We got an early start on the day with a vampire hunt. Returning to Bodhi’s lair in the main graveyard of Athkatla, we met up with Drizzt and a few of his friends. Then all of us entered ready for trouble. And we found it. The lair had been repopulated with the bloodsuckers. We came prepared with Holy Water and plenty of stakes. We killed eight on the upper level, and going down the stairs we found another half dozen with Bodhi herself leading the fight.




It was barely lunchtime when we exited the tomb, and were met by an exhausted messenger rushing up to us, Lord Roenall had returned with an army intending to take d’Arnise Castle for himself. We rode hard back home and arrived just as our forces joined battle. We gathered a rear guard and met Lord Roenall and his bodyguard force as they arrived at the Castle gates. After the way our day started, this fight was pure anti-climax. But it was hugely important to the troops we’d been training, it was their first fight as a military force and they’d carried the day.



*****
Readers familiar with renders done by Zeno at “zenosziggurat.com” will recognize I again used much of his work for the fight against Bodhi. I am in awe of how he gets action portrayed. So I took some of his cues and mixed them with my party and style. This is sort of a testimony to what the AI can do, it produces stunning results when you actually know what to tell it!
That said, some of the Bodhi scenes were still maddening. For starters, I was averaging only a single render for every two or three generations. That means around 90% of results were being kicked out by the filter. Of those that were showing up, well it was determined not to show Diomedes in his armor! I was using “Bronze hoplite armor with blue crest on helmet” as I usually do. But it only was depicting the segmented skirt and helmet. No doubt, I got some really good Diomedes beefcake out of it. I did eventually realize, in keeping things brief, I’d left “embossed owl motif on chest” out. I had room to add it back so I did. And suddenly we got armor! Oof.
[Moving on to Psyche, it decided she had to have a hat. Seriously, the first dozen results I could actually see ALL had hats! And I mean the ridiculous Harry Potter sort of things. Psyche will not wear a pointed hat! The second render of her went long enough, I finally just decided to crop it out. You can still see the brim, but at least no point!]
I left that last up just to document my struggles here, but I did finally get a render I wanted and have replaced the offender. I’ll have to remember to call Psyche a sorcerer and NOT a wizard!
There remains two, fairly lengthy, sub-adventures before the pursuit of Irenicus will resume…




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