animatedamerican:

transfjord:

i’m playing a sailor in my new campaign and i love sailor superstitions, so i made a bunch of dnd sailor superstitions/traditions! (some might be weird/bizarre, but a lot of ours are too so i felt it fitting)

• having a water genasi on board is good luck, even better if they’re higher ranked (captain, first mate). however, if they’re a prisoner, it’s extremely bad luck for the crew that has them imprisoned. 
• holy people of sea gods closely follow water genasi in good luck/bad luck.
• sailors tend to get tattoos of a land god’s symbol in hopes that if they drown, a land god will get them back safely. however, sea gods find this extremely rude and disrespectful, so sailors have to find ways of hiding the tattoos at all times, whether with magic, clothes, or makeup. 
• every port city has a shrine or temple to a sea god. the very last thing sailors do before heading out on the ocean and the very first thing they do when they get back on land is pray at one of these places. bigger port cities have special roads for sailors to take.
• the only time it’s okay to sing sea shanties on land is if you have a vial of seawater on you. if you don’t have any, sea gods think you’re singing for the land gods instead of themselves. and if they think that, things will turn nasty when you get back to sea.
• sailors don’t talk about their families/friends/loved ones while at sea. the sea could get jealous, and try and keep the sailors all to itself–by whatever means necessary.
• there are various tattoos one can get for certain accomplishments (ie. defeating a monster, sailing for a certain amount of time/for a certain distance, which port you hail from, etc)
• every ship brings a small animal that’s special to a sea god on board (ie a crab). that animal has all priority–in food, in defense, in healing. it’s said that if that animal dies, the rest of the crew will soon follow.

bonus sea shanties:

• dwarf and orc shanties have a very steady rhythm and often involve drums–meant to keep rowing easy and sailors focused.
• tiefling and elf shanties are melodious and often eerie to hear from another ship–especially in foggy/stormy weather. they’re meant to simulate the sound of the wind, waves, and those who died at sea.
• dragonborn and genasi shanties often involved overlapping lyrics and melodies, causing them to sound like the storms out at sea. they’re meant to pay tribute to and appease the gods.
• halfling and gnome shanties are cheery and peppy, meant to keep things interesting after monotonous days at sea and to make sure morale is up.
• human shanties are as wide and varied as the race itself. they often tell stories–of the crew, of other ships’ adventures, or of history.

A little more on sea shanties because this is my jam, my butter, and my entire fluffy biscuit:

• Dwarf sea shanties historically started out as modified mining chants – the sort of thing haul-together you sing to keep everybody on-rhythm. There are still several shanties and mining chants in use today that have identical tunes and some of the same lyrics.
• Common themes of halfling shanties are “what will we eat first chance we get when we’re back on shore” and “weird/delicious/terrible things I’ve eaten in different ports of call”.
• One well-known elf shanty is meant to be sung in both Elven and Common, in alternating verses. Most versions, unfortunately, have hopelessly distorted the verses in Elven – some to nonsense syllables, some partially intact but riddled with wrong words, some rendered into almost-nonsensical Common that sounds vaguely like the original Elven words. As a rule, it’s a bad idea to sing it around elf sailors unless you know the real words.
• Because their seafaring songs are meant to pay tribute to the gods, dragonborn sailors find it exceedingly weird and inappropriate that humans and dwarves and gnomes so often sing shanties that are basically about sex.

bixbiboom:

injuries-in-dust:

imaheckincyborg:

saciecuca:

stellwrath:

injuries-in-dust:

Prompt

The peace negotiations were not going well. War seemed inevitable. Then one of the humans thought “fuck it” and decided to pet the enemy ambassador.

Someone better make this XD

Ptss @imaheckincyborg @stellwrath

———-

Carla was tired of it, the whole thing was going to hell faster than any of them anticipated and humanity was in the brink of a war because of some idiot space pirates that happened to have some humans on its crew, it wasn’t even them that attacked the Zvekrii-Gui mothership.

She could see Steve getting paler at each word traded, he was a wise old man, great at negotiations most of the time, but not even him was being able to sway the Zvekrii ambassador, despite their appearance they were known to be ruthless and hard headed.

Damn. Carla was a bulky strong giant of a woman and despite usually dressing in her military clothes she was a girly girl at heart and… and she didn’t want to go to war with them. Oh, not because she feared war or bloodshed, she could go easily batshit crazy in battle and even enjoy it, the problem was…

Zvekrii-Gui were… everything her child self could have wished aliens were, small, fluffy, pink, they seemed like the softest things in the galaxy and their eyes… big shiny cyan spheres of pure fairy dust, just like Tom her plush unicorn.

Of course she was worried with the prospect of war, she wasn’t stupid, humans rarely fought opponents so technologically matching (yeah, humans could be pretty despicable like that, but so were the aliens they were negotiating with) and the losses could be far worse than any other war the Human Empire had fought so far.

She sighed.

Steve was flailing now, wow, how professional, the Zvekrii ambassador started to leave.

In a bout of insanity Carla thought ‘fuck it’ it was going to be the last chance she would have to ever have the chance to touch the cute things anyway aside from dead bodies – probably.

When her hand connected with the ambassador head the whole room went silent and still.

The little thing looked at her with wide cyan eyes that soon started to close in bliss almost unwillingly when she started to scrach and pet his fluffy soft fur.

“You guys are the softest beautest creatures I’ve ever met.” She said softly almost to herself. “I really would hate to have to fight you guys.”

For her – and everyone’s suprise the ambassador let her pet him for a long while, and when he regained his bearings somehow he looked at her with something akin to satisfaction and… smugness? Was that right?

“What do you call that thing that you did with my head?” The Zvekrii-Gui words were translated instantly by her head implant.

“Hmm… You mean, petting…?” She tried.

“If your race are willing to greet us this way everytime our races meet for at least a hundred years, there will be no wars between our kind.” The ambassador said magnanimously and Carla lifted one brow and looked at Steve.

The poor man looked shocked for a second before starting to vigorously nod in her direction.

“Deal.” She said with a smirk.

And thus the Zvekrii-Gui & Human Petting Treaty was born and the two races became terrifying (for the overall alien community) allies.

Thank you. Thank you, you beautiful cretin for creating this

It’s amazing. I love it.