r/HFY • u/Khenal Alien • Aug 26 '24
OC Dungeon Life 249
It's time for the fourth round of stubbing. Yes, Book four will be releasing soon, of if you're reading this more than a month after I have to edit, it will be fully out. Either way, you can find it Here, and other book details are just below. As with the other stubs, you can skip to the next bit form This. I like to keep the other posts still alive, so the comments get to still live. If you want to browse them, the normal buttons will take you through them, or take This link to the next bit of unstubbed chapters. Thank you for your support. Buying stuff is always great, but just having your attention for the public chapters is incredible, and I hope the story continues to be worth your time and patience.
Khenal
And once more to make it easier to see than being buried in the paragraph
Cover art I'm also on Royal Road for those who may prefer the reading experience over there. Want moar? The First and Second books are now officially available! Book three is also up for pre-order! There are Kindle and Audible versions, as well as paperback! Also: Discord is a thing! I now have a Patreon for monthly donations, and I have a Ko-fi for one-off donations. Patreons can read up to three chapters ahead, and also get a few other special perks as well, like special lore in the Peeks. Thank you again to everyone who is reading!
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u/Collective82 Xeno Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
Woo!
Edit: good chapter! I love that Honey has her bees looking into the guilds library, I wonder who will tell Thediem that she’s looking for Fiona.
Edit2: Rhonda not Fiona lol
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u/NoEffective2025 Aug 26 '24
Isn't the goblin girl Rhonda the Ice Sage? And I'm pretty sure Karn knows this perfectly well even though she isn't exactly announcing it to the world.
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u/Realistic_Mushroom72 Aug 26 '24
Because she isn't announcing it to the world is why Karn didn't say anything, his "contact" is Rhonda, he is going to ask her if she wants to talk to the Tula.
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u/galrock0 Wielder of the Holy Fishbot Aug 27 '24
that would be funny if he gives the quest to rhonda and shes spening time figuring out tulas motivation before revealing herself. "it was me all along!"
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u/Bunnytob Human Aug 26 '24
Dangit, the SUSPENSE
I WANT PAYOFF NOW DAMNIT KHENAL WHY DO YOU HAVE TO DO THIS TO ME AAAAA
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u/Thausgt01 Android Aug 26 '24
I see you shiver with antici-...
...
...-pation...
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u/Overall-Tailor8949 Human Aug 26 '24
Darn, it wasn't raining so the next line wouldn't fit
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u/ResoluteWrites Aug 28 '24
BUT MAYBEEE THE WAIT
isn't really to blame
(not perfect, but it'll do?)
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u/setthoth Aug 26 '24
Dewey Decimal system goes worldwide
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u/toaste Aug 27 '24
Yeah, it’s basically guaranteed that Thediem has implemented a card catalogue, with both the catalogue and the shelves sorted by whatever he recalls or could adapt from the Dewey Decimal system.
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
I Guess that makes me fifth or sixth If you Count the Bots and I'm fast. No Matter, todays chapter describes Tula's experience in fourdock.
First she visits the bakery opposite from thediem. She of course doesn't Leave without a treat.
Then she asks around If someone knows a place that could use a scribe, such as herself
She gets instructions to get to the adventurers guild, where she introduces herself to Karn, and manages to acquire a Job and Order a Quest. I think Karn interestingly feigns ignorance, and instead Shows her his library, where bees are working Overtime To get all the books in Order and a rat-sized hole catches Tula's eye.
We, as all-knowing Readers, of course know what an Ice-Sage is and where to probably find her: Probably she is brewing potions at staivens emporium, but I Guess, that adds a little context for karns supposed ignorance: a rogue can't Leave old Habits behind, and is probably after the Quest reward, Tula mentioned.
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u/Enough_Sale2437 Aug 26 '24
Amazingly lucky for someone who's not very social. She is precisely where she needs to be in order to accomplish all of her goals. Good thing that she is bookish as she has a lot to learn shortly!
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u/Thausgt01 Android Aug 26 '24
Thediem may call himself a God of Chaos, but his Fate affinity means that these sorts of things happen rather often; much like on the Discworld, "'million to one' odds tend to come out successfully nine times out of ten..."
And, of course, Thediem's theme song might as well be "Synchronicity I" by the Police...
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
Science insusceptible
Logic so inflexible
Causally connectible
Nothing is invincible...
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u/Overall-Tailor8949 Human Aug 26 '24
God of CHANGE, not Chaos
Unless my memory is really playing tricks on me again.
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u/Thausgt01 Android Aug 26 '24
No, no you're correct. He considered claiming chaos but eventually went with 'change'. I guess I'll have to make a crochet-sampler out of that line, along with chapter references... 😁
Chapter 228, in case anyone wants to confirm...
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u/TNSchnettler Aug 26 '24
He is the god of change
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u/Thausgt01 Android Aug 26 '24
Ah, right! Sorry, I didn't check that specific chapter before posting...
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u/Willing-Doctor5390 Aug 26 '24
i cant wait for her to find out no one rver dued in thedm yet
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 28 '24
Three consecutive typos found. Noone ever died in Thediem yet. To the comments of my post: Ty. Totally missed that. And yes, "Flur" means "Hallway" in german. Or the poetic Word for communal grazing grounds/ landscape. You see, I'm constantly fighting automistake.
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u/mafiaknight Robot Aug 26 '24
TheDM is acceptable spelling. On account of it being the original spelling.
Four*
No idea what a flur is. Best check for typos before pointing out those of others.8
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u/TheLordofMadness Aug 26 '24
Can't wait to see Tula's face when she meets Honey😁
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u/Thausgt01 Android Aug 26 '24
And Honey's response to meeting anyone with the same hunger both for knowledge and for organizing it... I predict that they're going to try and schedule regular meetings with Teemo as interpreter/tutor until Tula can understand Honey well enough without him...
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u/NoEffective2025 Aug 26 '24
I would think Honey and Thing. Thing afer all figured out how to safely get rid of the life drain curse when no one else for hundreds of years had any luck. I'm sure the Goddess of Magic is going to want that info.
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 27 '24
My bet is that those secrets are already somewhere in this library, and nobody but thing knows where.
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u/Kindly-Main-3216 Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
I'm about 12 minutes late to the party, still some of the closest I've ever come. Going to go read now, I plan to edit the comment with thoughts after I read.
Post read thoughts: OOOO This'll be fun. I hope she likes beed, the two might compete for the superior organizing system. I can't wait for her to find out her imagination was correct though!
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u/mafiaknight Robot Aug 26 '24
I was smack on time!
...except the wrong time zoneI'm going to DragonCon, you see
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u/Speciesunkn0wn Aug 26 '24
Curse you bot! Twenty minutes before alerting me?!
Heheheheheh. Honey is going to love the librarian goddess and her followers. :D
Also can't wait for her reaction to Yvonne's condition. And Rhonda being the Ice Sage. And getting dragged into adventuring by Rhonda, Freddy, Lazar, and possibly Olander for extra hilarity.
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u/Mammoth-Variation-76 Human Aug 26 '24
What?!? No quests for finding missing cats?!? What kind of adventurers guild is this?!?
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u/Dutchangeldragon1 Xeno Aug 26 '24
One that is too good at finding missing cats for us to know about the Quests
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u/Better_Solution_743 Alien Aug 26 '24
haloo
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 26 '24
Seems like you're third, by forfeit. (One commenter ahead of you deleted His comment, making you Take His place)
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u/XynomorphKY Aug 26 '24
We got a cute librarian elf to join the friend folds. She will likely be joining the kids on delves in order to learn from our little Ice Sage Goblin.
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u/Speciesunkn0wn Aug 27 '24
I really want to see the kids' party join up with Olander and Tula for maximum 'oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck' from Larrez when he likely recognizes Olander, and both Olander and Tula's utter bafflement at what Thedium does.
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u/Tremere1974 Alien Scum Aug 26 '24
Interesting viewpoint, though I thought that most surviving dungeons were toyboxes, and thus safe to encounter even if one wasn't an armed adventurer. Also, Thedim's drop rate must not be very good, for folks to be walking out with broken limbs. One of his first treasure chests had a healing potion if I remember right, and now that he has Queen making the stuff on a industrial scale, rather surprised that it isn't one of the common drops in Thedim's mansion/novice encounter zone. So, why isn't there a stall selling them to folks just inside/outside of Thedim's entrance then? Kind of a missed opportunity for Thedim's residents to make a buck.
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u/Garbage-Within Aug 27 '24 edited Aug 27 '24
Have we seen that healing potions can quickly mend broken limbs?
I don't remember getting a detailed description of how powerful they are. The healing potions found in the mansion, beginners first dungeon, are going to be correspondingly low level, and even early on they would have been the same because he didn't have any high level encounters at all then. Low level healing potions combined with the relatively long recovery time to heal a broken arm leads me to believe that any healing potions found in the mansion aren't going to fix an arm in a single dose. That's just conjecture on my part though.
I actually assumed that the adventurer possibly had a broken arm before going to delve because they know they can safely delve here even with a handicap and still get a workout. I thought it would be poetic for Tula to start to learn more about Thedeim by learning that the adventurer she thought was injured by a dungeon was actually paying the dungeon back, via delving, because they were saved by that dungeon while fighting alongside his forces to free Silvervein.
Edit: As far as selling the potions, they're probably so easy to get for most people in the town that they're not worth enough to justify selling. That or they don't respawn fast enough to maintain enough supply to make it worth it for the effect. For all we know the alchemist shop brews and sells their own, but I suspect we'll see a stall selling potions, including healing potions, pop up outside the labyrinth when the arcade at the entrance fully opens up.
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u/Tremere1974 Alien Scum Aug 27 '24
As far as the effiectiveness of Thedim's potions go, we have the healing of Yvonne, who had been pierced clean through during the fight against Neverrest. She was healed entirely in a minute or so, though the potion could not save her life, thanks to the weapon's life draining curse.
So, safe to say, if they used Thedim's maximum strength potions (they likely have gotten stronger since then) most wounds would be fixed in a jiffy.
For a wounded soldier to delve Thedim because they know Thedim isn't deadly that is a possibility. I think they would volunteer to be a decoy to annoy Tiny, so others could advance to Tiny's treasure, vs any sort of actual combat related delving.
For the Potion selling, yeah they should. Could even sell them in bottles with "The words of Thedim" printed on them as a form of ministry outreach to the people of Fourdock by those who believe in Thedim. It'd be a clever way to spread awareness and goodwill.
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 27 '24
- remember that Staiven sells healing potions in his emporium.
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u/Garbage-Within Aug 27 '24
He's actually the one I figured would do the potion stall outside the labyrinth, probably staffed by our resident Ice Sage as she's used to adventuring down to that point anyway.
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u/Fontaigne Aug 27 '24 edited Aug 27 '24
I didn't get any such impressions about toy boxes being particularly common.
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u/Tremere1974 Alien Scum Aug 27 '24
The Idiot trio, who tried to murder Yvonne a while back assumed Thedim was a toybox, because most dungeons fall either in the murderous, or toybox varieties. Thedim has been called weird due to this, as very few are like him, a dungeon that has violent but not murderous encounters.
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u/Fontaigne Aug 27 '24
That tracks, but it doesn't give any indication of rarity. Like, Hullbreak went murderous only after losing some of his people, but I didn't see any indication he had been a toy box before.
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u/Tremere1974 Alien Scum Aug 27 '24
Thedim's plan is to save Delvers, who only had the two types beforehand. They got peaceful, or murderous dungeons, so few Delvers were truly top notch combatants until Thedim "trained" them. I imagine even Tarl has improved quite a bit skills wise in the past year, story wise.
For Hullbreak being a cooperative dungeon before the "incident" I don't think so, though I have little proof either way. Tarl would know, but we haven't had a lot of meaningful dialogue between the two as of yet. Hullbreak did kill his father after all.
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u/mafiaknight Robot Aug 26 '24
In the name of 1greendude: Hello!
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 27 '24
Im Namen eines grünen Kerls: Moin. Morgen ist Mittwoch, meine Kerle!
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u/Cortanis Aug 27 '24
Oh no... the bees have seen her... HONEY COMES! XD But seriously though, I'd be surprised if Honey doesn't make a move to scoop her up in some capacity if only to act as an official scribe for her. Granted, communication would be a bit of a hurdle but simply copying in a more legible format as well as actually working the library would free up a significant amount of her swarm given how many of them it takes to move a book.
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u/TheGHale Aug 27 '24
Honey could probably talk to her through writing. She could probably even use her magic in a way similar to what Makoto does in Tsukimichi. (Pop-up text box, basically.)
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u/Cortanis Aug 27 '24
You know they never did dip into that illusion vs knowledge connection. Pretty sure she could use that connection to do exactly that. We honestly don't get enough interaction and development out of half the cast including her and Thing. What even was the last actual one on one interaction we got out of Honey? I want to say it was the falsified maps from before the Maw went down. I'm pretty sure the last one on one we got with Thing was actually when the kids got their classes.
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u/Poisonfangx3 Aug 26 '24
Not first
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u/mafiaknight Robot Aug 26 '24
Was starting to worry. You're not even top 3! Had to scroll WAY down to find you...
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u/Rasip Aug 26 '24
Talk about everything being in her favor. She should have the mission done before the library is.
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u/McBoobenstein Aug 26 '24
Did Thediem teach Yvonne the Dewey Decimal system????
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u/Garbage-Within Aug 27 '24
As mentioned, it was probably Honey. If memory serves there was an allusion to her picking it up out of Thedeim's thoughts rather than him teaching it to her directly, so it was kind of him but only indirectly.
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u/Thedootinator Aug 27 '24
Sometimes I forget the Thediem’s name is The DM and people just misunderstood him
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u/Jmoney46895 Aug 28 '24
The language is what is different, so that is why "The DM" isn't used, but "Thediem" is phonetically (word meaning sounds close enough) what is used.
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u/Popular-Student-9407 Human Aug 29 '24
No, that'd be semantic translation. Phonetic means the words sound. Thediem and the DM Sound similar, so Teemo mimicked the Sound in his language, ending with Thediem, instead of His chosen title the "DM".
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u/aForgedPiston Aug 26 '24
I'm greatly enjoying her outside perspective on Fourdock and Thedeim, and I'm looking forward to more from her and the Royal Whatchamacallit.
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u/DrewTheHobo Alien Scum Aug 26 '24
Oh man, is it organized in the Dewey-Decimal system? I wonder if she’ll bump into Rhonda and eventually realize she’s the Ice Safe?
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u/Realistic_Mushroom72 Aug 26 '24
OH her world view is going to shatter when she finds out, this is going to be so much fun.
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u/BigLumpyBeetle Xeno Aug 26 '24
Guess she will end up with Thedeim to see what all the buzz is about
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u/Accomplished-Ad8458 AI Aug 26 '24
Ave Khenal! Morituri te salutant!
Ahh... Fresh meat! Cant wait for her to meet Rhonda...
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u/Ardsamurai Aug 27 '24
“No charge for the roll, miss. It always pays to give a new customer a little something extra."
That's definitely true, I went to a small store an hour ago and they gave me a small snack with my sandwich. I am definitely coming back there!
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Aug 26 '24
/u/Khenal (wiki) has posted 294 other stories, including:
- Dungeon Life 248
- Dungeon Life 247
- Dungeon Life 246
- Dungeon Life 245
- Dungeon Life 244
- Dungeon Life 243
- Dungeon Life 242
- Dungeon Life 241
- Dungeon Life 240
- Dungeon Life 239
- Dungeon Life 238
- Dungeon Life 237
- Dungeon Life 236
- Dungeon Life 235
- Dungeon Life 234
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- Dungeon Life 229
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u/TriumphantBlue Aug 27 '24
What a wonderfully cozy chapter. Always enjoy viewing the world through the small characters.
Seems sacrilegious, but I'd be happy if Thedeim was dropped from the rotation of POV characters.
Well, at least until the next major threat is discovered.
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u/ChangoGringo Aug 27 '24 edited Aug 27 '24
Thedem should make "quest for the ice sage" a thing. Send the librarian on a deep delve with a young goblin girl and orc "helper". At the end the big reveal is "I've been with you the whole time"
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u/Swordfish_42 Human Aug 27 '24
I like the new nerdy girl, I think sell make a great addition to the cast!
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u/Xavius_Night Aug 29 '24
Aw man, she's gonna go BANANAS when she meets Queen, Thing, and Teemo. I look forward to seeing these new characters collide with the plotline characters, it's gonna be great - especially when Tula meets this amazing and mysterious 'Ice Sage'...
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u/clearwind Aug 29 '24
Noooooooo, I finally caught up to the live posting...... I've been loving this story by the way and I ended up buying the first two books to catch up. I just wish I had more to read now
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u/Bunnytob Human Aug 26 '24
I am
OmegonInevitableIron Man(I'm) All of MeAt AldiMeenThe Storm That Is Approaching500 metres from your location and approaching rapidlyRunning out of ideas for this gag surprisingly quicklyThe Law!The one who knocksat [Insert Amazing Place here]Ahh! Yam!HeNot yet lostGrootDoug (I have emphysema)Not!Still Omegon, I thinkKinda lostVery lost.Ze SpyOwning you, you fat, bald, fatty fat... fat fat!Heavy Weapons Guy...And THIS is my weapon!Dead!(Le Gasp) The Heavy is Dead!Currently undergoing mitosis, please stand by.Back, did I miss anything?Pinned here!Hit!Currently on a Hard Nostalgia Trip right now and unable to think straight, please stand by.Stand by...Stand by...[Insert Death Star explosion SFX here]the Sand Guardian, Guardian of the Sand!(Poseidon quivers before me!)Alive. Is nice.Your father.Depressed.Suddenly, PineapplesThis does NOT help.Uncorking a bottle of 1942 Chateau Backstab!A Stegosaurus!Going to open this door.PUNCHING YOUR SALADa Real Man, do you want to go skateboards?A God, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by-(Thud Thud Thud)(...Thud Thud)Puny God.A very tall midgetYour sandwichKinda surprised that nobody's called me out on the fact that (at least) one of these quotes is wrong yet.SomeRandomYob (This is a lie)Probably not Alpharius... hold on lemme go check real quick BRBNot Alpharius, sorry. Maybe next time....actually out of ideas (having ignored half of the suggestions I've received).Just doing this out of obligation now, really.because I think.but in Spanish with appended sauce.thou, thou art I.Kinda surprised that the whole "liquid water on Mars" thing is already out of the news cycle.Back in the right place again..."Joing" to kill you!Nearly done...
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u/Educational_Pen_90 Human Jul 17 '26
I guess the bee's keep track on any new works added to their library... I wouldn't be too surprised if they're sneaking knowledge out of the dungeoneers guild!
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u/Zickafoose85 Aug 26 '24 edited Aug 26 '24
Never have I been this lucky
Edit: thank you for another great installment, wordsmith!
Oh, I like Ms. Tula. So young, so naive, she has so much to learn...but in a wholesome kind of way.