But first – sneese SUCK. They’re half snake and half geese and all mean! I did not enjoy that bit, but I got rid of them by making balls of light for them to chase. Smart, right? Yes. I am smart.
This was on the way to investigate that Gorgon thing, and was not what we thought! She’s under a curse, because she said she thought she was prettier than the Goddess Mithra, who apparently took offense. So now as a Gorgon, this poor lady has to guard the Eye of Shar – yeah I don’t know what that is. YET.
We headed back to the Library because I had some serious research to do, and turns out Mithra and Ioun and Shar are triplets! Go figure, right? Shar hasn’t been seen since the Portal Wars tho, which is like, forever. Her followers are still around but their religion sort of collapsed into some kind of cult when she disappeared. They are very bad news. There might be a secret temple tho! Seeeeecret TEMPLE. Fun.
Oh, while I was doing this research? Yeah, you know my notebook? The one I carry around all the time and am scribbling in constantly? I had that open on a shelf while I was looking something up, and a spectral version floated up out of it and suggested another place to look. Out loud. My book was talking to me. Not the weirdest thing to happen to me, but still. I named him BookMark, we call him ‘Mark for short and heck does he like to do research! And he is good at it, we make a good team.
However the Library did not have a ton on Shar, and Patricia, the head librarian? She suggested we go try the Library of Tyr, which is where Speak was, so perfect, and we haded there. Speaking of secret – they have secret areas in their library that only I can see the entrances of! I felt like the coolest kid in town. And ‘Mark picked up another word to repeat at odd times – “research” from before and now “knowledge” which was the secret passcode to get into the secret room in the library.
Anyway. Confirmed Shar is bad news, probably super evil, and her sisters locked her away. (Don’t get any ideas, you.)
We have to head back, Speak got put in charge of a sort of rescue mission and I want to stay with her. She keeps me safe. Like you used to. I miss you so much! This adventuring stuff is scary a lot, but mostly very fun? I hope I am getting better at all of this! Hope to see you soon, love you oodles and doodles!
Hey V, just a quick note, we are swinging thru town to grab supplies and so I can drop off the TWO books I have recovered. That’s right. Two so far. I am the awesomest. While I was dropping those off at the Library, I got my notes copied so far, in case…well. In case. And so folks here can do some research if they want. I used to do that when I was still beginning here – taking neat adventurers notes and turning them into something readable and researching the things they came across…and now I am the adventurer! I feel so cool right now.
Oh and I looked up the Goddess Ioun and like…I should be careful with her, but I think it’ll be okay because she is the Goddess of Knowledge and like…that works? For me? I need to do some more reading… poor me.
I heard about some artifacts you might be interested in, but we have to go check out a possible Gorgon situation, so I am going to go do that!
Hope you’re having as much fun as I am! Love you oodles and doodles.
Verin!!! You will NOT believe what I have been up to!!
Okay, so you know that last letter, I said I was heading to this tower with my friends? Okay, well, we got there. Also, I am not good at drawing maps. Oh and I found a shiny rock.
So this tower is bonkers, half of it fell into the ocean ages ago, and of course the bit we wanted was under water. To get to it, I had to swim. I did not like it Veri. I did not like it at all. I am not good at swimming!!
Oh but while I was trying to do that, Speak got me some Demonic Octopus Ink! It is impermeable to water!!! Which is so neat. I am going to try and see if I can make something like it for my own inks, that would be super handy.
Okay so this tower, right? It has a copy of every book every written. Seriously. I was just looking around and FOUND one of my missing books! Well, not the exact book that is missing, this one is newer but STILL. I am so excited.
While looking for a book to give us any idea of what is going on in the tower (these guys are fighting over a glowing orb, I wasn’t really paying attention) I ended up getting cursed, TO NOT BE ABLE TO READ ANYTHING VERIN. NOT COOL. While I was freaking out about that, the Goddess Ioun spoke to me. And if I agreed to dedicate myself to her, she would fix the curse. Veri, I can not explain to you what was happening in my head at that moment, I was devastated, and panicking, and …oof even thinking about it getting me all worked up, so! Long story short, I agreed, curse lifted, I am dedicated to the Goddess Ioun now, no big deal.
Anyway! I found a book with a ton of info in it but Veri, it was written in CELESTIAL. I told you it was worth learning. You all laughed at me, but I told you. AND IT HAS AN INDEX. Oh I was in heaven and I just started inhaling the thing thru my eyeballs while everyone else did a bunch of other stuff (super was not paying attention ahem, book). This book is so cool I can’t wait to show it to you! This is where I found out about this tower containing every book ever written, and there are these automatons that will bring me any book I want! This is, of course, at the base of the tower. And we were in the top. So. Useless at the moment, but I am going to get back there! Ooo maybe we could go together!
Uhm, things got a little chaotic and we had to kind of run away, but! We used these travel circle things and I took a bunch of notes (as usual, hush) and sketched the symbols and what not – I want to show you when we meet up again, I think you would be really interested, seems like your kind of thing!
Well, we’re going to head back to town in a bit, so, I’ll just send this off to you now. Hope you’re doing alright! Miss you sis!
Okay, let’s take a look at what I played with in January. Second January I have been doing all of this by the way! I remember being super frustrated with shimmer inks January of 2022. But I have learned a lot since then – still more to learn tho, haha. Keeps things interesting.
Pen/Ink Palette: I went with “Ice” as a theme, and picked out some really pale and icy blues, purples, and teals. I actually enjoyed every single pen/ink combo. It was tough to pick a favorite. One thing that ended up being a little annoying was having my Magic Green and Favorite Purple pen still being inked but I didn’t use them very much. Considering putting one or both of them away.
I use a notebook from Ink Flight to record the palette’s I use every month. Here you can see my comments on this combo: “I love this nib! 3 widths, so useful. Pretty blue/purple ink, one of my usual favorite shades. When the shimmer comes thru it is very pretty.” And on the right I list the pen and ink details.
Favorite: While it was tough to choose, the one that ended up being my favorite combo was a Bonecrusher7 Studios pen, using a custom three-grind pen from Jose Munera, and filled with a limited edition ink, Dawn, from a Dominant Industry and Cult Pens collaboration. The ink really worked well both from the 1.1m stub grind, and the MF grind side. I’ve played with different custom nibs before and often the ink only looks right from one side or the other, so I was happy to find a combo that worked well with all of the grinds on this nib.
Least Favorite: This may have been my own fault, but my least favorite combo was an Iron Feather Creative pen, filled with A Watery Star, from Wearingeul. I don’t think it was the pen or the inks fault, but it ended up writing a much different blue than I expected, way darker, and bled thru the paper! Completely wrong from an ink I sampled as a shading medium blue with shimmer! But after a couple of days I got to thinking…I had put Thunderbolt from Diamine in this pen the month before, which looks exactly like the dark ink coming out right now…so maybe the nib wasn’t cleaned out enough? Something to keep in mind when I am cleaning it this time! I am going to use the cleaner liquid this time instead of just water.
Learned: I’m betting the things I learn every month will end up being from whatever my least favorite pen/ink combo was. Like, in this case, I learned that even if you THINK the nib is clean, it might not be. And I need to look into some more ways to make SURE they are clean when I am done cleaning them!
Daily Samples: Okay, I ran into a conundrum. Last year, when I had decided to go back thru every ink brand I had sampled in 2022 and pick up the last couple of each that I hadn’t sampled yet, I ended up with…a lot of inks. More than I could sample one a day in November. I decided not to worry about it at the time haha, and so January 2023 was arriving…I discovered I had enough PenBBS samples for another whole month…which is what I am doing in December. Then the hodge podge that was left meant I needed 10 more samples for the month of January, and since I get 11 with the Ink Subscriptions I get monthly I thought, you know what! And just added them to the Daily Samples for January to fill that out. And I got super lucky! I had only previously sampled one of the inks from the Ink Flight subscription. Hooray!
Therefore! This section will be just touching on the samples that I did not get in one of my subscriptions.
So many colors! I circled the dates for the inks I will reference below, 9, 15, 22, and 31.
Favorite: A purple, so surprised. Taccia Naka Murasaki (January 9), a solid cool purple, and has that “dusty” feel that I like. I think this will go quite nicely in any of my purple palettes, and it is on the darker side, so easy to read. Probably going to be a little tough to tell it is a purple in darker lights tho.
Least Favorite: Another surprise, my least favorite was a brown. (Being sarcastic by the way haha). Kyo No Oto, #10 Ochiguriiro (January 15). It’s a softer brown, which shares a little to a darker brown, has sort of deep yellow tones, and…I just don’t like browns. If you like browns, this is probably a good one tho, it behaved really well on my dip pen.
Learned: I don’t think I can completely guarantee that I have no brown ink samples in any of my reviews, but I can certainly try! This is definitely confirming for me that random ink samples are fun but only in small amounts, like the ink subscriptions. I have March figured out but I am going to have to do a think about what I am going to do in April.
Ink Subscription Samples: As I said, I actually sampled these in my Daily set, but I still! Gets it’s own section. And I got to play with Lamy inks from Truphae – which I have never tried before – and Anderillium from Ink Flight – which I have tried before, but out of the 7 I had only sampled one before. Also, I keep getting Monteverde pens in my Trupha subscription box haha, and the one from this month has not been tried yet! Next time I need a red pen I guess.
Favorite: The Lamy inks were all vaguely sheen-y inks, seemed to be a jewel themed pack. I ended up liking their Azurite (January 22) out of all 11 the best. It’s a very blue purple with a light green subtle sheen. I am guessing the sheen will only present itself in finer nibs by taking one thousand years to dry but otherwise I’ll need a broader nib to get it to show up visibly.
Least Favorite: For variety, let’s say the black ink, instead of the brown, was my least favorite…Anderillium, Common Loon Black (January 31). Nothing against the ink really, I just…think black inks are boring. Now! I could be wrong. But currently I have only seen one black ink I really enjoyed, and this was not it. Happy to be wrong some day tho.
Learned: Well…I guess I confirmed that I am still sus of sheen inks, and I still don’t like brown/black inks no matter what. But maybe I was not paying enough attention…
Whew, let’s see what we’ve got next month, shall we?
Me again, your favorite sister, haha. We’re really on an adventure now! Kurtz has this chicken he named Fry, and we’re not allowed to eat him. Oh and I met a bunch of pixies and they really do like shiny things and I trained like, all of them, copper for their pixie dust. I am positive I have seen something about using it in ink, but I left my ink experiments book back at the library so I’ll have to check on that later.
I met this Paladin Leon, and he looks so familiar for some reason! Do you know him? I can’t remember if I have met him somewhere before…he’s really nice tho.
Things aren’t too exciting yet, we ended up in a village where I could buy buttons – shiny ones – in case we run into any more pixies. And an actual bottle of Ink of Arcanum! I don’t usually use it much but I’m a little worried about running out while we’re out on an adventure and this could work as a base I suppose. If I am in a hurry. Maybe. We’ll see.
Our guide to this tower we’re trying to get to is a 14 year old named Tony. Seriously. He rolls his eyes like 8 times a minute, but he seems to know what he’s doing so! Hopefully we should be fine? Wish me luck!
I know this one is a bit shorter, but I just wanted to say hi! Hope you’re doing well, and looking forward to hearing all about your adventures back! Hint hint.
Love you oodles and doodles!
For true and always, Auster TrueStone
An #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #AmbulatoryWheelchairUser With Opinions
