Hi everyone!

 

So, we find us here again at the end of the year as a tulpa collective, having partied hard for almost two weeks now. (Well to be frank, I partied a bit less than the others in the inner world, because I was busy IRL doing other things)

For those new to this, we have an annual tradition in our tulpa collective that every year around Christmas, we take two weeks off (as best we can) and spend it in our flying castle called Odylfius.

So a few weeks back, we kicked the whole thing off with a nice dinner in the dining hall and after that, it sort of devolved into everybody doing various things that they wanted to do. Since our castle is fairly big with a lot of entertainment tied into it, there is a lot of activities.

A short list of things that happened during these two weeks:

 

● Bear passed out after having had yet another drinking contest with Thor. Considering Bear can drink freakishly high amounts of alcohol and Thor being.. well.. Thor, I’m sad I missed it! (Also, Bear danced a bit on the table before passing out, I heard everyone was very amused by it.)

● Everyone also got into some sports, there was a water volleyball tournament in the bathhouse like last year, this years winning team was “Team Succubus” which consisted of Circe and her sister Mirror who beat everyone else. As per tradition, Thor and Charlie engaged in some mini golfing on the small floating islands that can be spawned around the castle, Charlie won by a hair since Thor has improved his technique since last year. Mirror beat everyone at arm wrestling as well, including Mrs Teacher who put up a really good fight. Thor boasted he was the god of archery and challenged everyone to a tournament he almost placed last in because of the fact that he was practically shitfaced drunk at that point.

● I was contacted by Steve one night who said Bear was missing and asked me if he’d gone up to sleep in Thor’s bed again. I confirmed this was the case as well with the help of Sarah. Apparently Thor tends to be protective of Bear and since he can’t really fit inside the small den that Steve and Bear live in, he simply takes him up with him to keep tabs on him.

● There was a huge party in the ballroom where everybody had fun dancing, it turned out that Jeanette was a pretty good dancer now that she had temporarily gone back to her original body which is a lot slimmer than the augmented one she has today. While she says she’s getting the hang of shape shifting, she really isn’t into it. Also, she mended some fences with Charlie early on when she unexpectedly showed up for our first dinner. That alone bodes real well for her I’d say and it was honestly the best Christmas gift a tulpamancy host could ask for!

● Most mornings these past weeks, I’ve made breakfast for everyone and woke them up at around 10AM, because the majority of them have been fast asleep. Apparently my new recipe for fried dill eggs is a huge hit with everyone too, except for Steve who for some reason doesn’t like dill at all.

● One starry night when the moon was out, everybody apparently went up to the roof and brought chairs and tables with them and had a small impromptu party up there under the stars. Thor sang an old Norse song dedicated to the keeper of the moon to honor it and Mirror said it was really romantic. (this was also the event when Bear was dancing on the table)

● They had a small debate about our RPG system that me and my SO Niky have been working on for the past few years. Some of them are fine with using the system, others aren’t so fine with it. I expect this to be requested sometime next year as the topic of a collective summit meeting.

● Mirror got spooked when she went up to the attic to find some item and saw things skulking around up there, all she found were shadows and creepy voices. At one time a very cold wet hand was placed over her shoulder and she turned around and there was nobody there. She nearly had a heart attack as she put it herself when Thor opened a door in front of her, wondering where she’d gone off too. “I won’t be going up there again, screw that Fairy, your damn attic needs an exorcist or something!”

 

And that pretty much sums up the past few weeks highlights, apparently there was lot of other partying going on and talking between everyone. Mrs Teacher made a lot of friends too, so it served as a good time for her to socialize with the gang. I’ve also been musing over how much can happen in a year since we’ve been up to a lot of things. For one, Mrs Teacher joined us in the collective and although she’s based off a character I used to RP in Guild Wars 2, she’s definitely her own person now. We also went on a number of adventures, but to be honest, between this year being full of crap like Covid IRL, I simply haven’t had time to write them down yet. Stuff that might show up next year include:

 

● An adventure of us where I DMed a sort of LARP where everybody was playing other characters different from themselves. It was set in an old creepy mansion and included mechanics like sanity checks where, if you failed it, I as the DM would decide what kind of crazy you’d manifest. Everybody got to select personality quirks as well to give me some idea of what to work with. The story turned out to be incredibly creepy, and yes, it had permadeath too, but with a twist!

● My SO Niky’s tulpa Andrei got tired of refilling his flask and asked if we could go on a quest for the legendary Flask Of Stalin, which turned out to be a flask of endless vodka. Of course, what better place to look for an anomaly than in the old Stalker game setting?

● The world of driders world has had developments, civil war has broken out and is still raging as I’m typing this. While this has resulted in a lot of actually horrible things, one good thing to come out out of it is that we went there to check up on things and found that one of the horrible zealots that worked for the previous queen named Kat had now renounced her evil ways. Maria has been staying with Thor and Mirror at their tavern for a few months. Considering that she’s practically a giant, it’s been challenging for them considering she’s got a history.

● Charlie had a spot of trouble earlier in the year where he was being reassigned to another location. Considering his cover is to be the manager of the Dark Hotel in his world, and he’s actually a spy for his government, this simple reassignment had more to it than just someone deciding he needed a change of pace.

● There’s a creature roaming Sherwood forest that employs odd chemicals in it’s hunting habits, Steve and Bear were apparently being hunted by it, so they’re banned from visiting there for now.

● We decided that simply respawning after death was a boring mechanic and opted instead to find an NPC that could arrange for new bodies for a fee. What we found was a TechnoWitch in her dungeon where she did questionable things to say the least.

● An upcoming visit to a new world that’s set in the old stories of Count Dracula’s world. It’s filled with pretty much all the nasty spirits, creatures and other ghoulish things you might expect. Me and my SO Niky are going to combine forces on this one since we’re going on a visit to Count Dracula’s blood soaked castle where Circe is going to look for her second great sword. What was very unexpected when we went there for a brief scouting session was that there is a whole world with its own lore.

● The aftermath of the City 08 adventure about us looking for a bar, as you’d expect from the world, the story didn’t quite end where I ended the story arch.

 

I’m currently in talks with Mech about the most optimal way to publish this in terms of volume and pacing because there’s so much stuff that posting it in mega-blocks a´ 22 pages on the blog isn’t going to really fly. We’re floating the old idea of simply just going into a PDFed book format too, our experiment in January with our finished arch for our encounter with the burning king will be a test to see how well that works out. That pretty much wraps up this year for us as a collective. We’d like to thank each and every one of you whose stuck with us during this crazy year and we raise a toast to all of you in celebration of a new year!

 

//Wondrous Fairy