“The Highking’s Blessings”
Our friendgroup is currently running a DnD Campaign with my boyfriend Paul as the DM.
It is an accumulation of one-shot DnD Adventures, wrapped up by a “bigger” plot, spanning multiple planes of existance.
If you care to read this very long post, I’ll be talking about the campaign, the characters (specifically my characters and some NPCs that I’ve drawn art for), and some future wishes.
Preparation
Each player was tasked to come up with three characters, that could be related to each other, but didn’t have to be. Since we are playing in a multi-universe setting, we were allowed to make up our entire backstory, including the world our characters grew up in, as long as it doesn’t break the integrity of the story. (So: no characters from sci-fi futures that come equiped with laser-guns and kill the big bad in five minutes or less. We were generally asked to keep the theme kind of “fantasy”).
Each of the characters needed to formulate a wish that they’d be willing to sacrifice a lot to achieve. This was pretty much everything we needed to do to prepare.
Intro
There is a legend in your homeland.
A legend about a king without a country, but with great power and endless wisdom. Not a human, nor an elf or an orc, he is but a simple, old Goblin that will grant you a wish in exchange for your servitude.
A saying has been passed down through generations: “The Goblin King will compensate your work with whatever your heart yearns for most. But only those who carry deep longing in their hearts will find their way to his doorstep. Knock three times, and the Highking shall answer.”
And here you are now, standing in front of that door that you could have sworn had always been there - sunbleached and with rusty metal decorations - yet, if you asked someone else, they would have claimed to have never seen that particular door. Another, maybe. But not this one.
Your heart tells you to knock three times, even thought your entire body regards this a silly idea.
The door magically swings open into the deep black of a corridor illuminated only by a blue lantern at the very end of it. You stride towards it, and after less steps than you thought were necessary to reach the light, you suddenly stand beneath it. The room shifts, and you’re suddenly stood in a vast library, lit by floating candles, its shelves stretching to infinity, and you are sure that if you went more than ten steps in, you’d be lost forever.
In front of you, behind a desk with papers stacked up to the ceiling, you see a small, hunched over figure sitting on a stack of books, fashioning two monocles and a three-cornered hat. You have found him: The Goblin King.
“Oh, who do we have here?”, he proclaims with a weighty, but slightly rusty voice, “state your wish, my child, and we will make a deal...”
And thus, each character stated their wish to our DM, without the other players / characters knowing about it, in exchange for completing an unnamed number of tasks, until the Goblin King (his name is Thyrfsk, btw) deems the debt payed and grants their wish.
Before every adventure, Thyrfsk sends a letter to one of the three characters, telling them where to go, and what to achieve. So each player only plays one character out of their set of three, so there are many different group scenarios.
We are only three players, but sometimes we have guests, that join us for one adventure.
My Characters
Keej Laplace
- Homebrew-ish Bird Race, based on Aarakocra stats, Silly little bird
- Wizard Class (Order of the Scribe)
Keej is an old man, with most of his life behind him. He started as an outsider to his own people, too soft for their fight-centric culture, and literally “kicked” out of his nest, separated from any loved ones as a small fledgling. He wandered into human territory and was nearly beaten to death over his appearance. He fled into the nearest public building, a library, where he’d soon find his future parental figure and mentor, Albert Laplace.
Unable to speak the common human language, Keej’s answer to Albert’s “what is your name, young man?” was the birdish word for “What?”: “KEEEJ!”
Albert taught Keej most of the things he knew, and Keej developed a grand love for books and storytelling. He has leather beak- and claw protectors, that he puts on to turn pages and handle the books, in order not to scratch them. He developed his own scratch based written language and quickly became a sort of newspaper reporter / chronist, who collected and wrote down all kinds of stories from the kingdom.
He eventually wrote about the wrong people, and a high bounty was placed on his head. A group of mercenaries tried to ambush him in the library, but couldn’t catch the fleeing birdman. They set fire to the library and killed Albert, without Keej being able to do anything about it.
He wandered the land, heartbroken and hunted, and traveled through multiple kingdoms and countries, occasionally collecting stories, but mostly trying to survive. One day, he meets a woman named Mirinna Lécor, a professor for magic at the local university. After a short talk, she quickly recognizes his intellect, and offers him to drop in on her lectures & to live with her as long as he sometimes sweeps the floors and doesn’t complain about the food she cooks.
He studies magic and soon becomes a professor himself. He grew very close to Mirinna, forming a deep intellectual (but platonic!) relation-/ friendship.
Mirinna dies from an illness after a good ten years, and Keej decides to wander around the world once more. He collects as many stories as he can, but quickly grows bored, realizing that human(-ish) matters are trivial, that all living beings follow certain path, that they cannot break free from, and that history will always, endlessly, repeat itself.
He craves to have that special intellectual stimulation once more, but his culture dictates that one should never wake those that have already died.
So when he eventually meets Thyrfsk, he asks be allowed to stay by his side and write his Biography, because surely, an interdimensional, incredibly powerful and ancient being such as the Goblin King will be enough stimulation for his remaining life span.
Despite all his hardships, Keej is lighthearted, funny, a little weird and in general rather non-violent, but he is slowly getting less “humane”, in a sense that he views life and the universe in a grander scheme, where individuals (etc.) don’t matter as much. I’d allign him as true neutral.
Sa’Kiara il Damie un Koroh (Kia)
- Elf Fighter! :D
- Stupid Idiot (I say this with all the love I have in my heart)
Kia has a very long (admittedly bs fantasy) name, because she is born into royalty. Her name means something along the lines of “Her Highness Kiara first daughter of Lady Damie born into the House of Koroh”.
She is your typical rebellious young adult, who completely deviates from any values her family / society in her hometown impose on her. She is loud, boisterous, and incredibly headstrong. She does not want to be part of royalty, and is often beat or magically drugged to get her to conform.
Esmerah is an apprentice to the royal cook, very talented, appearing rather hard working, dilligent and quiet, but her wit is as sharp as her knife, and she is just as stubborn sometimes as Kia is. They met when Kia snuck out for midnight snacks, became best friends and ultimately (not so) secret lovers.
The two of them decide to run away from their home, after Kia was threatened to have her memory erased and personality magically altered to make her finally stop “bringing shame to the family”.
They move to a small Orc-Village, and build themselves a small cabin in the forest. The Orcs are very friendly and welcoming, and especially Kia quickly learns to love their “brutish” manners. Esmerah starts working at the local Inn, and Kia takes up carpentry.
Although they enjoy their life together, both of them, but especially Esmerah, start longing for “grander” things in life. Esmerah wants to be a star cook, unrivaled by others, and Kia wishes to study and leave her traces on elven history, without all her achievements being attributed to “being of royal decent”.
They appear before Thyrfsk together, wishing to be forgotten by everyone except each other. Thyrfsk offers them to grant their joint wish, but only one of them has to follow his call to battle at a time. So far, I’ve only played Kia (she is the fighty one), but should our DM suggest that I play Esmerah, I will be happy to do so.
I classify Kia as Chaotic Neutral, she has a very strong set of her own moral values and doesn’t overthink any of her actions / words. One of her strongest views is that everyone is the maker of their own destiny, and if you fail to fight for your own future, that’s on you. She might offer help to someone in need, but if they insist that they don’t need it, she will not intervene. She steps on a lot of toes with her direct and casual way of speaking, and needed to be dragged away from situations by other party members on several occasions.
Rhekine Amakir
- Aka my favourite white boy!
- Human (?) Monk
Rhekine was born as a Raccoon, and nearly died within his first winter on earth. He ran into a dwarven monk working at a monastery, called Rurik. Rurik took him in, fed him and kept him warm until he was healthy again. When Rurik tried to release Rhekine back into the wild, Rhekine kept coming back to play around Rurik, climb his legs and sit on his shoulder.
Close to the monastery lives Quarion Amakir, an elf druid, that takes care of the forest and occasionally supplies the monks with potions and medicine, in exchange for food and metalworks. Rurik and Quarion are in a long lasting romantic relationship with each other (this is my silly little fantasy escape world, monk celibacy etc. doesn’t exist here <3), and have been wishing to adopt a child into their family.
So Rurik has the most idiotic and irresponsible idea anyone could ever have, and Quarion goes along with it, because it is human nature to be selfish and faulty, and apparently dwarves and elves are no exception from it. They inscribe Rhekine with a rune of transformation, and turn him into a human child, using Quarions Druid Magic. The Rune connects Quarions magic to Rhekines body, and keeps the spell up consistantly. Should the rune be broken, he’d transform back into a raccoon.
Quarion lacks the might to transform Rhekine completely, so a few Raccoon features stay, discolouration around his eyes, nightvision, claws on hand and feet, and a small tail, as well as a stomach, that can handle mostly anything Rhekine stuffs into his mouth.
Rhekine grows up at an incredible speed, aging aproximately 3-4 years in physical appearance and mental capability for each year that passes. He learns about the forest & how to treat different ailments/ wounds, and gets taught how to fight by the dwarven Monks that treat him like family.
Despite having a human appearance (Quarion and Rurik couldn’t decide if they wanted a dwarf or elf sized child, so they said “let’s settle in the middle”), Rhekine knows very little about humans, most of it from story books and hear-say. When he grows curious about them, he visits a human town, hiding his raccoon features, and watches a play called “Zee, avenger of the poor”, a masked man that saves ladies and poor people from all kinds of evil-doers (Based on The Mask of Zorro). He starts idolizing Zee and thinks of him as his role-model to being a good human. Rhekine fashiones a black cloak and mask, a rapier and gloves, and he adopts certain manners, like swishing his cloak back to greet someone or overdramatically kissing everyone’s hands.
In general, he develops a love for theater and visits the plays often, but can’t always fully distinguish between fiction and what humans actually do. Most of his moral understanding stems from tales for children, and he is often unprepared for the dangers / ways of the “real” world on his adventures.
Quarion grows sicker with every year that Rhekine is transformed into a human, they didn’t anticipate for this transformation magic to have such a big toll on Quarions body.
Rhekine’s wish for Thyrfsk is to be transformed into an actual human boy, without having to rely on Quarions magic.
Rhekine is approximately 14 (human years) at the beginning of story, and it is such a joy to play him. He is incredibly nice and lovable, makes friends easily but gets incredibly nervous when it comes to talking about himself. He hides his Raccoon Features and is quick to assume a role whenever there is a chance. His usual role is that of the protector and avenger, but sometimes he’ll pretend to be a genius detective, a romantic casanova, a high-nosed noble, or any other trope you can think of. Luckily our DM is a big supporter of “bullshitting your way out of battle”, so more often than not, situations with Rhekine can get resolved by swindling and running. One time, Rhekine stage-battled a demi-god to distract him, including light and sound effects provided by the other party members, and a fully improvised story arc.
The other players and characters don’t know that he is partially raccoon, and Rhekine keeps dodging any potential traps that might reveal his identity, although our DM puts them into all our adventures. I’m very excited to be able to reveal the whole backstory to the others, once their characters find out.
NPCs
Prysbytr
- Thyrfsk right-hand man (goblin)
Prysbytr appears to each character before every mission, our DM describes it as “the shadows get longer, and suddenly, Prysbyter is there. His coat is ever shifting and you seem to see entire galaxies in it. Out of it, he pulls a door, and places it in front of you, gesturing for you to step through it.”
Prysbytr is pretty serious, but not opposed to chatting, if the character initiates it. Prysbyter will often greet the characters with a “hey how’s it going, ready for your adventure?”, and he has quickly become a very loved character.
Rhekine has a very good relationship with Prysbytr, and it almost seems as if Prysbytr doesn’t like sending someone as young as him to do dangerous adventures.
Keej keeps trying to find less convenient spots to be in when Prysbytr appears, to test the goblin’s magic abilities. He keeps being impressed with how nonchalantly Prysbytr handles having to appear on top of a tower, or in the middle of a lake. I think he enjoys the game too.
Kia generally likes Prysbytr, but keeps mispronouncing his name, makes fun of his serious antics and low-key challenges him to fights. Prysbytr has shown a bit of a prideful side recently, when he showed Kia just a little bit of his power by magically supporting her opponent in a (friendly) tavern fight. She now knows a fraction of his power and has a little more respect for him.
Kwalish
- Our first overarching plot antagonist!
Our group has not actually met Kwalish yet, but there have been little crumbs in our adventures, that him and Thyrfsk have a little feud going on.
He is a goblin artificer and master thief, and we are scheduled to meet him in our next adventure. I’m glad Paul asked me to draw him!
Future Wishes / Plans / Predictions?
I’m hoping to draw a whole lot more for these characters, and some others, that might come up.
I think that Thyrfsk will grant the wishes at some point, but not necessarily exactly as promised, I think for example that Rhekine might have to come to embrace being partially raccoon, and Keej might need to find his roots back to what he’d think are “trivial things” in life, leaving behind the grand understanding of the universe.
I also know that some of the other characters have wished for something like “unstoppable might/ power” because they come from a world that has wronged them severely, and they are out to destroy the whole thing in revenge. Knowing our DM and how he has characterized Thyrfsk so far, that character is probably not getting godlike powers.
So far, we have only ever each played one of our three characters at a time. Since our next adventure is supposed to span multiple sessions and be a kind of “advancing the overarching plot” scenario, we will probably have to play all of our characters “at once” (maybe they are at different locations), but maybe all my characters will meet!! I have not figured out yet how they’d interact with each other...
Thank you very much for reading this long post, I hope you enjoyed the rambling. I love playing all of these characters, and drawing them is a lot of fun.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment or use the Ask-box! :)
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