vicious mockery is my favorite spell in dungeons and dragons because like
A) it does decent damage
B) it’s a cantrip
so canonically, a talented musician can murder commonfolk by hurling a single insult at them (average damage at 17+ level is 10, max 16.). imagine a chaotic evil bard who becomes a serial killer and the local guards are afraid to pursue him because you might go up and say “you’re under arrest” but then he just retorts ‘your mom is under arrest” and you fucking die on the spot
that same musician, if he can manage to successfully insult the world’s most fearsome ancient dragon 55 times without dying first… it dies. a process which would still take only about 11 minutes (assuming the bard has a spell DC of 19, meaning the dragon would fail about 50% of the saves.)
A Bard could kill a dragon over the course of a single Roast session.
if you ever doubt your writing, be it your themes, or the reason behind it, remember that h.g wells wrote war of the worlds both as a commentary on colonialism and the horrors it brings, and because he fucking hated his neighbours and his 13 hour job, and wanted to write about the town in which he lived getting blasted to the fucking ground by lasers into an irreparable heap and all of the townspeople dying painfully
you, too, can channel your hatred for that guy that lives down the hall and blasts music at 4am into the one of the most influential science fiction stories ever written! fuck it! i believe in you!!
This is one of the most inspirational things I’ve ever seen