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dhwty-writes · 3 years

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The Terribly Sad and Tragic Affair that Is the Fake Funeral of Shadowhand Essek Thelyss

Apparently, I am not only drawing for the Critical Role fandom, but writing for it, too. After months of nearly no progress I just vomited out 3k words this Tuesday and it only went downhill from there.

This fic is based on this post by @anne-o-nyme, I really hope I managed to capture the energy of it.

Have fun!

Summary: There were eight strangers in the foyer of his dead brother's towers and Verin Thelyss was slowly losing his patience.

After the sudden "death" of Shadowhand Essek Thelyss, it is his brother Verin's job to empty out his towers. The Mighty Nein show up to help (and maybe steal a few things).

OR: Verin is grieving, Essek just wants his stuff back, and the Mighty Nein are the Mighty Nein.

Warnings: I didn't tag this with MCD, because Essek is technically alive and kicking. Since Verin doesn't know that though, and this fic is written from his POV, this is dealing with grief and includes depictions of depressive thoughts as well as anxiety attacks. For more explicit warnings, please mind the tags on AO3. Take care of yourselves, and let me know if I forgot anything.

Read on AO3

There were eight strangers in the foyer of his dead brother's towers and Verin Thelyss was slowly losing his patience. "Listen," he said with what little calm he had left, "I know that by returning one of our beacons you became heroes of the Dynasty and were placed under Es— My bro— his stewardship. But this here—" he gestured vaguely at the interior of Essek's towers that had always been too cold, too empty, but not like now, never like now— "This is a very difficult situation for me, so if you could please leave, that would be greatly appreciated."

"Yes, yes, it's very sad that Essek died," the blue tiefling said—Jester, her name was Jester; she had given him that already as she had offered him her condolences with a hug—and Verin could barely contain his anger. After the funeral he had quite enough of lying dignitaries, nobles, and heroes currying favours with him. That had always been Essek's thing, he would know what to do, how to make them regret even daring to speak up; Verin had never been any good at it.

"But we're his friends!" He grit his teeth at Jester's blatant falsehood. Perhaps his anger showed on his face, since the tiefling faltered. "And, uh— Fjord?"

"It's true," the half-orc with too-smooth words and too-smooth voice lied, too. "We spent quite some time with your, er— your brother here. Made some good memories. We thought we might take this as our chance to say goodbye, too."

"We are here to help as well. We wouldn't want to infringe upon your grief, though," the tall firbolg added. "So, if you'd prefer us to return at a later point, we'd be happy to."

Verin was still trying to process everything—from these strangers showing up unannounced to their overwhelming presence to the fact that his brother was dead—while simultaneously trying to keep an eye on the halfling who looked like she might have sticky fingers. So, he latched onto the word that stood out the most to him: "Help?"

"Right," Fjord said, looking slightly embarrassed, "we probably should have led with that..."

"We should have called ahead, too," the scary-looking human in blue—they didn't even wear white for the funeral—added. "We always forget to call ahead."

"But Beau, how should we have called ahead?" Jester complained. "We didn't know Verin yet."

"Well, Essek—" the human was interrupted by the even scarier-looking woman next to her stepping on her foot unsubtly. She at least had the decency to act embarrassed. "Right. Sorry 'bout that."

Awkward silence fell across the room, the Mighty Nein looking anywhere but him. It took him a few moments to realise they were waiting for him to speak up. "Help how?" Verin could have kicked himself. By the Light, he could do better than that. He had to do better than that.

A beat of silence followed, then everyone seemed to talk at once. Verin wanted to weep. How was he supposed to deal with this? How had his brother dealt with this? 'He probably hasn't,' he thought. 'They're probably all liars, probably—'

Someone cleared their throat and all eyes turned to the other human who hadn't said anything so far and who looked properly miserable. Immediately, the Mighty Nein fell silent. "Word has reached us that Den Thelyss ordered these premises to be vacated as early as possible," he said quietly with an accent Verin has been taught that belonged to the enemy. "And while some of us may not look like much, I can assure you, we are quite capable."

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "I supposed such menial tasks are beneath the heroes of the dynasty. There are servants—"

"Well, sure," the halfling with the probably sticky fingers interrupted, "but we know him. Knew him, I mean; sorry, force of habit."

"Besides, there's a lot of stuff," the lavender tiefling, who Verin was pretty sure was a known pirate, piped up. "Looks like you could use the help."

"If you want to, of course," the sad Empire human added.

Verin only wanted to scream, to give room to the torrent of thoughts raging in his head. 'My brother just died. My brother just died and he wasn't consecuted, so he's gone for good. He's gone for good and I didn't even know him; I didn't even know about these supposed friends he had because he didn't allow me near him in decades. I was a horrible brother and so was he, but I can't even be mad at him because he's dead.

'And now these liars show up and talk about friendship and knowing him, but those are all lies, horrible ones, because Essek had no friends. Essek was cold and cruel and lonely and do you even know how horrible that is? Dying alone with no-one who mourns you, just the favours you still owe them? Do you? I don't even know, and I'm his brother.'

Were he a weaker man, a less disciplined one, he might have said so. But he was Taskhand Verin of Den Thelyss and he had learned discipline before he had learned to talk. So, he said: "Your help would be greatly appreciated, thank you. I'll have the servants bring up some tea. There are, uh—" He straightened his back, summoning the composure that was befitting a Taskhand, even one with a dead brother. "There are boxes up there, they've been brought to the rooms already. Anything of value will be sold; the rest will be given to charity. The things— Well, if you find anything that might have sentimental value, something in his handwriting, perhaps, I think I should like to keep that, please."

The firbolg nodded sagely. "Of course. We will be careful with our selection."

With that, Verin turned around and— froze. Where was he even supposed to start? The towers had always seemed to huge for just Essek and he knew that there were very few personal belongings in them. Still, they would have to be scoured clean within the fortnight.

A large hand on his shoulder made him jump, although he'd never admit it. "Sometimes, when a task seems too large, you should start with the smallest part," the firbolg said. "If I were you, I'd start with the smallest room."

"Thank you, that, uh— that seems like good advice," Verin replied, still a bit startled and confused. "I, er— I'm afraid I didn't catch your name."

"Caduceus Clay. I live in a graveyard, so I'm used to this," Clay said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Verin furrowed his brows slightly. A graveyard? It seemed highly unlikely to him that one of the heroes of the Dynasty would live in a graveyard of all places. Perhaps they were not only liars, but impostors too? But they had the symbols of the Bright Queen, so there wasn't much that he could say.

"Right," he mumbled. "I believe the smallest room would be the closet. Although it might be tied with the bathroom..." He trailed off again. He had never seen Essek's bedroom in his towers. Judging by how many times he had even seen the inside of the building; he could count himself lucky if he even found the way there.

"Why don't we split up?" Clay suggested. "One group takes the closet, one the bathroom and one the bedroom. We'd get done sooner that way."

"That is a great idea, Caduceus," Jester said excitedly. "I'll take the bathroom; I promised— er, I'm curious if I can find more of that hair oil, I got for Fjord that one time!"

"Ohhh, are you saying this is... an investigation?!" the halfling joined in.

"That's exactly what I'm saying, Veth!"

"Seems like a case for Wildemount's best detectives!"

"Bye, Verin!" Jester called and he blinked and they were gone. Fjord joined them as well, muttering something about having to supervise them.

The purple pirate-tiefling shrugged, heading off in the same direction. "Well, I wouldn't mind rifling through some drawers. I'll have a look at that bedroom."

"Yeah, I don't need to see Essek's underwear, so I'll pass on the closet," Beau added tactfully—Verin was getting the sneaking suspicion that manners were not really her strong suit. She linked hands with the large woman at her side, pulling her along. "Come on, Yash."

"I'll go handle the tea," Clay said. "Don't worry about it." He vanished in the direction of the kitchen, his steps accompanied by the constant tap tap tap of his staff.

When Verin looked around, he realised that only the sad Empire human was left with him in the hallway. "If you wouldn't mind," he said, pointedly avoiding eye-contact, "I would love to have a look at the closet. I always, ah— appreciated your brother's sense of fashion."

Verin blinked at him a few times, then shrugged. "Sure." He began heading up the stairs.

"My condolences," the human continued. "I realise I didn't speak up earlier, but— I am sorry for your loss."

"Thank you," he said, letting the same numb feeling wash over him again that he had embraced since the news of Essek's death had reached him.

"I know that we seem like a bunch of, ah— forgive my language, but assholes, but we're really here to help. I will tell the others to tone it down a bit."

"Thank you," he repeated.

"If you'd prefer that we start in, ah— less personal rooms, we can do that also."

"If I'm perfectly honest, I don't even know what I should be doing there."

"Neither am I." The human laughed nervously. "I have dealt with grief before, but I've never had the, ah— how do you call it? Hang on." He pulled out a copper wire and whispered: "Beau, how do you say zweifelhafte Ehre in Common? You can reply to this message." A moment later he straightened. "Right. I never had the dubious honour of emptying out a deceased person's house before."

"Neither did I," Verin admitted. 'Usually, the deceased person comes back,' he didn't say. Instead, he opted for: "You're, er— What's the word in Common? You're weird? I'm sorry if that's insulting, I just— waele xanalressen [stupid languages]."

"I don't understand your words, but I think I understand the sentiment." The man grimaced. "And I've heard that one before. I hope we're not too much of a... too much."

"It's alright," he lied and opened the door to Essek's bedroom.

It wasn't alright; Verin wanted to weep again.

The door to the bathroom stood ajar, as did several drawers and cabinets, although he couldn't glance inside. Considering that he heard glass shatter and a quiet "oops" followed by a hushed "Jester!" he was rather glad about that. Besides, what he saw was already quite enough to handle. Beau was currently rifling through Essek's nightstand, the tall woman tossing unread books on the bed carelessly, while the lavender tiefling seemed to make his way through his brother's collections of make-up and jewellery alike.

They froze when they spotted him and the sad human in the door. "Heeey, Verin," Beau drawled.

"These were all still closed, I swear," the lavender tiefling said immediately, gesturing at the jars in front of them.

Verin just sighed in defeat. "I don't wear any make-up, I don't care; you can have it. Put the jewellery in the box to be sold; the books are for charity if he hasn't read them. Just leave the earrings in front of the mirror, please. Those were his favourites."

Without another glance at them, Verin headed straight to Essek's closet, desperate to get some quiet. He took a few moments to collect himself, before closing the door and leaning his head against it with a heavy thunk.

He stayed like that for a minute or maybe two until he heard someone clear their throat. "I have been debating for the past fifty-five seconds, if I should just Dimension Door out," the sad human said and Verin very nearly jumped out of his skin, "but that would be loud and I didn't want to startle you. Not that I didn't startle you like this but—"

"Vithin shu," Verin cursed.

"Vithin shu ke," the sad human agreed, his accent in Undercommon even heavier than normally.

For a moment, they both stared at each other, equally startled by the course of events. Then, the human looked away again. "I, ah— have started learning Undercommon before, um— well, before." Verin tried very hard to focus on the way the human was scratching at his forearms; that way he had something else to focus on besides his nearing breakdown.

"This is a bit embarrassing, but, ah— I believe I forgot to introduce myself," the human continued. "I'm Caleb Widogast. Essek and I were... friends, yes, and ah— colleagues, of some sort. It's... complicated."

He scratched at his arms again before turning towards the shelves and pulling out a stack of tunics. He unfolded one, looked at it, then carefully folded it again, cast a cantrip to smooth out the wrinkles, and put it in the charity box. Then he repeated the procedure with the next. And the next. And the next.

Verin frowned, thinking for a moment about his words. There was something about them that seemed painfully familiar, although he couldn't quite remember. Then: "The transmutation specialist."

Widogast looked up in surprise. "Yes."

"Essek told me of you," Verin admitted.

The last time they had seen each other had been here, in these towers, just a few months ago. He had found his brother in his office, pouring over notes for a new spell, alive and healthy as ever. As always, he had entered without knocking. As always, he had pretended to read the notes. Not as always, he had noticed something wrong. "Whose handwriting is that?" he had asked.

"What?" Essek had snapped, his head whipping up. Then, however, his expression had softened. "Oh. A friend's. A colleague, of sorts. He's helping me out, a bit."

"With the spell?" Verin had asked incredulously.

"Yes. He's a transmutation specialist; you know that's not my forte. Now give it back, will you?"

"A colleague, huh?" He had grinned and held the paper out of Essek's reach. "Are you sure that's all?"

Perhaps Essek had been sick after all, for the strangest thing had happened: instead of using his floating cantrip to snatch the notes back, he had gotten a dreamy, far-off look in his eyes. He had even smiled with an expression Verin might have called dopey, if it weren't his brother they were talking about. After a few moments, he had snapped out of it, sighed, and said: "It's complicated."

"Did he?" Widogast asked tentatively. "Did he, ah— did he say anything else about me?"

Verin pinned him down with a glare, sizing him up. In hindsight, he should have noticed the thick spellbook at his hip earlier; judging by his slim frame alone, he should have known the man was a wizard. He supposed Widogast was handsome enough, although his brother had never cared much for that, with his copper hair and his striking blue eyes. Blue eyes around which crows' feet were gathering, as he noticed to his dismay. 'He's human,' Verin reminded himself. He might have a few decades left, maybe, whereas Essek had centuries ahead of him. The thought why his brother might condemn himself to more loneliness crossed his mind, though it hardly mattered. His brother had been the first to die, after all.

"Verin?" Widogast inquired quietly.

"I'm sorry," he answered with a thick voice. "I got lost in my thoughts there. He, uhh— he said that he trusted you." That didn't even begin to cover it, but these Mighty Nein had been lying to him since the moment they got here, so what was a little lie by omission? Besides, there were some memories that he wanted to keep just to himself.

"Essek," he had teased, still waving the sheet of paper out his reach. "Come on! Aren't we brothers?"

Essek had crossed his arms and pouted. He hadn't done that since they were both little. "Unfortunately. You are a menace. And a child."

"If you tell me about him, I'll give it back. Is he handsome? Is he a drow? Where's he from? How did you meet? When will I meet him? Can I promise to kill him if he hurts you?"

"Verin!" Essek had groaned and hid his face in his hands.

"What do you do when you meet? I bet you stay up all night, talking about 'arcane research' or something."

"We do, in fact. Are you done now?"

"Oh, is that what young people call it these days?" He had cackled at his own joke.

"Evidently not," Essek had muttered. "Might I remind you that you're younger than me?"

"Might I remind you that you're a buzzkill?" Verin had shot back and placed the note down. He had gotten bored of his own game.

Essek had taken the sheet of paper almost reverently and thanked him. "I would have hated it to rewrite that page." He had smoothed it down, stored it safely away in a folder, silent for a long time. Then, he had said: "Caleb."

"Excuse me?"

"That's his name," Essek had said. "Caleb Widogast."

Verin had frowned. "Hey, Essek?"

"Hm?"

"You must trust him a lot, to share a spell with him."

His brother had taken a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. Verin hadn't expected him to answer, yet he'd said: "I do, actually. It's not the first spell we've created together and I would be honoured to create a thousand more with him. I'd trust him with my life, my death, and beyond. I think—" He'd huffed. "I think I trust him almost as much as I trust you."

Verin watched Widogast as he was looking through his brother's tunics, placing most of them in the charity box, and he wondered. Wondered if the trust Essek had obviously put in Widogast had been misplaced. Wondered if it had extended to his friends, as well. Wondered if ultimately trust had been his downfall, as he'd always feared.

Then again, if Essek had trusted him... perhaps that trust had been mutual. Perhaps they had been friends. Perhaps there was another person mourning his brother after all.

"Do I have something on my face?" Verin had given up on counting how many times Widogast had now startled him out of his thoughts.

"No, no I—," Verin stammered. "I'm sorry."

He tilted his head to the side. "For staring?"

"No, er— For your loss." Liar or no liar, it only seemed appropriate.

"Oh." Widogast turned back to the tunics. Verin probably should get started, too, shouldn't he? "Thank you. Though I'd wager your loss weighs heavier than mine."

"Probably," he agreed and turned to the task at hand. At this point, Widogast had moved on from the simple tunics to Essek's court regalia. After a short moment of consideration, Verin decided to look through the pants; he also had no interest in sorting through his dead brother's underwear.

Out of the corner of his eye he kept watching the wizard, pulling out one cloak after the other. At a few he wrinkled his nose, at others he just stared before putting them with the tunics. After a while one made him pause; an elaborate, beautiful robe in deep purple. "This is what he was wearing when we first met him," he said.

'He hated that one,' Verin thought. Not that he could say that out loud. Instead, he cocked his head and asked: "Are you sure? He has a lot of those. Had, I mean. Had a lot of those."

"Yeah, I'm sure." He tapped his temple with a faint smile. "I have a good memory."

"As does Essek," he snapped, suddenly feeling very defensive about his brother's capabilities. "I suppose most wizards do."

Infuriatingly, Widogast only nodded. "Indeed. Or they're not very good ones."

Silently, Verin turned back to the trousers. The sooner he got done, the sooner he got these people out of his brother's towers, the better. He didn't know for how long they worked in silence, Verin reminiscing about the times he had seen Essek wear the clothes and wondering about those he didn't know. Eventually, he folded the last of them and forced himself to return to the present. "I think we're done here," he announced. "Do you have a preference for a next room?"

"Perhaps the library?" Widogast offered a tentative smile. "I think I might be of more use there than folding clothes."

"More use than I will be, surely."

"I take it the wizardry doesn't run in the family, then?"

Verin only scoffed and opened the door to the bedroom again.

He immediately spotted Beau leafing through one of the books Essek had never read, while the tiefling was chatting amiably with the aasimar while braiding her hair. He also noted the boxes neatly stacked in the middle of the room. Besides that, he noticed with a heavy heart, the room looked much the same. If anything, it looked less orderly and empty than before. Except for—

"Where are Essek's earrings?" Verin demanded to know.

"What earrings?" the lavender tiefling replied with a too-wide grin the same moment Beau said: "Dude, there's tons of them, why don't—"

"No," he said decisively. "Essek's favourite earrings; they're always up here. I told you about them. Where are they?" His hands curled into fists, his neatly manicured fingernails pressing almost painfully into his skin.

"Perhaps you should look in one of the boxes," the aasimar woman suggested "I'm sure they're—"

"You're lying," Verin interrupted her, barely containing his anger. "Why are you lying? If they're in one of the boxes, then only because you put them there. So: where are they?"

Widogast only now stepped out of the closet, wearing an amber necklace he hadn't noticed before. "Verin—" he said tentatively, but he'd had enough.

"Shut up!" He startled himself with how loud his voice was. But he was beyond caring. "I know they're not in there, because the only ones to put them in there would have been you. So, either you're lying about having them put in there, or you're lying about stealing them, I don't care. Just— please. Please give them back."

The four of them passed a guilty glance. "We can't," Beau replied finally.

"The fuck you can't," Verin spat. "Give them back!"

"Verin, love, we would really love to," the tiefling added, "but we can't."

"I don't understand; is it precious things you want? Here, have some!" He strode over to the boxes and ripped the first open, tossing the lid towards the bathroom door Jester was peeking out of. He reached in to grab a necklace—an ugly one, he had always thought, with a stylised beacon—and threw it in their direction.

Beau caught it. Of course.

"Have a whole box, actually, if you like them so damn much." He reached inside and pulled out a jewellery box, tears prickling in his eyes. He threw one of those, too, just for good measure. It gave him some satisfaction that Widogast had to dodge it. "Just give me back the bloody earrings that my brother wore at my fucking consecution!" He was properly crying now and could only imagine the mess he looked like, but he had reached his limit. And, in his opinion, he was allowed to with all that was going on.

At least they looked a little bit guilty. "Fuck man, we didn't know," Beau mumbled.

"It's just one pair, Beau," Jester called over from the bathroom. "I'm sure it will be alright."

"Yes, there's no need for this to escalate," Fjord agreed and strode over to them, his hands raised innocently.

"I don't even know you people," Verin muttered, looking at the people crowding into his brother's bedroom. "Why did I even let you inside?"

"Do you want the earrings back?" the aasimar woman asked, reaching into a bag at her hip. Had she been carrying a greatsword for the whole time? Verin suddenly noticed how overpowered he was, were he to face all of them. "You can have them back if you want. Here, you can have them back."

"For a moment," Widogast added, slowly drawing closer to him and taking the earrings from the aasimar. He held them out on his flat hand, almost like he had seen soldiers offer treats to horses. His whole demeanour reminded him of someone trying to calm a spooked animal. For some reason, that seemed hilarious to him and he couldn't help the hysterical giggle that escaped his throat.

"Verin, I need you to calm down," he continued. "I know that's easier said than done, but you need your head."

"I think we should all calm down," Clay said from the doorway. And despite being surprised again, he did. It didn't make any sense, but few things these days did.

"Did it work?" the halfling asked. Verin wasn't really sure what she was talking about.

"It did," Clay confirmed.

"Gut," Widogast said and pressed the earrings that had seemed so important a moment ago into Verin's hands. "I think we should maybe go somewhere else, ja? Will you come with me?"

Inadvisable as it might be, if Essek had trusted that man, he should, too. And out of all of the Nein, he seemed to be the most normal one. The one he could see Essek with most. So, he nodded.

"I'll get us back to the kitchen, quickly." Caleb held out his hand and Verin closed his eyes, steeling himself. 'I hate Dimension Door,' was the last thing that crossed his mind before the teleportation spell ripped him away, together with: 'We haven't been to the kitchen, yet.'

Evidently, there went something wrong with the spell. Verin didn't know much about magic, but he knew Dimension Door couldn't transport more than two people. So, when he heard Beau groan and say "Fuck, dude, warn us next time," he knew that something wasn't right.

"You knew about the plan, Beauregard," Widogast replied.

"It doesn't matter," Fjord decided. "Caduceus, do you think you could make tea again? I think the Calm Emotions is about to wear off."

Cautiously, Verin opened one eye, then the other. They were, in fact, standing in a kitchen, as far as he could tell. All of the Mighty Nein were surrounding him. The furniture seemed to have been made for people taller than them; Essek probably would need to float in order to avoid awkwardly climbing onto the chair. The firbolg, however, who was fussing with a teapot, seemed to fit right in. All in all, the interior was very rustic. And very much not in Essek's towers, not that he had ever seen that room, of course.

The panic hit him once more. Verin whirled around to the wizard, instinctively grasping for his sword. "Where the fuck—" he faltered, finding his hip bare. Of course, he hadn't brought it for the funeral. Instead, he opted for just grasping Widogast by the lapels and lifting him up a bit. It was supposed to be menacing, which surely would be more effective, were humans not so annoyingly tall. "Where the fuck are we?!" he spat out.

A lot of things seemed to happen at once—he heard a "Fuck, man, what-" from Beau, a "Well, Mister Thelyss" from the pirate, several hands trying to tug him away from the weak wizard—but he didn't pay them any mind. He just shook Widogast, who looked entirely too calm for his liking, and demanded: "Answer me!"

"Leave him," was all Widogast said. "He has every right to be angry."

Indeed, the people grasping at him retreated, still on guard and surrounding him. There was a creak outside the door and Verin desperately wished for his sword once more. Then, a voice cut through the tense silence that had descended over the kitchen: "Caleb, is that you? You're back early."

"Yeah, there were some complications. Best come and look yourself, Schatz."

There was a sigh that was entirely too familiar for Verin's liking. Then, the door opened with a creak and in walked a dead man. "Complications," Essek Thelyss said with a fond smile. "I was just a Sending away, what did you come here fo— oh."

The person wearing his brother's face stopped in their tracks as they saw him. A couple of complicated emotions passed over his face—confusion, surprise, regret, guilt. If he hadn't known before, Verin was certain now that they were impostors, all of them. His brother would never tolerate such a display of weakness. Still, the impostor said: "Hello, brother."

Verin whipped his head back around to the wizard in his grasp. "What the fuck are you playing at?" he hissed.

"I- what- Verin!" the Essek-impostor sputtered. "What are you doing; put him down!"

"I would appreciate that, yes," Widogast added.

"Not before you don't tell me what's going on."

"Going on?" The impostor sneered and shook his head in a perfect imitation of his brother. "Nothing is going on, Verin."

"You died," he accused him.

"Evidently not," Essek scoffed.

Verin narrowed his eyes, looking from the man claiming to be his brother over the other too calm wizard to the rest of the Nein, seemingly perfectly happy to let this play out. "Prove it," he demanded. "Tell me something only my brother would know."

"You've become paranoid," he noted and Verin couldn't decide if it sounded proud or disappointed. "Alright. When you and I were in our early thirties, you once got in trouble for scaling the outside of mother's mansion. Rightfully, I should have gotten in trouble, too, but I was hiding on the attic. And the reason you never told anyone, is because then you'd have had to explain that I, the wizard, had somehow outpaced you, the fighter, in a climbing competition."

Verin wrinkled his nose at that. "Well, my brother cheated."

"I did not cheat, thank you very much!" He huffed indignantly and crossed his arms. "You didn't say 'no magic' before we started."

He stared at Essek for a few moments. "It's you," he whispered.

"Obviously."

Verin dropped the wizard on the ground and looked over at his brother; really looked. The man looked nothing like the one he had known for most of his life. His hair was longer than it had ever been since he'd cut it off and his bare feet were touching the ground. His clothes were casual, a simple tunic and trousers. After this day, Verin knew for a fact that not even Essek's trancing clothes were that informal, and yet his brother looked more comfortable in them in another's house than he had in decades. On top of that, he kept glancing over to Widogast. And smiling. Essek was smiling.

No, this man looked nothing like the one Verin had known for nearly a century. But he looked a lot like his brother.

"You're alive," he said stupidly.

"Yes, of course I am," Essek said, as if Verin hadn't just attended his funeral.

It felt only right to tell him so: "Why are you alive? I was at your funeral."

"That's a long story," he sighed and floated onto one of the chairs that were slightly too tall for him. He accepted a cup of tea from Clay with thanks and turned back to Verin. "Why are you here?"

"Well, that's a pretty long story, too," Jester spoke up. "He kind of started freaking out about your earrings, I think? And he was crying and looking pretty awful and everything, right Caleb?"

"I, ah— didn't think he'd believe us if we told him about you," Caleb said. "So, we had agreed beforehand to bring him here, in case of an emergency."

"He thought we were lying," Clay added.

"I suppose it is my story to tell," Essek said. "Earrings, Verin?"

"They're your favourite," Verin said stupidly and held them out to him.

His face grew soft. "Oh," he said as he took them gingerly, "I didn't know that you kne—"

Before he could overthink and do something stupid like stop himself, he surged forward and enveloped his brother in a tight hug. After a moment Essek closed his arms around him, too.

It seemed so unreal, to be able to hold him after mourning him for what felt like years. All the worries, all the grief and anger that had crushed him in the past few weeks and for what? For the bastard to still be alive after all. It wasn't fair. Why had he had to go through all of that? And why did he feel the pressing urge to start crying again? He should be happy, shouldn't he, that his brother wasn't dead. So why did it make him feel so awful?

"I think this is our cue to leave," Fjord said. Verin felt his brother nod and heard the Mighty Nein shuffle out of the kitchen, the door closing behind them with a creak.

Only then, Essek spoke up. "Verin," he asked quietly, "are you crying?"

"Shut up," he mumbled through the thick fog of tears and snot, definitely not crying. "I hate you, Essek. Do you know what I went through?"

"Meeting the Mighty Nein? Yes, I can imagine."

"They're horrible," he complained. "They're loud and they're rude and they had absolutely no respect for any of your belongings! I thought I was going mad."

"They are. They also are my friends, you know."

"How?" he asked agonised.

"I know they don't look like it, but they are surprisingly capable. And I am sure that you've noticed most of them to be annoyingly charming. But I think their absolute worst traits are their infinite stubbornness and perseverance. They quite literally did not leave me alone until they had befriended me."

Verin glanced up at him questioningly. "And were half in love with the wizard?" he guessed.

Essek scowled darkly, a faint blush colouring his cheeks. "Perhaps."

He snorted and disentangled himself from their embrace. Very calmly he said: "You're a liar."

Essek looked genuinely startled at that. "What?"

"You said, you trusted me more than him. Why then, did he know and I didn't?"

"It's... complicated," he said.

"You wizards say that a lot."

"Verin." Essek closed his eyes. "I trust you. Implicitly. And I care about you. Which is why I chose not to burden you with the knowledge of my misdeeds. I didn't— I didn't want to put you in an impossible situation to choose between me and our queen."

He laughed nervously. "What on earth are you talking about? I mean, you didn't commit treason or anything."

Essek didn't answer, avoiding eye-contact instead.

"Right?"

Still, Essek kept stubbornly quiet.

"Oh," Verin breathed. He took a moment trying to reconcile what he knew about his brother with the fact that he was apparently a traitor. It all fit together ridiculously easy. "The beacons."

Essek looked up at him in shock and he knew he had hit the mark. "What?"

"You stole the beacons." Now that he thought about it, it made perfect sense. Essek had been studying them at the time, one of the only people with frequent access to them. He had always been fascinated by them, yet his theories had been rejected for their heretic nature. As Shadowhand, he had also regular contact with counterparts from the Empire, albeit not officially. Then, a few years after Essek’s research had been denied, they had vanished. How had he never seen this before?

"Oh Essek...," he said softly.

"No, please— I don’t—Please don’t—” He seemed to deflate, curling in on himself. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you, I—”

"I don't care,” Verin interrupted his frantic ramblings.

"What?" Essek looked up at him, looking just as shocked as Verin felt.

“I don’t care,” he repeated, realising that it was true the moment the words left his mouth. For how could he care about something as trivial as treason when Essek was sitting right in front of him, alive and well. "You're my brother, I don't care. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a year. Maybe in ten. Right now, I only care that you're alive."

“I—What—I don’t—” Essek stuttered, lifting and then lowering his hands a few times. “I don’t know how— If I can—Fuck.”

There was a joke on the tip of his tongue, but even he knew that this wasn’t the right time for it. Essek was obviously trying to tell him something and it took him a minute to decipher that strange behaviour. “Are you asking for a hug?” he hazarded a guess.

An agonised expression passed over his face and for a moment Verin thought there were tears gathering in his brother’s eyes. Surely not. “I don’t know if I may. I don’t mean to overstep—”

Without further ado, Verin stepped forward and gathered a yelping Essek up and squeezed him tightly. “Of course you may!” he assured him, awkwardly patting his shaking shoulders. “I love you, Essek. I am very glad that you’re alive.”

“I’m very glad to see you, too,” Essek answered and squeezed him a little tighter.

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tigerkirby215 · 3 years

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5e Vex, the Gloomiest build (League of Legends)

(Artwork by Horace “Hozure” Hsu. Made for Riot Games.)

Writing this build in a dark room late at night, super tired and stuff... Stuck inside cause of this dumb virus... AFKing in TFT for a Prestige skin like a tryhard... It’s kinda aesthetic, ya know?

GOALS

Another person to kill... Shadow? Can you handle it? - You don’t need best friends: you’ve got your Shadow. He’s the only cool one, because he’s basically you.

Ugh. Can we get some rain clouds in here? - No one likes a debbie downer, but everyone loves a good scare!

Man, walking suuuucks - Nowadays even the anti-dash champion needs a resetting dash. “Do the thing, Shadow.”

RACE

I could make Vex a Harengon to justify her rabbit ears, but she doesn’t really do much “jumping.” That, and I didn’t buy Wild Beyond the Witchlight. So Halfling still works good enough for a yordle. Your Dexterity increases by 2, and while your movement speed goes down to 25 you have Halfling Nimbleness to move through people who are bigger than you. You’re also “Brave” for advantage against fears (when you hang around the Shadow Isles stuff really isn’t that scary) and of course have good ol’ yordle Lucky to reroll Nat 1s.

Halflings are normally pretty cheerful but Ghostwise Halflings are perfectly dark. You’d normally increase your Wisdom by 1 but I’d recommend increasing your Constitution instead. But I mean, it’s not a big deal if you take Wisdom instead. It is only +1. You also get Silent Speech to keep to team chat with 30 foot telepathy. I mean, they have to understand your languages but at least you don’t have to tell everyone what you’re talking about. And oh yeah you obviously speak Common and Halfling.

ABILITY SCORES

15; CHARISMA - Turns out when you don’t release any new yordles for (wait it’s been 5 years since Kled was released? Holy shit) people end up wanting them.

14; DEXTERITY - Just because you don’t like walking doesn’t mean you’re slow.

13; CONSTITUTION - Imagine dying like a normie.

12; WISDOM - Vex isn’t sad because she’s pessimistic. She’s just realistic.

10; INTELLIGENCE - You’re too cool for school. (And I needed everything else more.)

8; STRENGTH - Ughhh I don’t wanna lift heavy stuff! I’m tired...

BACKGROUND

I guess you’re technically a Haunted One, even if the black mist is the best thing that ever happened to you. You get proficiency in Arcana and Survival as well as two language of your choice to talk to your "allies.” (I guess one of them has to be exotic or whatever.) (I’d personally pick Sylvan as the language of yordles and whatever language the majority of your party knows as your second choice, but that’s just me.)

The thing that sucks about having a Heart of Darkness is that everyone keeps trying to help you, thinking that your sadness (and the living shadow on your back) is something to be fixed. I mean, at least you can get the NPC normies to help you, as long as you don’t spook ‘em. “No doctors! I told you: being sad makes me happy.”

(Artwork by @ToggleD0wnFall on Twitter.)

THE BUILD

or whatever...

LEVEL 1 - SORCERER 1

Starting as a Sorcerer for saving throws and stuff. Also proficiency in Intimidation and... Persuasion, I guess? Look, persuading people that you’re fine “no really” is a skill too.

I wonder what Sorcerous Origin we’ll pick... If only there was one based entirely on shadows and darkness... Oh hey Shadow Magic. As a Shadow Sorcerer you get Eyes of the Dark for 120 feet of Darkvision to see with your dumb Halfling eyes, and Strength of the Grave which will let Shadow take a hit for you. (As long as you make a good Charisma save.)

But of course the main appeal of a Sorcerer is the Spellcasting. You can learn 4 cantrips from the Sorcerer list and two level spells: For cantrips Mage Hand will let Shadow pick things up for you, Mind Sliver and Sword Burst will keep loud people off you both up close and from afar, and Prestidigitation will let you do all sorts of normie yordle magic. As for leveled spells Shield and Mage Armor are both kinda mandatory for some Personal Space.

LEVEL 2 - WARLOCK 1

What? Did you really think we wouldn’t get at least some support from adults? Work for that cool gloomy dude Viego and make a pack with The Undead. That’s because Undead are super dark and morbid and have a Form of Dread: as a bonus action you can turn on your Doom and Gloom for 1 minute. You get some temporary hit points, fear people when you hit them, and are immune to fears yourself. You can transform a number of times equal to your proficiency bonus and regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.

You also get Pact Magic, which is different from normie Spellcasting because you get the cool stuff done with just a Short Rest. Anyways you can learn two cantrips from the Warlock list like Minor Illusion to have Shadow trick some normies and Eldritch Blast to Eldritch while you Blast. You can also grab some first level Warlock spells like Hex to mark people you don’t like, and Arms of Hadar if you really need your Personal Space.

LEVEL 3 - WARLOCK 2

Second level Warlocks get their Eldritch Invocations for extra stuff that you don’t have to put effort into. While Armor of Shadows does exist it’s honestly better for you to cast Mage Armor with a spell slot, so with that being said take Agonizing Blast to agonize while you blast and Eldritch Mind so you can keep your concentration around annoying people.

You can also learn another spell like Hellish Rebuke, because people just keep barging into your Personal Space!

LEVEL 4 - SORCERER 2

Now that you can agonize your blasts it’s time to go back to Sorcerer. Second level Sorcerers get a Font of Magic for Sorcery Points which currently don’t do much other than give you more spell slots. You can turn your Warlock slots into Sorcery points though, which is good because they come back on a Short Rest but the rest of your magic does not.

You can also cast another spell like Earth Tremor, to slow people down with Looming Darkness and sunder the land with your edginess.

LEVEL 5 - SORCERER 3

Third level Sorcerers finally get Metamagic! Empowered Spell will allow you to maximize your damage and retain your role as an artillery mage. Alternatively if you want to guarantee fears in your foes take Heightened Spell to give them disadvantage to resist Shadow’s influence.

If you want Shadow to stick around then Dust Devil will swirl around for quite awhile. Alternatively Shadow (Magic) also teaches you Darkness for free, and you can cast it with 2 Sorcery Points to see through it! Your friends can’t see through it, but you can team up with Shadow for some powerful combos when you can see them but they can’t see you!

(Artwork by @jpdiasarts on Twitter.)

LEVEL 6 - SORCERER 4

4th level Sorcerers get the first of many Ability Score Improvements, but I can’t take Fey Touched every time for Flash. That, and we won’t give into basic yordle society. So let’s get value out of our Halfling race with the Second Chance feat. Along with +1 to your Charisma you can also use your reaction to make an enemy you can see attacking you reroll their attack roll, potentially making them miss.

Don’t use this against an attack that you can Shield against, but if someone gets a really good roll you can use this to get your Personal Space back! You can only use this once per combat though (it comes back when you roll for initiative!) so make sure to use it when it matters to keep your spell slots in check.

Oh and you can also learn another spell, and another cantrip! For your cantrip Shocking Grasp will help you push people away if they get too close (folk tend to react poorly when zapped by a tazer!) As for leveled spells Web will keep foes from dashing around, and is also pretty flammable. Huhn; wonder if that’ll be useful.

LEVEL 7 - SORCERER 5

5th level Sorcerers get gifts from the Ruined Queen Tasha in the form of Magical Guidance. You can use a Sorcery point to reroll a d20 if needed, potentially squeezing a success out. Don’t use this all the time (even if Warlock slots means you’ll have plenty of Sorcery points to spare) but this can be very useful in an emergency!

You can also learn third level spells and hey: Fireball may be a normie spell, but it’s still pretty effective. It’s maybe a bit too flashy to be Looming Darkness but it’s a good source of AoE damage which isn’t as loud and annoying as Shatter.

LEVEL 8 - SORCERER 6

All this time being a Shadow Sorcerer and Shadow hasn’t even done anything for us! Well how about you go out there and get some work done, Shadow? For 3 Sorcery points you can summon a Hound of Ill Omen to target a foe within 120 feet of you.

Shadow is basically a Dire Wolf except he’s Medium, has temp HP equal to half your Sorcerer level, can move through stuff (but takes damage if he ends his turn in stuff), and automatically chases whoever you told him to go for. Shadow will appear 30 feet away from the person you told him to get, and will chase after him like I said. All he’ll really do is attack the target you told him to though; he won’t even opportunity attack unless it’s the person you told him to chase. But if Shadow’s near someone they have disadvantage on their saving throws, which is pretty cool. (Unfortunately it’s only against spells, not your Form of Dread.)

Speaking of saving throws: Slow is a really great way to keep normies from running around doing annoying stuff. And you don’t have to hit Shadow with it which is pretty cool.

(Artwork by @Lauriquess on Twitter.)

LEVEL 9 - WARLOCK 3

Third level Warlocks get to choose their Pact Boon: if you want a really small Shadow go for Pact of the Chain, and if you want your cool necklace go for Pact of the Talisman, but we’ll be going for Pact of the Tome because you’re mostly a spellcaster really. (And we definitely don’t have enough cantrips.)

You get a Book of Shadows (See? Books can be cool!) with three cantrips: take Thaumaturgy to be extra spooky, Vicious Mockery for some sick teenage burns, and Sapping Sting to make normies fall over when you fear them. Some might say that 10 total cantrips by level 9 is a bit overkill but look on the dark side: you’ve now got a cantrip for basically every type of saving throw in case you can’t hit with Eldritch Blast!

Honestly none of the Pact Boons are particularly important for Vex so I picked the one that made the most sense. Feel free to take something more practical since 10 cantrips is admittedly overkill.

Oh and you can learn more Warlock spells, so now it’s time to finally take Misty Step. For Flash!

LEVEL 10 - WARLOCK 4

4th level Warlocks get another Ability Score Improvement: getting more Charisma for better spellcasting is probably a good idea.

You can also learn another spell, and hey look another cantrip. For your cantrip even if more damage options are kinda overkill by this point Chill Touch inflicts Grievous Wounds, which might be useful. You can also grab another second level spell and Blindness / Deafness (which is on the Undead list) is far more useful than any of the other normie options you’d have at this level anyways.

LEVEL 11 - WARLOCK 5

5th level Warlocks get another Eldritch Invocation, and even if you’ve got a resetting dash you’re still a squishy mage. So grab Tomb of Levistus for Zhonya's Hourglass.

You can also grab third level Warlock spells now! Remember how I took Fireball and complained that it wasn’t a good replica of Looming Darkness? Well Hunger of Hadar takes your Concentration but it’s a lot edgier!

LEVEL 12 - WARLOCK 6

6th level Undead Warlocks have become Grave Touched by the mist, and can make mist of their own! Along with being able survive without eating, drinking, or breathing you can turn any of your damage into necrotic damage. If you’re in your Form of Dread however you can add one extra damage die to whatever you’re using to get people to buzz off, adding to that morbid and macabre aesthetic.

You can also add another spell and if you’re bored with Shadow being a wolf how about you make them a Summon Shadowspawn? Weaponize your Fury, Despair, or Fear (I’d honestly recommend Fury since it has good synergy with your Dreadful Aspect) and work together with Shadow to deal with all your annoying foes! I’d also suggest replacing Hellish Rebuke with Counterspell, because even if the former fits better the latter is way more useful.

(Artwork by Jennifer Wuestling. Made for Riot Games.)

LEVEL 13 - WARLOCK 7

7th level Warlocks can finally activate Shadow Surge. Relentless Hex lets you mark a foe with Hex and then dash to them. And technically you can move Hex around after the fact to reset your dashes! And while you’re at it you may as well grab Dimension Door for Summoner Teleport.

You could also upgrade Summon Shadowspawn to Summon Aberration if you so desire, but Summon Shadowspawn is more than strong enough and far more fun and thematic.

LEVEL 14 - WARLOCK 8

Another Ability Score Improvement. Yay. Cap off your Charisma for the best spellcasting you can get out of Shadow. You can also learn another spell, but we’re going to wait for...

LEVEL 15 - WARLOCK 9

9th level Warlocks get another Eldritch Invocation: even if it’s kinda ineffective Ascendant Step is still pretty useful to have Shadow carry you around. I mean yeah it’s slow but not that much slower than walking for you, and Shadow can lift you up in the air. “Shadow; carry me...”

You can also learn 5th level spells. If one guy’s being particularly annoying Negative Energy Flood can get them to shut up and work for you. Alternatively if you want more Personal Space Antilife Shell is on the Undead List and will make sure normies keep faaaaar away.

LEVEL 16 - WARLOCK 10

Are you ever so sick of everything that you just want to explode? Necrotic Husk has two benefits: for one you’re resistant to Necrotic damage, and immune while in your Form of Dread because being around Viego for so long means you’re used to his work.

But additionally when you are reduced to 0 hit points you can use your reaction to drop to 1 hit point instead and cause your body to explode! Each creature of your choice within 30 feet of you takes 2d10 + your warlock level in Necrotic damage. You do gain 1 level of exhaustion after using this, and after using it once you can’t do so again until you finish 1d4 long rests. So I’d perhaps use Strength of the Grave first unless you really need to lash out.

I hope you weren’t expecting more spells because you aren’t getting them from Warlock: just a cantrip. By this point we’ve honestly got far too many cantrips so I dunno maybe just grab Prestidigitation again and swap it out from Sorcerer when you get the chance.

(Artwork by @DukkoArt on Twitter.)

LEVEL 17 - SORCERER 7

Finally back to our yordle roots: 7th level Sorcerers get 4th level spells like Storm Sphere for a sphere of darkness and angst. But I mean the real benefit is that you get more Sorcery points let’s be real.

Oh and you can swap out Prestidigitation for Gust I guess. Spooky winds and stuff. Either this level or next level depending on your DM.

LEVEL 18 - SORCERER 8

Your last Ability Score Improvement... You’re gonna have to ask: what’s more important to me? More Metamagic, or more Eldritch Invocations? If Metamagic is to your liking take Metamagic Adept for Careful Spell and Distant Spell along with two more Sorcery points to use on them. If you like Eldritch Invocations though Eldritch Adept has a ton of options as a level 10 Warlock. I won’t tell you what invocation to take (they’re all great boosts but none of them shout out at me as something you should prioritize) as there are plenty of options to make your own Vex now that they’re all grown up.

I can at least tell you what spell to take: none of them! Wait until next level!

Oh and you can swap out Prestidigitation for Gust I guess.

LEVEL 19 - SORCERER 9

9th level Sorcerers can learn 5th level spells which means you’ve finally caught up to your Warlock slots. And look at that: the good wish Tasha gave you one last way to weaponize Shadow. Bigby’s Hand does a bunch of cool stuff and is pretty much the ultimate way to make Shadow crush some normies. (Most literally.) Alternatively if you want to borrow from Viego Enervation will let you heal from the mist and also do some damage. Great if you’re stuck in a corner with a bunch of annoying normies.

LEVEL 20 - SORCERER 10

Our final level is the 10th level of Sorcerer for one last spell, one last cantrip, and one last metamagic option! For your metamagic it’s honestly about time you take Quickened Spell to up your DPS. For your cantrip take Mold Earth to dig holes in the sand and brood. And as for your leveled spell? Honestly I just like Synaptic Static, and there isn’t much else I want anyways.

FINAL BUILD

PROS

We’re all doomed. But you’re more doomed - 5th level spells pack more than enough punch, and you’ve got plenty of them. Warlock slots will always be at your fingertips, and Sorcery points give you plenty of flexibility too!

I can feel it: someone’s happy over there! - Along with giving you a temporary hitpoint shield Form of Dread puts a nice bit of CC on all your abilities. Keep enemies scared and sad with tons of Doom and Gloom!

Ugh. Stop copying me Shadow! - Hounds of Ill Omen are cool. Summon Shadowspawn is also cool. Bigby’s Hand is especially cool. And hey: even your lower level Concentration spells like Hex? They’re pretty cool too.

CONS

Ughhhhhhhhhh this is gonna take foreeeever! - You’ve got limited fumes, even for a coffeelock. Form of Dread has limited uses and there’s only so much spell slot melting you can do to get your magic back.

I’m dancing... Happy? - You’ve got a really boring set of really normie skills... and if you’re playing Vex the way she’s meant to be played you’re probably not going to use any of them except for Intimidation.

Yup; the glass is half empty - Half your levels are Sorcerer levels, meaning you’re squishy. You’ve also got Mage Armor on which guess what: also means you’re squishy. People who hit teenagers sure are lame but it’s really not hard to Power Word Kill you.

But I guess you’re pretty cool overall. Shadow’s an alright partner and you can spread Ruination even without Viego. Trudge around and get people to frown for once. There’s nothing wrong with being sad, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting the world to be sad. But do try to at least be happy out of character, because we play games to have fun. I mean, who’d play a video game that just makes you depressed and angry?

(Artwork by @AzzylumArt on Twitter.)

#dnd #dnd 5e #dnd build #dnd guide #League of Legends #League of Legends Vex #vex league of legends #Vex #yordle #shadow isles #dnd warlock #dnd sorcerer #shadow #meh #whatever #I dunno what to tag this

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starkeaton · 4 years

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the adventure zone: graduation character list

Well, i accidentally deleted the original graduation character list post, so here i am making another one. Oops. And as always, if anyone has important details i should add then feel free to suggest them!

Here are all the characters introduced in episodes 1-25. Named characters only!

Also i can’t hide spoilers! So, um..... I can’t put spoilers on this one. If you need the version with spoilers try this version of the post that i made on the adventure zone subreddit but youre not missing out on much.

# -EPISODE 1- (19 characters)

Hieronymous Wiggenstaff (he/him): Head of the Hero/Villain school. at least 400 years old. wears shining blue armor with gold accents. also an elf. according to Tomas, he led the charge at the "battle of blood valley", brought the Kingdoms of Rickart and Dawnbreak to a peace treaty, and founded the school. a little boastful, a little prideful, [SPOILERS OMITTED], and overall a pretty good dude.

Higglemas Wiggenstaff (he/him): Head of the Sidekick/Henchperson annex, cranky old elf. has a dog named hero who shows no signs of anything strange at all, ever.

Gary (he/him): friendly room gargoyle. pseudo-hivemind.

Groundsy (he/him): the groundskeeper. a pretty nice fellow. don't go in his shed.

Hernandez (he/him): beautiful centaur professor of animal handling.

Jimson (he/him): human battlegrounds trainer for sidekicks/henchpeople, world famous featherweight champion, wields a staff. married to crushman.

Crushman (he/him): silver dragonborn with a sickle, and self-described beefy boy! heavyweight blood champion married to jimson. never lost a match for 8 years. full name Frostus Crushman.

Rolandus Fontaine (he/him): former prince, son of deposed king, kind of an asshole, maybe. wears a cape (important detail)

Zana (she/her): "terrifying" tiefling villain sorcerer, friend of rolandus. barkept the test tavern in ep2

Rhodes (she/her): hero ranger, friend of rolandus.

Buckminster Eden (he/him): hero guy. son of "The Iron Lord". their dad is stronger than rolandus's dad. his wiki page says rogue so i think hes a rogue? i never caught that and ive listened more times than i wish i did

Leon (he/him): softspoken buff, bald "fighter" (although i dont remember any clarification on how exactly he fights), sidekick of buckminster, around 28. anyone else keep forgetting he's bald? i keep forgetting it. >!gets sorta-drafted into becoming a falcon for higglemas and so far hasn't done much else.!<

Rainer Michelle (she/her): cheerful villainous necromancer with a floating chair. also, her name is pronounced "rainier" despite not being confirmed as such? travis ships her with fitzroy.

Tomas (he/him): human man with "kind eyes" and a good (psychic???) memory. guidance counselor.

Stewart LeBoeuf (he/him): brawny human man. serves food. there is no joke here, i promise

Mulligan (he/him): teaches potions. mentioned but doesn't appear yet. and we're like 25 episodes in. maybe we'll see him someday

Germaine, Victoria, Rattles (he/him,she/her,???/???): Skeleton crew. They live in the training room i guess, and as a result can never die, because "no one dies in the training room!" (note: someone now HAS to die in the training room). also their races are never explicitly stated but i guess they're probably human? in episode 3 travis brings up something about how many bones are in "the human body" and at this point i think i'm looking too deep into this so i'll just forget about it and you probably should too.

# -EPISODE 2- (9 characters)

Riveau (he/him): halfling, blame-taking teacher.

Mimi (they/them): gnome sidekick who builds cool robot prosthetics

Bartholemus (he/him): owl aarakocra accountant teacher, known for being the best accountant in the land and having a face some might describe as "smoochable". very pro capitalist :’( hope he gets better

Ramos (she/her): goliath teacher of shieldwork. *

Dip (she/her): sidekick, half-orc twin of pip

Pip (she/her): hero, half-orc twin of dip

Festo (they/them): fairy with "beautiful gossamer wings", independent study teacher of magic, loves to party

Snippers (he/him?): Let me tell you my story about Snippers the magic crab. When Travis gave the list of animals that Griffin could choose as Fitzroy's familiar's current form, he listed crab near the start, and this gave me excitement. Now i knew that crab was pretty unlikely but god i hoped that he would choose it. When the list went on- Bat, Cat, Crab, Frog, Hawk, Lizard, Owl, Poisonous Snake, Fish, Rat, Raven, Seahorse, Spider or Weasel- I nearly lost hope. I was hoping so hard that Griffin would choose the crab, but i was ready to accept a non-crab familiar. It was just buried in that list. It wasn't the most useful animal and it was an obscure pick. And as Travis informed him that it didn't have to keep the form for the whole campaign, Griffin said those five words i wanted to hear so, so badly. "Well then it's a crab." Folks, I do not often react physically when something happens in media. But in that moment, i remember very clearly, i fist-pumped and yelled, "YES!!!!!!"

so anyway, Fitzroy has a crab.

Jackle (he/him): kenku teacher of sneakery. creepy dude. apparently knows something about argo? also his name is not spelled "jackal" for some reason. Also in later episodes theyve started calling him "The Jackle" for some reason??? *

# -EPISODE 3- (1 character)

Dakota (they/them): tavern instructor, clad in black/red leather. no race stated? probably human. *

# -EPISODE 4- (6 characters)

Gerry & Tom (she/her, he/him): shopkeepers at barns and nobles who seem to have very bad names. also constantly competing for customers? these guys got dropped faster than the heathcliff quests, which is honestly just sad.

Barb (she/her): the bartender. runs Springs Eternal in Last Hope. has a sweet seeing-eye hawk familiar.

Jaryd Reginald (he/him): owner of Reginald Ore. Wants the workers to be held responsible for the damage caused by the xorn. (fun fact: originally i wrote down "Jerrod" because i wanted it to sound like a fantasy name, then realized it was probably "Jared" because theyre named after listeners, but i was pleased to find it confirmed that it's actually "Jaryd")

Candice (she/her): A Miner. thought those werent allowed in bars but, i guess not. Wants the mine owner to be held responsible for the xorn's damage.

Jade Johnson Esq. (she/her): lawyer.

# -EPISODE 5- (1 character)

Xorn: a big hungry gem eating guy from the plane of earth Low-Down Deep with 3 arms and 3 legs. why did travis just say "multi-armed" instead of specifying it was 3? who knows! Anyway it leaves

# -EPISODE 6- (3 characters)

Osric (he/him): the man, the myth, the bursar. finally shows up after being mentioned in episodes 2 and 4. he's an elf.

breeze through the willows (she/her): Pegasus attacked by demons, lost her parents. introduced in ep1 but gets a name here so fuck it. also in ep>!16!< we find out shes a "white arabian pegasus" and i dont think thats a spoiler bc we shouldve really known it from the beginning

Sabor (he/him): Librarian/research teacher. also a TORTLE. Really good at recalling stuff, i guess. kinda reminds me of Tomas's memory thing but i'm sure that's just a coincidence... *

# -EPISODE 7- (1 character)

Mosh (he/him): The goliath blacksmith who welcomes argo into the unbroken chain. Also, and this is specific to the tumblr version of this post, all the characters with an * at the end of their descriptions are also members of the unbroken chain. if someone knows how to do spoilers on tumblr please tell me

# -EPISODE 8-

# -EPISODE 9- (2 characters)

Eeiïäá#æ&éñn (pronounced like "Ian") (he/him?): an imp but without a shitty voice. also happens to not be violent. what a coincidence?

Terence (he/him): a chain devil with a real demonic name. minor boss of the imps. very convincing and very threatening. has the frightening ability to make you zone out during his fight

# -EPISODE 10- (2 characters)

Althea Song (she/her): elf with autumn-orange hair. representative from heroic oversight guild. i'd like to personally thank travis for spelling her name out.

Crabtree (she/her): Artificing teacher. Long gray hair with a long grey beard. no mentioned race, one might guess dwarf but that would be an assumption i suppose. also unbroken chain member, presumably the dwarf argo didn't recognize in episode 7.

# -EPISODE 11- (3 characters)

Marie (she/her): Grey-haired elf woman. She's the school's physician, i guess. Member of the unbroken chain.

Dendra Maplecourt (she/her): Fitzroy's mom. Has hot mint gum, i guess. She was mentioned earlier but i wasn't convinced she was a real person until this episode

Cool Gary (he/him): AYY ITS ME GARYR

# -EPISODE 12-

no new characters again!

# -EPISODE 13- (7 characters hhhyyyuu)

Kale (???/???): Head of the Placement Department, in charge of real world assignments. First mentioned in Ep4 but i missed that the last few times bc it is so brief. Gives exposition about missions i guess????? is that the only reason this chara cter exists

satyr thief (unnamed) (he/him): tries to rob thundermen, dies instantly

Ogre (he/him): teamed up with the satyr. his name is ogre.

Moon (he/him): A Sidekick. small pale sullen guy. no mentioned race. Why is there another FUCKING sidekick WE HAD ENOUGH hhhyuuuuuu

Deanna (she/her): A bigoted centaur with an obnoxious voice. Malwin the Strong's second in command.

Malwin the Strong (she/her): Leader of the centaurs of the scarlet woods. Wants to appease the spirit of the scarlet woods so that thecentaurs of the scarlet woods will be protected in the scarlet woods. Had a relationship with Arturas in the past but their clashes are currently known to get pretty heated.

Arturas (he/him): Leader of the Centaurs of the Valley, i guess. Had a relationship with Malwin. Centaur. Did i mention centaur? i cant think of anything else about this character

# -EPISODE 14- (2 characters)

Calhain (he/him): Human wizard, Malwin's magical advisor. Kind of an amateur wizard in a job high above his skill level. Graduated Wigginstaff's as a hero.

Spirit of the Scarlet Woods: A spirit who requires sacrifice in order to keep Malwin's herd safe and prosperous. Not keen on dubiously canonical combos, i guess. i wouldnt be either. also apparently the sacrifice depends on personal value, not how much value it has to the spirit.

# -EPISODE 15- (2 characters)

Sylvia Nite (she/her): Fitzroy's magic theory teacher at knight night school, who he turned into a catfish by accident. oops!

Chaos (they/them, maybe more): Presumably a deity, gave Fitz his powers and wants him to give in to his chaotic desires. (physical desc: 9 foot tall, iridescent 'mother of pearl' skin, pure white eyes, fine burgundy cloak with gold/onyx lining. their physical form beyond that seems to change every time they show up.)

# -EPISODE 16-

none -w-

# -EPISODE 17-

some demins happened. the big dudes are called "Pit Fiends" and the armored demon ladies are called "Erinyes", by the way. that was incredibly hard for me to figure out the first time, especially without headphones, i thought travis was saying "pig feet" and i just could not discern what the other things were

# -EPISODE 18- (6 characters)

snow on the mountain: shire horse pegasus

storm at sea: peruvian paso pegasus, vehement defender of The Guardian. doesn't have a goofy voice.. but he could have....

thaw of the spring: a winged horse

night of no clouds: a winged hhorse

The Guardian: "An ancient and powerful being that guards the unknown forest." Has protected the flock from demons for many many years. apparently is the voice that was talking to our firbolg in episode 1?

Grey, the Demon Prince (he/him): wants to cause a war, originally wanted to kill hiero and higgs, forces the heroes to build an army to fight his. As "Fauxronimous", he has skin the *color and pattern of* (but not necessarily made of) slate splashed with liquid, pointed ears, sharp teeth, shining eyes, horns of unspecified shape. 12 fucking feet tall. wonder if the slate-looking skin is related to garys. plot twist detected? Also i recently looked at the episode descriptions and found out his name is spelled "Gray", but really does it truly matter?

# -EPISODE 19- (2 characters)

Shabree Keene (she/her): Argo's mom, killed on the Mariah, possibly by the Commodore. Long auburn hair, green eyes. Mentioned earlier but described here, so fuck it.

**Thomas** (he/him): Argo's first mate on the Mariah, as the Kraken, in his chaos-dream. may or may not actually exist.

# -EPISODE 20- (1 character)

The Commodore (he/him): Reknowned hero of the seas, military regalia, great naval hero, presumably responsible for the death of Shabree Keene. No mentioned race. Seriously, they never mention this guy's race. The only thing described about him is how he's dressed and his evil smile. Does that mean he's human? Elf? Dwarf??? Who knows! maybe it just doesnt matter.

# -EPISODE 21-

none

# -EPISODE 22-

not any of them. not any.

# -EPISODE 23- (1 character)

Ozymondelius (sp???) (it/its): A warforged teacher who just so happens to like war or something? i guess its in the name. only mentioned in this episode, doesnt show up yet.

# -EPISODE 24-

they have a fight in the training room but nobody dies :\\ maybe next time. also no new characters. pog

# -EPISODE 25- (4 characters)

Gherkin (he/him): Tall lankier skeleton, has a scimitar and a merkin, which is a pubic wig... and he wears a jerkin? which i guess is a kind of coat? also i think hes mute

Tibia (she/her?) : Shorter skeleton with gold teeth, and long canines. i think both of the skeletons are mute actually.

The Lich King aka Gordy (he/him): Rainer's dad. Commands armies of the undead. lives in The Crypt. described as a hooded, skull-faced man with intricate black lines on his face, but changes to a shaved-head man with dark skin and vetiligo. Abandoned as a babby, raised by traveling parents, had necromancy powers, took Rainier in. Not actually very scary at all i don't know why he did the creepy laugh. Kind of a warm fatherly figure actually. hm. also people are speculating Gordy might be short for Gordita and his parents are maybe supposed to be lup and barry but THAT S JUST A THEORY.

our firbolg's father (he/him): A firbolg who lived by the code and was there when our firbolg was banished. Came to respect our firbolg's interest in a new way of life, in his final moments.

TOTAL: 72 NPCS! (well, including 2 extra PCs, i guess.)

Average: 2.88 NPCs per episode.

i was gonna not include the bone-PCs and have it be 69 but our firbolg's dad was just too important to not respect with a spot on the list.

anyway as always make sure to smack me with a blunt object if i forgot any characters!!!!!

#the adventure zone #taz #taz: graduation #taz g #sir fitzroy maplecourt #argonaut keene #taz firbolg #i dunno what else to tag this with #text post #keatposting

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jelloopy · 4 years

Text

Murder on The Rockport Limited Notes

Previous: Character Creation, HtbG, Moonlighting

Ch 1

Robbie is a halfling who is pretty shitty but he’s good at making “potions” (Robbie is the roommate that everyone really hates but doesn’t want him to leave because he is their plug)

Taako is on the top bunk, Magnus is under Taako, Robbie is next to Taako and Merle is under Robbie

They are woken up at 3 am to report to Lucretia (3 am really?)

”Yeah it’s like Mario Mario or Luigi Mario” ~Griffin (This is so funny because this actually proves that Taako’s last name really is Taaco. Before Justin played it as a joke but this kinda derails that)

Robbie asks them for Pringles when they leave (Thus the beginning of me and the boys not remembering him by anything other than Pringles)

They arrive in their PJs (Taako is in footie pajamas and Merle’s has a flap in at the butt with a Kenny Chesney tattoo on his ass) (When the hell did Merle get that tattoo. Also, why is Lucretia in her full BoB garb right now? Was she asleep and get changed really quickly? Do her robes double as PJ’s? Did she just not go to sleep?)

Taako says he gets night terrors that’s why he’s in like a full-body Onesie/sleeping bag (That is so fricking sad if you think about his backstory later on…)

Magnus just starts changing clothing right then and there when Lucretia tells them that they don’t have time to get ready (This man really has no shame or boundaries. I imagine it was the same in the century tbh)

Leimann Kessler (half-elf man) was murdered before he was even on the train but was able to secure the Relic on the train (Personally, don’t know a lot about how trains work but this to me is kinda odd. Who knew he died? Do their bracers know when the wearer perishes? Is there like a body temp check and a pulse check in there too? We know that it can track them but… how much more can it do…)

All the relics come from a different school of magic. They were never in the hands of someone long enough to learn what they are capable of (Potentially this is a lie. We would have already known the names, schools of magic, and possibly what they could do based upon that alone. I bet Lucretia is hiding that info in her office)

The Gauntlet deals with Evocation magic (Hmmm, I can only imagine why. Maybe because Lup also worked in Evocation magic?)

Avi is manning the cannon! The whole scene with Magnus High as hell. Avi Never learned how to Wink (Avi you’re adorable I love you. Magnus. Get your shit together man.)

Taako pulls the lever too early and they change trajectory into a swamp

Leech fight! (I honest to god forgot this even happened before listening to it again. Not my fave fight)

Ch 2

Merle gets a lot of blood sucked from him by the leeches

Merle is completely submerged in the swamp and Magnus pulls his ass out (Why is it always Merle)

”Scientists have yet to agree” ~Griffin (I personally use this phrase all the time. It just makes me laugh so hard every time.)

Taako can levitate (I really wished he used this more ngl. I would also like to see some more fanart of this)

They are in Rockport! Covered in swamp shit!

Tom Beaudette! We see his house and they get hosed off then they see him at the ticket station again. (What a nice guy!)

Leimann, Diddly, and Justin Kessler (10/10 best alias’ ever)

Taako Charms Tom (It’s a nice go-to huh?)

Merle really wants to murder tom he wanted him to step in front on the train (Merle really is the one who goes straight for murder)

Ch 3

Hudson, Jess the Beheader, Graham Juicy Wizard, ANGUSSSSSSSS, and Jenkins McShittywizard (My favorite train gang!)

Travis making fun of Griffin for how he needs to sleep with 100000000 pillows (I cherish all of these out of character bits where they really just dog on one another)

Angus, my sweet summer child don’t talk to strangers. We know your grandfather’s name was long forgotten even though you’re going to visit him in Never Winter.

The boys legit think Angus is evil and Griffin yells at them bc they are being racist. (1- how are they being legit racist? You haven’t introduced anything about Angus’ race at all?) (2- Jesus he is only 10 years old my dudes)

Graham is 36 years young and is crazy obsessed with trains and his real name is Percy? He is shadowing Jenkins in hopes of learning more about working on a train

Taako from TV! (And so his legend begins!)

Ch 4

Jenkins is harnessing a limited version of teleportation magic

Angus calling the boys out on their bullshit

Taako calling Angus “pumpkin” (Literally melts my heart. I wish someone called me cute nicknames. Also, Taako hasn’t even talked to this kid that much and that name is reoccurring)

Angus has a nondescript blue book that is able to intercept messages sent through magical means (Where did this child get this book and who let him keep it? This is legit just like letting children under 13 have access to the unrestricted internet. It’s literal Hell)

The bit with Angus and “PRYING EYES AND EARS!” (uh foreshadowing my guy)

They find “Jenkins” Dead body after hearing Graham scream

Merle is able to identify a lot of things by looking at the body (It still scares me that he is technically a Physician.)

Angus pulls a small CROSSBOW OUT OF HIS SLEEVE? (Where did he get this, how did he keep it from Hudson, Why the fuck does he have it)

Angus really said “you guys run I’ll get rid of him!” and grabs Graham and runs (How strong is this child. He’s legit lifting and pulling a grown-ass man without help)

”I’m following Angus I’ll see yall in hell!” ~Taako (Yes follow the badass 10-year old please)

”I wanna tell you about the time about this time there were three ogres…”~Taako

The Foley work bit and then Griffin just snapping “The train derails and you all die” (Another out of character goof that I cherish)

”I shit and take 14 damage” ~Griffin (are you okay? How much health do you have? What’s your max HP dude?)

Taako makes the Crab monster Levitate

Magnus punched the crab monster out of the window and it got scrapped up on the side of the train

Ch 5

They follow the Crab into their sleeper car and Magnus attacks with a chair and Griffin says “I imagine because you are so skilled at carpentry that you’ve had to attack someone with a chair before so you are in fact proficient in this attack”

Jess comes in and finishes the crab off with her Soul bound ax that she can conjure at any time (This legit just means that Jenkins did not need to carry her ax to the crypt safe. She let him do it for shits n giggles. We stan)

Jess got her last name legally changed to “Beheader” and Magnus says that he got his legally changed to “The Hammer” (Really Magnus… this isnt 3rd grade stop trying to impress her. It’s that or it could be another sad reference to “Hammer and Tongs” which would mean Julia was “Tongs” D: that is so depressing and cute)

Magnus and Merle are making good progress in solving the murder

”Alright lads” “oh fuck” When Merle keeps up his disguise as Leimann Kessler (It’s so funny because his fake Leimann Kessler is just his current Argonaut Keen.)

”I cast ZONE OF TRUTH” “Jesus you’re like a zone of truth cleric” (Oh honey. This is just the beginning)

Magnus wakes Graham up with a 5% smack with his left hand and then a 6.5% smack also with his left hand (Wtf is this BNHA? Alright Deku)

Taako is an Alcoholic? (He keeps asking for a drink ...This is a bit concerning but it makes sense)

Magnus slaps Graham again with 7.2% and he popped something in Graham’s jaw and he begins screaming but Merle heals him (OKAY DEKU COOL IT MY GUY)

”I wanna be a guy... with a head!” ~” Hudson” (hehe foreshadowing)

SCUTTLE BUDDY!!!!! (A short but adorable life you have my Lil man)

Ch 6

The “fisticuffs” scene with Taako and Angus (Now this is really concerning considering his backstory. I know it’s a joke because of how many people they accidentally kill all the time but like dude… little do you know…)

Angus leading them through the mystery is so cute. But also you know its Griffin trying to get his family to really think it through and I love it. (It really makes my heart really full to hear Griffin get really excited when they figure it out slowly instead of mocking them when they guess wrong)

MERLE YES! MAGNUS YES! YOU’RE GETTING IT! YOU’RE SO CLOSE! (Teamwork makes the dream work baby!)

Magnus jumps out of the train and Griffin gets really serious and gives him the “if you fail this you will actually die” speech (This coupled with the fight scene that Magnus accidentally skipped and the fact that originally Travis did want Magnus to die so he could re-roll a rogue is so wild)

Magnus is gonna become a wrecking ball Jesus (very Magnus-core)

Hell yeah, Magnus! Knock the meat monster into Jenkins!!

Magnus gets hit for 10 points at 1hp and paries it for 10 points! (Top ten anime near-death experiences)

Jenkins threatens to kill the meat monster. Horribly misses then is thrown off the fucking train by the meat monster (Get fucked wrecked Jenkins that’s what you get for being cocky!)

Ch 7

They find the dousing rod compass that Jenkins was using and find the monocle (Pirates of the Caribbean much?)

Taako grabs The Oculus because he has escaped the thrall of a relic before

It tells him that it can make anything he can imagine (This is really interesting tbh)

The Umbrastaff eATS JENKINS WAND!!! and a Lil sigil appears on the handle of the staff that also looks like an umbrella (Lup gets fed lmao. Don’t really understand the Sigil appearing tho. It doesn’t come up any other time I don’t think so it’s cool)

Taako grabs the teleport wand thing and asks everyone to leave and he grabs a bunch of shit from the Cryptsafe pile (Very Taako-core)

They make it to the engineer’s room and Graham tries to slow the train down but he can’t

Taako wanted to open the gate to Never Winter to Phandalin but they change it to Jenkins’ garden because it needs to be a room with “one entrance” (Solid idea on Taako’s part. If it were to work no one would have been hurt)

Taako pushed Angus off the train and he looses two teeth (This man pushed a whole child off the train… ‘Ight)

Magnus dies by jumping off the train (Top ten anime death scenes)

Taako successfully opens the gate into Jenkin’s garden and the train crashes into the garden

Magnus is stabilized by Merle (Awe so the Cleric can do his job!)

Angus gives them pringles for Robbie and the compass. Taako gives Angus one of the forks from his grandfather’s set.

They go to a nearby Never Winter Clinic to get patched up

Out of character, they choose to work on voices and Griffin calls them out bc he’s been doing 8 “different” voices and Clint goes “Yeah try doing that for 40 years” get fuckin rOASTED Ditto! (Also Griffin I love you but like 3 of the voices were the exact same and 2 were so similar it wasn’t funny. Don’t get me wrong different voices aren’t my strong suit either but ya did give it your best shot so.)

We goin’ back to the moon baby!

AVI MY MAIN MAN! (I will forever and always want and need more Avi screen time)

The oculus works with illusory magic (Which is very interesting bc I know it was made by Davenport because he also worked in allusory magic but I don’t ever remember him using any magic… who knows maybe he has and I just never realized)

Lucretia thought they were gonna get it off the train before it left... woman… (You’ve known these men for how long and you thought they were gonna w h a t?)

Next: Lunar Interlude I,

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ask-dnd-sides · 4 years

Note

Can I go back and see the last time dayd saw maxwell and Regina?

You zoom back in time, not as much as the previous vision, but you know you’ve gone back at least a few years.

Instead of the very rundown shack of the previous vision, you instead appear at very modest but put together house. You enter the house and the first thing you see is Dayd slightly younger than you saw him in the present, pacing back and forth.

The second thing you see is a girl with brown-black hair on the couch and you realize it’s a younger version of Regina, watching Dayd go back and forth, back and forth.

“Day, it’s okay.” Regina keeps her gaze on Dayd, following him as he goes back and forth.

“I don’t know if it is! And you don’t either! I’m sorry, I just...” Dayd drags his hand down his face, stress clearly written across his features as he glances over at Regina.

Regina is still a moment before coming over to where Dayd is and grabbing his hand to stop his pacing. Dayd turns fully towards her and they make eye contact, something deep and unspoken going between them. After a time, the spell of whatever message they were sharing is broken as Dayd pulls Regina to himself in a hug, stroking the back of her hair as if to calm her, but you can tell Dayd himself is trying to comfort himself with the movement.

Unfortunately, the moment is broken up by 4 short knocks on the door. Immediately, Dayd pulls back, face turning white as the brood drains from his face. Regina, understanding, brings Dayd back to look at her, nodding measuredly and reassuringly. Something in her eyes is sad, as if knowing that despite her words, it not going to go the way their both hoping.

Dayd stoically lets go of Regina’s hand and almost robotically goes over to the door, hesitating a long moment with his hand just millimeters from the door handle. He doesn’t look back at Regina this time, just waits a moment before turning the handle.

Dayd in seeing the situation, somehow pales even more than before.

There are 3 men on his steps, with someone behind them out of sight. One of them, the apparent leader or superior to the other two, is smartly dressed and has a smile on his face, actually no it’s more of a sneer now that you look at it. The other two are dressed identically and are quite muscular.

You realize that they are essentially towering over Dayd with how tall they are compared to him.

Despite the height difference, Dayd scowls and defiantly says one word: “No.”

The leader looks bemused at Dayd’s defiance and statement, and they twirl their fingers, signaling for the man behind him to bring the fourth person forward. When they do, Dayd goes from pale to almost immediately red faced in pure anger.

An older version of Maxwell is thrust into sight. Maxwell stumbles at the sudden push, knee digging into the dirt as he coughs a little. The only positive thing is that Maxwell doesn’t have any bruises or cuts, but you can see his wrists are bound in shackles that look way too tight.

“Hey Day, long time no see?” Max laughs and smiles weakly at the pun, quickly devolving into coughs.

Dayd takes a step back, keeping Regina behind him as she came to see who was at the door.

“You can’t.”

The man’s bemused expression doesn’t change, you get the feeling he is used to getting his way and doesn’t think for a moment that this halfling can stop what’s about to happen.

“That’s funny, it sounds like you think you have a choice here. Boys, get her.”

Dayd’s eyes widen before he lets out the most guttural and anger filled shout you’ve ever heard. Before anyone else can move, he’s over with Max yanking on the chains, trying to pry them from the two guys hands, but the guys instead of worrying on what’s Dayd’s doing, they make a beeline for the door.

Seeing this, Dayd immediately jumps back in front of Regina, ready to fight. But with the snap of the leader guy’s fingers, Dayd is suddenly falling to the ground, asleep, behind him, you also see that Regina has fallen to the ground alseep.

The 2 guys easily step over Dayd’s sleeping form over to Regina’s sleeping form and picking her up easily.

But as the 2 guys grab Regina, she starts to stir and flail even as she is half asleep. As the two guys bring her past Dayd, Regina, still struggling against them, as able to plant a solid kick to Dayd’s side, which prompts Dayd to jump up ready to fight at the jab at him.

For a second, Dayd is completely confused at what’s happening, but the memories hit him full force and he is immediately jumping after Regina, shouting, “Regina, Maxwell-”

However, he is stoped with a blade under his chin, stopping his cry short and forcing him into silence to not cut himself by speaking.

The leader smiles as Regina continues to squirm and cry out, almost relishing them.

“Bubba! Day, help please! I don’t want this!! STOP! Get OFF me!!”

Dayd doesn’t move though, as any sudden movement would now mean nicking a fatal artery and certain death. That doesn’t stop his eyes from sending a venomous glare directly at the leader.

“You can’t stop this, ‘Day,’ they don’t belong with you.”

Dayd scowls, and manages to spit at the leader without nicking himself on the blade, getting the leader square in the chest. The leader is not really phased, producing a handkerchief to wipe it away.

“It’s nice doing business with you Dayd, tata!”

Dayd’s forehead is met with the pummel of the the blade in the leaders hand, causing him to collapse to the ground in a daze, but not fall completely unconscious.

But by the time Dayd gathers himself and is able to look up, the 5 of them are gone.

And as the vision spirals away, you see Dayd face turn to the sky and let out one of the most heartbroken sounds you have ever heard. Wordlessly screaming to the sky other than a few ‘Regi’s and ‘Max’s before the vision completely fades out as Dayd loses two of the people closest to him....

#roll the die #dayd #regina #maxwell #past vision #past things #past lore #past info #past visions #supnerds

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hoshizoranoseirei-a · 4 years

Text

Ryuji paced nervously outside the cafe, he’s new to this human side of town. Having been raised and surrounded by dragons his whole life he’s having to adapt to human life. He’s only lived in this town for two months and one night after seeing countless ads he decided to sign up on an online dating site. He immediately got an match and now he’s to him in person. He couldn’t believe that he’s actually doing this. All he knows is that he doesn’t want to screw this up. Ryuji took a deep breath before wiping his sweaty hands on his pants before reaching for the door handle and finally walking in.

Jae tried to keep as few eyes on him as possible, lifting his cup to take a sip of the coffee, hazel eyes looking up as the door opened and pausing as he caught sight of the new person walking in. It wasn’t hard to pick out the one he was waiting for, and it took a lot not to choke on his drink. The other was much prettier than the picture he’d used and Jae couldn’t help but smile as he set the cup down, keeping his eyes on the other as he moved to wave a little, hoping to catch the other’s eye.

Ryuji stepped inside, his eyes looking around the room for the one he was here to meet. He nervously played with the choker around his neck as he made eye contact with him. He was way more handsome in person than he thought he was going to be. Ryuji waved shyly as he made his way over to the table and sat down in front of him. He stared at the man in front of him in awe, Ryu just couldn’t believe that this man was real and was willing to have a conversation with him. He cleared his throat and crossing his hands in front of him before speaking.

“Hi.”

Jae grinned as the other approached, happy to be joined by the other. “Hi.” He greeted, moving to look down at his hands around the cup. “I will admit, uhm, I was really nervous about this.” He began, licking his lips. “Can I get you a coffee?”

“Yes please a coffee would be nice.” Ryu said as he watched as Jae’s tongue traced his bottom lip and gulped. He didn’t know how to start a normal conversation. “So, what made you sign up for online dating? I mean you could have anyone you wanted, yet you’re here with me.”

Jae moved to sit up a little, nodding. “Is there a certain kind you prefer? The waitress should be back in a moment.” he offered. He bit his lower lip at the inquiry. “Hoenstly, I wanted to meet someone outside of my work colleagues.” he answered. “It can get kind of stressful in my line of work.” He moved to take another sip from his coffee, tilting his head as he watched the other. “Where are my manners, though. I’m Jae.” He held out his hand to shake Ryuji’s, smiling warmly.

“Coffee with a bit of milk and sugar would be fine.” Ryuji replied as he watched Jae’s hand come towards him for him to shake. “Hi I’m Ryuji.” He said sweetly with a smile as he shook Jae’s hand back. Ryuji couldn’t get over the sparks that got sent his spine once their hands connected. He quickly took his hand back to rest it back on his lap. This man was beginning to make him feel things and Ryuji didn’t know how to handle it. He’s never felt this way before and he was started to freak out a bit.

“Pleasure to meet you in person, Ryuji.” Jae replied, the spark that went through him had him shook in a subtle way, tongue dragging over his lips for a moment as he smiled. His eyes were torn away as the waitress came up to take an order. Jae ordered the new coffee, taking the offered menus from the woman and handing one to Ryuji. “What about you? Why did you join the site?” he asked, setting his menu on the table in front of him.

“I wanted to get closer to my human side.” Ryuji said as he glared at the waitress walked away from the table, he didn’t like the way her scent mixed with Jae’s. There was something about the way he smelled that calmed him in a way. Ryuji quickly calmed his composer before he spoke again. “I’ve been on my own for so long that I’ve lost touch with my other side.”

Jae tilted his head at the words, giving a smile. “Not a human either, I gather?” he mused, glad that he didn’t have to have the conversation explaining his unique heritage. His finger traced the rim of his cup for a moment, glad when the waitress walked away. “Well, you won’t have to be alone anymore.” he assured. “I should probably let you know that in the next couple of months, I’m gonna be gone for a bit. My tour starts, and it lasts for close to a year.” He explained. “But I’m sure you could come along if you wanted? I just have to talk to my producer.”

“Raised by dragons up in mountains. I never asked about my birth mother nor do I care to know where she is. I loved my life the way it was until that night.” Ryuji trailed of in a sad tone. He didn’t want to have that kind of conversation right now. Right now what was important was getting to know Jae, who was apparently going on tour soon. “I’d like to come along actually. I’ve always wanted to travel the world. If your producer lets me anyways.” Ryuji said with a slight blush to his cheeks. He couldn’t believe he just offered to travel with a man he just met, but there was just something about him that he couldn’t let go. He didn’t want Jae to leave and forget about him.

Jae nodded as he listened, lifting his cup to take another sip. He noticed the sad change in scent and Ryuji’s tone before he changed the subject. Jae wasn’t going tonpress on what had happened. “Im a halfling myself. Dad’s a witch, mom’s a siren.” He explained. “They moved back to Osaka after I graduated.” He missed his parents, but he got to tall them all the time, which helped. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Yoochan’s pretty chill most of the time.” He explained, pausing as a couple of teens walked up and asked for an autograph. Jae chuckled and obliged, signing and leaving notes, even taking a few pictures with the group before they left in a fit of happy giggles. Jae shook his head as he watched them, amused. “And here I was hoping to not be recognized.”

Ryuji watched as the corner of Jae’s crinkled when he smiled. He liked his smile and he wanted to be the one to put it there. “Does it get hard sometimes? Being a somebody?” Ryuji asked placing his cold and shaky hands on the table. It was getting kind of crowded in the somewhat small cafe. Being around so many humans at one time made him a bit nervous.

Jae opened his mouth and then closed it. “I mean, sometimes?” He mused, tilting his head as he leaned back in the booth. “It helps being with a small label, honestly. I don’t get recognized as often as some people in the spotlight.” He anawered. “I haven’t had any insane fans yet, but I know it’s a possibility.” He smiled as the waitress brought Ryuji’s coffee, nodding at her as she walked away. He did notice the change, arching a brow. “Are you gonna be okay? We can go somewhere less crowded if you want.”

Ryuji brought the cup up to his lips and took a small sip. Placing the cup back down he wiped his hands on top of his thighs and sat up a bit. “No. No I need to get used to it. I mean if I’m going to be travelling I need to get used to crowds at some point right?” Ryuji chuckled slightly. He knew it would just be easier for them to go someplace else but just being around Jae made him feel fine. Jae made everything going on around them disappear and that’s all that mattered to Ryuji.

Jae wat hed the other, wanting to keep an eye on him with the clear unease Ryuji was feeling. “Well, logically, yes.” He agreed. “But small steps can help sometimes, rather than just jumping in?” He asked. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, especially since this is a date.” He moved to look at the menu. “Anything I can do to distract you?”

“I know this is a bit forward, but would you mind holding my hand?” Ryuji asked timidly. He needed to be close to Jae or at least touch him. Knowing Jae was an halfling made him feel comfortable and sort of normal. Jae was quickly finding his way into his heart and Ryuji was not about to let him go. His brain raced as he thought of ways to court him. He want to know more about Jae other than the fact that he was famous. “Do you enjoy shiny things?”

Jae didn’t even think to hesitate, reaching over to curl his fingers around Ryuji’s hand. “I wouldn’t mind at all.” He really couldn’t wait to show Ryuji to his team, he was certain they would love him. “I do like shiny things, but nothing overly sparkly.” he explained. “My stylist says I’m a simple kind of person.” he thought for a moment, free hand moving to toy with one of the rings on his choker, nodding to himself. “I’m just not a flashy person. Some of the outfits for concerts can get flashy, but that’s usually because of the concept.” He gave Ryuji a smile and ran his thumb over the back of the other’s hand. “Are you hungry?”

Ryuji blushed when Jae’s hand intertwined with his. “Hungry? I’m starving. I could eat anything at this point.” Ryuji said as he looked down at the menu. There was so many things to choose from and everything looked so good. His stomach growled as he scanned the paper. “Ah I can’t choose. What would you recommend?”

Jae couldn’t help but chuckle at how cute the other was. “Given you’re half dragon, you should probably take in more protein. So why don’t we do a variety of items and share?” he mused, not letting go of Ryuji’s hand as he looked over the menu. “How does that sound?”

Ryuji couldn’t help but bounce in his seat a bit. “Yes that sounds wonderful. Let’s do it.” Ryuji said as he lightly squeezed Jae’s hand. “What’s your favorite thing to eat? I’d love to cook for you some time.” Ryuji loved to cook, it was one of his favorite pass times. He pretty much taught himself how to cook and was surprised that he was actually good it.

Jae smiled at the reaction, unable to look away. Ryuji was adorable, and he just wanted to keep him around at all times. “Favorite thing like my parents’ cooking? Or like as a restaurant food?” he asked, pausing as the waitress came over to order the various food for them. When the waitress was gone again, his attention was immediately back on Ryuji. “From restaurant, I’d say a good seafood and steak combo, with veggies and rice. Especially with crab and shrimp. As for food from home? My mom makes really good sukiyaki, and my dad makes the best tempura.” He smiled as he spoke, thumb continuing to brush along the back of Ryuji’s hand. “What about you?”

Ryuji tilted his head slightly as he thought about his favorite foods. “I’d say that favorite food would be Kalguksu. My step mother made it for me all the time. I loved it so much I asked her to teach me how to make it. It’s the only thing I have left of her.” His sentence trailed off as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. “I also enjoy a variety of melons. But I love all kinds of foods. I’m open to trying new things as well.” Ryuji spoke with the biggest grin on his face.

Jae hummed. “Teach me sometime?” he asked. “My parents taught me to cook, maybe I can make it for you?” Seeing the brief change in Ryuji’s demeanor, he squeezed his hand gently, trying to comfort the other even though he didn’t know whatthe story was behind it. “Well, travelling the world will give us both plenty of opportunity for new things.” He promised.

“Of course I’ll teach you.” Ryuji smiled. He felt so full of love. He hasn’t felt happy in years. Being on his own from the age of 16 he had forgotten how to love and how to be loved. “I suppose we should order our food? I might end up eating you if I don’t get fed soon.” He laughed as he winked at Jae.

Jae smiled at the words, nodding. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe that can be our next date?” he offered, tilting his head. Platinum hair shifted into his eyes with the movement, but he didn’t mind. He smirked at the comment, enamored of the half dragon. “Maybe later, little dragon.” he teased back, lifting their hands to kiss Ryuji’s hand. “Food first, though, yeah?” he asked, waving the waitress over.

After placing their order and receiving it moments later they began to eat their meal in comfortable silence. Ryuji loved that Jae never let go of his hand the entire time they ate. Ryuji picked up a piece of meat with fork he was eating with and held it up to Jae to eat. He watched as the man opened his mouth to eat the meat. He was beautiful even as he ate, Ryuji could watch him all day. “ Ah I’ve eaten a bit too much. I’m starting to get sleepy.” Ryuji mumbled as tears glazed over his eyes. He knew that he shouldn’t have eaten so much because he always gets so tired afterwards. Ryuji yawned as he laid his head on the table struggling to stay awake.

Jae was more than happy to share the meal, even eating when Ryuji offered him food. Tilting his head, he smiled at the comment. “Should I take you home?” he asked, thumb tracing along Ryuji’s hand as he spoke. “You can get some sleep, we can meet up later for dinner?”

Ryuji tried to sit up but was too sleepy to do so. “Wanna go with you. Don’t leave me.” He mumbled out sleepily. Ryuji didn’t want to go home to his crappy apartment on the bad side of town. He hated being there alone. He knew how to defend his self but even an half dragon had their limits. He had the enhanced speed and all that jazz, but it felt like his life would just be so much more simpler if he could just shift.

“Awwwh,” Jae cooed, moving to place the money for the food and standing up. “Come on, I’ll take you to my place and you can take a nap.” he assured, half carrying Ryuji out to his car and helping the other inside, even buckling Ryuji in. Walking around, he got in the driver’s seat and drove to his loft, moving to help Ryuji to the elevator, holding the other up on the way to the floor where he stayed. Once the elevator stopped, he led the way down the hall to his door, unlocking it and then helping Ryuji to the couch. “Get some sleep. I’ll go get a blanket.” he assured, going to fetch a blanket and drape it over the other halfling. By the time he got back from the hall closet, the other was asleep. He chuckled and moved to cover Ryuji, going to the little office he had to work on memorizing some of the new song he’d received.

Ryuji stretched and rolled over resulting of him falling off of the couch he was sleeping on. He hit the floor with a thud, sitting up groaning as he rubbed his now sore shoulder he looked around the room he was in. He had no idea where he was. He tried not to freak out at his unfamiliar surroundings. Standing up he picked the blanket up off the ground and wrapped it around his shoulders. He began to walk around in search of Jae, the thought of being away from him made his anxiety sky rocket. He looked at the pictures on the wall one of being of Jae and his parents. Tears made there way into his eyes and he thought of his parents, family and friends. He just missed them so much.

Jae was in the office area, leaned back as he sang over the notes, not wanting to mess up when he finally got to do recording. Hearing the thud, though, he moved to get up and check on Ryuji. “Ryuji?” he asked, tilting his head as he saw the tears in the other’s eyes. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay, you just fell asleep is all.” he promised, moving to run a hand through the dragon’s hair. “I was just in the other room practicing.”

“No it’s not that.” Ryuji sniffled. “I just miss them so much. I hate being alone and they knew that. They all did! But they left me anyways.” Ryuji sobbed into Jae’s shoulder. “Please. please don’t make me go back. I hate it there so much.” Ryuji whispered out wrinkling Jae’s shirt in the process. “I’m sorry. Oh my goodness I’m making a fool out of myself.” Ryuji said stepping away from Jae and crossing his arms in front of him. “Forget I said any of that.” Ryuji made his way back into the living room grabbing his phone before heading towards the door. He needed to get out. He felt so stupid for saying all of that. Jae didn’t need to get involved in his problems, he probably had his own problems to deal with. He made his way down to the elevator. He stopped in front of the elevator before sobbing once more of the fact that he had no idea where he was going.

Jae felt terrible for the other, reaching out to rest his arms around Ryuji’s shoulders. “You don’t have to be alone. You have me now.” he answered, startled at the sudden change. “No, it’s fine.” He was confused as he watched the other move about the room, trying to stop him. “Ryuji, wait.” he said, following the other out the door and down the hall to the elevator. “Ryuji!” he called, reaching to take the halfling’s hand and urge him to look at him. “It’s okay, I promise. You don’t have to be alone. You can stay here.” he assured, moving to squeeze Ryuji’s hand. “Come back inside, okay? I’ll make us some tea.”

Ryuji followed Jae back inside closing the door behind him before making his way to the couch. He watched as Jae went into the kitchen to make some tea. He felt so pitiful. He just made a complete fool of his self in front Jae and now there was no going back. He looked up as Jae came back into the living room with two cups of tea and set them down on the coffee table. Ryuji moved to curl up on the other side of the couch sniffling. “I’m so sorry.” His voice sounded like he had swallowed a bunch of rocks. His eyes burned and his chest felt heavy. “I didn’t mean to become a burden to you Jae.”

Jae was quick to make tea while keeping an eye on Ryuji. Bringing over the cups, setting them down. He gave the other halfling a confused look. “What are you talking about? You’re not a burden.” he asked, tilting his head and reaching to try and pull Ryuji closer. After a moment, he opened his arms. “Come here?” he asked.

Ryuji quickly crawled over to Jae and climbed into lap. He held on so tight he probably resembled a baby koala. He nuzzled his face into Jae’s neck kitten licking a spot on his neck that smelled good before relaxing his body. He closed his eyes as he focused on Jae’s breathing lulling him into a dreamless sleep.

Jae smiled as Ryuji crawled into his lap, moving to grab a blanket and drape it over them. He shivered, breath hitching just a little as he felt the lick, but smiled, settling in as he held Ryuji. After a moment, he began humming the new song he was learning, reaching up to pet the other, falling asleep himself as he comforted the dragon.

Ryuji shifted a little in his sleep. Sitting up still clearly half asleep he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. He looked down at Jae who was still sleeping on the couch and smiled. The feelings he had for this man was so unreal to him and if this was a dream he never wanted to wake up. Gently getting off of the man’s lap he found his way into Jae’s bedroom to shower. Once clean he realized that he didn’t have a change of clothes and decided to put on one of Jae’s t-shirts. The shirt was long enough on him that he didn’t need to put pants on. Which also worked out in his favor since he didn’t have a change of underwear. Ryuji left Jae’s bedroom and went into the kitchen to get started on breakfast. He made omelets with veggies, sliced some fruit and made so fresh tea. He was just finishing up when he heard movement from the couch.

Jae shifted when Ryuji pulled away, still sleeping peacefully, the blanket settling around his waist. He slept until he could smell food, breathing in and stretching as he looked around. Realizing Ryuji wasn’t with him, he sat up quickly, looking around. “Ryuji?” he asked, standing and walking o the kitchen. He paused as he saw the other cooking, tilting his head. “You raided my shirts?” he teased with a smile, walking over to wrap his arms around Ryuji and rest his chin on the other’s shoulder. “Are you feeling better?”

Ryuji smiled when Jae wrapped his arms around his waist. “Yes I raided your shirts they smell good. Yes I am feeling much better now that you’re here.” Ryuji turned in Jae’s arms to wrap his arms around his neck. He placed a small kiss to Jae’s nose before staring into eyes. Ryuji felt like time had stopped around them as he glanced between Jae’s eyes and lips.

“Good. You really had me worried, y'know.” Jae answered, glad to see the change back to the dragon who had first walked up shyly the day before. His hands moved to play in Ryuji’s hair, caught off guard by the kiss to his nose. He tilted his head a moment before leaning in to kiss Ryuji softly, eyes closing as he held the other.

Their lips pressed together and it felt like fireworks had just been set off. Ryuji felt his body grow warm as he played with the hair at the back of Jae’s neck. “The food will get cold.” Ryuji said in between kisses.

Jae hummed at the feel of fingers in his hair, nipping softly at Ryuji’s lower lip. A low purr in his throat as Ryuji pulled away to speak. “Then maybe we should eat first. Then you can stay here while I work on the new song.” he offered, running a hand through Ryuji’s hair with a smile.

The two moved to the table to eat, Ryuji moving to the variety of fruit to stuff into his face. He moaned out loud as the flavors hit his tongue pallet. It had been so long since he had fresh fruit. Reaching over to grab more fruit he paused as he realized that he was being watched. Swallowing his food, he took a moment to gather his thoughts. “So what’s the name of the song that you’re working on?”

Jae couldn’t help but smile as he watched the other, tilting his head as he ate his omlette before he began on the fruit. “You can have as much as you want, you know.” he promised, plucking some of the fruit out and taking a bite from an apple slice. He hummed at the question. “It’s called ‘I am You’. My producer just sent it over from Seoul, the demo sounds really good and I’m actually excited to learn it.” he answered.

“I hear you sing.” Ryuji smiled. “I promise I’ll be quiet.” Ryuji pleaded. He excitedly bounced in his seat. Ryuji looked at Jae with the cutest smile on his face. “Carry me!” Ryuji said holding his arms up.

Jae laughed as he finished his apple slices, scooting back to walk over and pick the smaller up into his arms. “First we clean up from breakfast. Then you can listen to me practice. Deal?” he asked, kissing Ryuji’s forehead as he ran his fingers through the other’s hair.

It was clear that Jae was extremely focused. He listened to the music and bobbed his head to it. He began to hum quietly to himself in the back of the room. He quite liked the song that Jae was working on. He wondered to himself if the song had a name. Standing up quietly he began to his body to the beat, letting the music take over as he continued to hum.

Jae knew he could influence moods with his voice, so when he noticed another voice humming along, he looked up from the music as he sang, smiling as he watched Ryuji. The other hybrid was indeed beautiful and Jae knew there was something haunting him, but he wasn’t going to press. When the dragon was ready, Jae knew he would learn about it. When the song finished again, he moved to pause. “You still okay over there?” he asked, titling his head, which caused currently blonde hair to fall into his face.

Ryuji stopped what he was doing when Jae spoke. “I’m fine. Your voice is amazing.” He said in awe, slowly wrapping his arms around himself as he began to get cold. He could listen to Jae sing all day if he could. He felt so calm and collected when he sang. It made him fall more and more in love with him.

Jae smiled, a faint blush painting his cheeks. “It’s a part of being half siren.” he answered. “I can influence moods, but I can’t control people like my mom can.” he explained. “Makes my career a lot more fun, makes it more satisfying, when I know my fans understand the emotion behind each performance.” Seeing the other wrap his arms around himself, he moved to open his arms. “Are you cold? I can hold you if you want.” he offered.

Ryuji moved to straddle Jae’s thighs. He placed his head into his neck and inhaled. Jae smelled so good, causing Ryuji to shift his hips a bit. He began to place tiny butterfly kisses on his neck. Jae’s body was so warm against his body he felt like he was in a different state of mind set. It felt like his body wasn’t his own anymore, moving on its own accord.

Jae reached up to brush his fingers through his dragon’s hair, eyes closing at the feel of lips on his neck. With a low hum, he tilted his head back, lips curved into a smile. “That feels nice.” he complimented, reluctantly pulling back and adjusting to press his lips to Ryuji’s again, hands moving to settle at the other’s hips.

A noise of surprise escaped him as he felt Jae’s hands cover his hips. He brought his hands up to run his fingers through Jae’s hair. He loved the way Jae’s lips felt on his. Deciding to get a bit frisky, Ryuji took the chance to nibble on Jae’s bottom lip hoping to get an reaction out of him.

Jae smiled as he moved to pull Ryuji closer, one hand moving to rest at the small of his back. A shudder of pleasure dropped down his spine as Ryuji’s teeth found his lower lip, a quiet moan passing his throat as he urged Ryuji closer against him. “Mmmm…should I take you to bed, little dragon?” he whispered softly, opening his eyes to look at Ryuji with a smile.

Ryuji practically purred with excitement slightly arching his back. He shuddered at Jae’s whisper. “Please.”

Jae was careful as he stood up and lifted Ryuji, one hand guiding the other’s legs around his waist as he carried the dragon to his room, moving to gently place Ryuji on the bed. “Are you sure?” he asked, pulling back just enough to look at Ryuji, one hand moving to cup the other’s cheek.

Ryuji fell back against the bed and looked into Jae’s eyes. He was more than sure. Ryuji knew that as long that he was Jae everything would be okay. “Yes, I am more than sure. You’re here with me.” He spoke with pure confidence.

Jae watched Ryuji for a moment before leaning down to kiss him again, one hand holding him up while the other gently raised the shirt the dragon wore. Breaking the kiss, he tilted his head to trail kisses down Ryuji’s neck and shoulder. His senses were tuned to the smaller male, watching for the slightest notion that he should stop, though for some reason, he knew Ryuji wouldn’t give that clue. Something had connected them, which Jae still wasn’t sure how to explain, but he wasn’t going to just let his dragon go. His lips found their way back to Ryuji’s, tongue passing over Ryuji’s lower lip, asking for permission to deepen the kiss.

Ryuji granted entrance to Jae when his tongue licked his lower lip. He shuddered with pleasure as Jae’s hands moved over his body. He moaned out as he spread his legs so Jae could settle in between them. His hands reached down to Jae’s shirt to pull it over his head, before his lips attached to his chest. He hooked his legs around Jae as his hands gripped his body his nails slightly digging in.

Jae let the shirt be pulled off, adjusting to press closer against the other, pulling back after a long moment to breathe. His hands roamed over bare skin, nails faintly catching on skin. “You’re so pretty, Ryuji.” he whispered against the dragon’s lips, taking a moment to just admire the way the other looked on his bed. “Can I keep you?”

Ryuji practically mewled. There was slight shine to his skin as he was laid out underneath Jae. “Keep me forever baby.”

Jae smiled and moved to kiss Ryuji again, fingers trailing softly of the other before he pulled back to finish undressing. He moved to crawl into bed next to Ryuji, reachign to pull the other into his lap as he leaned back against the headboard. “I’ll keep you as long as you want me to,” he promised, smiling at the forever in the dragon’s words as he reached to stroke them together.

Ryuji’s head fell back, his mouth opening in a silence. It was his first time being touched in this way, but he trusted Jae with his life. “Jae please. Don’t tease me.” Ryuji whispered out as he ground his hips down on to Jae’s.

“But you’re so beautiful,” Jae whispered softly, kissing at Ryuji’s neck. Teeth nibbled and suckled, wanting to leave a mark as his hand moved, licking over where he’d bitten down. “I wanna make you mine in so many ways.”

“Then do it. I’m all yours.” Ryuji spoke with complete confidence to his voice.

Jae smiled and moved to kiss a trail over the other’s body, eyes closed as he breathed in Ryuji’s scent. As he got to the v of the dragon’s hips, he nibbled at a hip bone. “So beautiful.” he hummed, fingers dancing between Ryuji’s hips to tease along the other’s shaft before reaching to grab a bottle of lube from his nightstand, setting next to them before leaning over to run his tongue along the shaft, teasing it before he moved lower to take Ryuji into his mouth.

Ryuji gasped out Jae’s name. He was in pure bliss as Jae kissed down to his V line before taking him into his mouth. Ryuji’s back completely left the bed as he arched hard. “Oh god Jae! Please!” The halflings’ nails gripped the bed sheets ripping them. He sat up on his elbows, his hair now in his face, to look at Jae. He lifted his hand and curled his finger into the ‘come here’ motion. “Come here baby.” Ryuji whispered before pulling Jae into a heart stopping kiss.

It had been a long time since Jae had been comfortable to be with anyone, his music was just more important to him. But Ryuji was different in a way he couldn’t put into words. He found he liked the way the dragon reacted to him, reluctantly pulling away from his task to return the kiss, hands roaming Ryuji’s body before reachign down to stroke the other.

The two lovers moved together in sync, their bodies reacting to each others calls. Ryuji’s moans were flowing together almost like a song. He enjoyed Jae’s soft and subtle touches here and there. Ryuji bucked his hips when he felt Jae’s fingers near his entrance.

Each movement sent thrills through Jae that he’d never even thought of experiencing. It just felt natural, more in tune than any past relationship he’d tried to have. He pulled back to kiss at Ryuji’s neck. “Do you trust me?” he asked softly, nuzzling the pther halfling as he spoke.

Ryuji nuzzled the male back and smiled. “I trust you with my life.”

Jae felt those words in his very soul. “I’ll take care of you, I promise. I just want to treat you right, I don’t want to hurt you by accident, that would kill me.” He whispered, brushing his nose against Ryuji’s. “I promise it will all be worth it, Ryuji. Okay? Let me take my time and make love to you the right way. Please?”

“Okay. Yes.” Ryuji got out as he licked his dry lips. Jae continued to kiss and touch him, making him arch his back. His lover was making him feel so good that he never wanted this to end. Ryuji relaxed his body as let Jae do whatever he wanted to do to him. As long as Jae was with him, he was fine.

Jae smiled as he took his time, leaving little love bites and as he moved to tease Ryuji’s entrance, mouth taking in the dragon’s shaft. He moaned softly, bobbing his head as he ran his tongue along the bottom of the length. Pulling away, he looked up and licked his lips, tilting his head to kiss up and down the length as he tried to combine the pain of preparing his lover for him with the pleasure of his mouth. Taking his time meant he could watch the way Ryuji responded to him, and he drank it in. When finally he could fit three fingers with relative ease, he moved to kiss Ryuji hard and heated. “You ready, my love?” he asked.

Ryuji could have screamed because of the pleasure he was receiving. He let Jae take his time as he felt the fingers at his entrance. He bit his lip harshly at the burn of him being stretched open, but it soon turned into pleasure which made him melt. “Make love to me Jae.” Ryuji answered Jae when he spoke to him.

There was never a more delightful sound to Jae than the way Ryuji moaned under his kisses and touch. When the dragon answered him, he moved up his body and kissed him as he settled between Ryuji’s legs. Making sure to stroke more lube over his own length, he eased into his lover, tilting his head to gently bite at Ryuji’s neck vein.

Ryuji let out a loud moan at Jae pushing into him. His nail raked down Jae’s back from pain and pleasure. His toes curled as he placed his feet onto Jae’s hips to push him in deeper, making him automatically hitting his sweet spot. “Oh Jae!” Ryuji moaned out as he tried to catch his breath.

Jae couldn’t help the way he was drunk on Ryuji. It was different from anything he’d ever even imagined. It was hard to explain and yet it was palpable, the very need to have everything the other was. Hearing the words, he leaned over to kiss Ryuji hard, moving his free hand to stroke along his beloved’s length. When he pulled back, he ran his tongue over Ryuji’s lower lip. “Let me see you fall apart for me, baby.” he whispered, lips ghosting over Ryuji’s.

With those simple words that Jae spoke, Ryuji clenched around him as came in between them. His eyes rolled to the back of his head as his hands scratched down Jae’s back. Ryuji’s body shook as the waves of pleasure surged through him. His mouth hung open as a silent scream left him, Ryuji couldn’t do anything but breathe at this point. He felt like he was floating on air, that he was no longer in his body. His sense of surrounding were cloudy, but he could still feel Jae in him and around him. He was okay as long as he had Jae.

Jae fell apart at the sheer beauty of the dragon reachign his end. “So beautiful,” he breathed, pressing kisses up Ryuji’s neck to his lips, letting them both ride their high out. He relaxed enough to turn them on their sides, running his hand through Ryuji’s hair. Moving to hold Ryuji close to him, he kissed his forehead. He didn’t want to move yet, content to rest with Ryuji.

Ryuji focused on breathing as he rested with his eyes closed. Jae had sucked every ounce of energy out of him but it was all worth it. once his breathing was back to normal Ryuji lifted an arm to run his fingers through Jae’s hair. Ryuji was content with their position and continued to pet Jae’s hair. “You’re beautiful too.” Ryuji managed to get out. His throat was a bit hoarse from his screaming.

A smile curved Jae’s lips, closing his eyes as he enjoyed the pets to his hair. “Would you like something to drink? It might help your throat.” He offered, moving to sit up some. He felt bad that Ryuji’s voice was so hoarse, but at the same time, he was glad. It showed he’d done well in fully pleasing his boyfriend. The reminder that Ryuji had agreed to be with him made him smile as he leaned over. “Stay here, I’ll get you something to drink and to clean us up.” He promised, climbing from bed to go get a glass of ice water, bringing it back before going to get a warm rag to clean them both up.

Ryuji hummed as the warm rag ran over his body. Once the two of them had been cleaned up Ryuji sat up to take a few sips of his water. “You really did a number on me.” Ryuji was sore from the hips down. He could barely feel his legs. “Cuddle me.” Ryuji sleepily mumbled out as he reached his arm up in search of Jae. His body was growing cold and he was growing restless at the fact that Jae wasn’t in the bed with him.

“I wanted to make sure I did. I didn’t mean to make your voice raw though.” Jae answered as he took time to make sure they were both clean before moving to pull the blankets back. “Come on, we’ll take a nap and then I’ll make us some lunch.” he promised, reaching to pull Ryuji to him, kissing him softly. He moved to turn on some music on his phone, setting it on his nightstand as he relaxed into the bed, holding his dragon to him.

When Ryuji woke up he stretched a bit as he turned his head to look at his sleeping boyfriend. He knew that neither of them had made it official yet, but did they really need to? Ryuji felt the connection and he was sure Jae did too. Ryuji winced a bit as his back still ached a bit as he tried to sit up. His eyebrows furrowed when he noticed that something just didn’t feel quite right. Reaching behind him Ryuji felt something cold and scaly. Ryuji brought his attention to the side of him and let out a loud scream.

Jae was sleeping peacefully when Ryuji’s scream startled him awake. He jumped as he sat up, sleepily looking up. “Ryuji, what’s wrong?” he asked, blinking as he reached up to rub his eye with the back of his hand.

Ryuji shot out of the bed and spun in circles. “I have a fucking tail!” Ryuji was panicking because this has never happened to him before. He had no idea that he could ever remotely shift, given that he was only a half dragon. “What do I do? I didn’t even know I can shift.” Ryuji stopped spinning just in time to see Jae staring wide-eyed at his newly equipt tail.

Jae blinked as he turned his hand to rub his eye with the ball of his hand. “I mean, you’re still half dragon, baby.” he said sleepily. “You still have dragon traits, even if you aren’t aware.” He yawned, sitting up better and patting the bed. “Come on, come back to bed.” he mused, opening his arms. “We’ll figure it out, just come back to bed.”

Ryuji tilted his head at his boyfriend. How could he sleep at a time like this!? Sighing Ryuji plopped down onto the bed and pouted. How was he supposed to function like this. Ryuji waited until Jae has fell back into a deep sleep before he snuck out of the room. He made a cup tea and sat on the floor. Ryuji concentrated on trying to make the tail disappear but he only managed to make it move side to side. Ryuji flopped over to his side, he thought about going back into the room to beat Jae with his tail but he decided against it. Ryuji looked over at the TV and began to distract himself with a movie.

Jae heard Ryuji go back downstairs and crawled out of bed. He didn’t know how to use his magic, he’d never tried to use it. Putting on a pair of boxers and some dark shorts, he blinked as he try to make himself wake up. Still groggy, he made his way back to where Ryuji was, rubbing his eyes. “You’ll give yourself a headache, you know.” he murmured, walking over to sit next to the other halfling. He absently reaching to take the tail into his hand. “It’s a pretty color, though.” he mused, still clearly out of it.

Ryuji flinched when Jae’s hand touched his tail. His new attachment was a bit sensitive. He did agree that the scales were pretty but he honestly didn’t know how to feel about it. “I already have a headache. I’ve trying to make this thing disappear for an hour now.” Ryuji muttered as he turned the volume down on the tv. He was more upset at the fact that his parents weren’t able to help out with this. If they were still here he would be able to control his dragon side.

#the longest one for last #normalabnormalityofmultimuses #Ryuji T.#c; Jae #a siren's song is in my veins;; Jae Kyung #music to calm a dragon's heart;; Jae x Ryuji #t; a dragon's song

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asleeg · 5 years

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no man is rich enough to buy back his past (1/2)

[read on ao3]

[a b-day fic for @roswyrm ]

It wasn't until he saw Zolf again, the sobs already rising up in the back of his throat, that Hamid understood how much he had missed his best friend.

Because that was what Zolf was, at the end of all things. Bertie never had been, had proven that over and over again, and Sasha was brilliant and loyal, but Zolf had been… special. Zolf had been the one he cared about so intensely it inspired him to scream and cry and do all the things his family had tried to train out of him. It was Zolf that had held him the darkness, Zolf who had saved him from himself, Zolf who had inspired him to lead. Zolf was his best friend.

And Hamid was a mass of tears shaped something like a halfling.

Grizzop and Azu both looked worried-- Well, Azu looked worried. Grizzop looked like he thought Hamid had finally lost it. Hamid couldn't blame them. He didn't know what Sasha had told them, but he could never bring himself to talk about Zolf with them. It felt wrong, somehow. The early days, when they were still working on the name, was something so precious to him, and words couldn't explain it. Especially not to the people who had replaced Zolf and Bertie, thereby changing the entire dynamic.

Sasha, though, knew Hamid at his absolute worst, and the tears didn't phase her at all. After she greeted Zolf (Lowkey as always, like Zolf was catching up with them after lagging behind to catch up on some paperwork. Why did that thought rip a sob out of Hamid's throat?), she faded to the back of their group, looking between Zolf and Hamid with a wide, expectant grin. She had planned this surprise, Hamid realised, but was too distracted to be offended.

Zolf had always been the one to carry the full brunt of Hamid's emotional outlash, but he'd never smiled like that about it. His smile was soft, almost fond, and Hamid could feel his organs quaking at the way the emotion echoed in Zolf's clear, blue eyes.

"Well," Zolf said, and, oh god. Hamid had forgotten how deep and lovely Zolf's voice was, oh god, he was sobbing even harder now. He was so happy. "I guess some things never change."

"Shut up," Hamid said. And then, quickly, "No, wait, I didn't.... Don't leave."

Zolf's brow furrowed, but his smile didn't fade-- Just turned a bit sad at the edges, the happiness wilting. Hamid felt the loneliness in his chest start building again. "I'm not going anywhere, Hamid."

If anything, Hamid cried harder.

"Sorry," Grizzop said, in his usual 'I'm not trying to be incredibly rude, but I unfortunately will be' voice. "Who are you?"

"It's Zolf," Hamid sobbed. "It's.... Zolf."

Azu looked confused. "What is a Zolf?"

"I'm a Zolf. Zolf Smith, in fact. Founder of..." Zolf paused. "Sorry, what was it you were calling it now? Right, sorry. LOLOMG."

"Ah, right," Grizzop said. "The cleric they left in Prague."

Hamid wailed.

"Does Hamid not like Zolf?" Azu 'whispered' to Sasha, and Hamid is so used to her particular brand of obtuse that it almost doesn't register. It's not until he sees the worry flit into Zolf's eyes that he sucks in a breath so sharp that it burns all the way down to his toes. Hamid can't let Zolf think that he doesn't want this, can't let Zolf think that he belongs anywhere other than here.

Sasha beats him to it, though, with a snort. "Hamid likes Zolf plenty. He's just a prat about it, sometimes."

The tears almost stop when Hamid draws himself up into full height, prepared to be affronted, but Zolf ruins all composure by coming to his rescue. "Stop it, Sasha. You know how Hamid can get when he's hungry; A couple dire lobsters and he'll be right as rain."

"I'm right here," Hamid wibbles, but it doesn't come out as the protest he intends it. It's more a statement: I'm right here, Zolf. I'm right here, pay attention to me. Then again, he's not sure if he wants Zolf to notice the teary, snotty mess he must be at the moment.

"Wow," Grizzop says. "I can't believe you used to be weirder than you are now."

"Grizzop," Azu scolds, but before she can continue (and embarrass Hamid further by discussing every schmoopy, ridiculous emotion written across his face), Hamid interrupts.

"No, you're all right," Hamid said. He took a deep breath, tries not to notice that the fondness is creeping back into the edges of Zolf's smile. "We should all get dinner. Zolf, you've... It would mean a lot to us, if you would meet the new team."

"I'd love to."

The easy agreement almost threw Hamid off, and certainly made him suspicious. Nothing with Zolf had ever been easy, from beginning to end. His sudden agreeableness was something Hamid hadn't expected or even wanted. Or, maybe, Zolf's growth didn't dissolve in the face of an old friend like Hamid's tended to.

"Perfect," Hamid said. He, and the rest of the group, were pretending that fresh tears weren't gathering in the corner of his eyes. "I'll go freshen up, and meet you all in the dining room. Yes?"

The team agrees easily enough, even if Sasha hesitates, but Zolf lingers for a moment. The doubt is clear in his eyes. After all, Hamid has never needed time or a bathroom to get himself stage ready.

"I just... need a moment," Hamid said, and Zolf nodded.

"'Course," he said, "it's a lot. You've been through a lot."

"Well," Hamid joked, "You seem to be handling it fine."

Zolf laughed, a low, rusty sound. It was different, now, like a record covered in dust. When was the last time Hamid had heard Zolf laugh? Before Prague, obviously, but... Before Paris? Before Dover? He couldn't remember.

"Do I? I don't feel fine."

Hamid winced. "Zolf," he said, softly. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

The look that crosses Zolf's face must be a look that all religious figures learn, at one point in their lives. It's a mix of "oh, look at this stupid beast, how I pity it," mixed with, "look at this abhorrent creature, how it disgusts me." Hamid had seen it in the eyes of many a priestess in his childhood, and Grizzop and Azu had both conquered halves of it. Zolf was the only one who had managed, so far, to also make it seem fond, as if Hamid's slight was somehow endearing. It always unsettled him, threw him off whatever self-destructive spiral he'd been ready to fling himself into.

Honestly, Hamid wishes he'd known Zolf at University.

"Of course I'm staying," Zolf says. He starts off after Sasha and the rest, and Hamid still isn't used to the fluidity of Zolf motions now that he's got two (magic) legs again. It's unfair, how much the new stability in his shoulders shows off how broad and strong they are. The last thing Hamid needs is even more reasons to miss him when he's gone. "I need to make sure the new recruits are taking care of you better than the last two idiots, don't I?"

And then he just... leaves, like that sentence couldn't be broken down into a thousand meanings, a million messages that Hamid could spend the next six hours dissecting. It's enough to paralyze Hamid, leaving him stuck stock-still in the hotel lobby until a well-meaning conceirge comes and pokes him along. Hamid trudges to the bathroom, replaying the conversation over to himself. It feels more like a daydream than a memory, like one of those silly fantasies he used to have, all prince charming and being swept off his feet. Although, it's less about the adventures than it used to be.

Once upon a time, Hamid wanted princes and princesses. He wanted grand adventures and crowns, to achieve great deeds that could be shown as brazenly as the medals on his chest. Reality worked that out of him quickly enough. After everything in London, Hamid had learned that no one was coming to save him. Paris taught him that grand adventures and great deeds were sometimes things you didn't want to show. Sometimes they were things you wanted to forget about long enough to sleep. But it was okay: Hamid had picked up new dreams. Dreams of him and Zolf, of Sasha and Bertie, all four of them a happy little family in the face of certain death. It had been a dream born from an almost.

Prague took that dream from him, too.

Hamid relished in the sting of cold water against his face, dripping down his neck. It made the world feel a little more real, a little less like the memory of those old daydreams. Seeing Zolf had led him back to that intense longing for a home-- But, no, that had been the fourth lesson, the one that Cairo taught him. Hamid didn't know how to be the new him around someone who still had his hands around the tenderest parts of Hamid's heart.

When he opened his eyes, they were molten and draconic, the tips of teeth peeking out over his lips.

They would have to figure it out together.

#rusty quill gaming #zolf smith #hamid saleh haroun al-tahan #zamid

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motherstone · 5 years

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Can you tell us more about your OCs? How are the OG cast their ancestors? Are Gabi and Sandra happy together now? Married yet? Your OCs are so rad and I love their story

!! AaaaAA thank you!! 😄😄😭😭💟💗💞💘💓💕💘💝 that’s is so rad of you op!!! And I’ll try my best to tell them a bit of their story:

Lemlin is born with a birth defect (underdeveloped elf ears), which makes him unable to receive vibrations (I hc the tip of elf ears are used to detect so) and hear things properly. He doesn’t really want implants and is actually perfectly fine with his disability, so he wears hearing aids instead and elf ears prosthetics just in battle. He had a full-blooded elf brother, Jaqes, who was the son of a wealthy nobleman before the Nobility class was dissolved a long time ago. They have a close and amiable relationship with one another, but Jaqes didn’t know he’s a member of the covert Auxiliary, much less a sharpshooter (which is ironic, because he’s the head of the Central Intelligence Division in there, a mix of CIA and FBI). Lemlin has a variety of friend including both humans, elves, and halflings. He’s really interested in theater, which is actually pretty suitable with his disability (deaf people are incredibly expressive while signing so yea!), and often goes on shows (Gigas goes with him on ocassion. They sorta have a father-son relationship haha). He’s the elf equivalent of 16 (no one knows. They thought he’s 22, it also doesn’t help he has his helmet on all the time). Lemlin is pan-ace. He lives in Milre, Gulfen.

Ian has a very strained relationship with his father (hc is that nearly all who is part of the Elf army are abusive fathers because they didn’t get the treatment they needed at the time), who is at odds with his homosexuality. He doesn’t care though, although at first he inherited his racism. That is, until his sister (Mako) had teenage sex with a human (who broke up with her when she got pregnant), and thus giving birth to a halfling, much to his anger. He’s even more furious with humans over this, but eventually realize his anger was bullshit, especially when his nephew was born. Now he has human friends, a human BESTfriend (Sandra), and is now seatching for a boyfriend (he’s working on it. If they can’t handle his personality they gotta go). Ian is passive-aggressive and sarcastic at times, especially on the field, so it causes great friction among the group, he is also prideful and assured with his great skills and technicality. However for all of his ego, he is a good leader when Gabi is not around and gets the job done, and is incredibly competent at what he do (he’s based on a few teachers and a classmate of mine haha). He’s the elf equivalent of 26, with kinfe skills, mechanic skills, pilot skills, and tactic skills, only second to Gabi (but the gap is still wide). He’s gay. He lives in Gorbon, Windsor.

Gigas! Big and friendly Gigas. He used to live in Ganon’s Gate, and had a halfling bestfriend, that is until said friend was lynched, to his great horror. It leads him to killing someone who went after him, which landed him in jail. Thankfully, Gulfen’s prison system is revised thanks to the King (Trellis. It’s similar to how prisoners are treated in Norway), so his actions are recognized as self-defense. While in prison, someone from the Auxiliary sees potential in him (it helps that he’s huuuuge. Like, 6"10’ huge. I decided that 7 feet is too tall), and thus offers to recruit him once his term is finished. By then, he’s a changed man, learning from experience, books, and stories from the inmates helped him develop a kinder and helpful personality (still cheerful tho. He’s always a joyous and passionate man). He gets into the Auxiliary and was assigned to Lufen, Coco, where he met his wife. It was a celebratio for the end of the great war, and the city was holding a huge banquet (similar to the fiesta of the Philippines where the food is laid out on a huuuuge table), and that’s where he met his future wife, whom he loudly comolimented her cooking (he’s a cook himself). There’s a lot more to his story besides this but I’ll cut it off. He’s the elven equivalent of 36, and is an incredibly strong guy, but lacks any sort of outstanding ability besides that. His personality acts as a great mediator amongst the group, and as a guiding and kind voice to all, and is very friendly towards Theorn. He’s straight. He lives in Coco, Lufen with his son and wife.

Sandra! She’s the physical incarnation of Dumb Bitch Energy (aaaa bit of a self-insert ahah). But by God is she agile and fast. She has 4 siblings (a couple are adopted) and she’s the oldest, her family owning a farm in Lufen. She used to be assigned in Gulfen to detect and neutralize landmines with her dog, until her legs got blown off along with her companion. It devastated her so much, she uses sex to cope (she’s hypersexual, but dw she is working on it). Sandra can a bit slow and dim-witted at times, but has a treasure trove of street smarts with instincts to match and is a friendly person to anyone regardless. She is on ocassion sorta oblivious to the atmosphere, which makes her make a situation worse, but if you direct her on the field, she uses her creativity to do her job efficiently. She’s bffs with Ian, often spending time with one another to the point of a qpr (queer-platonic relationship. THAT close). She’s 23. She’s bi/pan. She lives in a developing town of Lufen.

Theorn, an expert swordsman who is the only person left from the Redbeard warrior clan. He’s still using Leon’s sword, still at good shape, at the age of repulsor and stonekeeper tech (which is impractical but he’s still good fighter so they don’t stop him). He was orphaned at a young age, but developed a strong moral code regardless and became a police officer in Kanalis as a result. He got tangled in with the Auxiliary when he gets out during a lockdown (upon which all citizens goes underground for safety) to help people when the city is attacked by a rogue mountain giant, and sees Gabi slaying the thing and encountering Ian (who is in a different squad from Gabi. This is so long ok), which he is not meant to do or see, as the Auxiliary’s existence must be kept secret. He and Ian fights but they were toe to toe when it comes to close combat, they knock him out and takes him to the Hexagon (Auxiliary HQ) with the intent to wipe his memory of the event, to which he simply pleads to join, feeling he’ll be able to contribute more. Now he’s in a squad of the weirdest, egoistic people he’s met, and although looking serious, is absolutely at a loss of words at the Auxiliary’s odd happnings and morbid humor (heard soldiers develop nihilistic and fatalistic sense of humour once), but deep respect at the fights and sacrifices that they do. His lawful, goody-good personality is often at odds with the group (he’s kind of the prim and proper guy while these dudes… Can be wacky at times), to his great frustration, with Gigas the only person taking him seriously. He is at most odds with Ian (haha sexual tension everyone?) and with Gabi’s chaotic neutral/good personality. He is still good friends with them tho and cares about their sakes. Theorn is still a reliable and the most trustworthy guy of the group, and although his skills are nowhere near outstanding outside parkour, hand-to-hand combat and swordplay, he is strong, fast, and agile in his own way. He’s 24. Theorn is bi/pan.He lives in Kanalis, Windsor.

Gabi. Hot-headed, incredibly petty, batshit strong and skilled Gabi. She follows her own moral code, and is often at odds with the authority at Auxiliary and her own squad until she realizes her toxic attitude aint shit and changed. Now she’s the most serious of the group, but at least reasonable. Has a very fucked up sense of humour and hates Theorn’s personality (cop-convict anyone?), but ultimately came to resoect him for insisitng on doing good in a shitty world. Has a serious crush on a developing artist, who was pretty nice and her cheerful and lax personality helps her feel safe and comfortable, helping her develop social awareness and skills. She is in fact, not in a relationship with Sandra (not her type). Her crush used to have a crush on someone, but eventually stops and slowly has a crush on her (not that she knew. She was p much resigned to unreqruited love). But like her, her cursh has a deep set of mental issues, leading her to fall into depression and neglect, making her unable to work on her recruitment piece for Gulfen’s Institution (which offers free tuiton to its students should they oass and it’s a great school). Gabi then often breaks out of the Auxiliary without permission and during vacation months to take care of her recovery (it started when her mother beat her up in her OWN home, an small dilapilating apartment, making her feel paranoid and unsafe. It ignited old self-loathing and unwavering sadness yet again). She eventually gets better, and gets accepted, to the duo’s happiness. At a celebration party, she takes Gabi as her plus one. As they dance, Gabi finally confesses her feelings, which her crush actually reciprocates. They then starts a happy and healthy relationship. She the elven equivalent of 25. She’s a butch lesbian and lives in an unspecified part of Gulfen. Did I mention Gabilan is her pops

Ravis. He, him/they, them. They think idealistically on ocassion, even ny Theorn’s standards so the squad is kind of exasperated with him. It doesn’t help he is more naive and inexperience in comparison to them (yes, even Lemlin), with a good childhood to boot (in comparison to theirs) so it took quite a long while for them to warm up the guy. Ravis used to have a happy and healthy childhood in Lucien with his mother, and his father working abroad in Gulfen, but visits them very feequently. It all changes when the King suddenly (tw: suicide) committed suicide (?) (they never found the body), plunging the Elf nation into chaos and government shutdown affecting their lives outside Gulfen. They continue on regardless, with their mother ending up as a widow, and they studied to become one of the leading pioneers of Alchemy, under their mother’s tutelage. They then studied combat under three teachers during their teen years, and in nearing the end of their third term, theur mother is afflicted with an unprecedented terminal illness, and dies. Even though they are of age, they quietly move into the North East of Gulfen, in a remote village where they work as a healer. Needing his intelligence, the squad was sent over to recruit and escort them, in order to investigate a chemical used when an attack on the Border Guard occurs, leading to a breach and thus ending the 500 years of the Gate being infallible. They nevertheless have a compassionate and empathetic nature, driven to help others especially those in need. He is quite well-spoken and intelligent, and has good social skills. Oddly enough, he doesn’t really have friends until the squad. They’re the elven equivalent of 20, and is a certified doctor.

#ok that is enough #thank u for asking and apolohies for the ling post #thank u for asking

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deeeepsteep · 5 years

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Tbh when I think about lycanthropy and werewolves, I think about it like the stages to a disease

Read More because I put way too much thought into this

I know most folklore says that lycanthropy is more of a curse, but idk I always liked the idea of it being a disease, something contagious and mutated that latches onto your body and becomes a part of you whether you like it or not

Though...I think it originated hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago as a curse - maybe someone did something terribly wrong and was turned into a wolf as punishment, and that person found out that it could ‘infect’ others by biting or scratching them. Maybe this person was a complete dick who lacked self-awareness and didn’t learn from their mistakes, so they decided to fuck things up even more by intentionally infecting other people, which helped spread the disease. So maybe it is a curse???? Maybe it’s some weird mix of the two???? Idk lmao

My version of lycanthropy comes in three stages:

Man-Wolf/Untrue Werewolves

Common Werewolves/Halflings

True Werewolves

All three stages can be seen as variations or different “versions/mutations” of the same virus. Sort of like how a cold has different symptoms, if that makes any sense???

Now, humans aren’t as smart as actual wolves, and humans love to make things harder for themselves so the difference in stages have given some of them an entitlement of some sorts, which gives way to a sort of...werewolf racism????? There’s no existing word for it so I’m just gonna go with that lmao - humans love to discriminate against each other and this “werewolf tier” gives them another reason to treat each other like shit, because humans are terrible like that. They see the different stages as a hierarchy of some sort, with Untrue Werewolves on the bottom, Common Werewolves in the middle, and True Werewolves on top. More on that in a bit.

They all have a bunch of common traits, but they stand out on their own. Their common traits are things found in many werewolf-related folklore:

Speed-healing - I read that this has been a trait in werewolf lore for hundreds of years so it seemed imperative that this interpretation had it too. Bruises and cuts go away in seconds, even if there’s internal bleeding or if it’s a really deep cut. Bones that normally take weeks to heal will mend themselves in mere minutes, which can be a good and bad thing. You’ll have to set the bone as quickly as possible or else they will mend the wrong way, which means you’ll have to re-break the bone and set it again. It also takes a lot of strength and power to break werewolf bones; humans can’t do it on their own, so if you can cause a fracture that must mean you’re either very strong or you know very powerful magic!

High Body Temperature - A healthy werewolf will run about 110 degrees Farenheit in both their human and transformed forms. For humans, that’s an extremely high fever that can cause permanent brain damage and even death. Werewolves have a significantly higher body temperature due to two things: Their speed-healing, and their human immune system working harder to fend off the werewolf virus. They make great space heaters, so if you’re cold and your heater’s broken, cuddle a werewolf!

Heightened Senses/Abilities - Common and True Werewolves retain their heightened abilities in their human forms, while Untrue Werewolves only have them when they’ve transformed. A werewolf’s nose can smell things up to 5 miles away - that’s almost twice as strong as a regular wolf! They can see very well in the dark; since Common and True Werewolves retain their night vision in their human form, they have reflectors in their eyes (Also an easy way to spot a Common or True Werewolf). Their hearing is ultra-sensitive, and they also possess superhuman strength and agility; True Werewolves can cover dozens of miles within minutes.

Transformation Under A Full Moon - This is a given. Whenever there’s a full moon, you transform, no matter what stage of lycanthropy you’re in. At night, once you see the full moon, your transformation begins. Full moons generally last between 3 to 4 days, but werewolves only stay in their transformed state at night. Once dawn hits, they’re human again - but when night falls and the moon is visible again, back into werewolf form they go! However, during the day of a full moon, they are noticeably more irritable (Scroll down a bit more to read up on Moon Sickness).

Weakness Against Silver - I know this is more of a pop culture thing, but I noticed in folklore werewolves don’t really have any traditional weaknesses, thus making them technically invincible - and I find that really boring tbh. Everyone has a weakness. When werewolves are attacked with a silver weapon, their wounds take longer to heal. If you’re a werewolf and your attacker breaks your arm with a silver hammer, guess what? Your bones will take weeks, not seconds to heal!!!! If a silver weapon breaks through skin and causes an open wound, it will leave a scar once it heals. Werewolves with plenty of scars are often revered in the werewolf community; you’re the toughest of the tough if you’re adorned with them! As of right now, silver is the only known way to kill a werewolf.

Post-Transformation Amnesia - Present in Untrue and Common Werewolves. Most werewolves have little to no recollection of what they were doing during a full moon, or when they’re in a transformed state. This is due to their human selves essentially dissolving when they transform.

Moon Sickness/Phasing Sickness - Moon Sickness happens with every kind of werewolf. Their bodies can sense an impending full moon, which triggers the human immune system to work harder than usual to resist the werewolf virus. It’s common for werewolves to experience chronic fatigue, insomnia, irritable mood (More irritable than usual), and even flu-like symptoms in the days preceding a full moon and during the days of a full moon. True Werewolves not only experience Moon Sickness, but also Phasing Sickness; they experience Moon Sickness symptoms when they haven’t phased in awhile. Unlike their Untrue and Common counterparts, they experience these symptoms because their wolf half is getting restless from being dormant for too long, rather than their human bodies fighting against the werewolf virus.

Insatiable Appetites - Werewolves LOVE to eat. They have insanely high metabolisms, so they need to eat large portions of food to keep up their strength - however, that doesn’t mean there aren’t out of shape werewolves! Soft round werebois exist out there. They just eat way more than other werewolves do, which is probably tonnes.

Sensory Overload - Having heightened senses is great and all, but it’s overwhelming for many Common Werewolves, especially for those who’ve been bitten recently. Their human bodies simply cannot handle the wolf’s sensitive nose, ears, and eyes. It gets so overwhelming that some werewolves look for ways to “dull” these senses so they’re easier to bear. Unfortunately, this means that a lot of Common Werewolves succumb to substance addiction. Drug and alcohol abuse is a sad common reality for many Common Werewolves. Smoking cigarettes is a common vice for the werewolf community, as it’s seen as the “least harmful” addiction; their speed healing is capable of eating up any harmful chemicals before they’re able to infect their cells, thus preventing them from multiplying and spreading, and it doesn’t affect their stamina. This means they’re immune to cancer and other serious diseases (If a human with cancer is bitten, their cancer will be cured...but it obviously comes with a heavy price).

Longevity: Werewolves aren’t immortal, but they can live for a very long time if they take care of themselves and avoid getting attacked with silver as much as they possibly can. Their lifespan is way longer than a human’s; the oldest recorded werewolf lived for over 800 years.

Loss of Humanity During Transformation: Untrue and Common Werewolves lose their human minds in their transformed state, making them incredibly dangerous. They cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, and they’ll attack anyone who stands too close.

A little more detail on the three stages of lycanthropy:

The “Man-Wolf”, or “Untrue Werewolves”

One becomes an Untrue Werewolf when they are scratched, not bitten, by another Untrue Werewolf, a Common Werewolf, or a True Werewolf.

They look more like the old-school werewolves you see in movies like the Wolf Man, Teen Wolf, I Was A Teenage Werewolf, and the American Werewolf series. They’re more human-shaped, peppered with wolf-life traits: They have a lot more hair than the average human, their nails are longer and more claw-like, their eyes retain their human shape but they may change colour (Not all wolves have yellow or orange eyes, they can be brown too). They possess the classic werewolf traits - superhuman strength, heightened senses, speed healing - but only when it’s a full moon and they have transformed (So if you get a boo-boo in human form, it’ll heal like a regular wound; you’ll have to wait for the full moon in order for the healing process to speed up). Otherwise, they’re your average-looking person, and if you didn’t know they were infected you probably would never be able to guess.

Untrue Werewolves are only able to transform when there’s a full moon; their mood or other environmental factors do not influence a transformation. The transformation process is gradual but relatively painless, as the only things that really change are the amount of hair, the length of the nails, the formation of the teeth, and, depending on the individual, the colour of the eyes.

There are known small pockets of Untrue Werewolf “packs”, but for the most part Untrue Werewolves prefer working alone. That being said, the few packs that do exist band together because they have an unwavering hatred for Common and True Werewolves. They’re often seen as the very bottom of the “werewolf hierarchy”, and many werewolves do not consider them part of their community, hence the Untrue Werewolf title. Since they’re the least “wolfy-looking” and only possess wolf-like traits when the full moon is out, they’re often looked down upon, or not taken seriously. Desperate to prove themselves, and to show others that they count as werewolves, some have gone as far as deliberately scratching and/or biting humans for the sole purpose of adding more to their ranks. Unlike Common and True Werewolves, Untrue Werewolves do not have enough of the “werewolf virus” in their system to transform a human into a Common Werewolf via biting them, so their bites will merely turn them into another Untrue Werewolf.

However, it is possible to “advance” to a Common Werewolf if an Untrue Werewolf is bitten by a Common Werewolf or a True Werewolf, but unsurprisingly, most Untrue Werewolves go out of their way to ensure that doesn’t happen. There are some who willingly seek out a Common Werewolf or True Werewolf so they can get deliberately bitten, but these are few and far in between. For the most part, Untrue Werewolves are stubborn and proud beings who just want to be respected for who they are. They just want to be loved!!!!!!!

The Common Werewolf, or Halfing

These funky dudes are the most common kind of werewolf, hence the name. In order to become one, you must be bitten, not scratched, by another True Werewolf.

They look more like your “classic werewolf” aka a wolf that stands on two legs, with hands instead of paws. They’re huge, with the smallest recorded werewolf measuring a little over 7 feet. Their forearms are stronger than their back legs and it shows in their posture; they’re often hunched over, with their thick arms hanging by their sides in an ape-like stance. Fur colour varies, just like any wolf coat does. Same with the eyes. The noises they emit are similar to Untrue Werewolves, but are significantly more animalistic. They retain their heightened abilities, including speed healing and night vision, in their human form.

Common Werewolves are notorious for being incredibly violent and hot-tempered in both their wolf and human forms. The smallest inconvenience can set them off, to the point where it can force them to transform unexpectedly, and a Common Werewolf doesn’t discriminate when it comes to their rage, meaning they’ll attack anyone who is in close range - including loved ones. The transformation process is extremely painful for Common Werewolves because their bones and internal organs shift around as they mutate from human to werewolf. Shifting back to human form is just as painful.

Many Common Werewolves detest their wolfy state and dread or even fear transforming. This resistance only makes the virus within them more volatile, rendering them vulnerable to more unexpected transformations and violent outbursts.

Although they are considered the middle tier of the werewolf hierarchy, both Untrue and True Werewolves look down upon Common Werewolves for their brutish behaviour. They’re often seen as the “dumbest” and most “goon-like” of the community, but they are still regarded as “more werewolf” than Untrue Werewolves. However, these stereotypes are mostly untrue, as Common Werewolves are fully capable of planning and executing elaborate hunting and battle strategies, and there are some who are capable of controlling their anger. Unlike their Untrue counterparts, they prefer living, hunting, and attacking in packs.

Halfling is a common colloquial term for them, but most aren’t fond of the name, as they feel it makes them sound like an incomplete being. If you want to piss off a Common Werewolf, call them a Halfling - but most would strongly advise against it!

True Werewolves

The highest tier in the werewolf hierarchy, and also the most rare; there are less than 3% of recorded True Werewolves, though it is very likely there are many more. One cannot become a True Werewolf by a scratch or a bite; it takes weeks, sometimes months or years of physical and mental preparation.

It’s unknown how the first True Werewolf came about, but the most commonly accepted tale is at least 1000 years old and speaks of a Common Werewolf who was left for dead in the deep woods after being attacked by a coven with silver daggers. As she lay in a pool of her own blood, she began to hear voices that whispered things to her such as accepting change and reaching her full potential. Interpreting these messages as a sign of making peace with the end of her life and accepting her fate, she closes her eyes, ready to pass onto the next life - only to wake up moments later, fully healed, and in the form of a wolf.

Picture the werewolves/shapeshifters from Twilight, except not as gigantic. True Werewolves, when in wolf form, look exactly like a real wolf, with the exception of enhanced senses, strength, speed, and speed healing. They are able to shift back and forth between their human and wolf forms at will, and the transformation process is seamless and painless. Transforming only takes mere seconds - they actually prefer the term phasing as opposed to transformation or mutation. It has been described as morphing or “melting”; however, when angered, scared, or under a full moon, the transformation is more volatile (But still painless), often described as “exploding” into their wolf forms. Like their Common counterparts, they retain their enhanced abilities in their human form, but unlike their Common and Untrue counterparts, they retain their sentient minds when transformed/phased (Except during a Blood Moon - more on that later). They’re able to discriminate between friend and foe in their wolfy state, and True Werewolves usually prefer keeping to themselves, so they’re the least harmless out of the three werewolf types. They are way more docile than their Untrue and Common counterparts, however some may still be prone to angry outbursts if provoked enough.

So how does one become a True Werewolf? It’s hard to explain. The very few True Werewolves that are known to exist have difficulty describing the process. Many of them have “accidentally” turned into True Werewolves; one True Werewolf described his experience as waking up one day and being overcome with a feeling of “wholeness, completeness, like I’ve finally found this missing part of me that I didn’t know I was searching for”.

Achieving True Werewolf status is a matter of quelling the perpetual conflict between a werewolf’s human half and their wolf half. Common Werewolves are constantly at war with their animalistic instincts and impulses, which causes them to act out with violence. True Werewolves accept that they are two different beings within the same vessel, and that they are not “more human than wolf” or vice versa; they are equal parts human and wolf. A True Werewolf’s human immune system no longer sees the werewolf genes as a virus that needs to be fought off, so the two halves intertwine and form a completely new genetic makeup, finally collaborating instead of butting heads.

This is a very difficult concept for many Common Werewolves to handle, especially when lycanthropy is highly stigmatized and most of them have been raised to fear or detest lycanthropes. This internalized hatred makes it very difficult for many werewolves to accept lycanthropy as a part of themselves and refuse to believe that this is a lifelong condition. The constant resistance only makes them more volatile, which increases public stigma, so it’s kind of like a self-destructive cycle. True Werewolves find a way to break out of that cycle - in other words, they know what werewolf self-love and self-care is and they’ve embraced it fully!

Like Common Werewolves, True Werewolves have the pack mentality - which is crucial for them, since so few of them exist. In wolf form, they’ll look like an ordinary wolf pack, and they’ll usually behave as such as to not attract werewolf hunters or any other predator (Witches, demons, vampires...literally nobody likes werewolves, it’s pretty sad).

True Werewolves are often revered in the werewolf community, as they are hard to come by, and their self-acceptance is greatly admired. However, there are very, very few True Werewolves (Remember, only less than 3% of them are recorded to have ever exist) who look down on anything that isn’t like them, and refuse to interact with Common and Untrue Werewolves. Fortunately, “bad” True Werewolves are very few and far in between!

Lycanthropy In Society

Like many other interpretations out there, this interpretation of lycanthropy is condemned, exiled, stigmatized...you name it. Most people aren’t fond of werewolves. though their hatred towards them is mostly born out of ignorance and fear than genuine hatred. It’s a given that humans act hostile towards things they don’t fully understand, and so this is how they approach lycanthropes. Many of them have a very limited understanding of what lycanthropy is about and only accept what they’ve heard through word of mouth, aka urban legend and exaggerated recounts of encounters with lycanthropes. For the most part, the world sees werewolves as violent, out of control, savage, disorganized, and primitive. This means there aren’t a lot of opportunities for them - jobs, friends, romantic relationships, etc.

There are groups of werewolf hunters whose sole purpose is to hunt werewolves into extinction. They can be literally anyone - human, goblin, demon, vampire, witch or warlock - and many groups have grown fame and notoriety for killing packs and packs of werewolves simply for being werewolves.

However, there are some people out there who do want to learn more about lycanthropy and have gone so far as lived with werewolf packs to gain a better understanding of them. Pro-lycanthrope scientists have teamed up with lycanthropes (And lycanthropes who are scientists) to try and come up with a cure to lycanthropy, or at least a medicine of some sort that’ll help Common and Untrue Werewolves retain their humanity while in their transformed state. Contrary to popular belief, wolfsbane isn’t an effective ingredient, and there currently isn’t a cure to lycanthropy.

Lycanthropy isn’t inheritable. One can only become infected with the virus if they’re bitten or scratched, so if two werewolves decide to start a family their children will be free of the virus - but, unsurprisingly, many children of werewolf parents want to become a lycanthrope so they can be like them. Many werewolves are against the idea, as they believe their children can have a clean slate and live the life they never had.

Werewolf Alphas?

Many people have a common misconception about wolf packs and pack behaviour. Alphas aren’t necessarily the leader of the pack, and they don’t actually have this reigning authority over the group. Rather, wolf alphas - and there is a female alpha and a male alpha for each pack, not just one lone male alpha - act more as parental figures...most likely because their pack consists of them and their children, rather than a band of random, unrelated wolves.

But humans aren’t that smart. Humans, by nature, desire power and control - and that reflects in werewolf pack behaviour. Werewolves need an alpha. They need someone to listen to, someone to guide them - especially Common Werewolves. In a werewolf pack, there is only one alpha, though gender isn’t a determining factor. A werewolf alpha isn’t necessarily the strongest or most dominant of the pack. An alpha must be street smart, they must know how to properly plan and execute hunting strategies. An alpha is a leader because they know how to lead with respect, and they see their fellow pack members as a cohesive unit rather than a hierarchy. They do not see themselves as above pack law, or “higher” than the other pack members. They see the pack as equal members of a group with their individual sets of strengths and weaknesses, and they have a gift for figuring out how to use everyone’s strengths to the advantage of the group. Earning the position of alpha comes with a lot of respect and trust, though there are very few True Werewolves who abuse this position of power (Like I mentioned earlier, humans aren’t as smart).

There are werewolf betas and gammas who serve as second and third in command to the alpha. Betas and gammas are usually the muscle of the group; they’re the strongest, physically speaking, and when they travel in wolf form they’re are often seen at the head and tail of every pack (Alpha and gamma in front, beta in the back) so that they keep a watchful eye on the other wolves and potential enemies.

What Happens During A Blood Moon?

A blood moon is another term for when the moon is in total eclipse. It takes on a distinguish reddish colour, hence the name.

Blood Moons are one of the worst times in any werewolf’s life. There isn’t a scientific explanation for it yet, but blood moons make werewolves even more agitated, violent, and explosive than usual. Even True Werewolves can’t resist the pull of a blood moon; they will turn violent and lose their human minds. Werewolves stay in their wolf forms even during the day of a blood moon, and they are unable to change back until the moon is back to normal.

So you have a bunch of feral-like Untrue, Common, and True Werewolves running around and destroying everything they see. It’s not fun for anyone.

What About A Wolf Moon? A Super Moon? A Harvest Moon?

The full moon in January is commonly referred to as the Wolf Moon. A Super Moon is - you guessed it - when the moon is gigantic. During these phases, a werewolf’s senses are heightened and they find that their strength is at least doubled. They can run twice as fast and hit twice as hard.

A Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. The same applies to Wolf and Super Moons - they’re stronger, but strangely enough...they’re a lot more hungry. Werewolves have a big appetite to begin with, but during a Harvest Moon they’re hungrier than usual. Werewolves in rural areas have been known to steal entire fields of crops and livestock. In a sense, the Harvest Moon is like a werewolf Thanksgiving!

What about a Super Blood Wolf Moon?

Feral-like werewolves with double the strength and speed running around everywhere that have absolutely no control over themselves? Have fun!

#werewolf #werewolves #lycanthropy #my stuff

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animatedpileofbones · 5 years

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DA q's!! 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 14, 17, 25, 33, 34, 37, 40, 42, 47, 51, 52, 60, 63, 66, 77, 78, 79, 98, and 99~! (◠‿◠✿)

eli i love you man here we go, this is long sorry but i have a Lot To Say! i literally wrote like 1500 words for these so it’s under a readmore.

1 how did you get into dragon age

i was on tumblr when inquisition came out and a lot of my friends and mutuals at the time suddenly became dragon age blogs for a while (some still are, howdy!) yEARS later i found origins on discount at gamestop and decided to check it out and whoops now i’m a fucking mess forever :)

4 about my warden(s)

My first, and most recently rehashed* warden was Gwinek, she was a casteless dwarf rogue, dual wielder. I didn’t know there were specific temperaments in this game like in 2 but I play her as gruff but fiercely loyal. She would do almost anything for her friends and sister, but is very naive in matters of magic. She romanced Leliana.

*rehashed because I came to the series completely blind, and as such made some not so great choices the first time around.

I also have an elven mage, named Lemmen, she was also a big helpy helperton but slow to trust. She romanced Alistair and I don’t like to think about that sacrifice. :’)

5 about my hawke(s)

My first Hawke was Marcel, a dual wielding rogue and I played him purple. He is big into his friends, obviously, but mostly just wants to be liked despite the fact that he is accidentally an asshole sometimes. He romanced Fenris. All my Hawkes romance Fenris. I love Fenris just so much and I keep telling myself one of these times I’m going to romance Isabela but then Fenris walks in all drama and vengeance and I’m just too gay to handle it. My latest Hawke was Lucien, a… purple dual-wielding rogue. He erred on the side of blue, though, whereas Marcel was vaguely red, so. Not Entirely the same but view my problem, especially going into...

6 about my inquisitor(s)

My first inquisitor was Vodahl Cadash, a… dwarven dual-wielding rogue. :) He was pretty anti-chantry but was also more invested in taking care of his crew than making enemies, preferring to let Josephine handle PR and just say what she told him to say while he supported his team as he saw fit. He lived for life on the road, mostly, an adventurer type, but whatever his inner circle needed, they got. He romanced The Iron Bull, because I’m a thirsty thirsty bitch. I rehashed the dwarven rogue in Heraht, this time romancing Dorian; Heraht was much more enamored with surface life, not necessarily Ferelden-style though. He was well manicured and a bit on the sarcastic side of charming. Right now i’m playing a human sword-and-shield warrior, Errol Travellyan, and he is accidentally just Dorian But From The Free Marches in personality. He can be easily frustrated, I play him fairly no nonsense at times but he’s trying to maintain his Approachable Facade. He’s…. also romancing Dorian OH NO

7 favorite origins backstory

Oooh this is tough because I love Leliana so much, and Alistair just makes me cry all the time I Love That Man, ooh this is tough but I think I have to say Morrigan. She is a story gift that keeps on giving, and I think this is because of what we learned in Inquisition. Without that info, I think… OH NO WAIT IT’S SHALE, HANDS DOWN IT’S SHALE

11 best hawke quote

it’s not specifically a quote but when you bring the viscount’s son back in act 1 and you can either keep your mouth shut about their disagreement or Well Actually yourself into that conversation, that’s my favorite.

14 favorite origins party combo

Before you get Shale, it’s Alistair, Leliana, and the dog. After Shale, it’s Shale, Leliana, and either Zevran or Alistair.

17 mabari name

In Origins, I named the mabari after a person from the backstory. For Gwinek it was Leske to keep her friend with her even now. For Lemmen it was Jowan, because at least the mabari would never let her down. In DA2, it was a family pet, so for Marcel it was named Champion, and for Lucien it was Handsome Cal, and you can envision all sorts of titles in there but I didn’t have enough characters. Lord Handsome Cal Esquire III (he was the first)

25 favorite inquisition place

It’s the Hissing Wastes for sure. It’s always dusk, it’s so vast and beautiful. I love just hanging out there.

33 favorite dragon age character overall

Hey Eli? I hate this question! I am doing my current playthrough solely for the benefit of Leliana this is true. But I have a horrible weakness for two (2) men, Fenris and The Iron Bull, I can’t choose between them, and also Varric, and, asdlfjasdf how could you do this to me? I also identify very heavily with Dorian, and, I’m going to just cry instead of answer this, how about that?

34 least favorite character

Oh it’s Anders no doubt, no question, I hate him. I hate him so much. Like don’t get me wrong, I am in full support of mages taking back their space in Thedas, I just. Have known guys like Anders and the way he hits on f!Hawke like immediately after his intro quest, y’know where we had to kill his boyfriend? felt so bad and just turned my mild irritation into full-on hate.

37 blood magic yes/no

Nope.

40 moment/action i regret in game

Just like everything with the ending of Origins. I don’t prefer to do the ritual with Morrigan because I tend to play women which means I need to coerce Alistair into doing it and I did that for exactly two savestates (one being my Cousland because I wanted to see how that went and then the first time around with Gwinek) thinking “this is the best long term post-game choice! Neither of us have to die! And I’m not even making him be king!” despite it sitting bitterly in the back of my mind the rest of the series. then comes Inquisition and the full consequences of my actions hit me like a brick in the face and I eventually scrapped that playthrough and went back and didn’t be a shithead shitbag, replaying Gwinek entirely so that choice wouldn’t have even begun to make sense to her. I regret that so much.

42 who do i wish i could romance

VARRIC “PARAGON OF MANLINESS” TETHRAS

47 best antagonist

Arl Rendon Howe from Origins, cos he was voiced by Tim Curry and that was just so sexy of a choice. In all seriousness though, Meredith from da2.

51 favorite warden/hawke/inq headcanon any/all

Lucien Hawke routinely had sleepovers at his estate in Hightown. He tried to a couple times while living with Gamlen, but everyone was too sad to indulge him.

Heraht nearly breaks up with Dorian on a near weekly basis whenever Dorian accidentally lumps him in with the Fereldens re: hygiene. Also, not a headcanon but just the way I played but the two of them absolutely had coordinating outfits at all times.

Gwinek shared tents with Wynne most nights, finding in Wynne the mother she wished she and Rica would have had.

Also with Gwinek, she may have helped her sister’s paramour become king but she doesn’t trust him half as far as she can throw him and comes down to Orzammar on the regs to make sure he’s treating Rica right, and he knows damn well that Gwinek put him into that throne and she Will take him back out of it, and he can’t do shit without risking absolute chaos.

This is also a good time to mention my ot3s: Hawke/Fenris/Isabela, Heraht/Dorian/Bull

52 favorite npc headcanons

Fenris took to reading rather easier than Hawke would have guessed, only Hawke didn’t know just how well Fenris had taken to it until years into their relationship because Fenris thought the “lessons” were cute.

The Iron Bull introduced hot cocoa to Skyhold and literally changed so many lives in that moment; quartermaster Morris pulled so many strings to get marshmallows in, and when they arrived the first time the celebration was almost a riot.

60 who do i wish had been given more story

Weird to say for the woman who had her own Origins DLC and also was pivotal in Inquisition, but Morrigan. She’s just really interesting to me. Also, Warden Stroud. I think he was just there to be the Easy Low Stakes Choice to leave in the Fade honestly but I hated not having a reason to care about him. I didn't play any da2 dlc tho.

63 best story moment

This is tough? I enjoyed the landsmeet in origins. I think most of da2 was great story. Except Orsino obviously. I think I’m just going to point to all of da2. Yeah.

66 something i hate about any of the games

it can’t seem to decide how it feels about the qunari. also that there are characters that absolutely are not straight that the writers decided Actually, Despite Everything, They Are Straight Actually :’)

77 what moment/memory still gives me chills/feels

Definitely definitely Dorian’s confrontation with his dad. That was so well acted, I felt that pain and betrayal so viscerally. It hurts every time. As for a different brand of chills, y’know when if you seduce The Iron Bull and stuff finally starts happening there, and he lifts the inquisitory by the wrists in One Hand and remember I was playing a dwarf, oo golly that shit is All I Need In Life

78 what am i hoping for in da4

More magic and Old Gods and stuff! More Morrigan? Familiar faces!

79 what am i worried about for da4

Familiar faces! :’) Also just so heavyhanded “morally gray” issues that is actually just bad edgy writing. Worried we will be racelocked like in 2 :(

98 if i could be any non human da species which/why

Dwarf, because halflings don’t exist in thedas and dwarves are fairly industrious as a culture

99 where would i live

Despite what I just said, I would probably live somewhere in the Free Marches! Kirkwall ended up pretty fucked and I am absolutely biased because da2 was my favorite.

#dragon age #101 dragon age questions #ask memes #not taz #space jaam #spacejaam #space-jaam

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dreadlock-detective · 6 years

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[Bought a new writing program a bit ago and wanted to try it out so I came up with the idea of one of my D&D character Dindel writing everything out from her perspective to her dad, who is currently being held by a criminal organization for wracking up too much debt. Probably going to try to keep doing these as the campaign goes on~]

Diary Entry List

Entry #1: Tournaments! Bankwets Banquets!

Um, well, hi Dad! The last few days have been really, really, REALLY weird so I thought I’d start keeping track of everything so I can tell you all about stuff when I get you back! I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t believe me, but whatever! I swear it’s all true!

So do you remember when I told you about the large cat-like man I ran into a few days before you were taken? Well his name is Sir Veil! He’s super nice! To me anyway! So when I found out you were taken by the Barren I kinda didn’t know what to do, so I went about finding him again and it’s looking like it was super lucky I did! He got an invite from Cathyr to join their forces for what now looks like some kind of exploration of the lands north between there and Delzimmer. Anyway, he was nice enough to let me come along with him! I know you didn’t want me using my powers where other people could see them, but he’s a warrior and I think my healing magics will come in handy for him. I have to prove I can be useful so he’ll be sure to keep me around!

Since the land between Delzimmer and Cathyr is so bad (I know what I just said we were doing with that, calm down!) we took a boat ride down to the coast. Have you ever gone on a boat before? I hate it! I felt sick for a whole two weeks! I don’t like it when the floor is moving like that! Sir Veil seemed pretty concerned for me. Hopefully it didn’t make him question taking me with him. I can’t afford to be too weak for this! Though since you’ll be reading this, I’m not too worried about failing! Got to think positive!

When we finally got down to Cathyr it was a really strange sight. The city had been destroyed some time before ago but they’re all building it back up. I wonder if Delzimmer will ever get that kind of treatment. Probably not. It’s too full of assholes. Speak of, the people here creep me out! I went with Sir Veil to get some wax for his cloak in case it rains or something and the lady we bought it from told us this place is, like, SUPER peaceful and SUPER safe and that there’s not really any crime or anything. What kind of large city doesn’t have criminals all over it? Even if it’s not like Delzimmer there’s got to be SOMETHING. I don’t trust her. Or this place. When we got back to the inn (Oh yeah, Sir Veil is paying for us to stay at an inn!) there was some old guy playing a weird lute-looking-thing and called us over. He had been on the boat with us down here but I guess I was too busy making sick over the side to notice. Anyway, his name is Essmer, uh, Kindheart or something. Suspicious name! He wanted to talk to us for a while and offered to just let me have money he had earned playing his instrument. I didn’t take any! I know better than to put myself into debt to some random weirdo old guy! He’s a drinker too. Loved to smoke, talk, and drink. He bought us drink and food too! Sir Veil opened up to him a bit. I didn’t tell him much. I can’t trust anyone who just hands out free stuff like that. People like that always want something from you.

After exploring the town for another day it was finally time for the… tournament… thing I guess that we had apparently come down here for! It was all in some huge arena place, biggest thing in the city I think! They took our names and I guess I’m what they call a “magi” (I think the old man almost got himself kicked out since he couldn’t decide if he was a soldier or a magi. I think he was still drunk). Once inside we were addressed by the man in charge of the city and told there were a number of activities around here and we basically just had to impress him.

The most impressive thing was this huge 3 story tower thing build of wood and steel by some deranged gnome. It was greased up like a carnival pig and had all sorts of doo-dads popping out of it. Sir Veil took off his shoes and just charged at the thing! If it wasn’t for the grease I think he would of climbed up the thing before I could blink! He just ignored all the tricks and clawed his way straight up the side! The grease and a well-timed smack from a pole out of the thing stopped him before he got all the way though. He almost made it but missed a jump for a rope hanging far out from the tower and fell! He fell a good thirty feet, but landed just fine! He really is a cat, I swear!

Essmer had come too, and he set out to figure out some puzzle they had laid out. Something with cards and a box. He had some help from a very… well another strange man. Niles the Entertainer as he’d say later. Everyone here’s so odd! Anyway, I went about to a different challenge - a man stood guard, his back to us, with THE MOST MONEY I HAVE EVER SEEN sitting in a pot behind him! Like, SO MUCH MONEY! It was all that coin that’s even bigger than gold! Um. Platnumb! (Apparently it’s Platinum. Whoops!) All I had to do was sneak up, take one, and get back without being noticed. I was really good at it! Well, mostly… Every time I was about to the finish line with a coin in my hand I’d get too excited or something and make a noise! I couldn’t help it! I’d never held a platinum coin before! If I could just get that whole pot I’m sure I could get you free immediately! Rich people have so much money! It’s crazy!

Sir Veil had decided to join the fighting tournament instead of continuing with the tower thing. I was watching while waiting for another go at the coin thing. His first few fights were pretty sad. They were young and stupid and nowhere NEAR as strong as Sir Veil. He’s like a mountain of furry muscle! The next one, though, some guy with a couple of clubs or some such… he bit off more than he could chew. Sir Veil got REALLY angry and let out some massive roar! Everyone in the stadium was pretty freaked out I think! I’d never seen Sir Veil get into a real fight before that! The poor clubs guy… he just got destroyed! Almost for real! Even though they were training weapons, Sir Veil managed to smash in his chest! The guy running the tournament ran over and started yelling for a medic! I rushed over as fast as I could and, yeah, the guy had RIBS in his LUNGS! It was pretty gross, but I had to get him fixed up and then I… um… I used my magic to heal him. In front of an entire stadium of people staring at us no less. I KNOW you wouldn’t approve, but I couldn’t let Sir Veil get in trouble for killing someone!

Thankfully, Sir Veil’s last fight was less dramatic. He was against a kid of the owner of the Inn we were staying at and Veil got all mad again so I had to stay on guard in case I had to help out again! Killing the son of the man’s place we were staying in would probably not end well! But he seemed at least a bit better equipped to handle Sir Veil’s fur-ocity (hehe!) than the last one and he got beaten up pretty bad but didn’t end up a bloody pile on the floor! With that Sir Veil won the tournament and secured a place in this whole thing. That old guy and “entertainer” also figured out their thingy and I guess got in too, though they kept arguing about who did the most work on it. I had to prove myself too! That damn guard FINALLY didn’t spot me and I got away with THREE platinum coins! They let me keep them too! It took too many tries for my taste, but I guess it was good enough for them to let me join too!

We were gathered together buy a half-elf guy named Lucan (Another half-elf! Going to have to ask him about that later!) and we were all invited to a banquet! And given ten gold! These rich folk hand out money as easy as breathing here! I don’t understand it! And Sir Veil gave me his too! I feel bad! He seems so concerned about me. I hope he’s not keeping me around out of pity… but anyway, so yeah, banquet! But, well, me and Veil don’t really look like the fancy sort… he barely wears anything and I’m… well, not like I have a fresh change of clothes! So that Essmer guy came with us to buy some nicer looking clothes. I guess that’s what people used to come to you for when you made shoes when I was a kid! The halfling who ran the place was pretty worried about us at first. I can’t say I blame him. Sir Veil doesn’t look like the kind of man to go around in nice duds and I, uh, look like a homeless vagabond I’m sure. But once Essmer told him we did indeed have money the halfling got over it and started spouting off more clothing related nonsense at me than I could ever remember! I didn’t even know how the heck to put on half the stuff he threw at me! He had to get his wife to help me while he tried to get Veil into a pair of pants (hehe!). Eventually we got a few things that looked pretty nice (It’d been so long since I wore shoes!) and ended up spending like… sixteen freaking gold between me and Sir Veil! Clothes are so expensive! I’d have much preferred to put that money towards helping you but I didn’t want anyone deciding they didn’t want a vagrant working for them! Besides, I still have my platinum!

Not much to say about the banquet itself besides that’s where we learned that we’d be traveling north to help settle the wilds or some such thing. Sounds dangerous but I’ve got Sir Veil with me and if they keep giving out gold like they have been I can’t possibly say no! They also had SO MUCH FOOD! I don’t think I’ve ever been so full in my life! It’s absolutely insane how much money must flow in this place!

Oh! And yeah, I’m officially grouped with Essmer, Niles, and Lucan along with Sir Veil. Essmer’s got some kind of weird crossbow-but-not thing that makes a massive thunderclap when it fires. I’m not sure if it’s magic or not! Loud as the hells though! He’s probably the weirdest. I can’t tell what his real motives are yet. He spends money way too freely to have gotten it legit, and his drinking problem worries me (Something you two have in common we’re going to have to deal with when I get you back, you know!). Niles… I don’t think he likes me. I’m not sure why. When he talks to me he always seems angry. He doesn’t seem to like Lucan much either, didn’t think Sir Veil would speak Common, and gets into arguments with Essmer. If we’re going to be stuck together I hope we can get along. Apparently his mother is some famous performer of “horse dancing” or something. Do you know what that is? I can’t imagine a horse doing a waltz! Essmer insisted he must have meant a donkey rather than horse, and as Niles defended horse dancing everyone at the banquet started laughing. Nobody would explain it to me either! Though Niles called my ignorance appalling or something. Made me feel dumb! And Lucan I haven’t had much time around yet. Hopefully he’s nicer than Niles and more trustworthy than Essmer! And Sir Veil is great, but wow I’m glad we’re on the same side! When he gets angry it’s kind of terrifying to be honest!

So, yeah, that’s been my weird little adventure so far! Ship travel, a new city, meeting strange folk, being in a tournament event thing, using my powers in public, winning platinum and gold, spending money on new clothes, going to a feast and eating more than I knew I could, and now we’re going to be headed off north into the wilderness! I’ll try to add to this whenever I can to make sure you don’t miss out on anything! Love ya!

-Dindel

#d&d stories #Dindel #D&D 5e #writing #dreadlock detective #Dindel's Diary

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robotspiderrampage · 7 years

Text

Letter to Rebecca Moseley

Ashbury, 19 July 1887

To: Rebecca Moseley, 1 Old King’s Way, Caladon

Rebecca,

I hope this letter finds you well, and I also hope that you remember how to read this. I have also enclosed a similar message for your father.

[The rest of this message is encoded in a series of pictographs, essentially Wingdings.]

Dearest sister, I apologize for the coded message. Though I personally have no more need for subterfuge, I’m sure that Dad would appreciate the gesture, given the sensitive nature of some of the things I plan to tell you.

I’m sure that at this point, you’re aware that I’m alive. I survived the crash of the Zephyr. I’m sorry for any grief I may have caused you before word got back to you. You were the only person who knew I’d left on the Zephyr initially, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy dealing with the aftermath when it crashed. I should have written you, but unfortunately, circumstances prevented me.

You see, the crash of the Zephyr was just the beginning of the convoluted mess that I find myself finally nearing the end of. I found myself thrown unwillingly into a plot so inconceivable that you’ll probably think me mad if I tried to tell you all of it. But, given that this may very well be my last communication with you, I feel that I can risk you judging me as mentally infirm in addition to being physically infirm.

The Zephyr didn’t crash from mechanical failure. It was shot down in an effort to kill one of the passengers: a dwarf named Stennar Rockcutter. The reasoning behind this treacherous murder plot is even stranger. You see, Stennar was a member of the Black Mountain clan of dwarves, a clan that disappeared 60 years ago after Gilbert Bates revealed mechanical plans for his patented steam engine based on their own to the public. The cause of the clan's disappearance? Abduction. A group of Dark Elves (elves who defected from the main body of elves after the Age of Legends), masquerading as emissaries from Quintarra, lied to the leader of the dwarves, stating that Bates’ inventions had led to the destruction of uncountable elven forests and that the Black Mountain Clan was responsible for the damage, as they had given Bates the plans. They demanded that the clan be banished to the Isle of Despair, a prison island off the coast of Ashbury. As it happens, the Clan wasn’t banished to the Isle. They were banished to the Void. Yes, that Void. The same one that people tend to go to when they die, according to the Panarii. You know, the funny humans in robes that we used to see scurrying around Caladon? Those Panarii. I’ll be touching on the topic of the Panarii again in a moment. They’re pretty important to this story. Anyway, the dwarves were banished to the Void so that they could build some sort of device to break an individual stuck in the Void out. The individual in question? None other than Arronax, the villain of the Panarii holy book. See? I told you I’d get back to the Panarii. It turns out that the Panarii actually prophesied Arronax’s escape, and in their prophecy it was stated that their god, the elf sorcerer Nasrudin, would return and fight him, defeating him once and for all.

At this point, you’re obviously thinking two separate thoughts. First, that I’m insane and spinning conspiracy theories. This… is a fair assumption. Second, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with me, and why I didn’t just come home after the crash. I thought endlessly about doing just that over the last two years. The problem was that I and the other survivors of the crash were erroneously identified as the reincarnation of Nasrudin. A young Panarii monk, Virgil, told us that because we had survived the fiery crash unscathed, that we had been “reborn on wings of fire”, just as the prophecy stated for Nasrudin. We tried to debate the validity of that statement, but Virgil's mentor, the Elder Joachim, agreed with him. Even the Dark Elves seemed to think of us as a new potential threat, as well, sending waves of assassins after us from the moment we clawed our way out of the wreckage. Admittedly, in their case, they probably considered us a problem due to our brief conversation with Stennar before he passed on from the injuries he’d sustained in the crash. From that point on, my fellow survivors and I have had no other option than to unravel the plot that I spun you above in an effort to figure out why everyone either thought we were a god, asked us to handle a difficult but relevant situation, or wanted us dead, all the while avoiding contact with our loved ones out of fear of you being used against us. However, as we worked to untangle the twisted knots of intrigue, we found even more complications.

First, the Dark Elves had been led to believe that the Device that they had kidnapped the Black Mountain clan to build would be used to break Arronax out of the Void. It turns out that Arronax was never in the Void at all! He lives, alive and well, off the coast. Now, before you exclaim “but wait!”, don’t worry. He’s not the bastion of evil that the Panarii made him out to be. We met him. He’s just a sad old man struggling with daddy issues. Magick was able to extend his life to the present day. You may ask why the Device was built, then. It seems that Kerghan, the terrible necromancer that had been banished to the Void for crimes against sentient-kind in the Age of Legends, managed to trick the Dark Elves into thinking that he was their idol, Arronax. The Device exists to break him out. It uses the souls of the dead stuck in the Void to power itself.

Second, the Device is ripping holes into our world. We’ve encountered many such rips and they allow the terrible creatures of the Void, demons, beasts and the like, to enter our world. The rips also destabilise reality, and if the current trend continues, there may be enough to end reality as we know it.

Third, the monk that originally clued us in to the Panarii prophecy has far more to do with the situation than even he initially realized. He left us a year ago, angry and depressed from the stress of the quest and of us, and ended up in one of the rifts… and therefore the Void itself. He encountered the Device, but since he was alive when he did so, it couldn’t use his soul for power. Instead it shattered it. The shards were able to retain sentience and some were able to escape. Saint Mannox, the man who wrote the Panarii holy text, and therefore the prophecy that pulled us into this mess, was one such shard. The Panarii elder who mentored Virgil and encouraged him to stick with us was another. All of them seem dedicated to engineering our involvement in these rather unbelievable events.

Fourth, it seems that the only way to stop the world ending and possibly save poor Virgil from the Device is to get into the Void and stop Kerghan. We have plans to do just that. Hopefully we’ll succeed, but there’s a very low chance that we’ll make it back out alive even if we do.

Rebecca, I’ve done and seen so much on this journey… and I don’t just mean the absolutely hairy series of unfortunate events that I just laid out for you. I roamed the continent. I got engaged and then (sadly) broke his heart. (Which, by the way, my ex-fiance is apparently in Caladon now. My companion, Thaddeus, mentioned to him that I have siblings, so… I’m sorry if you have a random new suitor.) I stood up to Councilman Babcock and (accidentally) made a rude gesture at him while dressed as you (which you probably heard about and I’m sorry if that hurt your reputation, though I know you and you probably thought it was hilarious). I was arrested half a dozen times. I met the king of the dwarves and the leader of the elves.

Best of all, I made friends. Real, live friends that aren’t related to me. Against all odds, I managed to fall in with a group of weird, funny, awful, lovely outcasts and… I have friends.Thaddeus, the human, is a fellow technologer, a practitioner of medicine, and possibly one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. He can be awkward and naive and frustrating occasionally, but mostly he’s just unflappably kind and the most loyal friend I could ask for. He’s known about Tarant as the Pervert of Tarant, but don’t listen to a word of it. He wouldn’t know a set of genitals if it bit him, He’s certainly no Pervert. Waltera is a quirky halfling who loves both love and other people’s stuff. Utvald was a half-ogre that traveled with us for a short time before settling in Tarant. Last we saw him, he was in a rather dangerous situation. I hope he’s okay. Pog the Garringsburg’s half-ogre joined us for a while, too. He seemed quite smitten with me, but he eventually found acceptance at the University in Tarant. Wolf is a Dark Elf (!!!) who defected from the rest. She’s exceedingly odd, constantly nude, and occasionally a danger to herself and others, but I find her more pleasant than I may let on. Her sister Zan also travels with us, and she’s the calm, rational counterpart to her sister. She and I are of a like mind on many matters and I appreciate her greatly. Straf is… well he’s Straf. He was an elf, but thanks to a series of magickal shenanigans, he’s now some horrible salt golem/dragon hybrid. Don’t ask how. I really can’t explain it. He’s an awful person, a loudmouth, a bigot, and quite possibly the worst person I’ve ever met… But he’s also loyal and has saved my life more times than either of us would care to admit. Magnus, a dwarf, is intelligent, a fine craftsman of armor and weapons. He’s kind and just the right level of sarcastic and is also quite handsome, if I do say so myself. And last, though certainly not least, was our dear friend, Virgil. He was sweet, kind, and never missed an opportunity to be helpful. He could be surprisingly strong-willed when he wanted to be. He wanted to rise above his childhood of pain and poverty and make a difference in this world. Unfortunately, we pushed him to the breaking point. I miss him keenly, Rebecca. I hope we can save him.

Lastly, before I sign off on this letter, I have some news involving our father, Doc, and the reason I left. I’m sure, given all the other nattering on that I’ve done in this letter, that you thought I’d forgotten my goal. I didn’t. I found out exactly what happened to Doc. He’s still alive, Rebecca. Dad didn’t kill him, and he didn’t die of natural causes. He’s alive. Dad had to fake his death to protect him. It seems that Dad is the exact opposite of what I thought he was. He’s not a callous businessman exploiting a race of people for his own benefit. He’s helping them. He’s saving the half-ogres from the other gnomes. The Industrial Council is forcibly breeding half-ogres for use as unpaid labor. Dad knows and has been quietly trying to stop them. I met with him a few weeks ago and discovered the truth, after I had located and destroyed the facilities at one of the breeding colonies. Dad kept everything from us because he wasn’t sure he could trust anyone, including his own children. That made me angry, at first. After all, I had been pretty open with him about my views on the subject of half-ogre subjugation. Yet, he let me run off into danger that he was apparently fully aware of, given how much he knows about my exploits. I thought it was short-sighted or selfish. I thought maybe he was just doing it for the glory. But the more I think about things, the more I realize that that’s not the case at all. He didn’t think he could trust us. He put the needs of the many, many half-ogres over the needs of us. Yes, he let me amble off into danger. I might have been hurt or killed, but honestly, if I’d proven untrustworthy and he had told me, I could have doomed hundreds, possibly thousands of half-ogres. As much as it hurts, he was probably right. Their safety outweighs mine. This realization makes what’s to come in my own quest more bearable. I’m willing to walk into the Void if it helps save everyone else. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

But, sis, I do have one need of my own to fulfill before I go. We have to acquire one last thing before we’ll be able to take on Kerghan in the Void, but once we get it, we’ll head to Roseborough to be sent to the Void. It’d like to see you before I leave. If you head to the Roseborough Inn after you get this letter, we may be able to see each other before I go. If you don’t wish to do so, then I understand, though.

Love, Dyna

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topazshadowwolf · 7 years

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Concerned Citizen

Remember when I wrote that story about a lich named Randall Failey. Well, I decided to do a follow up (and I have yet another planed). Been slowly working on this between bouts of frustration and writers block with my Soriel fics. Anyway, this is original work and contains some dark humor.

Sample: Yes, The Failey Circus, with all its wonders and fantastical creatures to behold, was doing very well, very well indeed. He had nary a problem until one day he was approached by a “concerned citizen.” Well, not really approached, mind you, more like ‘cornered when trying to close.’

Failey’s Circus: Concerned Citizen

by: Topaz Shadowwolf

The Failey Circus was a rather successful one. It contained a wide variety of acts and exhibits for anyone interested to enjoy. All of which were painstakingly acquired by the ring master, Randall Failey. It was something he took considerable pride in, there was not another spectacle quite like his.

He had one fledgling dragon, two unicorns, a manticore, six drakes of distinct colors, three mammoths, two wyverns, four elves, one vampire, two werewolves, eight dwarves, and one halfling. Of course, there was also him, a lich, but that was a given. The hardest to keep originally were the unicorns, but luckily, one of the elves have taken to their care, and that seems to do.

Well, there was also an army of undead in one of the wagons, but they were not for public eyes. He likes to claim all 17 of the ghouls were bandits, save for one tax collector, but that is a lie. As much as Randall hates having to pay taxes, he wouldn’t just kill a man or woman just trying to do their job. Well, unless their job is to rob him. Then that’s a different story all together.

Yes, The Failey Circus, with all its wonders and fantastical creatures to behold, was doing very well, very well indeed. He had nary a problem until one day he was approached by a “concerned citizen.” Well, not really approached, mind you, more like ‘cornered when trying to close.’

“Randall Failey!” hollered the concerned citizen. It took a moment for the lich to recognize this woman’s face, but only a moment.

“Ah, yes, you’re the one who heckled my manticore trainer,” Randall hummed, wondering what bee now buzzed into this lady’s head, forcing more interaction.

“That was a gross display of power over a magnificent beast of great magical qualities. And I insist you end that act and fire him!” The woman screeched at the end, hurting Randall’s ears. Which, as a lich, he didn’t really know could happen anymore; since, he really didn’t feel much anymore.

“Who, the manticore?”

“No, the trainer!”

This was amusing, and Randall grinned, “The trainer is a she, and her taming is all an act. Manticores are far-”

“A she?! With a beard like that?!” The woman interrupted, “Don’t try to shoo me away with such pathetic attempts at lying, you vile person.”

“Oy, what’s goin’ on here,” one of the dwarves asked, walking over. “I thought we were closing?”

“Yes, well, I’ve been distracted by this woman here, who wants me to fire your wife.”

“WHAT?!” the dwarf then turned and pointed at her, “Now you look here, missy! My wife is a fine and wonderful lady. I don’t know what ya got against her, but she ain’t goin’ anywhere, ya hear?!”

In the distance Randall heard the wyverns starting to holler, wanting to be fed. He turned back to the woman, “You see, nothing to worry about, now I need to really close up so the wyverns can be fed, and read to, before their bed time.”

“Is that so?” the woman got into Randall’s face, “What about the poor manticore?!”

“The poor manticore has already be put to bed,” Randall said, standing his ground and straightening his coat.

“Aye, after the act, my dear wife rubs his paws, checks him over, then gets him ready for bed. And if ya keep this up, I can’t do the same for her,” the dwarf said with a cheeky grin.

“Thurin, why don’t you go ahead and see to her, I’ve got this,” Randall nodded to the dwarf.

“You’re not going anywhere until you do something for that manticore and all these poor beasts you have enslaved!”

“The wyverns won’t shut up!” one of the older, though younger looking, members of his troop said. He walked up, dressed mostly in shades of green and yellow.

“Could you please feed them for me, tonight, I kind of have my hands full,” Randall said, gesturing to the woman.

The young man looked at the human woman and snorted, before looking at Randall, “Not my job. You said that I wouldn’t have to do anything for them if I joined your little group.”

“Negligence! NEGLIGENCE!” The woman screamed.

“Dear gosh, I changed my mind, I’ll feed her to them if you want,” the young man snarled, covering his ears.

“No, this is a concerned citizen, we don’t feed them to the wyverns,” Randall corrected.

The young man rolled his eyes before glaring at Randall, “Just make them shut up soon or I will kill them.”

The woman gasped in horror, “What a heartless, vile, ignorant,” her list kept going no matter how much Randall signaled for her to stop. He even tried covering her mouth with his hand to make her shut up, but she moved away and just kept going! When Randall looked back at the young man, the expression he saw is best described as indescribable.

“This is all over that manticore, right?” The young man grinned, and not the kind of grin anyone should want aimed at them. The sort of grin that say, ‘you really should have shut up a while back, because now, you’re going to filled with regret.’

“Lance, no,” Randall, said, trying to get a handle on the situation.

“No, no, it’s fine, let me show her to the fuzz ball, yeah? Set her mind at ease,” the young man, Lance, reached out and grabbed the woman by the front of her blouse.

“Hey, watch where,” She was going to say more but Lance was literally dragging her away.

This was going to be bad if the press found out. Hoping Lance doesn’t do anything too drastic, Randall followed behind them. “Lance, I’m sure she didn’t really mean any of that,” he said, trying to smooth over the situation again.

“I MEANT EVERY WORD!” The woman hollered so loudly the wyverns felt the need to call louder, worried that they might not be heard.

“See, she meant it,” there was such a dark undertone in Lance’s voice, it made Randall wince.

They finally entered the tent, in there the manticore was sprawled across of sea of pillows, looking as content as can be. Thanks to Ruma, of all the magical beasts in this place, he was the most pampered. Lance walked over and shoved the woman at the manticore, “Hey, Fluffy, you have a fan.”

With a snort, the manticore lifted his head and looked at the young man, “How many times must I tell you before it sinks into that thick scaly skull of yours,” he said in an indignant tone, “My name is Ferdinand. Not. Fluffy.”

“Whatever, you going to eat her or what?” Lance huffed.

“Eat her? What kind of barbarian do you take me for? She is some sad heckler, a critic to my grand act.” Ferdinand turned his attention then to the woman, speaking kindly to her, “Be mad at lion tamers, not grand displays of my magnificence that audience can feel safe enjoying,” the manticore huffed.

“What about the chains and whip?” The woman asked.

“All part of an act, I am an actor. Most humans would be terrified if they found out I had an intelligence equal to or greater than theirs. Besides, it’s fun to play the terrifying beast, I rather enjoy it.”

“See, no harm done,” Randall said.

“THE DRAGON?!” The woman yelled, “It was chained from head to tail, a prisoner in this cruel circus. That was plain to-”

Lance lifted her up, glowering with a look that caused her to finally shrivel back. There was a fire in his eyes, and his mouth, “Do you really think such weak and pathetic chains could hold me, human? I am a Prince of the Sky, future Lord of Flame and Destruction, and you think such a weak bunch of metal could hold me?”

“Lance, don’t hurt her, please,” Randall said, slowly approaching, ready to separate her from the dragon in human form, if he can.

There was a pause, before the woman squeaked, “I did?”

Again, there was a pause before Lance dropped the woman, “Huh, I must be a better actor than I thought.”

Randall caught her before she fell backwards onto Ferdinand, and sighed, “Let me see you out.” Luckily, he saw the female elf, who feeds the unicorns, walking by with two dwarves, all three pulling carts of meat towards the wyverns.

As he finally waved goodbye the ‘previously concerned citizen,’ and made sure the place was free of patrons, he sighed. That could have gone better, but then, it also could have been worse. Either way, it might benefit everyone in the future if he makes it clear that everyone, even the animals, are part of the act.

#original stuff #Randall Failey #Fantasy Circus #Some Dark Humor #I was going to make the dragon female #but if I continue this #later on I have an idea that will be more fun with a male dragon #the next story will focus on Ruma

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dmbower95 · 5 years

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Chapter 1: Eesten in Flames

“I just ran right between his legs and was gone before he even knew what happened. The look on his face when he realized I was going to get away was priceless,” Netta said, slapping her knee and laughing deeply.

“So not only did you steal an entire tray of pastries, but you also embarrassed the captain of the guard and got away with it,” Gnyx summarized. “That’s pretty impressive.”

“Gnyx, you are a cleric of Digon. You are supposed to be a shining beacon and lead by example,” the paladin said, exasperated.

The gnome and the halfling shared a look before laughing.

Origen stormed off and hurried up to Eldingar. “How much longer until we get to Eesten?”

“Not long. Probably a few hours. We’ll get there a little after sunset,” the dragonborn explained.

“That’s fine. Then you’ll get paid and I never have to see that woman again.”

“She’s not so bad once you get used to her. Plus, she is great to have in a fight. I have seen her melt a man’s face off from over twenty yards away,” Eldingar said.

Origen sighed and rubbed his neck awkwardly. “I’m sorry. She is very frustrating though. I think she is doing it on purpose.” Eldingar looked at the paladin like he was surprised he was just figuring it out now. “…Right.”

———————————————————————————————————–

Eldingar was right about the time of their arrival. However, as they crested the final hill and the town came into view, they were greeted by a terrible sight. Buildings were burning, painting the night sky with oranges and reds. “…Digon protects us,” Gnyx whispered, horror spreading across her face.

“We have to help them!” Netta said taking a step forward.

Just then an ear-splitting roar echoed through the valley as a giant blue dragon descended on the town from the inky black sky. Lightning crackled as a beam of pure energy shot out and cut a deep trench in the road.

“A relative of yours?” the halfling said, looking over her shoulder at her companion.

“I don’t think so,” Eldingar deadpanned.

Origen spun to face the warriors beside him. “I know we only hired you to take us here, but there are people who need our help. I can’t promise you anything, but still, I ask. Will you stand with us?”

Eldingar hefted his battleax onto his shoulder and settled his shield securely on his arm. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

Netta held up her hands, fire sparking to life between them. “Just because we aren’t paladins doesn’t mean we are going to turn our backs on people who need us.”

Gnyx smiled and patted Sterling on the head. “Couldn’t have said it better.”

“Well then, we better get going.” Origen pulled his longswords out and started making his way down the hill. The others falling in step behind him.

The closer the party got to Eesten the more screaming they could hear. They also could hear orders being shouted and the pounding of boots carrying them out.

“Gather everything!”

“Leave no stone unturned!”

As the party reached the edge of the town, the sound of fighting spilled out from an alleyway. A broad-shouldered man limping heavily and bleeding from his side, came running out. Being dragged behind him were two young children.

The man led the children across the street, his eyes wide with fear and terror. When he got to the other side, he looked back over his shoulder. “Christine!”

At the mouth of the alley, a dark-haired woman bravely stood her ground, naked sword in hand. Her night clothes were covered in blood and as she stared down the approaching robed figures, it was hard to tell whose blood it was.

Springing into action the party raced forward to intercept the figures. Gnyx stopped by the woman for a moment. “Get back, we’ll handle this!”

The first of the charging enemies threw himself at Eldingar, his sword held high. Murder and death in his eyes. “For the Queen!”

The sound of metal on metal screeched as the dragonborn brought up his shield to deflect the blow. Before the man could recover, the fighter took his battleax and buried it deep in the man’s side. The man howled out in pain, but before he could retaliate, soft golden flames erupted from his body. Looking back Eldingar threw a thank you back at the gnome. Gnyx smiled back as her eyes faded back to their normal green.

Origen was locked in a pitched battle with two of the robed figures, his two swords flashing out in quick deft movements. Both blades were coated in blood, but when another cultist joined the fight, he was forced back a step.

“Watch out paladin!”

Without thinking, Origen ducked as a burst of fire shot over his head and began eating away at one of his attackers. Netta cackled as she turned to the other enemies. “You’re next!”

Eldingar buried his battleax in the back of one of them and turned to smile at the last one standing. The bandit took a moment to take in the warriors in front of him, before turning and running away. He only got a few steps before the heavy body of Sterling slammed into him, forcing him to the ground. The man cried out and tried to get away, but he was no match for the young dragon.

Sterling jumped off the man when she was sure he was dead, prancing over to her mother. “Good girl,” Gnyx cooed. She pulled out a rag and quickly wiped the blood from the gleaming silver scales.

Origen picked himself up off the ground and stomped over to Netta. “You could have killed me! Are you crazy?”

“I told you to duck, didn’t I?” Netta said, rolling her eyes.

“Guys, I think we have more pressing matters,” Eldingar said, crossing his arms and motioning toward Christine. The woman was making her way to them.

“Thank you! I thought I was done for.”

Gnyx smiled. “Not while I’m around. Are you hurt?”

“No, but my husband, Corrin, he was attacked. Please, you have to help him.” Christine ushered the party across the street and behind a tall building. The broad-shouldered man was sitting in the grass, wheezing and clutching his side. The woman dropped to her knees and brushed his hair from his face. “You stupid fool. I told you to get back.”

Corrin grinned weakly. “I couldn’t let you have all the glory.”

“Let me help,” the gnome said. She began pulling bandages from her pack. As she moved forward, Sterling moved as well, drawing the attention of the children. Both gasped and ducked behind their father.

Sterling let out a sad trill and lowered her head. Gnyx shook her head. “Don’t worry. She won’t hurt you. She is a good dragon. She is going to help protect your home.”

The older of the two children, a young girl, searched the cleric’s face. She must have found what she was looking for because she took a hesitant step forward. She slowly brought up her hand and placed it on Sterling’s head. The dragon bumped against her and licked her fingers. The little girl laughed and called out to her brother. “Gavin, she’s so cold.” Gavin, emboldened by his sister’s bravery, also reached out to touch the dragon.

“You should be more afraid of Netta,” Eldingar joked.

Netta glared at her friend and slapped his heavily armored leg. She winced in pain and shook her hand. “Shut up, Eldingar.”

Origen rolled his eyes and turned to face Christine. “We are from the Dragonwing Sanctuary. We were sent to investigate rumors of a group calling themselves the Dark Dragon Cult. Can you tell us what happened here?”

“I don’t know much. We were getting ready for bed when they showed up. At first, we thought a fire had started, but then the dragon attacked. We were on our way to the keep when we were attacked. Corrin jumped in front and they cut him down. We’ve been running since. If you hadn’t intervened…” Christine trailed off, tears welling up in her eyes.

“We are here now. We will escort you to the keep. Is that where Lord Glin will be?”

“He should be. Someone sounded the horns calling us inside. He would the one to give that order.”

Eldingar stuck his head out of the alley and cursed under his breath. “We need to move. There are more those robed men coming.”

Gnyx helped Corrin to his feet, his color already looking better. Christine gathered her children and lent her shoulder to her husband. “Lead the way.”

Origen and Eldingar took the lead with Gnyx and Netta behind them. “Keep your heads down and stay as quiet as possible.”

They made slow progress through Eesten, following Christine’s directions and trying to stay out of view of the bandits running around. It was readily obvious that they were severally outnumbered. Dozens of the robed cultists littered the streets, but they weren’t alone. Small scaled kobolds and doglike lizards followed them around.

While they were moving between buildings, the sound of crying caught Netta’s attention. “Wait! I hear something.”

“What is it?” Origen said, his pointed ears perking up slightly.

“Someone is crying.” Netta closed her eyes, focusing on blocking out the sound of fighting. “This way!” She took off without waiting, Eldingar right on her heels.

Origen threw up his hands and motioned for Gnyx to go. He turned to look at Christine. “Stay here. We’ll be right back. Scream if you need us.”

The sound of crying was coming from a building that was partially on fire. The front door was wide open, barely hanging onto its hinges. Netta poked her head inside. “Hello?”

The crying was immediately cut off an eerie silence descended inside. Netta took another step inside, fully ignoring Origen’s frantic head shaking. “We aren’t here to hurt you. We’re here to help you. We’re going to the keep, to see Lord Glin. You’ll be safe with us.”

Slowly an elderly man stepped forward a long branch tight in his hand. “Who are you?”

Origen pushed forward, his bright armor flashing in the dim firelight. “We are followers of Digon. We’ve already rescued some of your friends, but we are not safe here. We have to keep moving.”

The old man studied the paladin’s face before nodding. “Okay.” He turned and motioned behind him. Several figures stepped forward, eight in total. There was a young mother, clutching her baby to her chest.

“We need to move quickly. Before anyone notices us.”

“Too late,” Gnyx said readying her mace. Sterling let out a low growl and dropped down into a crouch.

Kobolds came bounding into the space in front of the building, cackling, and yipping. “They have shines! Get the shines!” One of the large drakes stepped out of the shadows behind them.

Eldingar turned and in one fluid motion threw one of his hand axes, sending one of the kobolds falling end over end in the grass before it laid still. Another burst into flames as Netta joined the fight.

“Get the ones at the back, girl!” Gnyx ordered before racing toward the closest of the kobolds.

Origen pulled out his blades and rushed the drake. His first blade scattered harmlessly across the creatures scaled hide, but his second sword sunk deep into its shoulder. The drake hissed out in pain before striking forward and snapping down on the paladin’s arm.

With a grunt of pain, Origen ripped his arm free and brought the sword down once more. This one also found purchase on the beast’s side, but it stayed standing. It turned to follow the half-elf’s movements, turning it’s back to the combat around it.

It turned out to the beast’s downfall. With a loud scream, Gnyx came seemingly out of nowhere and smashed her mace down on the back of the drake’s head. It crumpled to the ground and didn’t get back up.

She smiled at her friend, but when she saw the blood running down his arm she panicked. “How bad is it?” Her hands started to glow slightly, but Origen pulled away from her.

“I’m fine. You need to preserve your energy, there may be others who need it more.” He closed his eyes for a second, his hands flashing brightly for a moment. “Besides, I can help myself a little bit.”

“Come on! We need to move!” Eldingar shouted, cutting the last kobold clean in two.

They raced back to Christine with the new group following behind them. After a brief greeting, they started on their way once more.

———————————————————————————————————–

By the time they reached the bottom of the hill the keep sat on, their group of villagers had grown to over twenty. They were close to the keep, but everyone was starting to feel the drain. They had fought off several patrols, but the enemies seemed endless.

The keep loomed above them, but as they peeked out from behind the last set of buildings, they all sighed. They would have to cross open space and standing at the bottom of the hill was a small group of robed bandits. They were arguing and trying to pull a large chest behind them. Each of them also had a large sack filled to the brim with valuables.

Origen sighed and rolled his shoulders, his arm was still throbbing, but he pushed the pain aside. “Ideas?”

Gnyx looked at the ragtag group and knew they were pushing to the ends of their strength. They needed an edge. Something to make this fight easy. That’s when a crazy idea jumped into her head. “I’ve got it. I can distract them and then we can get the jump on them. They won’t know what hit them.”

When no one spoke up, Origen nodded. “Okay. Get into place. Leave one of them alive though. We need some answers.”

Once they were in position, Gnyx muttered some arcane words under breath and pointed at the group of cultists. The sound of falling coins echoed in the night. They all turned, fear clear in their eyes. “Don’t drop any! Hulan Doth will kill us!”

While they were distracted by looking for the coins the party descended on them. It was over before it began. Eldingar pulled out some rope and tied up the lone survivor before throwing him over his shoulder. “I got him.”

The villagers joined them and together they pushed up the hill. When they got to the top, their stomachs dropped. Dozens of robed figures, kobolds, and drakes stood between them and the keep.

They all turned at the sound of the approaching group. Horrid grins spreading across their faces. “Get them!”

Before the two groups could clash volleys of arrows came shooting over the wall. Most of the gathered force dying instantly. Those that survived the initial attack were caught off guard as a large force came pouring out from the keep. Armed men and women launched themselves at the invading force.

One of the guards broke off and made their way to Origen. “Follow me!”

The guards fell in step behind the group, creating a wall of force, stopping any that tried to follow. Another volley of arrows rained down on the enemies sending them scattering. Once everyone was inside, the large wooden doors were shut once more.

A tall man came running up to them. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“You’re welcome for saving your people,” Netta said, staring the man down.

“I apologize. Thank you, but who are you?”

Origen glared at Netta before answering. “My name is Origen Greycastle. We were sent to investigate. Are you Lord Glin?”

“Yes. I wasn’t expecting you for a few more weeks. Thank Digon for your speed. I hate to ask you to do more, but as you can see, we are in desperate need.”

“Of course.”

“For money of course,” Eldingar cut in. When the two holy warriors looked at him, he shrugged. “What? I still have to eat.”

When Lord Glin saw the unconscious cultist, he jumped. “You caught one. I’ve been trying to get one all night, but they are wily, and we have been pinned down in the keep for most of the invasion. Come with me, I know where we can keep him.”

As the party followed behind the Lord, a young man came rushing up to them. He handed each of them a small vial filled with thick red liquid. “Take these. You’ll need them more than I will.”

“Thank you.”

When they entered the interior of the keep, a red-bearded dwarf came running up to them. “Lord Glin! The great hall has been converted to an infirmary. The healers are doing all they can.”

“Good job, Caspin. We need to get to the holding cells. The paladins from the Dragonwing Sanctuary are here. They have one of the cultists with them.”

Caspin nodded and pulled out a large ring of keys before racing toward a large metal door. The door swung open with a loud screech. “This way.” He grabbed a torch from the wall and made his way down the steep stone stairs.

The holding cells were empty, except for a small cot and a bucket in the corner of the room. Eldingar dropped the body to the ground, smiling when the man let out a pained wheeze. Origen took a step forward, but Netta held up her hand.

“Allow me.”

When Origen opened his mouth to argue, Eldingar put a hand on his shoulder. “Just watch.”

Lord Glin stepped out of the way and let the halfling into the cell. The cultist was just coming to consciousness. His eyes darting around the room, when they landed on Netta he laughed. “This is the best you got?”

Without warning, Netta grabbed the man’s arm and burned it. The man howled out pain and struggled to get away. He made it a few feet before his back it the wall and he realized he was truly trapped. “You’re crazy.”

“Let’s get something straight. I would rather just kill you in some horrific way, burn your face to ash, melt you into goo…maybe even take your balls and let you live.”

Origen took a step forward, but Eldingar stopped him. The dragonborn then cleared his throat, snapping Netta out of her tirade.

“But, lucky for you. You have some information we need. Now, I want you to tell me everything. Who you work for, what you are doing here, and why.”

“I’m not tellin’ you anything,” the man said, trying to stop his body from trembling.

Netta shook her head, her eyes burning. “Wrong answer.”

She took a few steps forward and held her hand up. Thick purple and green liquid burst forward and covered the cowering man. He screamed out in pain, struggling to get his robe off.

Origen pulled out of Eldingar’s grip and dropped by the man’s side. Together they got the robe off, with minimal damage to the man. “Netta, go sit down. I think you’ve done enough.”

Netta shrugged and stood over by the blue dragonborn, who reached down and gave her a high five.

“I’m sorry about her, we just met. I didn’t know she would hurt you. What is your name?” Origen asked.

“My name is Phil,” the man said. His voice thick with pain and tears.

“Phil, listen. I don’t want to hurt you, but she was right. You have information we need. Please, tell us what you know and then we’ll leave you alone. You’ll be safe here in this cell and you’ll never have to see the woman again.”

“How hot do you think fire has to be for there to be nothing left? Do you think I could get it that hot?”

Phil began to cry tears and snot pouring down his face. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just keep her away from me. None of this was worth it. Please.”

“I promise,” Origen said. “Now tell me, who do you work for?”

“They call themselves the Cult of the Dark Dragon. They talk about some queen they want to find, but I never really cared. They offered us booze and gold to cause a little bit of mayhem. It was easy work, but then it got worse.”

“How so?”

“They wanted us to hit bigger and bigger targets. Cause more damage and kill more people. I didn’t want to, but if we tried to leave, we were killed. The blue dragon woman…she killed so many of them.”

“Dragon woman?”

“There were two of them a blue one, Drosa they called her, and a black one, Sitar. Sitar is in charge, but Drosa she carries out the orders with an iron fist. There is one more person in charge, Hulan Doth.”

“Are there here?”

“Drosa and Hulan are, but Sitar. She is back at the camp. It is a few miles south of here. Don’t tell them I told you this. They’ll kill me.”

Origen placed a calming hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I won’t. Can you describe the camp to me?”

“It’s in a basin of sorts. Tall walls of stone surround three sides of it. There are tents in the center and watchtowers that overlook everything. The generals, they stay at the back of the camp, by the cave.”

“What’s in the cave?”

The man closed his mouth, staring up at the half-elf with fear. “I’m scared.”

“Your generals aren’t here right now and I am. Now answer the paladin’s questions or I will come back in there and I will—”

Eldingar grabbed Netta and pulled her back a few feet.

Origen sighed. “I hate to say this, but she is right. I need to know.”

“Black dragon eggs…three of them.”

#story #short story #writing #dnd #Dungeons and Dragons #Adventure #fantasy #geek #geeky #nerd #nerdy

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