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Psyche: Update 37

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atcDave

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We used my new pocket plane ability to escape the city and move beyond the siege camp. After rescuing a merchant from some of Yaga-Shura’s soldiers (just the human kind) we discussed heading off to his main stronghold, or the old temple in the swamp where he was raised. The temple seemed more likely to unlock secrets so we went there first.
But first we still had to fight our way out of the area. There were over twenty soldiers, and a half dozen or so Fire Giants to overcome. This was mostly brute force type fighting, fortunately Diomedes, Jaheira and Keldorn excel at this.

No doubt, the most fearsome part of Yaga-Shura’s army are the Fire Giants. Big powerful brutes who can cleave a person in two pretty easily. Our warriors are up to the challenge of bringing them down.

On reaching the temple we were assailed by a specter of some sort, who tried the tired trick of fooling me into thinking he was Gorion back from beyond. Apart from the obvious moral deficiencies, it seems evil is unimaginative [its a pity Psyche hasn’t read much CS Lewis, he would agree!]. I didn’t fall for this the previous few times either…
After we slew the stupid specter we fought several more undead guarding the site. Finally we made our way to Nyalee, an ancient witch who raised Yaga-Shura.

The old witch was quite annoyed with her boy! She had taught him some trick with keeping his heart in a secured location to ensure his immortality, but had betrayed her by taking her heart also? I don’t quite understand all the subtleties of Necromancy, but we need to return with both hearts so she can restore them in some way. It should heal whatever has been stolen from her, and make Yaga-Shura mortal.

The obvious thing now, was to head to Yaga-Shura’s stronghold. This we did, and we fought a whole lot of Fire Giants! Maybe 30? Brutal fight. But we found both a human heart and a Fire Giant heart there, and returned them to Nyalee. She performed her ritual, and promptly regretted giving us the tools to kill her boy. Huh, makes a twisted sort of sense. We had to destroy her when she attacked us.

Then it was back to the Siege camp outside of Saradush.

The city had obviously fallen and was in flames. We helped refugees clear the area.

Much of the enemy’s army was busy in the city itself, so we hit the siege camp fast and hard.

Yaga-Shura himself was the only Fire Giant in the camp, but that’s who we came to see! He was shocked to find we could actually hurt him. This made him angry. And stupid. So the “The Five” is now “The Three”!

As we were finishing our battle Mellisan showed up. We needed to get the remaining members of the group, and she directed us to a small dust bowl of a town called Amkethran which would put us in easy striking distance of the other Bhaalspawn. I admit to being very suspicious of how she knows so much, and I wonder if her “help” is stringing us along? Well, one thing at a time, and Yaga-Shura deserved to burn.

That new ability I have to gate to and from my own little pocket dimension is cool and handy. But it seems to only work for places I’ve been. So we’ll be traveling across the desert to Amkethran the old fashioned way.

Several days were spent crossing desert.
We arrived at an Oasis about halfway to our destination. It had been occupied by troops from the Kingdom of Tethyr, and they were looking for me. The commanding officer, General Jamis Tomblethen informed me I was wanted for mass murder in the destruction of Saradush. Of course the sentence was death.

I was briefly worried we would have to kill all these soldiers, which would perhaps prove their point. I offered to let them use whatever detection magic they had on me and my party. Jamis seemed embarrassed and awkward that we clearly were not evil. I told him plainly what had happened, and that I was in pursuit of the other Bhaalspawn who had been starting wars and picking fights in the area. He wished me luck and let us go, I’ll leave it him to figure out what to tell his Queen.

After a night in the Oasis we set off again in the morning.

The Hollywood “B Movie” poster of “The Trek Across the Desert”!

5 responses to “Psyche: Update 37”

  1. Zeno Avatar
    Zeno

    That is a *very* nice set of pictures. My only quibble would be the size of the fire giant, but I’ve been struggling with that myself lately. AI seems to roll a dice sometimes to decide what it means by large, huge, gigantic, etc. I’ve taken to terms like “looming over” or “towering over” and perspective tricks instead of relying on size descriptors for big things.

    Other than the size thing Jaheira and the Fire Giant looks great. Nice action and both looks captured well. The Old Witch looks very good as well. All I would add is drizzle. 😉

    Diomedes going over the barricades is probably my favorite image in this set. Extremely effective. But they all come across well, and the desert setting is working very well with your style. It really emphasizes the harsh sun and sweaty skin.

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    1. atcDave Avatar
      atcDave

      Thank you as always! I do appreciate the encouragement.

      Yeah the size thing is always tough. I said 12 foot tall, but I don’t think it knows sizes at all. The distance between them is hard to gauge, he could be 6′ or 30′. Although he does look taller than the ruin?

      For the swamp I think I said “grey and murky”? But yeah, drizzle would have been good. Funny thing, I never described the witch as skeletal or undead or anything, but *most* renders had her as skull and bones. I said “woman”, although hag and witch were in the description at different times, I think this was “witch”.

      I loved the action at the barricade! I had another, I thought was even better, except he had no weapon! And those were extremely hard to get. At one point I went 4 or 5 renders in a row with all blocked results. Very odd, I said nothing about blood or hitting anyone. But overturned wagons, crates and barrels. Warrior leaping over a wagon. Soldiers on the other side scattering. And no renders. Very frustrating. I sent some unhappy feedback to Microsoft, but they never answer. Anyway, of the few renders I actually got to see, a number of them were very good.

      I do like making Diomedes and Psyche a little sweaty and scruffy sometimes. I normally go more the “put together” look. Especially Psyche, I expect to normally be well groomed. But every now and then, I want to see the sweat!

      I loved the scene at the Oasis. Jamis is maybe too red! But hey, we fair skinned guys need to be careful in the sun. Maybe I could try editing? So far I’ve made maybe 30 attempts at editing and exactly one success (which will be in the first post of my coming IWD run). My wife was talking earlier today about editing with Google, and she thought I probably could import renders? I may have to try it.
      But I loved the size and outfit difference. One of the few times Psyche’s “short” descriptor really seemed to make a big difference. And just knowing the actual, in game, power imbalance makes it all the funnier.
      This is exactly the moment I want that SimDing0 Questpack for. I love being able to talk my way past this with no violence. It actually leaves me with a little warm and fuzzy for the Tethyrans, Baron Diomedes and Baroness Psyche will have a decent relationship with neighbors to the south.

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      1. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        I haven’t even dipped my toe into editing. I’m treating this as an exercise in essentially learning a new programming language. The prompts may *look* like English, but I don’t assume they mean to the AI what they mean in the dictionary. So figuring out how the AI “thinks” and how to manipulate it into doing everything is for me the main objective. I know there are folks who generate separate parts of in image in different AI renders and the merge the images together manually. But that feels like “cheating” to me – I want the challenge of getting it in one step. 😉 It’ll be interesting to see how editing goes for you! Who knows, it may change my attitude. 🙂

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      2. atcDave Avatar
        atcDave

        usually with Microsoft’s editor I just get a message like “ethical AI won’t let you do that.” ??? I’m thinking “the dude has three arms and it won’t let me eliminate one?!” Especially weird since Jodie was showing me some stuff with Google that was very similar (just removing unwanted artifacts).

        I may not put much effort into it, usually when I give up on a render it’s because it isn’t even framing things right. Like it completely doesn’t understand what I want. And if it does understand, well a few more tries will get me something very useful. It’s just, a small number in between, where I’m only getting a very few “in the ballpark” and I hate to throw out one for a *small* glitch.

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      3. Zeno Avatar
        Zeno

        Yeah. Nowadays I often start with the free desktop app. I rarely like its finished products, but I can use it to get the basic framing worked out without burning daily uses and then move to the web site to add the details and get a final product. As you say – so much time is often spent just getting it to understand things like the basic concept of my airship the other day , or who is doing what to who. Once you’ve got that, its just fiddling with details until you like the final look.

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