation that actively hurts the one having it while simultaneously justifying said response as being helpful – can be found off the Catan board and out in the real world. In fact, I’d be willing to be that over the course of that last sentence, a few examples from your own life (or social media) probably sprang to mind.

But while relating these things to real life – another detour.

There’s a documentary out there called Behind the Curve. To summarize it here in brief, it explores those in our society that believe in a flat earth, and in my opinion it does a fair job of presenting them as neutrally as could be done, allowing prominent members of that community involved in the work to represent themselves rather than poke low-hanging fun at them. The juxtaposed flat-earther interviews with those of astronomers, psychologists, and other scientific minds as a sort of counter, foil, or opposed argument to balance them.

In the end, the documentary posed Flat Earth Thinking – that being something which to you might make perfect sense or seem perfectly adequate, despite those around you disagreeing, sometimes vehemently – is something that can happen to any of us, and challenged the audience to consider what thing, what belief they might hold could be their own personal Flat Earth, and why they hold that particular belief.

Tying this rant together in an effort to bring it to a close: Settlers of Catan is just a game.

Boy howdy, did Alan’s stupid, stupid move with blocking my road not deserve the amount of energy I’ve given it over the years, but I like to harness it differently now. Now, when I catch myself having an emotional trigger to an event, it gives me pause. Not always a big one, but just enough to consider if the thing I’m considering doing or saying is about to block someone’s longest road.

“Mhurren’s Mansion” – A Riddle

‘Sup, y’all.

[If you wanna skip the hooplah about all the context and “social experimenting,” there’s a fun riddle to solve a few paragraphs down. Enjoy!]

Had the wonderful opportunity to run a D&D one-shot game for a good friend of mine’s bachelor party (yes, you read that right) over the weekend.

In true Evan Fashion, I found myself far busier than I thought I’d be in the run-up to Game Day, and so I had way less time time to prepare than I thought I would. My solution: roll out an oldie, but a goodie.

I wrote a one-shot game back in January of 2018 from scratch, built from the ground up and inspired by the Jindosh Lock from Dishonored 2, and so far I’ve run the game three times, each with a different group. Y’all, I feel like I’m running a social experiment and it is awesome.

The first group was with a group consisting of my girlfriend Mandy and two of our other female friends (that’s right, Girls’ Night). I was so excited to see the riddle and puzzles I’d designed come together just as desired – not too easy as to be blown through, but not so difficult as to expect grand leaps in logic, and most of all: not broken (ie – missing pieces of information, incomplete). It was awesome watching them each read their own portion of the riddle, then pass pieces around until each had had a turn, then come together with their findings and hypotheses.

The second group was composed of three guy friends (one being Pierre, mentioned previously), and they handled it SO differently. Rather than pass their portions around, they each clutched their paper tightly and shared what they knew, but not what they were given. Despite this approach seeming much less cooperative, they took down the riddle in about the same amount of time.

Then, finally, this weekend’s group consisted of several good friends, though ones that left me the youngest at the table by a margin of about ten years (just meant some good 80’s references I didn’t get). THIS group was far more roleplay-focused than the previous two, and that made communication about their clues a bit foggier, but 100x more fun. They wound up silently electing a member of their group to essentially play the part of riddle-master whose job it became to, well, solve the riddle while the rest explored.

There’s more we could get to, but the main meat of the message is that puzzle-designing is kind of a lot of fun. Below, I’m gonna put the riddle in its entirety, but just know the players were each given a fragment, then had to put it together from there, plus solve the mansion’s other puzzles that depended on knowledge gained from dissecting this correctly.

But that’s besides the point.

Point is, can you figure out which sibling held which item at the end of Solstice, and the order of their birth?

Good luck.

…

“Four siblings once lived in this house, and all of them were thieves. Over the course of the Solstice of the Elements, they each stole one another’s treasures.

Arthur would not do much with his days save for laze on the sandy shores and hum his favorite tune. On the first day of Solstice, he saw the youngest sibling with Veronica’s treasure and later heard she traded it for his Jade Figurine. Upon hearing the news, he simply yawned and let them be. After all, on the fourth day of Solstice, he found Amelia’s treasure discarded in the dining hall, so he took it to his music room and was content.

The third child had a bitter heart and was envious of the firstborn’s special treatment. While she would swim, she also quietly resented her brother, who was older, and on the second day of Solstice, she stole his prized treasure, but later could not find it. On the fourth day, she saw the youngest come to her lake holding an Opium Pipe and trade it to the firstborn for the treasure she’d lost. While she watched her siblings deal in secret, she contented herself with a taunting tune in her bath house from her sister’s treasure she taken earlier that morning.

Veronica, hot-headed and avaricious, was spoiled by her parents with more riches than her siblings, but still she craved more. She stole Amelia’s Crystal Decanter on the first day of Solstice, filled it with brandy, and offered to share a drink with Lisbeth a day later, who had far too much. Two days after that, she got her treasure back and retired to her treasury with it. As she sank into the satin cushions, she mused on her own reflection to the end of Solstice.

The youngest child was flighty and impulsive. She loved her Pan Flute and would use it to play ‘The Fletcher’s Son’ for her brother, but on the second day of Solstice found it missing. She heard its soft sound on the beach that afternoon. On the third day of Solstice she used her sister’s treasure to dull a terrible headache, but gave it back to her a day later for a lovely stone bear. She put it with the rest of her chimes, which hung where feathers told the direction of the wind.

On the fifth and final day of Solstice, none of the siblings stole or traded anything.

Brave the four Elements and their dangers, return the stolen treasures to the Vault in the proper order, and find your worth inside…”

Easy, right?

Catch ya’s later.