astarinel

This might help -- I tried Silk Road quite a while ago and liked it, and explicitly noted in my reviews that it reminded me a bit of No. 93 Engine. I ended up deathmatching them and liking Engine better.

Thank you all for the reminder! I dearly love Litha '06 and definitely should slather some on today.

I couldn't find a topic for this one, so here I go! This is a primarily soft incense/resin scent. I generally don't like these types of scents, but I wanted to try Cleric because I enjoy playing them so much. On my skin, this is warmer and sweeter than a lot of other strongly incense blends I've tried, like Penitence or Cathedral, and doesn't have either a dark or powdery edge that I get with most incense scents. It's also has a bit of a citrussy feel, something like neroli or bergamot. It smells like there's some sort of white floral on top, something like ylang ylang maybe. It wears very close to the skin, but lasts a pretty long time. I could still smell hints of it in the morning after testing it the previous evening. I think this would layer very interestingly with the other RPG scents and protos that people have been testing.

I don't think two of my winter favorites have been mentioned: I wear: L'Inverno - White musk, winter plum, pine wood, benzoin, orchid, and stargazer lily. My boyfriend wears: Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills - Skin musk, white sandalwood, balsam fir, frozen black berries, cedar, winter rose, and white amber. They both have an outdoorsy, wintery smell to me, like standing outside in the snow. I also like Snow Moon '05 and Nuclear Winter. All of these have the snow note the lab uses that I really love, but less of the ozone that my skin can amp to terrible degrees.

Good is pretty and very, very good. Soft, fluffy, sweet, white, and clean. It's very wearable alone, unlike some of the other RPGs, although it would definitely bring a pale sweetness to any blend it was layered with. It manages to not be overly sweet, and ends up drying to a very wearable gentle skin scent.

One of the musks in here is the darker musk note I don't like, alas. It's definitely very bright and mixed and swirly almost. It's musky and floral, and the wasabi note is so spicy and sharp that it almost makes my eyes water to smell it. Interesting, but not for me!

Unfortunately, as with most blends containing opium notes, although this is complex and interesting in the imp it's not likely to stay that way on my skin. This is dark and resinous and a little smoky, but the opium goes sharp and musty and sort of unpleasant. As it dries, the fruit comes out a bit more, sweetening it up a little, but it ends up still being too smoky and bitter on my skin. It's kind of perfumey in an odd way, and I wish I could smell it without the opium, but it's definitely dark and appropriate for the concept.

Surprisingly, I get a lot of rhubarb here in the imp. As it dries on my skin, the oak is definitely the other note that sticks out most to me, it's kind of dry and woody. I find it a little overpowering, which is a shame since I like what I'm getting of the other notes. The tart bright rhubarb and soft herbal chamomile hang around, but not to the degree that would make me want to wear this scent. It's a pretty unique blend, though, and I don't think I've ever smelled anything in the BPAL catalog like it.

I quite liked this one, although like some of the other RPGs, it does feel a little simple as a stand-alone scent. It's just a soft, sweet light musk with a slightly powdery edge. Nice and clean, but a little simple on it's own and I'm not sure I'm fully into the layering here! It seems like a good idea but I don't need so many more bottles... >.<

This is definitely outdoorsy and appropriate for the concept! Dark and woody, and a little spicy and sharp and bitter somewhere. It's definitely evocative of an evergreen forest, a little smoky and mossy, and not terribly leathery, surprisingly.

I love Clerics, but I knew I wasn't going to love this. Rose is a great scent-ruiner for me -- most blends it appears in go to straight soap on my skin. It's not even really an issue of rose amping, it's that the note turns bitter and horrible and soapy and THEN stomps all over the other notes with great big stompy boots. Most scents with rose in it that I try end up smelling the same, which is to say, awful. So, while I can smell some nice resins in the imp, on my skin this is soap. Floral soap.

Not my kind of scent, but something my boyfriend might like. Worn leather topped with sticky, slightly-sweet greenness. Nice and somehow a little unobtrusive, which is appropriate I guess.

This is really quite faint, which is disappointing. I love paladins and I wanted to love this. The leather is very light, and this isn't the kind of white musk that sweetly amps on my skin. It's shiny and white, a little fuzzy from the resins. I was really hoping for a heavier, sweeter musk and a more prominent vanilla, but those notes (and practically the entire scent) disappear on my skin. I tried layering it with some other scents, but they totally took over and I ended up not smelling anything really from Paladin. I'm going to keep my decant around and see if the vanilla peeks out more with a little age on it, but for now I won't be looking for any more Paladin.

This is very masculine to my nose, and pretty much what it says. A rugged, darker leather note, not quite the "worn" leather you find in some blends, but not as sharp as black leather notes can be either. It's almost weirdly fresh with its metallic edge, and the musk here is dark and edged with resins.

I didn't like the smell of this in the imp, but it's one of those ones that definitely blooms after you put it on. It's resinous, bright, spicy, and a little sweet. It definitely makes me think more of an alchemy or magic shop rather than a practitioner, it smells like exotic spell components or something. It's actually quite nice, and reasonably straightforward a scent.

I was hoping I would really like this one, but it's just okay on me. It reminds me a lot of Aziraphale, which I love, but with a different musk and more prominent woods. It ends up being just a bit too dry and woody for my liking, and the musk in this one doesn't love my skin the way the one in Aziraphale does. It's very light, pale, and woody, with a slightly bitter edge. I was hoping for more beeswax with some sweetness to cut the woods, but unfortunately it's totally absent on my skin.

This is pretty sweet, but not sugary like some scents can be. It definitely makes me think of breakfast! Oatmeals and muffins with dried fruits and spices. It's kind of a warm grain scent, a bit sweetened, but not overly so. I expected to like this more, but I find it simple and a bit too much like food. As a foody-scent-lover, this is possibly a weird distinction for me to make, but the foody scents I like tend to smell like cake and candy, stuff I actually don't eat that often, and this makes me think of a normal brunch instead which is somehow less appealing. Definitely true to the description and cute for halflings though!

Wow. I don't even. Weird evil vegetables? As it dries the wetness of the vegetable lightens up a bit and it starts to get more unspecific "green." This is definitely a very unique scent -- smoky, leathery, a little vegetable-y. Glad I tried it, definitely don't need more.

This didn't smell like what I expected. I normally amp the ozoney aspect of metallic notes, but I don't get much of that bright metal here. This is a much darker scent, deep and a masculine to my nose. It's a little bitter, but not dirty -- more of the kind of mineral note that crops up in blends sometimes. I expected to immediately dislike it, because every note is basically a no for me, but I don't hate it, it's just not the kind of scent I really like to wear. It definitely scans a bit cologney, but it overall is really evocative of the concept.

This was my favorite of the race blends. It goes on very soft and outdoorsy, and I have trouble pinpointing any specific notes. Some part of the floral, maybe the lily with the woods, reminds me of L'Inverno, which is one of my favorite wintery blends. This is very gentle and pretty, and as it dries it gets a little brighter and sweeter on my skin, with hints of the fruity berries. I am normally not a fan of blends with this many floral notes, but there's just something sweet and fresh about this one.

This is definitely the same vanilla from Celeste, a very rich vanilla, with a light/white musk. When it goes on wet, it's a little weird -- kind of sharp and woody-bitter, but as it dries that fades away and the vanilla takes center stage. It actually doesn't remind me all that much of The Anti-Saloon League, which I prefer -- the vanilla in that one is a little more creamy/foody, and I like the sassafras note there. There is something else in this one, other than vanilla musk, vaguely woody-herbal, but as a vanilla-amper I get mostly vanilla out of this one. If you like the vanilla note in Celeste, though, this one is really for you! It's that same sort of musky-rich but not sweet-foody vanilla.

Honey, beeswax, blonde woods, something vaguely floral. The wood note here calls to mind Aziraphale, for me, very light and dry. The most prominent notes, however, are the honey (which is a "light" honey, more like the white honey in Valse Finale or door) and a beeswax that reminds me of Hanerot Halalu. Okay, now that I'm done comparing it to other things, it's very pretty. I'm always looking for light, wearable honey scents (because while I love the heavy, thick, and sexy ones, they're harder for me to wear to work and in casual situations), and this definitely fits the bill. It's a gentle, sweet scent, slightly powdery. As it dries on my skin, the wood and floral notes that I could smell in the bottle and while wet sort of fade into the background, leaving just the airy beeswaxy honey scent lingering around. Relatively low throw, but decent lasting power.

Very sweet and foody. As I applied, the blueberry was very strong, and immediately bloomed into delicious blueberry pie on my skin. As it dried, the blueberry faded somewhat, leaving me with a creamy lemon meringue. I expected the pie crust to get a bit buttery, but it wasn't ever overwhelming, and stayed in the background as sort of a soft pastry note. I'm really impressed with how well the lemon meringue note stuck around -- citrus notes tend to burn off on my skin very quickly, but this one lingered for quite a while. This was super-delicious, but definitely not for anyone who isn't into really sweet and foody scents. I love the lab's blueberry note, and treasure my bottle of Blue Phoenix, and this is another great example of that juicy-tart blueberry scent.

This was a lot less sweet than I expected! The white mint really stood out here, and while it's a note I like, I prefer it to be a little less prominent. The primary overtones of this one on my skin were herbal/citrus, with kind of a creamy base keeping it from getting too sharp. It's not quite what I expected, and it's interesting, but less foody and vanilla than I had hoped. Ultimately it's not a very me scent, but it's definitely unique and light. Pretty low throw, and I expected to be gone on my skin relatively quickly, but it's managed to linger a bit longer than I thought it would.

Have you tried Knave of Hearts? Its description is: Crushed roses and blackcurrant tarts. I find the pastry note in this to be most similar to the BBJ&S one, which is actually pretty unique to my nose. A lot of the cakey ones you've said don't work for you have what I consider a "moist cake" type note, whereas BBJ&S has a bit of a drier, buttery light pastry note. I also hesitate to recommend this because it's impossible to find, but The Crumpet Rebellion has a similar sort of pastry but not cakey foody note. I find the Knave of Hearts quite similar in terms of the pastry involved, but I know that the currants involved don't work for everyone. I'd second Lady Una as having a similar blackberry note, but my favorite blackberry blend is The Oblation (A stirring blend of dianthus, French lavender, blackberry, and white honey.) Possibly more difficult to find, just because it isn't a repeated-visit LE, but shouldn't be impossible to track down some to test. Good luck!