Just A Quick Spirit Tracks Drawing

Just a quick Spirit Tracks drawing

2/2 "gift"

working hard hardly working etc

So this was originally supposed to have a kickass artwork of the bros using the power- up and stuff but then I got sick and then I realised Im out of time and here we are so uh hieee everyone and welcome to my post-

Happy MAR10 Day! For the occasion, let's go back to the (not discussed in a long time) Power-Up headcanons. This time I'll focus on the Ice Flower (most of the lore under cut like last time)!

This was surprisingly requested by some (3) people. I'm going to be honest, I barely remembered this one at first. I kinda know how it looks and generally what it does, which will have to be enough to base this entire thing on. With that being said, I did some thinking and here's what I've got:

General headcanons;

This one has difficulty surviving outside of it's original environment. If you want to keep a batch in the house your best bet is to use the fridge/freezer, otherwise it looses both it's blue look and the stored energy. See, the Ice Flower originally wasn't (and still technically isn't) it's own flower species. Let me elaborate:

Nowadays the conditions there are not as harsh, however a rather long time ago travelers heading towards places like the Snow Mountain needed to be both be specially trained and very well equipped to even attempt a climb. A heat source was a big must, and it so happens that it often consisted of Fire Flowers. They'd put some in their coats to keep warm, as well as store a few in the backpack just in case they needed to protect themselves from monsters. When setting camp during their journeys these hikers would use the Power-Ups energy to start fires and cook food. After the flowers were depleted of their energy and entered their hibernation stage (I talked about it in my Fire Flower post), they would be simply thrown away like trash. Waiting for them to recharge was often not beneficial, especially in conditions like this, so there was ultimately no point in keeping them. However like I mentioned before, Fire Flowers are very adaptable, which actually wasn't that known at the time. Instead of wilting, these stubborn plants would try gathering energy like the usual, but since it was very cold and direct sunlight was limited, they decided to collect something else. While not all flowers made it, a few managed to amass the eminating frost and turn it into a new kind of energy which proved to be enough for their survival. With time even their petal colour changed to blueish hues. And thus the Fire Flowers in the area became Ice Flowers and over the years started populating the mountains and snowfields.

The Ice Flower is a multiple use Power-Up in theory but more often than not you'll find yourself without a place to freeze it after using one. If it's not placed in a cold environment during it's hibernation it'll simply revert back to being a Fire Flower after a long process.

Mario and Luigi specific headcanons;

While the idea of being able to freeze stuff sounded cool it wasn't very fun to learn.

In Marios case imagine: you're good at something, really, REALLY good at something. Okay great, now imagine being told that your knowledge doesn't matter because now you need to do the opposite of what you've learned. Back with the theme of "elements don't mix", Mario absolutely hated how much effort he needed to put into focusing the newfound energy to barely make a tiny projectile. Even before he got the Firebrand he had enough difficulty with it, so it only got worse from there. This was one of the rare times where learning the bare basics instead of mastering a Power-Up was enough for him.

Luigi didn't really mind. The main complications came more from the vague instructions he received during training rather than his own inability. Suprisingly or not the Thunderhand didn't make this one much of a pain either, I guess anomalies attract eachother. While he doesn't consider this Power-Up as a favourite he still finds it pretty fun that he can freeze and walk on water. Did you know, he used to be pretty good at skating in high school. If you didn't he'll make sure to bring it up at a given occasion. Back to ice powers, he definitely outdoes his brother on this one, even if not by much.

There's probably one more thing I should mention. Despite the contrary belief the Ice Flower does NOT increase ones tolerance to cold temperatures. To be frank it might even decrease it by lowering the bodys natural temperature, making the chances of frostbite higher. And so, they learned it the hard way.

In conclusion, this is more of a situational Power-Up. It's neither easy to find or preserve which can be annoying but despite all this it's hard to deny that it's ultimately a useful tool.

I don't know how much sense I conveyed through my broken wording and less than average writing skills but it's not that shabby if I say so myself. Just like last time some details might change in the future but for now that's the general idea that I have considering the Ice Flower. Once again thank you to whoever took the time to read this!

More IRL Lego Lancer!

We played the Tomb of Delios one-shot by Katherine Stark. Some NPC comp / sitrep spoilers ahead.

I used the backs of old trivial pursuit boards for grids, egg cartons, poster tubes, and a big Roomba box + insert for terrain.

I coated the cardboard with this flour and glue paste recipe I found on youtube.

I found a bunch of cheap-ish large lego octogons and walls online for the modular buildings, then greebled them with misc urban details I collected from my local bricks & minifigs bulk by-volume bins.

Our PCs were a Swallowtail artillery (callsign Bandit; an SSC plant in the union auxilliaries), Störtebeker striker (callsign Roadkill, silver-nanite kintsugi'd mechromancer), and Black Witch support (callsign Egret, disgraced princess (gotta be one of my favorite genders)).

The elite cataphract ended up playing trapdoor spider for most of the game; hiding in a magical healing forest (thank u support o7) and grappling PCs back into the forest with it.

Its scariest turn was popping out, structuring the Bandit and destroying his siege stabilizers, and lassoing it back into the forest. Egret came to the rescue and finally did the cataphract in with perimeter command plate/impact lance/crit thrown tactical knife overwatch combo.

The Swallowtail never took any voluntary movement after deploying its siege stab round 1, but between rainmaker knockback, the aforementioned trapdoor spider incident, and allied ferrous lashes, and a few rams, it was pingponged around the map pretty significantly.

"Come out Rainmaker, I just want to talk."

The final threat to the objective was when a bastion clambered up onto the pipeline to contest them. The Störtebeker (whose mini was having trouble standing up on the pipeline) pulled an indiana jones and just shot it down.

For the pre-battle narrative section, I made two 4-step clocks out of lego and a minimap as the party visited various districts of the city. Both were totally unnecessary but I think added a lot to the IRL experience.

All in all, it was a lot of fun! Things that worked well/could be improved on:

The aforementioned mini stability. I should add more baseplates to the minis to making moving and standing them up less finicky.

As cool as the egg carton bottoms are, having flat surfaces is just better. Going to stick with the tops going forward.

The grid ground floor worked great. I should trace more grids onto the egg cartons and larger boxes. I also made a few measuring sticks out of dowels and that was super handy.

Witchdice on phones continues to work well for PC character sheets.

I made a handful of status tokens that we could put next to mechs. They were handy for consumable statuses like lock-on, but less so for memorable ones like exposed and hidden.

We needed more little indicators for misc systems like Javelin Rockets and Iceout Drone.

It was fun to be able to follow up "how do you want to do this" with "you may now destroy the mini".

Hretha & Sanae

For one of my tabletop buddies, it's his Zora and her fairy! Hretha's our mage of the group, and on account of her being half river-Zora, there's been a lot more fireballs being slung from our group! Sanae helps by tagging enemies for us!