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honourablejester · 1 month

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D&D Character Concept: The Druid in the Walls

You know when weird bits of inspiration combine from very disparate sources? Specifically to give you extremely horrible backstories for a character?

Because I’ve been walking the dog the last while, and I’ve been noticing a lot of the wall plants. You know, the bits of plants, pennywort and red robin and the like, that grow in the cracks in the walls? Between the stones, in the gaps in the plaster. They’re really pretty, and I just love the stubbornness of them, to wind their way into wherever they can anchor and just bloom there.

I’ve written some things before on urban druids in D&D, and I was thinking idly about making a character in that context. The plants that grow in the cracks in the walls. And, because this is D&D and tragic backstories are, like, the thing, I was considering …

Beyond just general urban misery, where would you be where the sight of a stubborn little weed growing in the crack in a wall might be the one beautiful thing you can see and a seed that becomes a focus for your whole being?

Prison is an obvious answer. A cell, looking up at the bit of green growing near a high window. But the idea merged with a crime documentary I watched on youtube, which I cannot find again, about (warning for child death) a Victorian/Early 20th century murder of a child. A society woman who’d had a child out of wedlock as a teenager collected her young daughter from the woman who’d been caring for her, brought her to the cellar of her new husband’s house, and murdered her, without realising that one of the maids witnessed the deed. Which, yes, extraordinarily dark. But.

A child in the cellar. An illegitimate child, hidden away. A bit of green in a high window.

For some reason, my first thought was half elf, because D&D has some options for visibly illegitimate children. But then I remembered we can go one further for social ramifications. We could have a tiefling. A tiefling druid, who spent her first years in the care of a nurse, until she was old enough that they knew she would survive, and then was violently taken away and hidden. Because she is living proof of a … of an indiscretion. A sin.

There’s a bit of me that wants to go with the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide tiefling variants as well, here. Because, while we’re on this very bleak trip into victorianesque worries about the physical markers of illegitimacy and immorality, there’s the alternate appearance descriptions for variant tieflings: “Your tiefling might not look like other tieflings. Rather than having the physical characteristics described in the Player's Handbook, choose 1d4+1 of the following features: small horns; fangs or sharp teeth; a forked tongue; catlike eyes; six fingers on each hand; goatlike legs; cloven hoofs; a forked tail; leathery or scaly skin; red or dark blue skin; cast no shadow or reflection; exude a smell of brimstone.”

… Tieflings really are playing on a lot of … of very old fears and prejudices. So yeah. But if we’re consciously playing with that, here. It does work.

And this is the sort of house that has a cellar. That has maids. That has nurses. This is urban nobility. But this kid has no memory of wealth, comfort. She just remembers a prison. A cold room with a high window onto street level. And the bit of green, the delicate bloom, the one pretty thing she can remember, shining in the dusty light of that window.

I also, I’ve been handwashing a lot of clothes lately, and I was thinking about the red hands you get from hand laundry. Caught red-handed. And, urban nobility like that, they’d have laundry. Maybe even laundry in the cellar. And I was thinking about the maid in that documentary. And I was thinking … someone freed them. Someone heard the creature in the walls of that house, and the hints upstairs of what it might be, and someone found the compassion in their hearts to do something. Some tiny thing. Even if it was just ‘accidentally’ leaving a door open. And all this kid remembers of how she got out of that prison is … red hands. The raw, boiled red hands of a laundry woman, as she darted past them into the light, in search of their tiny sprout of green.

So she escaped. She lived as a street urchin for a while, a good few years. And she never lost … She looks for the plants. The weeds. The tiny scraps of green the city over. The flowers blooming in the cracks in the walls. Because there’s … there’s an ethos there. A sympathy. A stubborn, determined thing. They grow where they’re not wanted, in the dirt and in the dark, and they bloom anyway. They survive, and they bloom, and they give hope to those around them. It’s a scrap of a thing, a fragile shred of green, but it grows. No matter how unwanted it is. And it gives hope when there’s nothing else.

At some point another druid stumbled across her. An apothecary, maybe, an urban herbalist, or just a vagabond with their own sympathy and appreciation for those shreds of green that all the artifice of urban living could not drive away. She found a teacher. She learned some things. And she gave back some things. Druids have goodberry. Healing word. Spells to help … those who survive in the city’s cracks and crevices. And she wants to. Because of the green, yes, for the hope in the darkness, and also for those boiled red hands. For the servant who helped her, for the faceless person in her memory, that pair of hands, that helped the monster in the walls when no one else would. She doesn’t know who she was. She don’t know what happened to her. The house she came from had a demonic child caged within it. Who knows what they’d do to a servant who interfered in the family business like that? Urban elite, nobility, tend to have … pragmatic solutions to things like that.

Though they hadn’t killed her. Why didn’t they just kill the monstrous child, the proof of their sins? Why hide her, instead of simply getting rid of her? So maybe … maybe there’s hope. Maybe that poor woman, whoever she was, didn’t die for her good deed. I think that is a hope she holds. That she wants to find out what happened to that woman, and maybe, if it’s possible, if it’s not so very much too much to hope, to meet her. Thank her. And … until then. To emulate her. To help. Before anything else, just to help.

I do know I want this druid to have the druidcraft cantrip. Because, yes, it might be largely useless, compared to the likes of prestidigitation and even thaumaturgy. And yes, druids only start with two cantrips, and she probably should take more useful ones. But there is one effect of druidcraft: “You instantly make a flower blossom, a seed pod open, or a leaf bud bloom.” And that’s …

I’m not sure if it’d be ruled that she could create flowers with that. Let small flowers bloom in the cracks with a whisper. But even if she’s only helping the ones already there to bloom, it’s still …

That was her hope. Her symbol of the outside world. The only beautiful thing in her world for years. And she wants to be able to spread that. That was the first magic she learned. The first warmth and hope she ever held in her hands. The ability to make flowers bloom. Even here. Even in the dirt and the dust and the misery. A little tendril of green, stubbornly rooted into the stones of the world. Sometimes you don’t need to be able to fight. Sometimes you just need to be able to provide hope.

(If she could also get herself a Staff of Flowers along the way, she’d love that too)

Maybe a lot of the local urchins know to follow the flowers to find help. You know?

So yeah. Yeah. A tiefling urchin urban druid. A child of sin, with the cherished power to coax hope to bloom, and the stubborn determination to grow no matter what. And to … to repay the small and infinitely precious kindnesses they have received.

#d&d #5e #character concepts #druids #urban druids #tieflings #illegitimacy #druidcraft #urban plants #dark backstories #hope in the flowers

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author-a-holmes · 2 years

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Ahh, moon 🌙 for the October themed asks, please 💗

🌙 moon: do any of your OCs have dark backstories or secrets they’re trying to keep?

You know me well enough to know that they do... and I don't know whether to love you or hate you for this ask Rofl.

*Clears throat*

ANYWAYS; Fey Touched TRILOGY Spoilers beneath the cut, and maybe some Stolen Stories Series Spoilers too. Depends how long this post gets <3

Fey Touched

Lizzy and Booker actually don't have any dark backstories, or secrets. At least none that the reader doesn't know about right from the start. They, for obvious reasons, don't tell the vampires that they travelled to the mortal realm illegally, right from the get go.

Andric has a secret, but it's not so much a secret, as something he doesn't want to talk about, or acknowledge. While it's mentioned a couple of times throughout the first book that he's grieving his brother, Isaak, Andric's brother isn't actually dead. As far as vampire society goes, he's worse than dead. He's turned rabid.

Mia Harris doesn't have a dark backstory, per se, but a tragic one. Her older brother became a Kavian, and so her parents have put a lot of pressure on her to be perfect to try and remove that smear upon their family name. Both her mum and dad are members of the European Vampire Council, and having one Kavian in the family tree is bad enough, so Mia is pushed to be perfect to compensate. The perfect student. The perfect over-achiever. Skilled, and talented, and intelligent enough to step into her own job at the council the moment she graduates.

Cara has a bit of a dark backstory, and a secret. From Lizzy and Booker, specifically. Both her parents are dead. They chose to consume human blood, accepting the risk of turning rabid, in exchange for enhanced strength, speed, healing, ect. She'd treated as an outcast amongst the Speculo students because of this, so she tries to keep it from Lizzy and Booker for as long as possible. What she's never told anyone is that her parents were dosing her with human blood too, and although it was without her knowledge, she narrowly escaped their fate.

Stolen

I won't go into too many of the Stolen Characters, but Reilly has a lot of good and bad in his past. One particular mistake will come back to haunt him in book three, when an ex-partner who manipulated him, almost to the destruction of the guild, comes back into his life.

And may, or may not, lead to Stella's life being put on the line ;-)

#Asks #Ask Answered #Ari Speaks #Arista Speaks #October Themed Asks #Dark Backstories #Character Secrets #Tragic Backstories #Lizzy Hail #Andric Roche #Mia Harris #Cara Evelyn #Reilly Mosswolf #Fey Touched Trilogy #Stolen Stories #Writeblr #Writeblr Community #Writing #Writing Community

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taygra5shaon · 1 month

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he taste like shit. 🩸

Fix-it AU

one comment made me think what would happen if Astarion brought my Durge to Cazaldor before the main story.

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beanghostprincess · 4 months

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"Kuina's death is ridiculous" yes! That's the point! You do realize that falling down the stairs is a way of showing Zoro how fragile human lives are, right? You are aware that the point of Kuina's character is the unfairness of the world towards women in comparison to the privileges men have, like living in itself and fulfilling their dreams, right? You know that Kuina's death is "ridiculous and dumb" because it's meant to show that even the strongest person Zoro knew could die from something so little, right? You understand that the value Zoro gives to life is fucking immense, right? Right?? You realize Zoro can't seek revenge because nobody took her away from him and now the only thing he can do is become the world's greatest swordsman to avenge her death, right? You get that Zoro's character is an atheist because he doesn't believe in anyone and he can only rely on himself when it comes to Kuina's sudden death, right? You are aware that sometimes people die in the simplest of ways and that doesn't make them weak because death doesn't discriminate, right? You know that all of these things are what make Zoro's character so interesting and important, right? Right??? You know, right?

Well, of course you fucking don't because if you knew you wouldn't be saying her death is ridiculous <3

#if i see somebody else complaining about this i am going to throw hands i swear to god #sorry i just saw a bad take in here and i couldn't stay quiet #it's the most basic thing about zoro's character why are people complaining #'his backstory is boring' well i think YOU are boring and also don't have good taste #i am a zoro defender for life and his backstory with kuina is amazing shutupshutup #stop trying to find a weird dark theory abt her death. you won't find anything. that's just it. she died.#she fell down the stairs and died and it's a great story let kuina rest in peace #one piece #roronoa zoro #shimotsuki kuina

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anthropictales · 1 year

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Chapters: 21/? Fandom: Destiny (Video Games), Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Characters: Original SPARTAN Character(s) (Halo), Original Ghost (Destiny), Original AI Character(s), Banshee-44 (Destiny), The Spider (Destiny), Original Guardian Character(s) (Destiny), Original Fallen | Eliksni Character(s), Transhuman Character(s) Additional Tags: UNSC is sus, AI technical difficulties, Creepy old ruins, Gender shit complicated by transhumanism, AI reprogramming that could be considered torture, Psychological Horror, the wrong end of transhumanism Series: Part 5 of Fragments of Eternity, Part 3 of Tales of Storm and Shield Summary:

A SPARTAN, cast into the paraverse by a cosmic accident, and raised by the light. Her AI companion, and only link to her past, facing Rampancy and Ego-death.

Saving his life will hurl them on a collision course with

The Stormglaive

A rogue Lightbearer turned Ketchkiller Captain, and her ragtag crew of survivors and scrappers.

Beneath Europa's surface are the tools needed to save a dying AI, and the terrible secrets that led to the Stormglaive's first death.

Within the AI's corrupted memories, lie the events that led to the SPARTAN's own final moments.

Safe to say, nobody is getting out of this without seeing some shit.

#halo #destiny #fanfic #crossover #dark backstories #full contact tech support

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pencilscratchins · 1 year

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i have reached the part of the steddie hyperfixation where i make them domesticated men in their 50s. having a blast! (twitter) [ID in ALT text]

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #steve x eddie #stranger things #art #my art #fan art #my fan art #look. i love them and i also love AD videos #why? because i’m nosy! i’m a nosy person!#i have a whole backstory for them re: this video in my head #their apartment is super clutter decor v maximalist #oranges and teals and blacks and dark greens #eddie got big with a metal band in the 90s #steve was a steel worker until his 30s then became a school teacher #they got together in the 80s got civil unioned in vermont in 98 #married in 2015 #eddie takes steve’s last name bc they thought it’d be funny to piss of steve’s dad (it was)#steve stayed pretty private until he fully retired in 2015 (early ofc)#eddie has become twitters Old Man because his online footprint is ridiculous so he has a renaissance #so steve starts coming along for the spare interview and everyone’s like holy shit eddie’s husbands hot #during the video eddie points to a lamp and says this is a lamp we got from the flea market!#then points to a box next to it and says and this is a box of our friend max’s baby teeth #did you want all this? no. but you got it

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bloominglegumes · 8 months

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our large bipedal son who we found on the street

#watch as i keep drawing things that r too dark to see #transformers idw #tf idw1 #soundwave #laserbeak #buzzsaw #ravage #my art #urhhfhdshhfh #deeply hurt every time i think about their backstory #because they found him they saved him they raised him and then they end up at the head of 4 million years of war and theyre #theyre no longer a group of unlucky outcasts theyre the face of the decepticon menace and u think of all the ways theyve twisted and changed #the other cassettes joined from force or the perceived necessity of it as a fighting advantage but these four. they are the family and #and near the end of the run its brought up again how theyre separated across .so so far and they feel each other fade out it messes me up so #so bad like so incredibly bad

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majunju · 1 year

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isekai au notes

#genshin impact #my art #gave scaramouche the most cliche title and backstory a ml could have #he even has the dark hair ! if only his eyes were red </3

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dollya-robinprotector · 29 days

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Dress me up, make it tight, I'm your dolly You're my doll, rock'n'roll, feel the glamour in pink Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky~

Inspired from This post of @just-dol-headshots and this ask from @hakusins. Don't worry I'm still aiming for your ass Haku-Dean :) References and something under the cut

We all have to agree Bully Robin should have some softer and caring sides. When there's only them two and no one else is around to judge, he can let loose and slip back into that kinda of "Original Robin" we know and I love. I mean, that's what JDOLH made that got me into these swap messes from the beginning jsjkhskjhd you knowww the HUG!!

Reference: Barbie Girl (Aqua) and this cute ecchi Clamp Chobit piece

All in all I'm a pink bietch and Dollya won't be losing her V-card anytime soon that I can promise so hang in there okay mr.Bully.

edit: OMG THIS IS MY 1000TH POST TTOTT)) JKSDJLASKJKDLA

SELF-INDULGENT HERE WE GO

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drathe · 8 months

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I hope you die, I hope we both die

Enver Flymm and Urge, the unloved children

#my art #sketch #bg3 spoilers #bg3 #baldur’s gate 3 #enver gortash #Enver Flymm #the dark urge #theyre awful but I feel for their younger selves #tragic stories not always make backstories for heroes #rina

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sergeantwoods · 4 months

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ghost : why don't emo kids like high fives?

soap : why?

ghost : 'cause they're always left hanging.

soap : nice.

soap : I made a website for orphans. it doesn't have a home page.

ghost : haha.

ghost : why'd my dad go to jail?

soap : why?

ghost : beats me.

soap : simon --

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cuttyflammm · 6 months

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eek, poor rayman :/

#captain laserhawk #bullfrog captain laserhawk #clh bullfrog #rayman #rayman captain laserhawk #ramon captain laserhawk #nah cmon now #I need season 2 #immediately #what happened to my boys argh #also some bullfrog backstory would be appreciated pah-lease #sobbing #for a series that started out so silly it sure got dark quick

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warriordragonart · 1 month

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My interpretation of the Dancer while she was still human. Her hair is inspired by a mixture of Renaissance Italian and ballroom hairstyles and my headcanon for her name is Gwynneth!

#dark souls 3 #dark souls #dark souls 3 fanart #dancer of the boreal valley #been working on a DS3 fanfic recently #where the protagonist is from Irithyll #so I have exhaustively headcanoned EVERY character from there #the Outrider knight in the Grand Archives has a BACKSTORY now #and a DESIGN #and a NAME #(It’s Tirallen)#hence the work on the Dancer

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sunnyhar · 2 months

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