In Welsh folklore, the bard Taliesin loved riddles, and said that King Maelgwn should fear a mighty force that is "the strongest creature from before the flood, without flesh, without bone, without vein, without blood, without head, without feet, without signs of old age [though] older still.... It neither sees, nor is seen.... On land or sea it is without equal." He meant the wind.

#WyrdWednesday #Mythology #Folklore #Literature #Wales #Celtic #Bard #Riddle

Ya know what? HAPPY EASTER!!!

*Turns Monkey into Bunny*

#art #digitalart #mastoart #bunny #easter #dnd #dungeonsanddragons #bard

BARD UP
A recent comm I finished for VoiceOfPeace ! Had a lot of fun painting the whimsical effects on this character

#avian #furry #anthro #dnd #fantasy #rpg #ttrpg #bard #lute #artwork #art #digitalart #krita #starling

You know Fenn's a true bard, because he can sing in cursive.

#faun #satyr #bard #thedecemberists #banjo

Meet Phineas Draem, Proprietor of Phin's Finds.

He was never a warrior. Never an adventurer. Never a thief. He was a salesman.

Phin's Finds occupied a crooked alley in the kind of neighborhood that doesn't appear on city maps. Cramped, cluttered, lit poorly on purpose. The sort of shop where adventurers found oddities, nobles found things they couldn't buy anywhere reputable, and scholars found things they weren't supposed to touch. Phineas didn't steal or pillage. Everything in his stock passed through someone else's hands first. He simply had a gift for being the last person those hands sold to.

He built his business on charm, patience, and a network of whispers that stretched further than anyone knew. He out-negotiated rivals, cultivated desperate sellers, and kept careful track of who owed him what and who might need something quietly acquired. Over a lifetime of that work, card by card, he assembled his crowning piece -- a nearly complete Deck of Many Things. Not a replica. Not a partial draw. The real thing, almost whole.

Then one night it was gone. The stock too. Everything. Break-in, betrayal, curse -- he doesn't know. He may never know. What he knows is that he woke up with no money, no goods, no shop, and no status. Only the road.

He is not built for the road. He knows this. But desperation has a way of expanding a man's skill set, and it turns out that everything Phineas spent decades perfecting -- reading people, running networks, saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment, hiring the right middlemen, maintaining appearances under pressure -- translates surprisingly well to staying alive in places that would like to kill him. He ducks behind cover. He throws out distractions. He cuts through minds with words when steel would be slower. There is a hidden dagger, just in case. He has not had to use it yet. He intends to keep that record.

He is not chasing glory or gold. He is chasing stock. Artifacts, relics, cursed objects, forgotten magic. Anything with a story and a market. He wants his deck back. He wants his shop back. He wants to be, once again, the black market's most indispensable dealer -- and he is willing to go find the inventory himself.

---

Phineas Draem is a Rogue 3 / Bard 7 -- Mastermind and College of Eloquence -- and it shows. His silver tongue makes persuasion feel like a gift to the person being persuaded. His read of people borders on unsettling. He lies with the timing of a man who has rehearsed honesty so thoroughly he knows exactly when to abandon it. He has never seen real battle and does not intend to start now -- but he has survived everything the road has thrown at him so far on fast talk, misdirection, and the quiet confidence of a man who knows more about the situation than anyone else present. The dagger is a last resort. The words are the weapon.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Rogue #Bard

Meet Danumo Tallfellow.

He started on the street. Coins in a hat, card tricks, a little sleight of hand. Then he picked up an instrument and the coins came faster. He moved inside -- taverns, pub stages, dock-side crowds. Then small theaters. Then leads. Then one-man shows. Then coliseums.

There is no bigger stage than the one Danumo has already stood on. He has filled every seat in every room in every city. He is not just famous. He is beloved. He is the kind of name that makes strangers smile just by saying it.

It isn't enough.

It was never going to be enough. He doesn't want to maintain his fame -- he wants to expand it. Into every market, every household, every corner of the known world that hasn't heard of him yet. There aren't many of those left. But there is one frontier he hasn't conquered.

Adventuring.

At 5'1, he is the tallest halfling you have ever met, and he knows it. Slender, olive-skinned, with piercing green eyes and hair that enters the room a moment before he does. He has been trained in stage combat by the best stuntmen working, and he intends to find out how well that translates to something real.

---

Danumo Tallfellow is a Halfling Bard -- performer, showman, and the most charismatic person in any room he walks into. He has never walked into a room he didn't own.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Bard #Halfling

Gemini: от истоков до нынешнего времени. Цифры, факты, инсайды

Февраль 2023 года запомнился инвесторам Alphabet надолго. 8 февраля компания провела презентацию Bard - своего ответа на ChatGPT, который взорвал интернет. Всё выглядело как стандартный технологический анонс: красивые слайды, уверенные спикеры, обещания светлого будущего. А потом случился баг. В рекламном ролике Bard ответил на вопрос о новых открытиях телескопа «Джеймс Уэбб». Он сказал, что телескоп сделал первые снимки экзопланеты за пределами Солнечной системы. Проблема была в том, что это было неправдой. Первый снимок экзопланеты сделал телескоп VLT в 2004 году, а «Джеймс Уэбб» просто сфотографировал другую планету спустя 18 лет. Акции Alphabet упали почти на 8% за день. Капитализация компании снизилась на $100 млрд. В тот момент казалось, что Google проигрывает гонку искусственного интеллекта. ChatGPT набирал 100 млн пользователей быстрее, чем любое приложение в истории. Microsoft вливала миллиарды в OpenAI и встраивала ИИ в свои продукты. А Google нервно показывал бота, который ошибался в элементарных фактах. Прошло три года. И сегодня история выглядит иначе. Gemini - так теперь называется детище Google - вышел из тени Bard. В феврале 2026 года аудитория сервиса достигла 750 млн активных пользователей в месяц. Его последняя модель Gemini 3.0 Pro обошла GPT-5.1 в 19 из 20 тестов. Выручка Google Cloud выросла почти наполовину за квартал, во многом благодаря тому, что бизнес-клиенты начали массово арендовать вычислительные мощности для работы с Gemini. При этом компания планирует потратить $185 млрд на инфраструктуру ИИ в 2026 году - сумма, которая заставляет инвесторов хвататься за сердце.

https://habr.com/ru/companies/bothub/articles/1013368/

#ии #ии_и_машинное_обучение #Alphabet #чатботы #ии_модели #Bard #ChatGPT #gemini #Google #инфраструктура_ии

Dear friends of the the un-scene and other play times,

As we know from the #bard:

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely #players;
They have their exits and their entrances;"
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56966/speech-all-the-worlds-a-stage

To keep awake 'san zzz' I have been a doing:

Une) Continuing programming in #Python
Doux) At the moment, creating a button or two to open URL's
Trois) I have scattered my bran/brain to the four winds (toot, burp, chi and prana)
Cat/Quatre) Meow!

✅