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Psyche: Update 25

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atcDave

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Descending into the Underdark was a terrifying experience. Of course its a name we all know, a place of dark terrors and utter evil. It was particularly hard for our Elven ladies; for Jaheira, as a Druid, its as far from the World she knows and loves as can even be imagined, it is one more assault on her stressed mind. For Aerie, it seemed to be much worse. Our Avarial friend wants to soar among the clouds, and now she’s in a hole in the ground. We barely settled onto a cavern floor when we heard an insect like chittering, investigating we found three illithids in a side cave. We slew them quickly, but they sort of symbolize everything evil and twisted.

Thankfully, 100 yards past that cave we came across a small gathering of Deep Gnome merchants. It seems like a small thing, but they were friendly faces in this place of darkness. Okay, so they wanted to sell us stuff. But they had some useful information, a “mage and neck biter” passed this way a bit ago heading for the nearby Drow city. There is also a Svrifneblin (Deep Gnome) town close by. This sounds like the Drow city will be our stop, but a whole city of Drow sounds problematic. We should reconnoiter the area first, we really need a plan.

There’s a lot of activity, commerce and industry, ongoing. Yet the place remains unsettling and intimidating.
Our rest was disturbed, we prepared to defend ourselves [Edit: disregard this image, Psyche would be so embarrassed. Sometimes she uses Polymorph Self to “play elf” for her husband, please just forget all about this…]

We freed an imprisoned mage and a gnome youngster. Accidently freed a Lich! We’ll call that a good tactical exercise, a potentially difficult fight without that handy Dwarvish device we had a couple months ago. But I cast Pierce Magic (a powerful anti-magic spell), Skie had her Arrows of Dispelling, and Di and Jaheira just kicked his ***. He might have been fuzzy from a long Imprisonment, but it was good team building for us.
From there we got up to the Gnome village. We got a happy welcome due to the youngster we’d already sent home. But they had a problem with something they’d awakened in the deep. Imoen was hoping they meant a Grizzly Bear, but I think we all knew better than that. No problem, we can take care of that…

And we did. The Gnomes gave us a magic gem, a light source that could penetrate impenetrable darkness. We would need this to visit “Adalon”, a being unidentified to us but said to be of unspeakable beauty. She would have a way for us to find those we seek.
First we finished our exploring. It must be Spring, because we gave those caves a good cleaning. This means several enclaves of dangerous critters, Kua Toans, Illithids, Beholders; call it a public service.

Finally we found the cave of Adalon. Its a little intimidating heading down a grand staircase to a lair of ???.

A Dragon of gleaming silver is indeed beautiful!

Adalon was a little cranky. And even good dragons have over-sized egos. So she wasn’t exactly “friendly”. We quickly learned her wrath was due to the theft of her unhatched eggs. Adalon commanded us to enter the Drow city of Ust’ Natha and retrieve them. She would completely disguise us as Drow for our mission. Dragon magic is renowned for its unique power. The illusion she bestowed was amazing.

Psyche
Diomedes
Jaheira
Aerie
Skie
Imoen

We’re ready.

4 responses to “Psyche: Update 25”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    Those first Illithids are great! I like them better than the second set. More menacing.

    I found Deep Gnomes difficult. I went with (midget,grey skin,bald,pointy ears) to get close.

    Your silver dragon looks fantastic! I had a really painful time with that one. Just could *not* get it to do shiny silver. Looks that’s an area your art style does better.

    Looks like Ebony mostly worked for you for the Drow pics. Not sure if the purple and blue were for variety or because that didn’t work for everyone. Diomedes and Jaheira look especially good as Drow. As does Imoen – surprisingly. The “all blue” in contrast to her purple-pink outfit works well for her. Psyche looks a little too bubbly for a Dark Elf. Skie and Aerie even have good expressions for it.

    I just realized in some of these pics Diomedes has a very “Tom Cruise”-like face. I wonder if that trips the filter sometimes…

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Yeah I really liked the first illithids, but I liked Diomedes’ full kit in the second one, so there it is. I was very happy with Adalon! I only did 8 total renders on that, I saw this one and said “done”! And it was just “30 foot tall shining silver dragon”. If I’d gone further I might have tried 50 foot tall, but I was happy to call this one done. I do think it worked well in part because of the style, I know from model building that metal colors present all kinds of issues for paint. The AI likely struggles with finding samples of convincing metallics in oil.
      Your deep gnomes worked well, I might try one when I do our Drow adventures later today.

      Doing those Drow was tough though, I’m not convinced the AI actually knows what Drow are. Every render I was rejecting some for normal fleshy color skin. Often in patches, around the mouth, hands or whole head. And a number of African faces continued to show up even after substituting “Ebony” for black. Annoying when you start with “Russian” or “Dutch”! But Ebony absolutely helped, I got a few decent renders with that. And yeah, I mixed it up with “very dark blue” and “very dark purple”. I do agree about Psyche! But it makes my laugh to think she pushes the limits of Adalon’s magic, her “cute” is mightier than the spell…

      Speaking of filters, I had a fascinating lunch yesterday with a buddy who works a lot with AI, mostly in the medical field. But one of the things he commented on was how massively difficult it would be to write the filters. It’s probably all stuff you know, but it was a little illuminating to me about what the computer doesn’t actually know. He also mentioned some about the randomness of stuff sometimes, how the computer struggles with knowing one character from another and the nature of randomness. Interesting stuff, although obviously he’s knowledgeable several levels beyond me.

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      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        Yep. I’ve often thought that about the filters myself. My AI work has been in image analysis – where it looks at things like satellite imagery and tries to automatically identify features like building outlines, lakes, vehicles, etc. And that is massively fraught with difficulty. Even human image analysts have a decent mis-identification rate. Too many weird looking things out there. I remember having a bear of a time with a collection set out of Toronto, where it turned out they have an entire building on a corner which is painted to look like a picture of itself peeling off. So a 3D sensor, a camera, and a human eyeball looking from above vs from the street see completely different conceptions of the same darn building.

        https://streetartutopia.com/2024/03/12/flatiron-mural/

        For AI the best we can do is slap a “confidence” rating on things so a human can come along later and see how much they trust the ID. And at its core “is this a pickup truck” is a pretty well-defined problem. “Is this smut?” is a whole different can of worms. Can’t even reliably get two humans to agree on that once you get away from the extremes.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        That building is awesome, I can see why that would be problematic! I’ve seen one in Grand Rapids that it built to look like the roof is falling in, architects love making things unusual (my wife worked many years in interior design and could go on at length about that!).

        My friend was also talking about why that makes AI a problem for things like self driving cars or my old field, air traffic control. There’s a random element that may be fun in renders, but as you said, requires a human to look at it.
        And yes about the smut. Even back in the 1970s there was a US Supreme Court case where a justice commented on a porn case “I may not know how to define it, but I know it when I see it”. Might have been a naughty joke in there…
        I’ll stick with saying I think the AI has a dirty mind. But it is often funny when the rejection rate starts going up. And I still say it feels prudish. And most people would rate me as prudish.

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