My poor cleric, Siân, has had a really bad couple of weeks in-game. Over the course of the last not even a full two weeks, she has:

- woken up from being held captive by mind-controlling plants for a week
- found herself in a prison camp in the middle of a warzone
- watched a friend die while trying to escape said prison camp
- failed to resurrect said friend
- watched the resurrection fail again when someone else attempted a higher level spell
- found out that her family has been accused of treason and placed under arrest
- found out that a bunch of powerful nobles want to make her father emperor
- saw the instant destruction of an entire town via a weapon of mass destruction
- watched the friend who died come back to life separate from his still-dead corpse
- given up the very last gift her deceased mother ever gave her
- had a bunch of ancient knowledge magically dumped in her head
- had her right arm chopped off
- found out that her father named her his legitimate daughter due to obvious coercion
- had her right arm unexpected regrown by way of alchemy
- almost been killed by malfunctioning golems
- almost watched her entire group be killed by a shadowspawn beholder
- been publicly seen with magic users in an empire where magic is illegal
- been involved in a very bloody battle
- joined a pirate fleet
- found out that the empire-wide newspaper has been smearing her name
- almost been killed by assassins
- found out an assassins' guild with a reputation for never quitting has been hired to kill her
- been involved in another very bloody battle
- found out that she's one of the most wanted people in the entire empire
- almost been killed by lightning
- almost drowned
- died instantly from a magical trap while in a shadow plane surrounded by enemies

Considering the circumstances of her death, I'm honestly not sure what's going to happen. Resurrection may or may not be on the table, especially considering the rest of the group is about to go into a pretty massive bit of combat without a healer.

Next week, I'm planning on basically just being off camera the entire night unless something very unexpected happens. I'll figure out future plans after I see what happens in-game over the next, uh, 60 seconds or so.

They do technically at least have access to an item that will let them cast unlimited Gentle Repose, but said item is on their ship which is currently shrunk and inside a bottle. Plus said item is being used on the dead body of the group member who came back to life by other means and therefore has both a mostly-alive body and a corpse sitting on the ship, so... yeah.

(Don't ask. Trust me.)

Autumn starts in about a week-and-a-half, and the first day of fall is on a Monday this year. Which, you know, kinda bodes well for new beginnings in my mind since it's the first of the work week at least. And, considering how things have been going so far in September, I feel like I really need a set point for a fresh start.

So, you know, Mabon works fairly well for that.

Things have been pretty chaotic in my life the last year or two for a variety of reasons, and I think that I'm going to force myself to set up a strict daily schedule to start following again come September 22. I won't stick to it forever, but I've found in the past that the structure really does help me even if it's just for a month or so to get me back in the habit.

Now I just have to force myself to start thinking about a set schedule that will work for me while still having some flexibility for when things don't go quite as planned...

I've fallen behind on watching Critical Role's various specials and miniseries since they went on their CR3-to-CR4 hiatus, mostly because they've been releasing them on Beacon and then eventually showing them on their Thursday stream. That's made it hard for me to convince my brain to keep up with things, because I need a set schedule to follow every week that I'm watching alongside other people, so... yeah.

This is part of why I have trouble watching a lot of streaming shows (it was a problem with Rings of Power especially but there have been lots of others that I just never got around to watching at all), because for my brain there's a difference between "watching live with everyone else" like with more traditional shows and "watching it when I have the time because once it drops everyone's watching it at different times so it's pointless to watch it immediately."

Anyway, I really want to force myself to get caught up in the lead-up to CR4 starting - if only to get myself used to watching their long episodes again - so I'm going to list out the various specials that I still need to properly watch. And then I'm going to try to set aside the time to watch them over the next few weeks. If I can manage it, I may also try to make a few posts about them as I watch them, but watching them in the first place is my priority.

If I have time, I'll also try to watch Age of Umbra, which I started but had to drop because of stuff going on with work and IRL at the time. It's lower on the list, though, so we'll see if I manage it. And, hey, if a miracle happens then maybe I'll even find the time to watch some other miniseries they've had going further back that I never found the time to watch.

But, yeah. We'll see how it goes? Live Shows are the "must watch" part of the list. Everything else is just gravy.

( List under the cut. )