Relic Comic: Invasion Aves

My best friend as a teenager, Jason Durfee, gave me the idea for this comic. I planned to make it go even more unnecessarily long, using all kinds of different birds that would have specialties in every aspect of a military regiment, but I think it's probably good it didn't go on much longer.

I think it's funny how it demonstrates my lack of shame of blatantly ripping off existing jokes word for word (Home Alone). It's also funny that I misspelled "aves." "Invasion Avis" would mean "Invasion of the Grandparents," not birds.

Relic Comic: Pie for the Guy

This is a weird one. Especially with that oddly philosophical border around the edges of the paper. Much like the Head of Osiris one I shared earlier, I seemed to start with some kind of idea and then devolved into just wanting to draw something else entirely but not abandon the drawing. Very admirable, actually, considering all the truly unfinished comics I've made. At least it ends somehow.

Relic Comic: The Frost Wyvern

I'm not sure why I was so into monks getting interrupted while writing when I drew comics back then. And I wish that the "lighting effects" I talk about at the end showed up better after scanning. The pencilwork is quite admirable.

Relic Comic: The Tamarisk Tree

I already had this comic uploaded on my computer, but I never put it onto Pretzel Lectern! Funny that this same situation made it into two comics, down to not knowing what the actual tree was called.

Relic Comic: The Head of Osiris

Clearly this comic was inspired by the PC game Age of Mythology, specifically the 18th level in the campaign, "A Long Way from Home." I called it the "Tree-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" because I forgot it was called the Tamarisk Tree, and I just thought it was funny.

I like the video game elements scattered throughout, like the damage numbers, health pie charts, and the line chart showing the unit populations. And of course, the fact that I got bored and settled halfway through is hilarious. I think it made it so much funnier than an actual full-length comic! 
Another funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I made another comic about the Tamarisk tree that had some Paper Mario jokes in it... I'll have to look for that one too sometime.

Repunzel's [sic] Revenge

I stumbled upon a wealth of relics from my childhood and adolescence this week while vacationing at my parents' house! The first I'd like to showcase is this spin on a classic fairy tale I wrote in February 2000. You can learn a lot about my ten-year-old self from reading this story and seeing how I warped the familiar plot and characters, and the word choice I use that just indicated what I thought was funny back then. True to my nature, I hid a couple of Easter eggs from my interests at the time of writing it (Digimon, in this case).

I've preserved the incorrect spelling of "Rapunzel," but otherwise I've fixed the grammar to read better.

D&D 5e Lingering Injuries by Damage Type

As a 5e Dungeon Master, I've been thinking about how low of stakes it is for players to "drop to 0 hit points."  Getting that close to death should come with some serious repercussions—Players should remember each and every time they came that close to dying and have the scars to prove it. So I'm going to implement Lingering Injuries into my games. Rather than using the catch-all table in the Dungeon Master's Guide, I liked Farland's idea of doing it by damage type. After all, how could you bruise your ribs from taking acid damage?

This list is heavily based on Farland's, so thanks to him (them?) for doing the heavy lifting, but I made some changes; namely, making some things curable by "six levels' worth of healing spells," such as a cure wounds spell cast at 8th level, or eight 1st-level cure wounds spells, or a single heal spell, and I made Force its own table instead of sharing the table of Bludgeoning. I think Force is more than just getting pounded by something magical—a lingering injury from Force damage would mess up your own personal magic space.