For our first Zeta giveaway of the run, we have a full set of Wilds of Eldraine, donated to us by our friends from Wizards of the Coast!

We return to the plane of Eldraine as we venture into the darker wilds filled with swarms of rats, horrifying candy, tricky fairies, and noble knights. This lot is a full set containing all 266 cards in foil. Please note, this set does not inclue any fun variants.

Donate from now until 2:00am PST $6.62 or multiple positive integers thereof for a chance to win! Winners also receive a 2023 DBLoon!!

We're the cool shift this year. We decided we are, and what's cooler than that? A cool picture of a cool fish, of course! And that's our art challenge on this, your first Zeta of the run! We're asking you, our wonderful chat, to send us your absolute coolest picture of a cool fish.

It can be in any medium you'd like, but we ask that you email your creation to contest@desertbus.org in jpg, png, or gif format. Also, please include what your handle in your email so we can shout you out when you win!

Even though technology is cool, please no AI generated images. We may email back and request work in progress images to make sure that we aren't awarding AI a t-shirt.

For our lovely art challenge winner, a unisex Desert Bus 2023 shirt in the size of your choice, and a DBLoon!!

The first night has come, and it has been studiously watched. Already time means nothing to us as we carom from bit to bit with no sense of internal OR external logic. That's just how we roll from 6pm to midnight.

Of course, we can't start the evening without the evening news.

But hey, who's that? There's a new face on Nightwatch! We welcomed our new entertainer Rachel Weeks (who will be here for three shifts - alas, we cannot keep her for the full run). And of course, as with all newcomers, we took her to store.

Continuing our trend of important educational topics, we then turned to Ian Horner for a lesson in how to JoJo pose.

It was more dignified than the other pose Ian treated us to that night.

Also, there were a lot of sports tonight! Like, seriously, a lot of sports. We talked about baseball, we talked about hockey, we talked about Olympic breakdancing which is for-real a thing... and we came to a devastating revelation about the ratio of dogs to women being featured in sports movies. Now, that's a thought that's gonna fester.

All in all, it was a good shift, and Nightwatch is back in action. Drama, comedy, friendship. A dash of education. And just a lot of burger-related action.

This has been Nightwatch, tagging out for newly returned to in-person Zeta shift! Enjoy the cushions, Zeta. We smooshed 'em extra good for you.

Turns out there are a lot of talented artists on the internet, especially when you challenge those artists to draw your personified Desert Bus shifts as furries. We had a hard time picking from some excellent options, but we promised to clothe at least one person, and so we have a winner!

Thanks all who participated, and congratulations to Nick Korn for winning the first art contest of Desert Bus 2023!

Winner: Nick Korn

Honorary Mentions

Here on Desert Bus, we frequently encourage you to take care of others. But fun fact: did you know that you can (and should) also take care of yourself? This merch pack from Take This hopes to inspire you to do just that with a goodie collection from a fellow non-profit that aims to support mental health within the gaming community. It may dangerous to go alone, but you're not alone. Take this merch!

Donate $6.44 (or multiples thereof) before 11:15pm for a chance to win!

Fangamer brings us fabulous Desert Bus shirts, but if you like video games, they can bring you plenty of other fabulous stuff too. The store launched in 2008, and ever since then they have been adding collections for video games you were sure nobody else but you was that deeply in love with. Good news, gamers: Fangamer is as deeply in love with your favorite video games as you are. Go find your favorite new shirt, plush, or tea cup (no really)! Be sure to tell 'em "thanks for supporting Desert Bus!" while you're there.

Quick, James is asleep! Let's give away his stuff. 😈

James spent 2023 on an exhaustive tour of all four MagicCons, collecting goodies at every stop, and ultimately assembled this prize we call "James Went to All the MagicCons and Hosted 6 PPRs in 2023 Just So He Could Build This Prize Pack." By the time you finish saying the name of this prize, you'll be as tired as James was after all that travel. But you will also feel an insatiable hunger, a ravenous desire, an all-consuming need to take his stuff.

Donate $11.18 (or multiples thereof) before 8:45pm PT for a chance to take home all of James's stuff!

Kicking off the silent auction party for Desert Bus 2023, we have a Mushroom Witch Hat Trio and a collection of Watercolor Magic Tokens. Be the token-bearing card witch you want to see in the world by placing a bid on one or both!

These auctions will end at 2am PT.

Mushroom Witch Hat Trio

Watercolor Magic Tokens

You do your best to raise your dice right, you know? You enter a giveaway to get them fine, lathe-turned wooden accessories like a beautiful sycamore dice tray with a flocked bottom to soften their landing. They get a nice home in a dice tube made of purpleheart wood and closed securely with magnets. Heck, you even socialize them with a beautiful matching set of pen and mechanical pencil!

And then they roll 1s, and 2s, and more 1s again. But still, you love them enough to try and give them a good home by entering this giveaway for the Wood-Turned TTRPG Accessory Set. Donate $8.57 (or multiples thereof) before 7:15pm PT for a chance to surround your ungrateful dice-children with luxury!

Look, neither of us wants our naked human bodies just walking around being human and/or naked. So let's make a trade. You draw the fursona of any Desert Bus shift (or several of them). If your fursona is our favorite, then we send you a Unisex 2023 Desert Bus shirt to clothe your body. Deal? Okay, let's get on it.

But there are ground rules! We're looking for the fursona of the shift if that shift were a singular, conscious entity. No individual performers, please! We don't fursona without permission.

Send your fursona to contests@desertbus.org with the subject line "Shift Fursona" before 10:30pm PT. Please submit your entry as one PNG or JPG. Also, please be sure to include the name you'd like to go by (and your pronouns if you'd like to do so) should we show your submission on-air and on the blog.