After last session's "craziest plan ever", I thought maybe the group would take it easy, but instead today they stole an airship, managed to wrangle a haunting vision of the end of the world from the cleric's "god", unleashed an army of frost giants to rebuild their population and prepare for war against the Empire, and kidnapped a bunch of Imperial scientists so they can have them figure out the best way to make use of the horrifying being growing inside the planet's core.
Amusingly, they have yet to put much thought into stopping the undead horde that's currently ransacking at least one city, or the psionic sorcerer who has made it clear she's comfortable making an enemy of everyone in her quest to claim some kind of vague ancestral birthright (which is clearly related to the apocalyptic vision they just saw).
I'm looking forward to all the bad shit that's going on outside their very narrow view of the world.
Doomsday vision, Frost Giant repopulation programs and waging war on the empire is a narrow view?
Well, the party seems to mostly be following the lead of Somon, the noble "leader" of the party and his quest to build an army of frost giants and take over the world. Because the best way to protect the world is to rule it, right? I'm just saying, they keep ignoring some other major players in favor of focusing on the Empire. But it's fine, because it gives me more avenues to create shitty situations for them to deal with.
I just have to say, even though the Kickstarter won't come out until January now, I'm still very excited for Matt Colville's Stronghold book to come out, knowing that it will also tie into two other books about armies and mass combat, and domain rulership respectively. Those seem like useful supplements to out on my shelf compared to most homebrew stuff I see.
Id be totally down for a new stronghold book especially one from Matt Colville. The last one i bought was for pathfinder and it was... mediocre at best.
Its like, yea sure, we got a shopping list of stuff to spend all this gold on, but what are some of the tips and turns of running a stronghold and/or army? What are some neat tricks to help with digging up story hooks with this stuff?
Id like a DMG for this stuff more than a shopping book
I also came across a bag of pixie dust. None of us knew what it could do. During a big fight with a huge drop in the middle of the floor I took damage down to one health. In a fit of despearation I used it on myself.
“You get flight with a movement speed of 60.”
I immediately flew away and hid behind the edge of the drop. I spent the rest of combat popping over the edge, using Vicious Mockery to heckle the boss, and would then drop back down.
I am most definitely picking up Fly at level five.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
It's not unreasonable but I would let it go
It doesn't affect the game much so I would be kind of bothered if someone at my table asked for a housrule
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
It is kind of odd that it's so prevalent, but I chalk it up in the same column as bags of holding and magic focuses and a number of other things as being just one way to side step book keeping so you can roll dice and stab dragons.
Bags of holding mean you don't need to spend time checking encumbrance or weight.
Magic focuses so your wizard buddy doesn't have to keep a spreadsheet full of spell components.
Trail rations so you don't spend time GRRMartining up a meal based on what you have in your bags and that little patch of wild onions you spotted a quarter mile back and, hey, maybe someone can rig up a snare to get a rabbit.
And dark vision so nobody spends time counting minutes of torch time in the dungeon.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
It's not unreasonable but I would let it go
It doesn't affect the game much so I would be kind of bothered if someone at my table asked for a housrule
I'm not saying it should be house ruled, I just wanted to know if I'm the only person who feels this way.
Plus cats eyes potions or whatever and spyglasses are expensive. Which I need for my thief character raised by a spymaster.
No-dark-vision only tends to come up when you're in a dark dungeon and the human wants to be sneaky.
Then he gets left behind so there's not torchlight everywhere.
No-dark-vision only tends to come up when you're in a dark dungeon and the human wants to be sneaky.
Then he gets left behind so there's not torchlight everywhere.
Aw geez disc, you're making me real self-conscious now about my character now.
Kind of makes me glad I specc'd into social skills and mastermind. I can lie and persuade real good. Which fits my character.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Theres always goggles of Darkvision for that one character without it in an underdark campaign.
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
if you want to go Realism Mode for lighting and vision please look up how torches do (and do not) work. And what pre-modern people actually used for lighting.
edit: there was a good reason having a "torchbearer" as a cheap hireling was such a trope in old D&D.
Is it unreasonable to feel that orcs and elves shouldn't have dark sight and should get other bonuses that make more sense? Like elves seeing even farther and orcs maybe get better passive perception or something as warlike race that usually has to keep on their toes?
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
if you want to go Realism Mode for lighting and vision please look up how torches do (and do not) work. And what pre-modern people actually used for lighting.
edit: there was a good reason having a "torchbearer" as a cheap hireling was such a trope in old D&D.
I also came across a bag of pixie dust. None of us knew what it could do. During a big fight with a huge drop in the middle of the floor I took damage down to one health. In a fit of despearation I used it on myself.
“You get flight with a movement speed of 60.”
I immediately flew away and hid behind the edge of the drop. I spent the rest of combat popping over the edge, using Vicious Mockery to heckle the boss, and would then drop back down.
I am most definitely picking up Fly at level five.
Gaining a flight speed has always been one of the most powerful things you could do, until such time as everyone has a fly speed. The earlier, the better.
So after our party defeated the BBEG at the end of the first leg of my buddy's campaign this past sunday, we escorted queen Titania back to the summer court, and proceeded to have fun every step of the way (I'd argue that we were having more fun with the post battle stuff, hence why I'm bringing it up.)
First, we were feeling proud of ourselves, and so we decided to celebrate by playing some victory music on the way back to the capitol with our three musically inclined party members playing a kazoo, a didgeridoo and a chimera horn the victory music from overwatch... for 6 days straight... badly.
Also, the summer queen gave us two rewards for rescuing her. First, was control of the city of dennis, a ghost town we had passed through previously to do with as we saw fit. This for me is one of those really cool rewards since it gives the players a ton of options and opportunities to help develop their characters and take care of down time stuff and activities by recruiting people to do jobs for us like farming, crafting, enchanting and other activities (this is only made more interesting by virtue of how our group has a bit of a mercantile slant). Also, this gives us a way to have a transformers/G.I. Joe base where we can have back up characters hanging out if we decide we want to try something fresh and new.
The other reward was absolutely huge: the summer queen informed us that we now had the right to request a favor from her just once; given that the adventure has taken place in the feywild and how archfey operate, this is effectively an unlimited wish that we will be able to fire off one time.
Also, because we always have to have a moment where we are terrible people: I suggested OOC that we transform the city of Dennis into a sweat shop :snap:
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Yey my DM said he would give me a quest to find the night goggles. Without the 13,000 gp price they usually are.
So I mentioned the rat infestation I've been dealing with.
The week before we got a work order from the guild to go find some missing people in the city. Some investigation and a large tunnel in a missing person's basement led to the sewers. A few of us at the table groaned that we were going to be dealing with Rodents of Unusual Size, possibly as payback because of the Heist going so well before that. And then we found the Skaven effigy.
So this week, the guy who plays the dwarf paladin and I are trying our best to disassociate our metaknowledge of skaven from what our characters know, but I'm thinking eh, if we slip up a bit, he's a dwarf and heard rumors about more underground things than us, and Im a rogue with a spy background, so I've heard the gamut of the rumor mill.
Those sewers were a damn charnel house, it was fucking bad man... some of the players were wondering if we were too late to save anyone, and I piped in, "I don't think there is anyone to save... these ratmen *eat* everything." and sure enough, a quick investigation shows that with what's left of the bodies we find, its all bites. Cue a mob of skavenslaves (ratmen mooks) attacking us. I was worried about how many the DM put out there, because it was at least a 2 to 1 and 5e's action economy says that being outnumbered is fucking deadly. Thankfully, the DM had mooks with relatively few hit points so the wizard dumped a couple fireballs and softened them up for the paladin, myself, and our cleric to punch them down quickly enough. The monk was our MVP because he was able to keep a Skaven Assassin from hitting the rest of us, and those weeping blades fucking hurt.
I really wanted to cut our losses right here and get a body and cut some ears and get to the authorities, but even the guy playing the dwarf said we got to figure out how big a deal this is. So I cut all the left ears but no body because Im not lugging an 80lb corpse through the sewers, and yea its bad... real bad... we find the nest and its a horde sitting right underneath the city ready to attack.
And cue a rat ogre finding us out to put the session on a cliffhanger.
I have no idea how we are going to tackle this other than Im going to try to convince people I know to gtfo the city. I'm going to spitball an idea with the party members to try and run and gun this rat ogre out into the city streets so we'll see what happens this weekend, but I'm pretty sure the vermintide is coming whether we ignore it or not... this size of a rat host, there are way *way* more people missing that what we know about. These things are like the zerg in scifi games, they are not hiveminds, they are pathologically individualist save that skaven are better than everything else, and they eat everything.
We are not in the Old World. We are in something like waterdeep, but not waterdeep.
If we were, my go to theory would be Halaster Blackmage is alive/was alive until recently and fucked up on something big.
Edit** i have been channeling some Saltzpyre though...
edit edit** as for interchanging ratmen and skaven, I'm calling them skaven because that is what they are. We interchanged the terms at the table and DnD doesn't have ratmen in its monster manuals. But they had weeping blades, rat ogres, they have a hard on for church bells, and what we saw in the nest looked like warp lightning cannons and doom wheels, so i'm just waiting for warplock pistols, warpfire throwers and ratling gunners now...
I've only ever played 5e, and my 2 DMs neither of them let the party ever buy magical items. "Should be rare" is the reasoning. I.e. can only get it from loot tables, and even there I've of them at least always looked to screw us (i.e. oh you took a short rest on the dungeon? Well since they knew you were in here, they had a couple of their people move the treasure hoard out of this cave complex to an undisclosed location, leaving no trail to follow)
Geez. A DM wanting a low magic item game is one thing.
Being a goose is another...
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited October 2017
My DM won't let me have matchlocks so I'm happy he agreed to this. Was going to Oda Nobunaga Damara with my deposed prince rogue.
I know they're loud, they're for when shit goes down and silence is not super viable. Also I like the big bang and smoke. How do I first produce my pistol then produce my rapier without them?
My DM has merchants with magical items, but they are ridiculous. He had one merchant excitedly trying to sell us a wooden box that you could open and it would smell of one thing, but if you opened it again, it would smell differently.
You can probably also go with hooded lanterns in the meantime, whilst waiting for the Goggles o' nightvision.
I believe they're the lanterns that have a shutter so you can nix the light when you need to go sneaky?
In any case I think they're only around a hundred gold so.
They don't go out as easily as torches either, but the oil tends to cost more and gets spilled on everything.
My DM has merchants with magical items, but they are ridiculous. He had one merchant excitedly trying to sell us a wooden box that you could open and it would smell of one thing, but if you opened it again, it would smell differently.
So Tuesday cam and went, and a series of ridiculous occurences on our journey through chult has left me convinced that this place must have ties to Limbo because that's the only way I can explain the theatre of the bizzare that we encountered.
In no particular order we have:
A spectral grung that was so shitty at hiding it failed to make any attacks before we destroyed it, though our fighter did suffer necrotic damage when he snorted up it's ghostly fumes.
My kobold got caressed in his sleep by a creepy old woman.
Two of our party members discovered that these cute little koala monkey things called Zorbo's were in point of fact the apex predators of the jungle after they tried to scare them by pretending to be a tyranosaurus rex and were sumarily ripped to pieces. Further, the adamantine ingots they were carrying were destroyed; given that ingots are basically just bricks of metal I can only conclude that the claws of the zorbos caused them to imediatley sublimate (that is to say, convert from a solid to a gas instantly).
A natural 20 athletics roll from our fighter followed by a nat 20 acrobatics check allowed my koblod to bypass a magical forecefield puzzle much to the shock of a jungle spirit.
Posts
"it's fine, we have an airship!"
Well, the party seems to mostly be following the lead of Somon, the noble "leader" of the party and his quest to build an army of frost giants and take over the world. Because the best way to protect the world is to rule it, right? I'm just saying, they keep ignoring some other major players in favor of focusing on the Empire. But it's fine, because it gives me more avenues to create shitty situations for them to deal with.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Its like, yea sure, we got a shopping list of stuff to spend all this gold on, but what are some of the tips and turns of running a stronghold and/or army? What are some neat tricks to help with digging up story hooks with this stuff?
Id like a DMG for this stuff more than a shopping book
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Having leveled up some I'd picked up minor illusion, mainly to give my dead falcon the appearance of being alive.
Then I realized I have mage hand.
"SEE, ANDERS JR. IS JUST AS GOOD AS YOUR PETS, HE CAN FLY AND EVERYTHING."
I love this bird.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
“You get flight with a movement speed of 60.”
I immediately flew away and hid behind the edge of the drop. I spent the rest of combat popping over the edge, using Vicious Mockery to heckle the boss, and would then drop back down.
I am most definitely picking up Fly at level five.
It's weird to me that 75% of the races in the game can see in the dark. Maybe for sylvan elves in deep dark murkwood areas or orcs that have generations in the underdark I could see it, but aren't both these races awake during the day?
Yes I have been teased for playing a human character without it but that's not why I find it weird. It's weird to me that apparently only the hoo-man needs to see with torches or the sun.
It's not unreasonable but I would let it go
It doesn't affect the game much so I would be kind of bothered if someone at my table asked for a housrule
These look awesome as hell. SUPER PUMPED to run them. Now to just get everyone in the same place at the same time...
It is kind of odd that it's so prevalent, but I chalk it up in the same column as bags of holding and magic focuses and a number of other things as being just one way to side step book keeping so you can roll dice and stab dragons.
Bags of holding mean you don't need to spend time checking encumbrance or weight.
Magic focuses so your wizard buddy doesn't have to keep a spreadsheet full of spell components.
Trail rations so you don't spend time GRRMartining up a meal based on what you have in your bags and that little patch of wild onions you spotted a quarter mile back and, hey, maybe someone can rig up a snare to get a rabbit.
And dark vision so nobody spends time counting minutes of torch time in the dungeon.
I'm not saying it should be house ruled, I just wanted to know if I'm the only person who feels this way.
Plus cats eyes potions or whatever and spyglasses are expensive. Which I need for my thief character raised by a spymaster.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Then he gets left behind so there's not torchlight everywhere.
Aw geez disc, you're making me real self-conscious now about my character now.
Kind of makes me glad I specc'd into social skills and mastermind. I can lie and persuade real good. Which fits my character.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Are those homebrew? My GM is very big on orthodoxy to the rule book.
There are other magic items that give darkvision as well
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
if you want to go Realism Mode for lighting and vision please look up how torches do (and do not) work. And what pre-modern people actually used for lighting.
edit: there was a good reason having a "torchbearer" as a cheap hireling was such a trope in old D&D.
Any good links?
Gaining a flight speed has always been one of the most powerful things you could do, until such time as everyone has a fly speed. The earlier, the better.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Next thing you know you'll be flipping tricks in an alley in order to keep flying high...
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
First, we were feeling proud of ourselves, and so we decided to celebrate by playing some victory music on the way back to the capitol with our three musically inclined party members playing a kazoo, a didgeridoo and a chimera horn the victory music from overwatch... for 6 days straight... badly.
Also, the summer queen gave us two rewards for rescuing her. First, was control of the city of dennis, a ghost town we had passed through previously to do with as we saw fit. This for me is one of those really cool rewards since it gives the players a ton of options and opportunities to help develop their characters and take care of down time stuff and activities by recruiting people to do jobs for us like farming, crafting, enchanting and other activities (this is only made more interesting by virtue of how our group has a bit of a mercantile slant). Also, this gives us a way to have a transformers/G.I. Joe base where we can have back up characters hanging out if we decide we want to try something fresh and new.
The other reward was absolutely huge: the summer queen informed us that we now had the right to request a favor from her just once; given that the adventure has taken place in the feywild and how archfey operate, this is effectively an unlimited wish that we will be able to fire off one time.
Also, because we always have to have a moment where we are terrible people: I suggested OOC that we transform the city of Dennis into a sweat shop :snap:
The week before we got a work order from the guild to go find some missing people in the city. Some investigation and a large tunnel in a missing person's basement led to the sewers. A few of us at the table groaned that we were going to be dealing with Rodents of Unusual Size, possibly as payback because of the Heist going so well before that. And then we found the Skaven effigy.
So this week, the guy who plays the dwarf paladin and I are trying our best to disassociate our metaknowledge of skaven from what our characters know, but I'm thinking eh, if we slip up a bit, he's a dwarf and heard rumors about more underground things than us, and Im a rogue with a spy background, so I've heard the gamut of the rumor mill.
Those sewers were a damn charnel house, it was fucking bad man... some of the players were wondering if we were too late to save anyone, and I piped in, "I don't think there is anyone to save... these ratmen *eat* everything." and sure enough, a quick investigation shows that with what's left of the bodies we find, its all bites. Cue a mob of skavenslaves (ratmen mooks) attacking us. I was worried about how many the DM put out there, because it was at least a 2 to 1 and 5e's action economy says that being outnumbered is fucking deadly. Thankfully, the DM had mooks with relatively few hit points so the wizard dumped a couple fireballs and softened them up for the paladin, myself, and our cleric to punch them down quickly enough. The monk was our MVP because he was able to keep a Skaven Assassin from hitting the rest of us, and those weeping blades fucking hurt.
I really wanted to cut our losses right here and get a body and cut some ears and get to the authorities, but even the guy playing the dwarf said we got to figure out how big a deal this is. So I cut all the left ears but no body because Im not lugging an 80lb corpse through the sewers, and yea its bad... real bad... we find the nest and its a horde sitting right underneath the city ready to attack.
And cue a rat ogre finding us out to put the session on a cliffhanger.
I have no idea how we are going to tackle this other than Im going to try to convince people I know to gtfo the city. I'm going to spitball an idea with the party members to try and run and gun this rat ogre out into the city streets so we'll see what happens this weekend, but I'm pretty sure the vermintide is coming whether we ignore it or not... this size of a rat host, there are way *way* more people missing that what we know about. These things are like the zerg in scifi games, they are not hiveminds, they are pathologically individualist save that skaven are better than everything else, and they eat everything.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Also are you just saying Skaven for ratmen or does this take place in a 5e version of the Old World?
If we were, my go to theory would be Halaster Blackmage is alive/was alive until recently and fucked up on something big.
Edit** i have been channeling some Saltzpyre though...
edit edit** as for interchanging ratmen and skaven, I'm calling them skaven because that is what they are. We interchanged the terms at the table and DnD doesn't have ratmen in its monster manuals. But they had weeping blades, rat ogres, they have a hard on for church bells, and what we saw in the nest looked like warp lightning cannons and doom wheels, so i'm just waiting for warplock pistols, warpfire throwers and ratling gunners now...
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
13000? Goggles of Night are an "uncommon" magical item, they shouldn't cost more than 500 GP.
Being a goose is another...
I know they're loud, they're for when shit goes down and silence is not super viable. Also I like the big bang and smoke. How do I first produce my pistol then produce my rapier without them?
I believe they're the lanterns that have a shutter so you can nix the light when you need to go sneaky?
In any case I think they're only around a hundred gold so.
They don't go out as easily as torches either, but the oil tends to cost more and gets spilled on everything.
I love getting treasure like that, actually.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
In no particular order we have:
A spectral grung that was so shitty at hiding it failed to make any attacks before we destroyed it, though our fighter did suffer necrotic damage when he snorted up it's ghostly fumes.
My kobold got caressed in his sleep by a creepy old woman.
Two of our party members discovered that these cute little koala monkey things called Zorbo's were in point of fact the apex predators of the jungle after they tried to scare them by pretending to be a tyranosaurus rex and were sumarily ripped to pieces. Further, the adamantine ingots they were carrying were destroyed; given that ingots are basically just bricks of metal I can only conclude that the claws of the zorbos caused them to imediatley sublimate (that is to say, convert from a solid to a gas instantly).
A natural 20 athletics roll from our fighter followed by a nat 20 acrobatics check allowed my koblod to bypass a magical forecefield puzzle much to the shock of a jungle spirit.