so we all love the pocket pudding line, but, important note: there is no way carey “you should always be careful when you rob someone, they might just walk around with loose pudding in there” fangbattle found this information out in any kind of legal manner
in fact, going by just sort of how she is in that scene, im willing to bet she does this as a matter of routine
(lost a thing ages ago that you swear you left right there? carey probably took it)
and taako, being a pretty accomplished pickpocket himself (and the second biggest suspect for when items on the moon randomly go missing), is probably aware of this
i reckon he finds it funny if nothing else. sometimes he just watches her do it from where he’s sitting invisibly somewhere else in the room and critiques her performance
but he can’t just allow her to steal his stuff. he worked hard for that shit. or, at least, was very clever in his methods of obtaining it. and this is not the first time he’s had to defend against thieves, he’s been doing that his whole life
so he starts off pretty basic, stuff he’s mostly been doing the whole time
transmutation is his whole jam, and these kind of spells are nothing but transmutation. putting warding spells on his pockets so only he can access what’s inside, anyone else just finds an empty pocket? it’s second nature at this point. you’d be hard pressed to find any item of clothing taako owns that isn’t full of various charmed pockets, regardless of whether or not the original design for the outfit included pockets in the first place. and at some point carey’s gonna try, because at some point you get bored of the easy targets and start looking for a challenge.
(taako definitely doesn’t know this from experience. he also has definitely never tried to steal from her just out of curiosity. unrelated, taako is pretty sure at least one of her pockets contains an entire armed bear trap and he has no idea how. or how carey even gets to any of her stuff. she doesn’t even have magic. he’s a little bit scared of her, maybe?)
but taako’s not a quitter, and he’s definitely not going to back down just because she’s convinced him to conduct all future pickpocketing via mage hand. if this is a competition now, you can bet he’s going to up his fucking game.
round two: experimenting with short term conjuration charms, weaving them into the spells already in place. it’s a complicated bit of magic, but this is what he’s good at, and quite frankly it’s opportunities for humor are endless
initially, he just randomises it. trying to get into taako’s pocket? not anymore, please treat yourself to one of many various items, such as: -an assortment of jellybeans -a small statue of a dwarf that bares a striking resemblance to someone you think you know but you can’t quite put your finger on it (they’ve just got one of those faces) -an entire potted plant (none of them of an appropriate size to fit in the pocket, but the bigger they are the funnier it gets) -a surprisingly convincing replica of your own hand, disembodied and floating slightly
it’s conjuration magic, so none of them last more than about an hour, but it’s so fucking worth it.
(carey’s retaliation is to stab his mage hand out of the air next time it gets near her. she shouldn’t even have been able to see it, the arcane trickster’s glove makes it invisible. what strange capricious trickster god is even responsible for the existence of carey fangbattle?)
points have to go to the pocket though. he programmed in some of the weirder and more complicated objects, but the rest of the time it’s just designed to produce normal household objects in a completely random pattern. and the pudding, that’s funnier than anything he could have come up with. it’s perfect, it’s so on brand, and just the look it gets him when carey finds herself with a handful of loose pudding is fucking incredible. he doesn’t even care when she throws it in his face. it was worth every second.
he could have stopped there. that in itself was more entertaining than anything else on this moonbase. but that’s when he gets an even better idea.
carey knows that the stuff in his pockets are an enchantment. she’s seen them fade when the spell times out. the pudding, while hilarious, was just a ruse, and they both know it. whatever was actually in taako’s pockets that day never touched pudding.
so he reworks the spell entirely, on the outfit he next plans on wearing. takes down a few of the existing enchantments, and adds just one new one. and then he waits.
the next day, taako goes to watch the regulators training. it’s not unheard of for them to have an audience, they’re pretty popular on the moonbase, but taako usually isn’t part of it. he can tell by the way she eyes him that she’s already suspicious about what he’s planning.
taako just grins lazily at her, and conjures up a sign with an 7.5/10 on it. she scowls, and goes back to focusing on training.
it’s not until they break that he finally gets to implement the best joke ever created.
he knows she’s gonna try to steal from him. it’s an obvious trap, but both of them are too competitive and committed to this that he knows she’ll at least check what he’s got in there. (it’s the conjured pudding again. this isn’t a surprise. he’s never getting rid of the pudding trap it’s too good.)
so when she does, there’s a second where taako thinks she’s almost disappointed. not because she’s covered in conjured pudding, but because neither of them have ever gone for the same trap twice. and also because she didn’t find out what was actually in his pockets and she’s a perfectionist like that.
so taako waits for a moment, just to let it sink in. and then casually, pulls out a spoon, and starts eating actual pudding, from his newly waterproofed pockets.
the look on her face is fucking hysterical. taako completely loses his shit. he almost misses her response, which is the next best part-
“you enchanted your pockets so that anyone trying to steal from you would just get a handful of pudding, and then filled your pockets with actual pudding??”
yep, that’s exactly what he did. he can’t even answer at first, he’s laughing too hard. but he recovers, and holds a second spoon out to carey.
“want some?”
she looks at him in disbelief, but then curiosity gets the better of her, and she hesitantly tastes some of the pudding.
I can’t stop fucking thinking about how good the character development of merle highchurch is. like I’m talking cool character in dnd terms, see cuz it’s all
the THB are literally prerolled characters. they’d DESIGNED to be stereotypical, so that’s how they start, and then by the fucking end, you have a cleric who only became one because he came from a religious background but doesn’t have any actual faith in it until that faith is earned over the course of a whole campaign. a cleric who was a shitty father and husband, who resists being the moral compass he’s supposed to be at every turn, who treats religion, the literal basis of his class, like a necessary inconvenience. and then by the end of balance, we’re rewarded with a better father, a kinder man, and someone who has the personal love and favor of his god cuz he fucking. earned it. THAT’S dope character shit, THAT’S unique, Clint is a goddamn master.
As we go into Thursday I’d like to play a little Bingo with the new arc. This particular game I’m calling “How well can I predict The Adventure Zone,” and is a social experiment.
I have high hopes for TAZ Amnesty; I think we all do.
Griffin: You feel something tap your shoulder, and you hear “clinkclinkclink”, and you llok down and there is a bolt, like a “nuts and bolts” bolt laying on the ground. And not a second after you see that bolt on the grounf, one of these giant pieces of washing-machine-sized, industrial machinery falls from the ceiling and lands on you.
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