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Ranger Level 2 - The Safe House    Spoiler for story from Level 1 (in case you're curious about what happened previously)   Now that the Needle Blight infestation in the Veridian Forest had been eliminated, it was time to search for the Ranger safe house. Hal’s thoughts returned to the overgrown spring that she’d seen earlier. Someone had lined the pool below the spring with stones to make it easier to collect water. And it wasn’t too far from the south edge of the forest. That seemed like a good place to start looking for the safe house. Hal began trekking through the dense evergreen trees in that direction. Using the spring as a starting point, Hal began searching in widening circles. About 200 feet northeast of the spring, she located it. It was a massive stump of a tree, nearly 20 feet in diameter and around 15 feet tall. She might not have realized what it was except for the small carving of a ranger symbol in the uneven surface of the stump. Closer inspection revealed a carefully concealed door that swung inward after a brief shove. As she listened at the doorway, peering into the darkness, she could hear rustling movement inside. Apparently at some point in the last 30 years, something else had made this its home, and her first step in restoring the safe house would be to clear out the current inhabitants.   Welcome everyone! I’m Ranger Hal. Normally I would say that I hike, snowshoe, scramble, climb, and do search and rescue, but aside from the occasional hike and SAR, I haven't been doing much of that for most of a year and I'm still working on how to get myself in good enough shape to feel comfortable joining more of those activities again, especially the ones that require being able to hike uphill at a decent pace, because I feel pretty slow right now (slow being relative, but a lot of climbers tend to be fast hikers).  My current nerdy thing is Critical Role (as in, I pretty much quit watching all other TV shows shortly after discovering it last year). I'm at about Campaign 2, Episode 120. Also, anything by Brandon Sanderson.   Stats At the end of last challenge, I leveled up, so I'm now a Level 2 Human Ranger. My favored enemy is Plants (due to the blackberries currently trying to swallow one corner of my house) and my favored terrain is the Forest. I decided to roll for stats and they are Strength 12, Dexterity 17, Constitution 13, Intelligence 12, Wisdom 17, Charisma 11. My AC is 14 and I have 20 hit points. At Level 2, I chose Archery as my fighting style, so I have an extra +2 to attack rolls with ranged weapons (hopefully this means I won't have as much trouble with shooting turkeys as I did last challenge, lol! Forest Encounters Forest Encounter combat consists of workouts. I get 10 xp per workout and get to attack an enemy. If I skip a workout, the enemy gets to attack me. If I skip a workout due to SAR and do some exercise, it counts as a workout. If I skip a workout due to SAR and don't get any exercise, the enemy gets to attack, but I get to dodge. I plan to do 3-4 workouts per week and they consist of gym cardio, stairs (with a pack), and hiking (also with a pack). This time, all my attacks for these encounters are ranged attacks. In my favored terrain (forest), i.e. hiking, I get an extra 5 xp per workout. I wanted a little more randomness in what I’m fighting, so I made a table of potential enemies (CR 0 to 1/2) that might be found in forest terrain. Every time I run out of enemies, I will roll (d20 + d8) to see what I’m fighting next.   Spells At Level 2, I get spells! I’ve chosen Hail of Thorns and Goodberry. If a pack workout is an hour or more, I can use a bonus action to cast Hail of Thorns. If I bake breakfast cookies, I can cast Goodberry which gives me 4 berries that can be eaten at any point during the week to restore 1 hp each. I also get 10xp per level of spell that I cast.   Exploration I get 1 xp for each mile I walk outdoors (so gym cardio doesn't count). If the distance is part of a workout, this is in addition to the workout xp. In my favored terrain (forest), I get 2 xp per mile.  For each bouldering or climbing session I do, I get 3 xp and for each new V3 or higher boulder route or 5.11- climb route that I complete (or V2 that I've really struggled with), I get another 2 xp.   Clearing the Safe House I want to start cleaning my house a bit more regularly, so that’s what this portion of the challenge is. I have a list of chores and will roll (d20) to see what I will be cleaning every day. Well, maybe only 6 days a week. I think it will be better to give myself the option of taking one day off on the weekend. I don’t have to finish a given task (although I can if I want to), I just have to work on it for 5 minutes. If the kitchen is a disaster and dishes are piled up, I can work on that instead. If I’ve already done the task that I roll, I will move on to the next highest numbered task in the list. For each day I do a task, I get to make a melee attack against one of the creatures that might be infesting the safe house (yes, I made another list). If I do a task both weekend days, Sunday’s melee attack can be a two-weapon attack (using my bonus action). Every time I run out of enemies, I will roll (d12) to see what I’m fighting next. If I skip a day of cleaning, the enemy gets to make an attack against me (but only one attack is possible per weekend).   Fletching This part of the challenge is dealing with the blackberries around my house. Creating new arrows requires arrowheads (previously acquired), feathers, and wood. Hunting turkeys (or other birds or feathered creatures) will provide feathers (8d6 feathers per turkey, 3 required for each arrow). If I’m running low on feathers, I can insert a flock of 1d10 turkeys as enemies into either Forest Encounters or Clearing the Safe House instead of immediately rolling new enemies. I don’t have to kill all the turkeys in a flock. I’m sure they will be happy to run away. For every day I do any chopping of the blackberries (for wood to make arrow shafts), I can attempt to create arrows on a short rest. Not being proficient in woodcarver's tools, starting out, I need to make a dexterity check (DC 18) to successfully make an arrow. After making 5 successful arrows, the DC drops to 15 and I can attempt 1d2 arrows per short rest. After 25 successful arrows, the DC drops again to 12 and I can attempt 1d4 arrows per short rest. After creating 250 arrows, I will be proficient in using the woodcarver's tools to make arrows and can start attempting more interesting arrows (maybe fire arrows, maybe magic arrows once I have access to spells, I haven't decided yet). Songs I'm going to start tracking the days I practice memorizing songs. I have some thoughts about using this to bump up Charisma to allow a multiclass into Bard (if I still want to do it when I get to that point), but I haven't worked out all the details yet. However, I can start tracking without knowing all the details. I’m also tracking number of songs memorized. Short Rest I will have taken a short rest and can roll hit dice if I have done candles for morning and evening prayers and brushed my teeth.   Long Rest Long rests occur at the end of every week, so on Monday morning my hit points reset to full (20 hp). If I die during the week, I regenerate on Monday morning, but earn no experience points for the week in which I died. Social Encounters I feel like this was a good idea, but I don’t have a lot of incentive to work on it right now. Maybe something for the future. I’m leaving it here so I don’t forget. Finishing Notes and XP Cap I will level up at the end of the challenge if I have a total of more than 900 xp. I don't think I've really balanced my challenge and expect that I have too much possible xp for the lower levels, so I'm putting a weekly cap of 200 xp so that I can't entirely bypass Level 3 (and I also don't want to deal with leveling up in the middle of a challenge). I will still tally up the total xp for the week because I want to see how much I'm getting, but I will only carry a maximum of 200 xp over to the next week.

❤️ I was concerned about Helene and I'm glad you're alive.

That would be great! The spam/bots seem to have increased recently.

New challenge is up!       

A quick update for today before I go to bed: My glimmer for today was that I got to do deadlifts again as part of the legs circuit at the gym this morning!!! IT WAS AMAZING!!! It was 60lbs, and I had three intervals of 45 seconds to do as many reps as I could. The first 45 went super smoothly, I think I got ~20 lifts in, felt like a well oiled machine. The second interval wasn’t quite as fast but was still super smooth. The third interval I needed a break during - we were only resting 30 seconds between sets and that’s just not a lot when you are pushing it the way I was. But I still did really really well and the rest of the exercises went pretty well also, and I came home feeling like a freaking rockstar. It’s not a single lift max, but it felt SO GOOD and I was stupid excited. I was also the only person to attempt the deadlifts, the other classmates all did a squat machine thingy. It kind of freaked me out and the deadlifts were much more exciting, so I did that instead. And I was a giddy school kid for quite a while about it.    

Thank you, Sov!   I accept your solidarity in this as well, and am cheered by it. 🥰

I spent the last half of the previous challenge feeling like I was slowly sinking into the dark. Things were getting a little overwhelming and the only thing I felt I could do was try to enjoy the silence and solitude as much as possible because it was that or lose my grip on everything. A temporary med adjustment and my Dave coming home has buoyed me up again a bit, but on my ascent I realized that I had been getting glimmers of the goodness around me even in the darkness. Reviewing my forum posts and my daily journalling showed me that in hindsight it hadn’t been total darkness, that there were moments of brilliance and strangeness and beauty even in what emotionally felt like a barren ecosystem. This is a good reminder that our perceptions don’t always line up with the facts, and it’s one I need to keep in mind as we slip into shorter days and longer nights with the seasonal change as it can affect me.     This challenge will be primarily focused on collecting glimmers. A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger: something that catches your attention that makes you feel good, content, grateful, playful, contemplative, etc. I like to think that I am pretty good at noticing these things and drawing them into myself, but a more dedicated practice for a bit can’t hurt anything. Glimmers are related to a gratitude practice in my head, but they aren’t quite the same thing for me: glimmers are more fleeting, more catch and release than my gratitude practice, which is ritualized and written down. I am not sure if I’ll be writing down my glimmers for this challenge or not, but I think I’d like to if I can without damaging the ethereal nature of them. So this part of tracking things will be kind of wishy-washy, but I think that will be okay.      In terms of tracking I do have my chart ready to go:     I am hoping that a lower stakes challenge will help me recover a bit and fortify for the next round of Dave’s absence which will be January 4 to the end of March-ish. I need to be farther away from burnout before we do this again.    I hope that you are feeling cool and collected and ready to conquer your respective challenges if you are already on the boards for Zero Week. If you are taking the Zero Week to regroup and rest, then I wish you the deepest and most restful recovery.    Thanks for being here. ❤️  

I am currently shopping for a new horse and came across an ad for a 4 year old stallion who "would make an excellent gelding." My immediate thought is I dated some guys that phrase would have applied to.

Of course! They are the real stars of the show 🥰    

Yup I am right there with you. I was really hoping that getting a job would help me ease back into my old routines. I feel I've been in a rut for 1-2 years now. The embracing the nothingness did help originally but I need more sparkle in my life. Everything feels so dull! And I'm craving more.    Walking mostly because it's the easiest and most accessible for me. But also physical chores like cleaning the gardens for winter, visiting/grooming/riding my damn horse*🥲, playing disc with Winnie (dog).  I do really want to work on my mobility and strength but that comes later I think. The option is there but it's not a specific goal.    * I love her 🤣 she doesn't care I'm not riding but she's an expensive pet ($500cad/month) so I might as well be doing the thing and at least hanging out with her more because it's really beneficial to my mental health.