Image Response 24

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That was likely my most favourite one yet

As I commence writing this there's 10 hours on the mercantile clock in which to secure a print of Deep Carbon Observatory  ,
after which you'll have to find them in shops or via mail order, methods both adding a little more uncertain that the regular irregular amount of uncertainity.

Any way we have this image to response to
He is a Buggard Groundskeeper, specifically Mister Pigs .

The Seelie like other nobility amuse themselves with a rich variety of hunting practices, and thus need grounds and lands kept well stocked for them and them alone.


Thus they make use of buggards as groundskeeper, troll like brutes that make up for their (considerable) lack of intelligence with  immense and fierce tenaciousness .

Their minds are like single angry wasp held in a hand, an endless pricking their mind with suspicion and hatred.

Not a single leaf or stick can be moved without them noticing it on their rounds, their only pride and esteem is in their ability to maintain their grounds from poachers.


Their stout legs can pump remarkably fast , easily keeping up with a horsed rider, and adding to that is that thickets and various undergrowths let their master pass unimpeded , while seemingly rising up to snatch at the Buggard's quarry.


A Buggard will armed with a crude bunderbuss like weapon , packed with elfshot, resulting in the flesh peppered with painful wounds that won't heal until the elfshot is removed.
However when someone  tries to dig out the elfshot it will bury away from the chirurgeons probe , increasing the damage done.

They can only be removed by calling them out with certain songs which are known to very few mortals.
Those that do know them are very cautious about singing them , as to do so risks the seelie hearing and claiming the singer as their own.

Additionally some struck by this elfshot will have certain strangers come looking for them, not the Buggard , but his masters. If they find this marked trepasser they will ensourcen them into an animal form (but leave their ability to speak and more specific to plead) and put them in the grounds as use as a game.
 
Poachers don't escape the Buggard will be skinned and eaten ,  buggards being found of human skin for sheets and furniture covering and their cottage will have any surface sittable being dressed as such.

If the Buggard decides you are merely trespassing (as you seem to have no means of taking game nor the smell of it on you . The Buggard can smell if someone has held a bow or spear in the last day , and if they've eaten a game bird or beast in the last month)
 and the Buggard is not hungry (1 in 3 chance) , they will be sounded thrashed and kicked out .
 

If the Buggard is hungry , the victim will be bleed, skinned , dressed and eaten.
If the victim can make a case for their ability to sing , tell jokes or storys, they will be kept captive instead.
Nearer christmas time the Buggard will have atleast one captive that they fatten up for the winter feast.

The other danger is that the Buggard will be on orders to kept the woods stocked with human game.
In which case you won't be allowed to leave as the Good People wish to use in one of their specialty hunts , a few of which are listed.


1. Babes in the woods:
Children or youths are left to wander in their woods, and 1d12 Folk attempt to use illusions to convince them to lie down and succumb to hypothermia . Each of the court can use an illusion once to trick them and once to get them lost . If the victims manage to find their way out, they will be let go and often find money for their rest of their lives, providing they don't talk ill of their hosts, in which case they will often find snakes.

2. The questing knight
The quarry is one on a quest (or order to be on one by the Buggard) , the Seelie take turns attempt to use the quarrys moral failings against them , if they fall , that Fellow will turn them into a pet.
There will be 1d4+2 tests before they are left to complete their quest.

3.Vengeance Hounds
Someone is chose with guilty past, they will be pursed by the People astride horses and with hounds, each hound having the face of someone the quarry wronged. They will be relentless pursued , being able by time only by expressing true remorse to each hound in turn. More likely they will be torn apart by the hounds , and only their heart, tongue, breast , hands or genitals (which ever suits their crimes)  kept as trophys.

   

 4. The Duel
Some capable of defending themselves is chosen for this hunt. A single member of the Lovely Court  will hunt them down aimed with a bow , a dozen arrows, a thorned whip , and a long glass knife.
They must use the knife for the final blow or be seen as failure by their peers.
The quarry must make do with whatever they can make or find.
If the quarry survives , a  (possible as yet unborn) child they have who shows martial promise will taken on as a squire by court as reward. 
If the quarry successfully kills the Hunter, all debts , promises and feuds of the Hunter now belong to them. The hunter will then be reborn with a new name.


5. Armour of Gratitude
The quarry is given a day and night to earn the favour of as many forest beings as they can, and be given the ability to speak to beast, foul, reptile, tree and fish .
After the time is up the Reasonable People will seek them out, first with hounds and spears, then with crows and knives, then with flies and nets.
If they manage to escape , they will keep the speech ability. However if they speak ill of their hosts of this time their tongue will turn into a burning coal.


6. Blindman Bluff
Someone is either chosen for their blindness or made blind. The Folk seek them out with spears. however the rules of the game are that if the quarry calls out what they are within earshot of the Golden Host, then the Host have to treat them as that.
They  must use the correct tool/weapon for the killing of their quarry.
So if the quarry called out they are Tree , the folk must leave and come back with an axe.
Someone with average ability  to hide and detect will likely have the Folk find them 6 times before the game is up.
When the game is finished they will become what have last stated themselves to be.


Now what will possible be the last image of this game, we have twice had elephants, so lets end in thrice elephants:

 

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Print PDF 29 hours to go on the kickstarter of Deep Carbon Observatory by the time I start this post , and

Patrick has told us of a tarnished city of bronze and given us this

Liu Xue

This fellow is a Halcyon Host.

Someone whose psychic potential was strong, but they lacked the focus and will to force the world to obey them.

Instead a deep unhappiness and self belief saw all their potential pouring inward.
Their predisposition for daydream and escape into a safe and golden inner world becomes hypertrophic with their psychic power.

Resulting in an ability similar to "Dream Travel" but instead they fold themselves inward , in a grotesque but somewhat comical implosion , and travel to their innerworld.


Unfortunately they cannot sustain themselves  there , and must seek employment .

An underdeveloped physical form, a lack of ability to focus on any external task, little to no charisma, their powers lack the range or power of a psychoporter , there's only one real path available.

That of the Halcyon Host, turning themselves inside out to create a portal to a sentimental inner world .
Their patrons are those with a taste for the simple and excessively sentimental , tastes often found in the totalitarian and emotionally stunted .

So they are often are hosts to those that have little regard for them, barely seeing them as anything other than a door, plopping along like poison toads through the little palaces and soft lit glades .


And now Patrick , what is stirred up by this:

A TALE OF THE WORLD WINDING DOWN

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Print PDF Previously On Image Response Ping Pong 

Patrick has told us a mysterious tale of unlikely crusader against sinister forces
and given us these delightful lumps:

SOME LUMPS

(actually sculptures by Eva Funderburgh, she makes a whole series of these , go search them out)

 We are also nearing the last couple of volleys of this game, as the kickstarter has under 60 hours left at the time of this post , having done QUITE WELL FOR ITSELF INDEED

 I've got a few more images I want to see Patrick respond to , so let's see how quickly I can get these out.
 





WHAT IS IT?

A platonic crocodile, the name coined by some wag as they appear to be a pure distillation of the essential crocodileness of alternating sloth and gluttony.

They are found in the chaos of limbo, where they are less an active predator , and more like a scavenger , like a sucker fish.
But here they cling to Githzerai void-clippers , chaos serpents or  the whale like  protean-dreadnoughts.

The last of these is their preferred host, as when of those blunders through a floating landmass the resulting debris cloud is choice pickings for these, dozens of them flinging themselves from the dreadnought , like fleas from a submerging dog, each aimed at a choice target.

 And while capable of speed and leaping when in contact with a surface, once a drift in the voids of Limbo they lack any ability to move independently.

Once adrift like this , they  don't seem distressed , and fall into nearly instantly into hibernation , waiting collusion with something solid.

When in a hibernating state the platonic crocodile is never the less very aware of its surround environment and will be making internal calculations to itself on if such an expenditure of energy is worth the resulting gain in food of  a sufficient quality.

Most often they are content to wait for something better, either nestled upon each other on a floating landmass, clinging to the underbelly of a Dreadnought , or often drifting independently through the space of Limbo.


Platonic-crocodiles are seemingly  able to eat nearly anything , but seek "complicated" objects to eat. The higher something is on a food chain, the more it is processed ,and especially if modified in ways to store information or display intention , the more desirable it is as a food object.

So dirt is chosen over sand , grass over dirt, meat over grass, leather over meat, a book over leather, and a machine with moving parts over a book.


It can be quite easy to get used to Platonic Crocodiles as inert and harmless, but it is unwise to regard them as such , for it is never certain if one will suddenly decide it has waited long enough and it will settle on eating you and everything you own.



And now Patrick, our final volleys continue with this:

HIS REPLY

Lebbeus Woods

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Print PDF Patrick has shed light on the dark workings of hell and given us a better monster for the term "deodand" than the original Monster Manual 2 ever did.

It opens up a whole subsection worth of living machines, cursed swords , and wacky flintstones domestic-objects-as-fully-sentient-tormented-devices.

But we'll have to leave that unexplored today for we are responded to this image

Sha Sha Higby

Before  we begin, the mercantile purpose of this post series, i.e the promotion of the Deep Carbon Observatory Kickstarter , will rear its head.
 Here's the link, note that we have a new stretch goal, one in which we pay Brendan Strejcek (of Necropraxis fame to make all the spells contained in Deep Carbon Observatory "level-less" in the style of Wonder & Wickedness (which he wrote).
All spells being both the classic d&d ones and the ones newly featured.
If this stretch goal is reached , these spells will put in a freely accessible pdf (but not included in the book as that would throw out all the layout and shipping weight calculations)


right, with that the gild serpent of capital gain  slinks from view, we can begin your mild entertainment :

Eburnean Attendant 

The naga sunset court who rules when the sky is the assigned shade is headed by the Princess Never-Moon.

Born marked with the sorcerer crimes of her mother , her scales thin enough to be pierced with hair, her hearing as vulnerable too  .

A heartbeat at a distance sounds like the blow of a smiths hammer, a partial exhalation like the hurricanes gale.

Her attendants therefore are necromantic creations and clad in the lightest and softest fabrics.

The naga who volunteer for this fate tend to be those who have loyalty more than intelligence or personal ambition , or those who have disgraced their families and see no other way of earning back status for them.

To be come an Enurnean Attendant the naga is drugged into immobility and lower into water to which numerous flowers , herbs and fragrant tree saps are added.
 These are chosen to numb the nerves, soften the skin and flesh, stupefy the mind, strengthen the spirit, and additionally strong preservative agents
Then this bath is slowly brought to boil all the while the naga is kept on the brink of death and sleep.
The nagas flesh will be boiled and soften and fall off their bones, all the while the soul is kept in such a clouded state it doesn't realize the body has cease to function.
The end result is a fragrant skeleton naga, however a slight addled one, like one of an advanced age.

Enurnean Attendants are not the best of servants , their temperaments being either zealous and stupid, or bitter and sullen.
The Princess Never-Moon has taken to giving them masks so she can better keep track of the ones less suited to complicated tasks or ones where their loyalty to the court over her could cause problems.

This one picture is assigned bodyguard duty, (which the "zealous but stupid" is better match for) , equipped with bone-needle fans tipped with paralytic agents.

These weapons are designed to make no noise as they enter flesh , and the paralytic venoms will prevent a noisy (and thus painful to the Princess) death.

Bodyguards such equipped tend to react to loud noise by silencing the cause as quickly as they can, without waiting for the Princesses word otherwise.
This has caused more than a few diplomatic incidents.



Now Patrick, what pray tell is this?

IT WAS AN INTRIGUING MYSTERY

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Print PDF We are on the last 6 days of the DEEP CARBON observatory kickstarter and number 16 of image response ping pong (and week 1 of New Zealand corvid19 lockdown)

Patrick has woven us a tale of the wisest of primates (except for a few) and given us this

From Bad Roll Games

 What is it? Or what was it? The result of Wishing for a Mammoth Spider? An intestinal curse for shitting in the elephants graveyard?
No! it is the sessile larvae form of a Piper of Azathoth  

They are found where despair and mania are both paradoxically ascendant. Jaded and amoral cities of dying empires set a flame by their own populace , worlds where the victors of Ragnaroks turn on each other for lack of any other meaningful act, metro-crypt cities where the immortals strive only to die, etc.

There these creatures will be found, nestled in corner and eave, drinking in the despair and ever listening to the cacophony of nihilistic enterprise. For each will be composing a new unmelody , for this is the test of its kind .
To be admitted to adulthood , it will need to recite what it has composed from countless , fathomless, howls, groans, lamentations , laughter and hissing. An insufficient performance will see it torn apart and scatter to the nameless black winds between the stars.

The presence of these creatures will often prolong the death throes of the culture they are feeding on. 
As the despair is drained into these queer gullets , the populace will often think they have found a solution to their existential malaise .
 But it is like the brief quickening of life before the final hour or the hundred-fold sprouts around the stump of a felled tree.

For when these larvae pipers are engorged and flatuluting their way back to their  Azathoth orbiting brethren , the dreads will fall once again.




now antiantipodean one, I give you this as muse:

a Takayuki Takeya costume design for Kamen Rider or similar show

PATRICK HAS REVEALED IT TO BE A DEODAND 

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 Here we are , here we are , IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG NUMBER 14 , in which we act as CHALLENGING MUSES in order to keep a lively series of blog posts , so to keep the sly flame of promotion burning .

 (DCOhas a kickstarter to get a limit print run, it's fully funded, but you still have the opportunity to back it and so get a print copy reliably , instead of waiting for them to be available via mail order or store front)

Patrick has envisioned a visionary god

 And given us the above to respond to ..





















This is a Abeyantal Ambassador   ,a would be an elemental if the natural of reality was configured differently. This Ambassador, the Coruscate-Illuminant, is on its way to present itself before  the protean metabeings in the process of creating a reality.
The Coruscate-Illuminant argues for light as mass, energy as tangible solidity , a world where fire is a brick .

 It is unlikely it will successfully argue its case, it would help if the Coruscate-Illuminant would form an alliance with other Abeyantal Ambassador, but it can't envision sharing reality with any other. It desires to be an endlessly neon highway in a void forever.


Okay , now back to you Patrick.

Who be these?

(the answer is here!)

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Print PDF And an extra table to this post

d6 Sorcerer Knights of Nova Melniboné.

All assumed to have to a Restless-lance, a Changesome Flail and be riding an eel-horse of renown.

1.Scourfrous Zeal, his herald the Amphitere , its wings envasted ears, its head just lips and a lascivious tongue , its song lovely as its appearence horrid. His armour is bristling field of eyelids and his weapon the stolen tongue of the Dawn Bell

2. Volume's Man, his herald the Calopus, a horned wolf , laterally split entire by its own smile. Its horns make twice its height and festooning with mournful candles. His armour baroque with pearl and sculpted cherub reliefs. He wields a great hoop-net , "gods gullet" , that devours inexorable any caught in it. 

3. Burnt Poet, her herald the Leonine Whale, its furred form twisting ever in the air. It murmurs sadly to itself as it swells and declines alternately like a cloud . Her is a libary of burned books, joined with amber. She has the Eventual Moth, a tireless hunter, only real to its victim.

4.Padagoo Grune, his herald a Lympago, its manish form buckled under its own musculature, two dozen failed nations flags atop spears piercing its back. His armour a 1000 years of military fashion , cast in iron and smeared with sooty grease.

5. Kissing Grief, his herald a Stellione,the starlizard weasel, lit from inside  so brightly it hurts to look at it. His armour gold with a corona of blue flame. His weapon a great blade, a single piece of reflective glass that blinds and ensourcens .

6 Providence Jiver, his herald the Wonderful Pig of the Ocean, jovial , rotund , and a bounding.

His armour that of abyssal crabs, his weapon is the alabaster trident , which he caught the pig with.

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Print PDF WELL THAT WAS DARK

Well that was Patrick's response to a dark image , so reaping what you sow I guess. Though I think the dudes who did the reaping often were traveling specialists?

Two Preambles:

1. I'll assume if you are reading this blog you are wanting something to take your mind off the global pandemic and already have made use of all the information available to you , etc, and therefore are not assuming I'm being blithe or oblivious by not mentioning it.

 2. The image response ping pong post series is an ongoing promotion of the dco reprint kickstarter So there's the link out of habit, but anyone and everyone got other stuff going on right now.

 annnnyho

This chimerical and polychromatical creature, what is it ?


It is a Heraldic beast, note the careful and artful framing of the horns , cheek tufts and spurred ears, the single wing, and its innate yet measured posing.

 These beasts are more literal heralds than other beast of that title. Sorcerer Knights of New Melniboné create them as living heralds, both in the sense of a coat of arms , and to fly before , to announce their presence giving reasonable warning to their subjects to abase themselves. Subjects that do not make respectful positions , will suffer  the wraith of the Sorcerer Knight , and the torturous fecundity of flesh from a blow from a   Changesome Flails, or a fair worse Khronous Uneasement , which is what will befall those the Knight-Resplendent chooses instead to smite down with their Restless Lance.

The Beasts themselves are mix of impossibility, impracticality and savage actuality. They are so reliant on magic that if one could suppress the incantations that flow in their blood, they would barely be able to breath let only stand .


and now Patrick, for you :

Image from here , Howard V Brown possiblity

Patrick's response here

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did you know DCO featured on Kickstarter's "projects we love" , resulting in the addition of exactly no-one (that I can tell from the infomatics they give us) additionally backing.

While that was nice of kickstarter , I'm more amused that the audience of kickstarters "projects we love" is not an audience that sees a naked starving giant and thinks Cor better back that one.
That's you lot , apparently . Breath that rarefied air!


Anyway , thus  the opening  ritual complete, onward

Patrick has graced us with a poem

and given us

Humanoid Khepri Scarab from Late Period Egypt, Egyptian Museum of Berlin

Surprised that it wasn't a modern work, but of old Egyptian land.

I have a temptation to just research this exact artifact and do a history report. But I never had an Egypt phase as kid.

Instead again once more the fecund land.. we haven't had a magic item yet right?

this is a Might-of-been-kiln
You take  some scrap of sentiment , a lost opportunity and a closed door , give it to the bottom hands and it molds them, swallows them and birth a clay mummery of you. It will act out a shadowlife , slightly responsive to the environment but more responsive to an unseen one, acting out its craft, laughing with unseen peers, weeping at defeats , exalting at triumphs. All in dumb clay.

It's best to not watch too long, if one is too full of doubt and regret , trying to divine exact moments of the might-of-beens shadowplay , will become too absorbing. Soon the shadowplay will appear more real than their surroundings. They will walk like a shadow after their Might-of-Been , till one day it turn and smiles at them.

It will reach out gently to the former's face, and , like a mother with their child's tears,wipe their face away , and mold the former to just a clay suggestion of form.

AND NOW FOR  YOURS, PATRICK OF STUART

Jiri Sozansky found at the very very excellent http://drtenge.com/

HE DID THIS, LO

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Print PDF THE GAME CONTINUES

Patrick conjuring a umbral world that turns under the trains wheel and the insurrection arise against it, then he revealed a picture of this ugly dog

Alfrid Shaymardanov

 But first! The now all too familiar plug for the Deep Carbon Observatory kickstarter, now having exactly one stretch goal at 30,000 English Euros.   If reached (a mere 4000 English Euros away as of writing this post) the book will become sublimely grandiose , and will be constructed with the nigh inconceivable , as yet unprecedented, 3 RIBBONS
Minds were shattered at the beholding of Veins Of The Earths double ribbon, but here we are ADDING  ANOTHER RIBBON


Phew.
Back to this dog

This dog obviously collects souls. In certain infernal realms politics and gambling are twisted together like the strands of a rope. This Dog was formerly a prince or sub-duke, played badly, now owes much, and has only the form of a dog.

 He was walked the mortal realm for centuries now, getting owners, serving them as best a dog can, and then betraying them at the most ruinous time.

He damns souls not by temptation , as he lacks any of the customary powers and resources normally at hand to a personage le diabolique .

Instead this dog must choose his owners carefully.
Mortals of weak character but still in possession of a conscience.
Of a type that reflexively choose their own desires and needs over others , or are prone to inflict petty harms or injuries in moments of spite, envy or rage. But a type lacking the icy nerve of a blackguard or the heartlessness of a brute.
After an act of ill , this type will then begin to churn with guilt and will quickly turn to a trusted family member , mentor or companion.

To them they will seek solace, eager for vindication, reassurance or rebuke.

Thus this type will need good and firm guidance , far more than most.
They are easily lead astray but also easily kept in line too.

The Dog however will always be a source of assurance , a companion that does not judge or doubt, a instant balm for fraught nerves and lingering doubts.
His gaze is pure unconditional love, and to stroke his fur is to be instantly assured of all being right.

The results of which are ruinous in the extreme. Eventually no crime or base act becomes unconscionable to the owner , because The Dog will always be by their side, a silent validator and selfless comforter.

Then when the mortal has truly damned themselves and The Dog has grown bored , it will betray them. Revealing their possession to pursuers , distracting them from their normal security measures, uncovering hidden evidence etc.

If no subtle opportunity presents itself The Dog is more than capable of just tearing their owners throat out.

Either way the owner will find their soul now another gross fat hair writhing on the dogs coat.


So that's that dog Patrick , and now a muse-servitor for you :

James Pryde "the death bed"

BEHOLD THE RESPONSE HERE

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Print PDF  We are now in round 6 of Image Response Ping Pong ,

the kickstarter for GIANTLY IMPROVED DEEP CARBON OBSERVATORY is still ticking on , so there's your opportunity to get your print copy , otherwise wait until a point of sale can be found for them..
We have neaaarly settled on some minor stretch goals to extra-fancy the book. Nothing to do with increasing the writing or picturing because we reckon we got exactly the right amount of both.

 Patrick has responded and offered me this:

It is of course an ancestral urn,(or is meant to appear as)  used to contain the ashes of greatfathers and mothers and placed in a quiet room , so one may pray for guidance.

The hinging doors however reveal the real use, a escape portal for a member of the Horizon Society ,the decentralized wizards college.

However the sigil marks not a safe portal but one in which the ethereal tunnels from it are fraying.
The magics of the portal detect the damage and show the sigil as warning, let the user be aware.

To enter such a portal would risk predation, dimensional flinging, spectral marooning and soul-polyps.

The tunnels might be one of the rare ones that will be visited by a ChainOfArms, a centipedal nercomantic creation whose creation and useage was one of the many outrages that the unregulated magical studies of the Horizon Society inflicted on both common and rare society.

The remaining ChainOfArms work themselves to ruin , scrittering along the ethereal tunnels , finger-kniting the rips and holes they find.

The now firmly centralized Institution of Ethereal Affairs has firmly and severely banned any research surround the creation of them , including even dissectations  of one. Even being in possession of any part of one requires several permits and invites far attention from the Institution than is normally healthy.

AND NOW FOR YOUR IMAGE PATRICK:

THUS HE REPLIED

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Print PDF IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG IMAGE RESPONSE PING PONG we hope you are entertained because we are doing this the whole run of the kickstarter campaign

Which you should back if you want to get a print copy ahead of the crawling,wailing and keening mob that no doubt will descend upon any shop or point of sale doth blessed with such a splendoriffic tome. click the text go to the link you know the drill

Anyway we are in the 4th round of this game. Patrick has answered my last serve thusly

 (click here to read his respond )


has given me this to respond to 

crapaud et grenouille by Jean-Joseph Carriès

 Okay we have a very expressively frog or toad. Toad seems more fitting for its countenance.
An expression thoughtful and somewhat malign. The Toad sees you very clearly and feels only bored contempt for you. Its black pit of a mind stirs somewhat as it consider any uses for you.

Let's build on that, (plus address the smaller frog ), we have a port city, a twin port city , "Callo-calloo"
A sleepy marauder of a river feeds into the sea beside it , and so its docks receive the shallow bottom river boats and the ocean crossing deep keelers.

Stretching out from the cities flanks are brackish swamps. Where the sea breaks against them is the thick wall of mangrove trees , which erratically give way to  the moody swamp cypress.  All of which is a smugglers paradise, providing they have learned the tunnel like paths through the mangroves and know which  long strands of moss festooning the cypress are sacred to spirits , and that which can idly brushed through.

The smugglers , wreckers, bandits, and belligerent tribes (though rare that any one of these isn't somewhat part of the other) have a port too, the Moondocks.
 A littoral phantom location like the Underground or the Blackmarket, its physical location merely hasty planks and rope lowered, concealed trapdoors, and backroom ladders, only its conceptual location is a constant mercantile reality.

The other occupant of note is frogs. Penny frogs hoping out of bouquets, nimble fly-snatchers at the window sill, surly gnarled poison toads firmly in the way, dizzy googlers jumping on your face as you sleep. Even a variety that ventures into the salt waters, protected by a thick mucus and pestering fishermen as it takes fish on the line.

  Thus the ever present chorus of chirps, croaks, burps,pops, and groans, must be endured to spend any length of time here.
As the frogs are so voice-some , you might make the mistake to think they are not listeners too.
But they are. "Frogs catch flies, but they catch words better" as they say here.

All this speech makes it way to a singular mind. "The Toad" as it as known, the everydayity of the name is in contrast to the fear and respect is said with.

The Toad Hears. The Toad Knows. 
The Toad will share with you what he knows in exchange for a meal. 
(assuming you can find him , a challenge and ordeal in of itself)
The meal must be flavoured with misery , rage, or grief.
A meal will obtain these flavours when the maker is unable to take the action they believe will alleviate those feelings and instead find themselves in the kitchen and its requisite burdens.

A meal served to him will get you 3 questions answered. If you have the culinary expertise to serve him several courses each will get 3 questions.

The Toad is no resentful  genie, and will answer each question attendent to its spirit and not merely a  miserly response to just the letter. 

However he finds a passing amusement in trouble and strife. 
So how much he says and what he doesn't say will be shaped by a desire to either to see you in problems or being the source of someone else problems.

The Toads palate grows bored easily, and offering him a meal spiced with a common situation risks angered him.

The Toad angered will result in the afflicted unable to find their way out of the mangrove , until the Toad grows bored of their misery or their death. 

And on moonless nights the frogs chorus can be joined by the lamentation of those who ired the Toad so much he holds them there even after their dying.


AND THAT IS MY absolutely purple I don't even know what's happening with my writing right now RESPONSE

MY IMAGE FOR YOU PATRICK IS :

Agostino Arrivabene

HIS RESPONSE
 

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Patrick has replied with this ..fellow.
What is ..it?

THE PERFECT MONARCH
Well to answer that , one must know of an empire, though barely worthy of that name, it only containing 5 kingdoms.
The 5 kingdoms are similar to each other in their ways yet each has a violent history with its neighbours. And while long and bloody, these histories pale in comparison to the strife caused by each kingdoms attempt to unite all the kingdoms under one banner.

After a particular ruinous schism / 5 way civil war, a secret alliance of the magicians, witches , and void-fishers of the 5 kingdoms undertook a vast ritual to reach into the possibility-sea in the well of time and pluck the Perfect Monarch.
One whose sagely countenance and fierce wisdom will lead the 5 kingdoms in a golden age.

The above picture is what they received.

It is now a year of the Perfect Monarchs reign . He makes laws that are impossible to follow , nonsense decrees and spends much of his time quietly observing people in their homes , occasional undertaking a simple domestic task or routine labour.
While interacting or observing his subjects he maintains the above poise, however his movements through the air have his body lying prone  and what seems to be his robes undulate , making many to think he might some kind of squid.

The effects on society from the attempts to enact , avoid, or manipulate his nonsense have resulted in a confused upheaval , elaborate bartering systems, and spontaneous riddle courts.

The magical alliance who brought him here are still unsure if the ritual succeed or instead they brought forth some form of  potentially dangerous astral cuckoo-squid.

The  murderous conspiracies against the Perfect Monarch are numerous but as yet they have succeeded in only thinning each other numbers as they fight over opportunity and positioning to usurp the Perfect Monarch.

THE OBLIGATORY  ADVISING  OF YOUR OPPORTUNITY TO FUND THE PRINTING OF DCO REVAMP THUS SECURING YOU A COPY OF SAID BOOK

and now Patrick the volley to you is:

CLICK ON THIS TEXT FOR HIS REJOINDER

Image Response Ping Pong

Print PDF SO the kickstarter I alluded to is an a4 revamp of Deep Carbon Observatory.
 (click the text to go direct to kickstarter in case you thought it was just going to go here)

 When Broken Fire Regime had hit a bottle neck , I had the idea that we could revamp DCO , and in doing so work some form of design template that we could apply to Broken Fire Regime.

But this revamp became a considerable production , to the point that work on Broken Fire Regime stalled. BUT AT LAST it is ready . By ready I mean ready to be kickstartered to pay for the limited print run, as we are not content with merely doing a print on demand.

The art is done , baring a couple of map touch ups, the writing is done, the layout is done, this isn't a kickstarter in which you pay someone who intends to do something at somepoint.
It is just funds to get the pdf to the printers, get the books from the printers to storage, and from storage to the postal service.
Oh and pay someone (David Shugars) to do the pdf version good.

SO THIS POST has the purpose of alerting you to the kickstarter BUT ALSO kicking off the start of a game like post series where-in I post an image , Patrick response to it with a blog post , presumably d&ding it in some form , and tails it with an image that I in turn respond to.

And so we could have our posts popping up in the feeds semi-regular and also sneaking the ongoing plug to DCO kickstarter, like a worming tablet in a hunk of pet food.

BUT PLOT TWIST it got funded in like half hour.
SO y'all are welcome to cut ahead of the line and secure yourself a print version via the kickstarter, but this fucker is definitely getting made.
SO NO PITY PENNYS ARE NEEDED THANK YOU VERY MUCH

Me and Patrick are still going to start this Image Response Ping Pong though:
THUSLY :

 Thanks to the Smithsonian Institute for recently uploading a very lot of images to the public domain

CLICK HERE FOR THE RESPONSE