Star Wars Advent 2018 Day 17 and dungeons need dragons

Day 17 !

Not sure quite what to make of this one …

It’s a something with a light shade for a head. I have no idea what this one is supposed to be !

Moving swiftly on – to the books.

R.A.Salvatore has been writing Forgotten Realms books for decades now. And they’re awesome. His central characters are Drizzt Do’Urden, Bruenor, Regis and their crew. But he’s also played with other characters in the same world too.

This time sees the character Cadderly introduced, a monk who becomes the central character of the Cleric Quintet of which the first book is Canticle.

It’s been quite some time since I read this one. I kinda remember the young, naive cleric/monk fella Cadderly and the fighter Danica who is far more interested in Cadderly than our monk fella can detect. The central theme of these books is the Chaos Curse and the struggle between Cadderly and the monks of the Edificant Library and the forces of the evil wizard Aballister and his sidekick Imp Druzil.

An interesting series of books with characters that nicely evolve through the series. I must go back to it at some point.

Next up is Crucible by Troy Denning. It’s the second addition to the original Avatar trilogy and takes place many years after the events of the original. The Pantheon of the Realms has been reshaped and the assassin thief, Cyric, of the original trilogy has replaced the God of Murder. Except he’s a bit of a loony …. and he wants to supplant the other gods.

In this one, his campaign to destroy the worshippers of the other gods has been brought to a halt and Cyric is on trial by the other gods for his insanity.

Another decent book, although I sense these are books that only people interested in the Forgotten Realms Dungeons and Dragons game world will be the ones getting much out of these.

As an aside, in my campaign to listen through all of the music in the library again, I’ve now reached half way ! Only 4 months for 8300 songs. At the moment, I have Nina Persson’s Animal Hearts album and it’s a really good one. She has a fantastic voice and while this album doesn’t have quite the interplay and inspiration of your usual Cardigans album, there are still some great songs here and the album shows off her voice really well.

Gonna listen to their song Communication in a bit. Great song. I should do a music post again sometime soon.

Last book for today ! This is an old one, published in 1988 and it’s one of the earliest Forgotten Realms books.

The central character is our heroine Alias. She is a fighter who has woken in an unfamiliar inn with nothing to her name but a rather curious set of magical armour (yarp. It claims to be armour despite the …. gap) and the other gear of a sellsword. She also has a series of blue sigils tattooed into her arm. But no name.

Oh and there’s also a strangely mute lizardman who is acting as her guardian, whether she wants him there or not. Alias calls him Dragonbait, introducing one of the more recurring characters who pops up in the Realms.

As is normal for this type of book, they’re built around a limited party mechanic. Some of them even started out life as scenarios for the Dungeons and Dragons games. So in this one, Alias is a fighter, Dragonbait is a paladin and they pick up Ruskettle the Bard and Akabar the mage. The second book, The Wyvern’s Spur, is a little unusual in that the party doesn’t stay together. The second book is all about Ruskettle and then the gang comes back together for the finale in Song of the Saurials.

It’s the Finder’s Stone trilogy, co written by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb. A decent series.

I’m feeling a bit better today, although I did give up on attempting to do another bit of fan art. My drawing skills are still rather lacking, although the first attempt at an All Sketched By Me seems to have met with a good reception.

Yep. It’s crude but you can hopefully make out a driver who is in mid face palm and a crazy, drunk Jaffa with a hat enjoying himself far too much in the passenger seat. (It’s for a Las Vegas episode, so LHD). Oh and that spoiler at the back is not supposed to look like a dancing stick person.

Honest.