Challenge #01973-E149: Rhapsodical in Blue — Steemit
Good news: They were relatively harmless. Bad news: They had decided to split up and search for clues. Some Nightcrawlers were Bamfing all over the place. Some were perched on tall objects. The youngest Nightcrawler of the group was politely asking gargantuan-suited cosplayers if their outfits were load-bearing structures, and if he had permission to perch on them so he could scout around.
The Tick was scoping out the floor with a magnifying glass and saying, “Hmmm…” a lot.
And Taako… was haggling with the food vendors. “Listen,” he began. “I have gold. I have silver. I even have a few coppers. They have to be worth something…”
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Challenge #01959-E135: Something Blue — Steemit
“Unglaublich…” said five voices at once. Various incarnations of Nightcrawler were staring at each other.
“Hail and well met,” said another blue figure in a ridiculously tall hat. “This is not the markets I was in a second ago, not racially profiling, here, but… did anyone do anything… eldritch?”
“Fear not, citizens,” said a big, beefy, man beef in a blue suit that featured antennae. “I am nigh invulnerable to just about every threat that could present itself. I, The Tick! shall deal with any trouble that may occur.”
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I’m thinking about soulmate marks
We all have the code of first words, right? Greyed or scratched out means that the soulmate has died. Great fun for Taako-angst when he believes his soulmate died before he was born.
Hear me out on this one:
Updating soul marks
If your soulmate hasn’t been born yet, the words are just… random looking blobs in a rainbow of colours. When the soulmate is born, the blobs transform into this weird line of jagged thickness. Of course Faerûn hasn’t invented sound visualisation technology, but we’d recognise it as a recording of their voice, saying the words.
That line may or may not be their favourite colour. I’m still noodling with this bit.
Finally and at last, Kid Soulmate learns to write. The one who’s been waiting gets to see their shaky, first attempts at writing. Reading the words for the first time. As they age, the writing improves, etc. And when they’re finally said, they turn gold.
Kravitz died millennia before Taako was born. So for his entire living existence, he had twelve rainbow blobs on his arm (or wherever). As a Reaper, he doesn’t bother looking. For centuries, they’re just… blobs.
And then, two hundred years (or so) before the Crystal kingdom, his mark itches as it changes. He looks at it for the first time in roughly two thousand years.
It’s become a jagged line. Unbeknownst to Kravitz, Taako has just taken his first breath in another planar system, somewhere in the uncharted multiverse. Istus, of course, keeps her mouth shut in regards to any of his questions. She’s a little salty about his diatribes about fate and true love etc. when he literally died before his destined love was born.
It’s up to you about the headcannons regarding Elf education, but I rather imagine they’re a little relaxed about literacy.
A decade passes. More than a decade. Kravitz has been watching his mark like a hawk and finally starts to see words form in careful, slow handwriting.
And then you take your pick between:
Yo, thug! What’s your name, I’m ‘bout to tentacle your dick.
OR…
Hail and well met. My name’s Taako and you look like you’re made out of salt.
Meanwhile, for Taako’s age plus a hundred years, he’s been living with these grey, crossed out words on his hide.
What the fuck is wrong with the three of you?
I mean… you can’t argue with that kind of match, but let’s rub it in.
Kravitz is a Reaper. His status as living is strictly technical and dependent entirely on which plane he’s in. Goes to the prime material plane for work? Boom. Alive. Goes back to RQ? Dead again.
So Taako’s words are randomly going to black and legible to faded and crossed out and back again. Drives him bonkers. Especially when he’s in that null suit and can’t fucking scratch it.
The crystal golem has another reason to pause and seemingly stare at Taako. And -sure- Taako could draw a correlation between this golem’s appearances and disappearances in the lab to the itching on his arm, but everything else going on distracts him.
Then he eats a chunk of Merle’s crystallised arm. And hears the words he never thought he’d hear. And he feels the words itch for the last time.
Comedy fucking gold, my friends. Comedy gold.
Challenge #01949-E125: Naked Without it — Steemit
You couldn’t deny he was a wizard. The hat was a huge give-away. It made his full, wizarding height two feet taller and he changed it in all other ways from town to town. One week, it was dripping with gimcrack jewellery from fantasy dollar stores. The next, it was festooned with flowers and illusory beads of dew that sparkled in the light. It said ‘wizard’ louder than any collection of sequins, erroneous spelling, or arcane symbolism could manage.
And it made him easy to spot in a crowd. Something for which Sazed was eternally grateful, because he stood a chance of stopping Taako from blowing all their profits on more gimcrack jewellery, swatches of interesting fabric, or other decorations for that fucking hat. Or, failing that, some kind of knock-off high fashion that involved thirty near-identical shirts. It had got to the point where Taako could mouth along to the We’re on a budget, damnit speech.
And now, heart-stoppingly, that damn hat was on a hat-rack. Outside somewhere that looked really expensive to be inside.
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Part one - part two (coming soon)(-ish?)
I’ve just been thinking a lot about how a meeting bettween the taz and taz swap characters would go. I had a lot of fun with this comic so there will probably be some more parts!
Challenge #01947-E123: Loose End Tied — Steemit
Okay, now I’ve fucked up, thought Taako, transmutation wizard extraordinaire. Crew-member of the Starblaster. Multi-dimensional traveller. One of the Seven Birds of Prophecy. Member of the B.O.B. Best chef in all of Faerûn. Oh, and main squeeze of the Grim fucking Reaper. This thought came, of course, at half-consciousness as the not-so-stupid guards dragged him to the throne room of the latest Big Bad.
On the plus side, now he knew where the leader of this particular horde was. On the minus side, his allies did not. The most that the B.O.B. could do was track where he was thanks to his bracer. They could not, for example, send a team through solid rock to save his gorgeous ass. Not unless they could get a line to his boyfriend, his sister, or her husband. And worse - someone had taken his hat.
That was an insult worse than his current injuries. And there was no place worse for an injured wizard than right in the middle of the nest of the Big Bad Badguy. Glass cannons did not belong in the middle of the powder keg. Not unless they had something really cool up their sleeve.
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@good-night-starshine sent me these absolutely adorable pics based on chapter 13 of my Amnesty/SC crossover fic Babes in the Woods and TBH it’s all I can do not to gush, right now.
[’cause EEEEEEEEE I got fanart! I got FANART you guys! I GOT FANART! (rant rant, rave rave, foam faint) this is so awesome)
+Follow’d, hoping for more. :D
Smol question
I tried to send the McElroys some ideas for the Cryptonomicon, but the email I sent it to is no longer there.
Where do I send those good boys my literal fuckton of ideas?
Thinking about tiny twins
When Lup & Taako were tiny things, do you reckon they tried the ‘baby doe’ eyes [like Puss in Boots from the Shrek series] on anyone? And how old were they when it stopped working on potential marks?