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Delving Deeper: Creative Encounters and Character Evolution · Dissonant Whispers: A DnD Actual Play Podcast

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Delving Deeper with Oleander Hawthorne and Hawthorne.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Today we are here to have a metagame discussion about our sessions, our characters, and generally just ask each other what the hells were you thinking.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: We want to discuss today in relation to one of our games.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: It has brought up a few uh few different topics, one of them being creative DM battles.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we do have a very creative DM.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: He doesn't like to try and do any two battles the same, which is very much a pleasure for us.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: We never entirely know what is coming, and we're not just you go in, you see enemies, you fight enemies, you win or lose.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we had a battle where um we we made choices, okay?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: When we saw a creature dying, we thought save said creature.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We are both very optimistic characters, and we wanted to do what was right.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Save the character save the creatures.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: It looked like a creature I happen to be carrying.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Similar to it.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: A very familiar character.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: It looked the or creature.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was similar to the ink that he wears, that it gives him advantage.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's a symbiote that uh he has grown up with.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: So he sees another ink.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's it's gonna be the same, right?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let's save it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it didn't quite go as planned, and it was uh it was, I won't say evil, but it was definitely an psychotic?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe uh it definitely it had no attachment to us, and it all it wanted was power and control.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it actually started taking over Einar, and we ended up having a very interesting battle where Einar lost control to the ink, and we then had to have a two-front battle.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the party itself is fighting the ink that has overtaken his body, but Einar was uh fighting elsewhere.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the uh DM Stew likes to to challenge me.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Einar is a character that's got a lot of feat abilities.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: So he's got spells and abilities in his back pocket, and he's got the ink that he can activate, and just you know, he's he's a mealy-based fighting character, so you know how do you disarm the character?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's always able to fight with these augmentations that he's putting on him and his ability to move around and hide.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And instead, he put me in this theater of the mind, whereas my party is fighting an inky version of the worst of me and my abilities on the outside world as it tries to take them over.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fighting the I'm fighting Ventor, this inky dominating creature that wants to take over my mind, and it's a battle of me versus it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Straight up fighting, but he's it's it's Einar.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: None of these abilities.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So all of my feet magic is gone, any of my extra augmented fights, and so it's a real challenge for me where he's put me into this church with pews and this creature, and I gotta hold out fighting it while the party tries to defeat him on the outside.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was it was pretty fun because we discovered that this ink had the ability to shoot out tendrils of itself, and it ended up taking control of myself and Drax, and when it did, we suddenly appeared in Einar's mind battle.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Which is what messed things up.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had gone into a hit and run mode, and he was trying to bait me out by even calling me a coward, honestly.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you were hiding, it was great.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was hiding and then hiding, which is not an eye-up, but he was he was using what he could do and using the environment and playing to what he was giving.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then the two characters he cares about most appear inside his head because something's happened to them on the outside world, and that drew me out into the fight, which was not the best thing because I could not take this thing on straight up in a fight without my extra damage and protection, honestly.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, long story short, we won.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, he he regained control in the end because we knocked uh Ventor out and uh one-ish.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I got knocked out inside though, which allowed Ventor to auto-attune.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, that was pretty fun, actually.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that uh a forced attunement happened because the because the creature itself, like, you you weren't able to it to choose to uh he replaced Noctus as Noctus as the uh as the ink that I could activate and use for time.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: That was pretty cool.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So And who I could talk to.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: I could no longer talk to Noctus with my with my telephone telepathic abilities.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: I could only talk to Ventor.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So whose attitude is quite different.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's they're similar in some ways.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: Some ways they're very similar.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and others are very, very, very, very, very different.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: No two people are alike.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or inks.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or inks.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now the other thing that did happen in that battle, or as a result of that battle and that session, is um a big change of heart for Oleander.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that brings up character evolution.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: It have your characters changed over time?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they have, because otherwise, what are you doing?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: How invested are you really in the storyline if your characters aren't changing?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, mine did not change for the better.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: So uh this, you know, very well-intentioned character who is optimistic, believes in helping, and never, you know, when you come along innocence, or like innocent characters, innocent creatures, if you don't know that they are bad, you help.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: You you don't wait to find out.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a chance, if it's a choice between life and death, you choose life.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, as a result of this, uh almost losing Einar, Olihander actually realized afterwards that she would let if it was the same scenario again, she would let an innocent die rather than chancing what had happened.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that is that was a really big moment for my character.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was not an alignment change itself, but that was a very big alteration of choices.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: It impacted me storyline-wise more than it impacted um.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a change in in character, but so much more just an understanding of what the character thought he knew.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because before this incident, there's one there's one thing like him.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: We have a cat that is causing uh Smokey's trying to get into a room that's not something in front of it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: You might hear the door button.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: Don't mind, cats are gonna catch.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but what was going on with him in there mostly was realizing that there's other things like Noctus out there, and they're not like what, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: He at first it was it's this we're one of a kind, oh, there might be more like us, and then it's uh oh shit, they're hopeful there's not more like that.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so yeah, it was it was a big change in our storyline, and it was a big change for our characters for so many things.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um a lot of loss of innocence um in in that and yeah, not like super innocence, like we just don't know about the world, but um we disappointed mom and dad.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: We definitely disappointed mom and dad.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Mom and dad were very mad at us.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking at us right now and nodding their heads.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so Delphine, she was so mad that we had done this because um she viewed our saving the ink as like the stupidest thing in the world.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we we were indignant that she would even question of course we're gonna save this thing before we know if it's good or bad, because if we don't, it's dead regardless.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now, 100% onlyander now agrees and is probably a lot more pessimistic than Delphine is.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, Delphine, you were right, and Onlyander was wrong.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: It led to a great story.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: Though me and Ventor got beef.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Me and Ventor got better.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Doctors got better.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, all right, thank you very much for joining us for our Delving Deeper.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we want to know what you guys have had happen to your characters that have caused big shifts in their mentality and their uh goals or way of thinking.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And what kind of creative DM battles have you guys come in contact with?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because, I mean, it's not like everything is brand spanking new.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: We just want it to be new to us.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: So give our DM some ideas, make it fun.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: He can, you know, draw them all into a hat and pull them out.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we will have this kind of battle today.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: This one was a real mind bleep.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Literally.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Mind bleep.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you didn't want me swearing, so I didn't swear.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I accidentally swear at the weirdest times, don't I?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: That is true.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Such as 90% of my life, except for when I'm in character.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: My character doesn't swear very much.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Things like petunia and the fudge sickle.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a conscious choice.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Anyways, I hope you guys have a great night and thank you for joining us.