Swampwalk today, freaking hot outside. @maximillian_deersteak told me not to come back with fewer than 4 animal pictures. I was too overheated and slow to catch too much, but panda the black and white cat obliged, as did a lego bigfoot and a lego fly man when I got to the edge of the water. No frogs, toads or squirrels in easy sight, birds too fast or behind foliage. I saw a few motorcycle enthusiasts on the porch of a house and a some hard of hearing kids on bikes, with mom behind hollering at one to put “*both* hearing aids in before you go!” I didn’t feel right photographing humans without consent, especially kids. Temperature was 84F in theory, but was feeling like a walk through a soupy, swampy, hot mist of green. I should have brought a swamp thing or bog-nar figure, come to think of it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1OcaDgpf1/?igshid=1vzv68khz1ctw

Random Scotto factoid:

My melee weapon of preference in a fantasy setting is has almost always boiled down to a one-handed axe or cleaver first, hammer or mallet next, then a pick or some sort of pointed short spear.

Swords are near the end of my list.

Not only are they great multifunctional tools but they are also (to my imagination) more readily available if you don’t have something handy.

Being a fan of dwarves as a fantasy humanoid character didn’t hurt either.

I think I originally leaned into Dwarf stuff was the nice opposite number to Elves, and the special abilities like seeing in the dark, high constitution and innate mapping senses made them pretty handy for dungeon crawling.