Skinwalker

Not to be confused with the movie Skinwalkers. That was a fairly shitty movie about werewolf like vampires or something like that. But, like I implied, that’s totally not the point of this post.

A skinwalker in Native American folklore (this is me speaking without referring to Google, so I could be wrong) is a sort of shaman or holy man that has the ability, through a ritual, to assume the shape of a wild animal and move about as that animal. I’m not sure on any of the particulars. I don’t know if it’s a metaphorical transformation that takes place during a spirit quest with lots of peyote dumped on the fire. I don’t know if it talks about a literal transformation, as it would be in the case of werewolves. I don’t know if it’s a spiritual transformation where the skinwalkers spirit takes the form of an animal and walks across the astral plane for one reason or another.

I don’t know.

I could Google it, but I’m almost positive I’d find evidence relating to all three of the examples, and each one would be as valid as the last. (Depending on the sources of course.)

So, I’m going to take a step away from the folklore and look at something I do know a pretty good deal about; Dungeons and Dragons.

Skinwalkers bring to mind two core classes that relate directly to the skinwalkers ability to shape shift. First is the druid, which as far as I know is the official “skinwalker” class. Why? The druid has the ability to take on what’s called a wild shape, meaning it can transform into an animal of its choosing and use that animal’s body however it sees fit.

The other class that comes to mind is the shaman. Like the druid the shaman is able to assume the form of its guiding spirit, which is generally an animal but not always.

I personally feel that the shaman is the more likely of the two classes to become a skinwalker.

And, I totally lost where I was going with this post as it was supposed to have been written three or four days ago. I don’t know. So, I suppose what I’m going to do now is move on to the end of the post.

Guess what happens there.

Ryan

4-3-14—4-6-14

MIA

I’ve been out of touch for the last couple of days, and I guess what I need to do now is explain why. Well, I probably don’t actually have to explain why. I just feel like I should since I don’t like leaving things unexplained.

Monday, I didn’t write a blog post to put up for Tuesday. Part of the reason for that is because I typed my last blog post, Spring, right after I got home from work, and thus felt like I’d already written my blog post. I guess that’s kind of a trap I set for myself, because I more or less did the same thing either last week or the week before. I can’t remember. I would write a blog post for that day, and type it before I did anything else on my list.

I don’t like that I did it, but I can’t go back and change it now. And, I can’t go back to Monday to make myself write a blog post. I don’t have a TARDIS. If I did, though, I would go back and make myself do a lot of things differently, but I’m pretty sure that in the act of doing that I would create a temporal paradox and the universe would come crashing down around me.

Might be entertaining to watch.

Either way, what’s done is done.

Now, I have a better reason for not doing stuff on Tuesday.

I went to the dentist on Tuesday. Normally, that’s not such a big deal. But, this is the first time I’ve ever had to get a tooth pulled. And, I really had to get two of them pulled.

One of them they got out. It took some work, but they got it out. The other one didn’t go so smoothly. They couldn’t get it to come loose, or it was stuck on something. I’m not sure, but it wouldn’t come out. And, now the bloody thing hurts. It wiggles every time I chew something, and if I bite down on it the wrong way it feels like I’ve been stabbed in the face.

It makes me want to cry.

I don’t know how I’m going to be able to handle work tomorrow, but I really don’t have a choice in the matter. That’s part of being an adult, I’m afraid.

Oy vey.

Anywho, I’m going to quit bitching, take about 1600 milligrams of ibuprofen and go to bed.

God, be with me, I’m going to need you tomorrow.

Ryan

3-26-14

And, just to throw a DnD reference in there I'd rather fight one of these:

www.conceptart.org

Than have another tooth pulled. Or maybe I'd rather have this thing being the one to pull my teeth. Then I know it wouldn't hurt for very long.

Spring

The topic for today’s discussion is spring. And, while I’m not sure if cupcake meant for the conversation to hover over the season, bed springs, or the leaf springs one might find in the back of a truck. I am, however, certain that this conversation will leave out my favorite type of spring, the slinky. Why am I sure of this? Because I believe if she had wanted me to talk about a slinky she would have said a slinky. So, instead we’ll talk about spring.

And, taking a dart and throwing it at a random topic (OW! Oops, sorry Erik) I’m going to go with the season. Spring is the time of year when the earth quite literally comes back to life. The fall and winter are the slow death of the earth. Think about it, everything is shutting down. The leaves are falling off the trees. The grass stops growing. Many mammals go south for warmer climes, and many others curl up in nice cozy caves and sleep through the winter.

Spring is a period of awakening. Hibernating animals wake up, things begin to grow and migrating animals move back in this direction (like ducks… oh god how I loathe ducks).

Spring also kind of refers to Daylight Savings Time. This is an America only thing (I think. Google would tell you for sure.) and spring refers to springing forward one hour (yay time travel) so that we would have more daylight in the evening hours then we would in the mornings. Mother Nature sort of does this herself as well.

The earth as it rotates around the sun also spins on its axis, and that cockeyed, meaning the earth is angled, and at any one point in the year the earth could be pointed towards or away from the sun. As things are rolling around to spring in the northern hemisphere (our hemisphere) is pointing towards the sun. This means that more of the northern hemisphere is lit up and lit up longer than it is during the winter. This makes summers at the North Pole extremely interesting, seeing as the sun never sets.

In the context of something I understand a little better than science, spring exists in Dungeons and Dragons just as it does on earth. I don’t know why it wouldn’t, unless the DM has you playing on a planet that greatly resembles Hoth. And, even Hoth would have a period of spring like weather. It’s probably more like spring in Antarctica than it is around the center of the earth.

And, yes, there are rules as to how things apply to the world as there are with weather. Take a muddy road for instance. It’s just rained for a day and a half, everything is soaked, and the streets (which are little more than packed dirt) are muddy. People have trouble walking and running in it, thus reducing travel speed, and it sucks down and holds tight to wagon wheels, increasing travel time. And, remember the runner I mentioned, he’s going to have to make balance checks every ten to twenty feet to see if he slides in the muck. If he fails that check he has to make a reflex save to avoid falling, and depending on how the save goes he might have to roll for damage as well.

Then there are allergies. I still haven’t looked to see if there are rules for allergies or not. Meh.

And, yes, all of that does sound extremely tedious, and I’m not the sort of dungeon master who’s going to demand those checks whenever a PC moves ten feet. Nope, the only time that would matter is during a combat encounter, or some other strenuous event where the rolling of the dice is important.

Anywho, that’s all from me for the day.

Beware the Dire Squirrel.

Ryan

3-22-14