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thornfield13713 · 6 months

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6, 13, 15 (I was thinking for Rosie bc she's the bg oc I've seen most about, but feel free to go with someone else if you have more interesting answers for them!)

What companion are you platonically close with?

I have...a lot of trouble not befriending everyone all the time, in this game, but there are a few people Rosie is closer to than others.

The most notable example is Astarion, because they got close enough in this runthrough that I actually got his proposition at the tiefling party, and was planning to accept (with the intention of doing the 'you need a friend more than a lover' break-up later) if Karlach hadn't already made her move in the Underdark. Even without having briefly been lovers first, though, Astarion is probably Rosie's best friend in the party, in the same way that Wyll and Karlach are undeniably each other's. She was good friends with the rest of the party in various ways, but Astarion cemented his place as the closest to her by being the one who understood her situation with Bhaal most. They also shared a very dark sense of gallows humour that was often a bit unsettling for other members of the party.

She's probably second-closest to Wyll, though this doesn't emerge until after he's one of the only members of the group not to be (understandably) furious at her after her role in starting the Absolute plot comes out, despite the fact that, of the group, he's probably the member with the highest moral standards. The fact that they're both fundamentally dreamers who wanted to be like the heroes of the storybooks they grew up with helped a lot - Rosie, like Wyll, constructs a lot of who she is from half-remembered stories. She's doing it differently to him, but there's a certain amount of looking at each other and recognising the same coping mechanisms and the same careful construction of outward identity.

Minsc and Jaheira also very quickly became very close to Rosie indeed, once they joined the group as full-time companions. Those relationships are more familial than anything, given both of them make statements to the effect of 'you're family' over the course of the game, whether it's the 'cub' nickname or Minsc announcing that being Bhaalspawn makes him your uncle. And Rosie, who hasn't had a family since she was forced to murder her foster-family as a young child, likes having that to fall back on.

What are their thoughts on killing? Is it a necessary evil or do they enjoy it?

I mean. Rosie is a Dark Urge, which means that she automatically enjoys killing far more than she is comfortable with. Even early in the game, when she was just under the impression that she had a really bad case of the intrusive thoughts, she was very unsettled by how satisfying she found it to kill things, how much she enjoyed it. Which is a big part of why she did her best to avoid killing wherever she possibly could, lest it feed that part of her. This was...not an ideal strategy, as the Urge only got worse for not being placated, but thankfully for a while there were at least enough legitimate instances of no-other-option-but-violence to keep her mostly on top of her urges without random murder sprees.

That said, even killing in battle had a bit of a tendency to leave her guiltily torn between the part of her that loved every second of it, and the part of her that felt that killing ought to be a necessary evil and enjoying it was a slippery slope to whatever it was that led her to vivisect people in her former life (falling down to the Underdark early and getting her hands on noblestalk was enough to give her a relatively early insight into just how bad her past actually was, even if not the fact that she had greater ambitions than just back-alley serial killing) or kill people she wanted to be friends with in their sleep.

After losing her connection to Bhaal, this changed a bit, and Rosie had to come to terms with the fact that she still enjoyed fighting, she found satisfaction in it, and even the moment of the kill had something exhilarating in it still. She'd sort of been hoping her love of violence was purely Bhaal's influence, and it took a few conversations with Minsc and Karlach and other members of the party who enjoy violence, and whom Rosie feels, justifiably, have better grasps on the whole 'morality' thing than she does, to start getting past that sense of shame she feels about her enjoyment of fighting and killing.

What NPC's do they like? Which ones do they dislike?

I'm not sure her complicated feelings re: Gortash, Orin and Ketheric come under this one, but here's a quickfire of some of the major ones:

Depressingly, Rosie liked Alfira from the moment she first met her, and it was probably this immediate liking that led to Bhaal wanting Alfira dead right off the bat. That and Rosie having offered to help with her songwriting, which the Urge does not like at all. Unfortunately, Rosie being in some denial about how serious her urges are at this point, just assumes it's the same as thinking about Astarion's corpse the moment she meets him and lets Alfira come along with her, and- Well. You know the rest. She liked Alfira's hopefulness in the face of everything, she thought her song was beautiful, and was charmed and delighted by her eagerness to see the world - there was the beginning of a real friendship there, which just made what followed even worse.

She's also got a whole mess of feelings about Zevlor. At first, she admires and appreciates his protectiveness of his people, but then...well, then she finds him at Moonrise Towers after hearing everyone talking about how he broke, and there's a moment of absolute, agonising connection when he talks about how much he wanted to be a paladin again, and his guilt for what he was enthralled into doing. Sadly, that was the last she saw of him until the final battle, but there's something going on with those two and their relationships with their oaths and with the idea of being a paladin in general, and I sort of regret that, if Zevlor is anywhere in act 3 before the endgame, I haven't found him yet.

After they start talking, she and Dame Aylin also end up getting on surprisingly well, and I do slightly regret that there's no chance in-game to talk to her about the 'both children of the gods' thing, because it would be an interesting dynamic. Aylin is a bit more bombastic than Rosie, but she's also- in many ways, the sort of paladin Rosie wanted to be, but never quite lived up to. Which means that Rosie likes her a lot, admires her, but is...also somewhat envious of her.

Despite the above, Isobel is...uncomfortable...for Rosie, in that there's a certain...immediate, instinctive dislike there, exacerbated by the Urge screaming at Rosie to kill her even before Sceleritas turns up to make it an ultimatum. The Urge thing does just make Rosie dig her heels in, but that does just mean that she's quiet and awkward around Isobel, has a lot of trouble not rolling her eyes, and just does her best to avoid her at camp, despite getting on quite well with Aylin. Rosie herself can't even justify her dislike, it just...sort of happened?

Someone she is much firmer in her dislike for, however, is Wulbren Bongle. Yes, I know, if not the least controversial opinion in the game, it's up there. It's just- he has someone who cares about him enough to walk into danger and death for the chance of saving Wulbren. And Wulbren spits on it at every turn, treats the person who has gone to such lengths to rescue him like shit, and Rosie, who has...strong and complicated feelings about how people relate to one another, and about the idea of having people who cared enough to look- She wanted to throw Wulbren out into the shadow curse long before things came to a head, but that is the way it goes.

And then there's Sceleritas Fel, who scares her. Not because she fears him personally - even without her memories, she is quite confident in her ability to deal with him - but for what he means. She's as terrified to learn that she used to murder him on the regular (from the noblestalk thing) as she is by his delivering demands to kill her lover, because every word out of his mouth seems to confirm that she was an even worse person than she thought until he started talking, and she's genuinely terrified of just how deep and dark that pit truly is. All the same, seeing him killed to summon Bhaal hurt, in a way she has trouble explaining even to herself.

There are probably others I'll remember later, and kick myself for not including, but those are the ones that came to mind while I was writing this one.

#baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #rosie fatrabbit

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knightcallie · 4 months

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Baldur's Bounties: His Family

Weichei was not a hot single in their area! Maybe he should tell the marriage schemes during bounty hunting later...

The party learning that Weichei actually was married was, a whole thing. It kind of made Weichei laugh, maybe a little shy. Yes, he had two husbands, one had passed away. Did he marry rather young by elven standards? Yes, perhaps, but that didn’t matter.

Temerity, his childhood best friend and his first romance. An albino tiefling, from rags to riches, he’s become Fenim’s brightest rockstar in the music industry. They grew up together, and despite everything, they still stayed connected. Temerity was loud, rambunctious, never to be quiet ever again. He vowed to never be an untold story, an unsung melody. Sure, maybe he has a loose filter, but he always cared and loved strongly for those he held close. He did, always for Cheri. He loved the drow intensely, never letting him forget that he was loved.

Beau was the bassist cellist of the band Temerity formed. He currently was still alive, a strong stoic wood elf (autumn eladrin ancestry). He was a gentle lover, having fallen in love with the drow for just how passionate and adorable he was. He had originally wanted Weichei and Temerity to marry first, he can come later. Though, that was dashed considering they both ended up planning a ring and had part of it commissioned. He loved them both to pieces, caring for them and feeding them both well.

Weichei had even made marriage beads to wear himself, as that was what his Vaddy did for him and Mumu. Temerity’s a glass bead swirled with red and white with a strip of gold in the middle, while Beau’s was a dark oak bead with tiny green oak leaves carved the middle. Rings were a common marriage custom, but down in Fenim’s Underdark, creating hair accessories for their intended was the way to go for the drows.

The poly had four children. The first were the twins, Melian and Belamour. Both meaning some form of love, so they would never forget they were loved. Melian took more of the tiefling traits, her lavender skin a mix of Temerity and Weichei. She took up the drow’s love of artificing, growing the gadget empire. Belamour took more of the elven traits, her dark drow skin taking a more warm green tone. Though, they did find teeny tiny horns hiding in her curls. She took on Temerity’s and Beau’s profession, leading her own band called The Unsung.

The last two came a little later. There’s this runaway, a human forcibly turned into a tiefling. Archdevil Levistus wanted to finally break free and take over the Nine Hells for himself. They had found Niven when he was partially transformed, where his skin still partially showed his light medium tone before it was engulfed in ice blue and icicles. His legs turned hooven like a goat, eyes pitch black. A crown of horns were still rather small when they found him, afraid and defensive and ice cold. (It reminded Weichei so much of Temerity, back when they were children.) It took so much time and patience and kindness, and perhaps still too clingy for his age. But after what they went through together, it was understandable. (Sometimes, Weichei could still hear the shattering of the ice when he put a hole in that archdevil).

Finally, Raihin, who looked far more like Beau than the others. Her skin was warm, her eyes a kinder red that could be mistaken as brown. Her hair was looser and nearly white like Temerity’s, her bark horns standing tall like a beacon. She’s a stepping stone for those making the journey back to Paeon, to the Oak Father. She was the warm welcome, caring for those who desired rest for just a moment. The three daughters had spouses, children (blood-related or not) of their own, and Weichei sometimes looks through the memories of them in the pocket mirror. Niven only recently began a platonic relationship, still learning and understanding.

Going through the pictures, showing the group each and every one had Weichei’s heart aching. Oh how he wished he could tell his family that he was doing okay, albeit with a little passenger at the moment. Oh how he wished he could contact the Trades about what’s happened in the last few months. He had people awaiting him back home, people who held him in their person.

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velcoriaexploration · 2 years

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The chaos formerly know as Silltenna Arturius Vencroft, Second child of the Stage and Wire Vencroft Traveling Show, now known simply as Sill

Changling Pact of the Old One Warlock

Patron is the Changing, an non-shape beholden writhing mass and an elder entity from the Far Realms. Believes in not being beholden to a single identity or title.

They/Them, He/Him, She/Her, Nuisance, Beloved of the Changing One, “No you cannot summon Eldritch beings into the bathroom!”, Gremlin…. (Depends on the day, or who Sill is with really. Sill is also equally acceptable.)

True Age: 28

Apparent Age: Depends on the form Sill takes that day.

Sill, as a changeling and moreover a follower of the Changing, fully believes in the transience of form and enacting change, whether great or small. One day, they might be a tiefling man from across the sea, the next they might be a princess, or even forms changelings normally don’t have access to.

Sill: Being a slime can be fun!! Or a dragon!! Or a fly to pester your really germaphobic elf ranger pal of ten years!! You should have seen the look on Edwin’s face!! Anyway, I’ll take my own bio from here!!

Hi! Disregard all current information given of me till now I hijacked this bio. Name’s Sill. JUST Sill. I am a 28 year old changeling. I have a stable relationship with the wonderful Changing. Best friend a person could ask for. Sure, some people seem to run in terror when arcane sigils pop up in their corn flakes, or some tavern owner’s pet bird suddenly spews forth grey oozes from their mouth. But life is always changing, and so am I. Happy to meet ya!!

Some things about me? A little privacy invader aren’t you? Well, I like just about anyone, or anything that catches my interest. Yes, that is a tentacle springing out of your bathtub. And no, I don’t think you’re going crazy, but you are growing an extra set of eyes. Pretty neat!! Oh sorry, I need to get back on track before your sense of this reality shrinks to nothing.

Things I like: Changing, taking forms of other things animate, girls, guys, standard gender-divergent people, magic, money, my friends Edwin and Oleander, naughty stuff (who doesn’t?), money, and music. I think… Sometimes hard to pin down the things you keep as your permanent enjoyments when you change constantly.

Things I don’t like: Uptight paladins, my tiefling bard ex, clinginess unless I find someone worth clinging to I guess, peas, not being allowed coffee even if Oleander says I don’t need caffeine in my system, THE CIRCUS, and domesticated pigs. (Don’t ask. It’s a long story.)

To fellow cult newbies: Now, don’t worry, when you joined what some would call a cult, you may have signed up to become transient of form and mind yourself… But don’t worry!! I’ll be your guide and get you comfy with the “old man” behind the veil. Well Changing looks like an old man to me, but I have no idea what you’ll view them as. Welcome to the family younger sib…

To the rest: That’s pretty much me. So if you like a bit, well a lot of chaos in your life or bed, then hit me up!! Later. I have to go check on a new friend of mine who’s going through some things.

#velcoriaexploration #Sill #Sill’s Bio

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mybg3notebook · 3 years

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Loving your analyses of Astarion's behaviour and character so far! It has really reaffirmed in my eyes just how much of a bastard he really is. (I say that fondly, of course.) Do you have any thoughts on why the general reaction on tumblr has leaned so much towards woobifying him? After looking at his actual (explicit and implicit) morals in game it seems quite odd that some people are reading him as an edgy soft boi who just needs a hug from the right person to fix him.

Hello!

Thank you very much! I really enjoy seeing chars in a deep way. It makes me change my opinion on them, sometimes. That's why I like to do these analysis, even though it's a lot of work for a person who doesn't speak English as a native.

Lol, please, I won't be offended. Astarion is a bastard in the whole sense of the word, lol.

However, I find Astarion an interesting evil (evil neutral imo) char to explore the narration of “abuser who found a greater abuser”, with all the topics I talked about in those posts. I would feel a bit disappointed if Larian suddenly changes him into a man who always had a gold heart (because for that, you need to give hints, even in EA, and none of that has been seen so far).

An example of how this is done is with Shadowheart, she is evil and she supports a lot of cruelty that Astarion does too, but we got meta-knowledge (and not so much meta when we see her heavily drunk after killing the tieflings) that gives us enough reasons to believe she has some heart in her, despite Shar and her teachings. I do not support the idea of “she is a softie”, because she is not, but she doesn't have the same level of cruelty nor revels in murder so much as Astarion does. They represent different degrees of evilness. What plays in her favour is her face, which gives the idea of more softness than she truly has; the same happens with Astarion. Lae'Zel is less cruel than Astarion in general, with more logical reasons to be so because her brainwashed culture made her to be more pragmatic than a taster of cruelty, and yet, she receives a lot of more hate in the fandom... and it is clear to me why: she is not “beautiful” in the traditional white euro-centric standard sense.

And this is my point to answer your question (remember all this is personal opinion): I think there are many reasons why people woobify Astarion (not only in tumblr, but also in Reddit or in Larian Forums, it's a big part of the EA fandom).

First and foremost, I believe it's his appearance. If he were a bugbear or a goblin, few in this fandom would give a thought about his abuse, his pain, Cazador, etc. They would focus on his “bastard” side and leave it at that (again, Lae'Zel has this treatment). I want to make clear that I'm not questioning people's taste, everyone can like whatever they want to. I'm saying that, for me, there it proof enough to sustain this idea that Astarion is woobified because he is beautiful: when you read that a lot of people in this fandom never had an interest in Larian's previous games, or isometric rpgs, or even turn-based combat games (there are some people who are giving feedback against the game being a turned-based combat one! It's the nonsense because it's basically Larian's style), but they bought bg3 because they saw Astarion, even though they knew nothing about him.... All this, clearly, shows to me that a lot of people approached this game for only one char, for only his design (a big amount of them say it explicitly), and it is not far-fetched to know that people justify more easily beautiful villains than ugly ones. We can explore a lot of examples of this in many fandoms. People can love villains because they have real complex reasons to be so (like Loghain in DAO), but they also can like whimsical villains just because they are “hot”. I feel this is Astarion's case, he is a “beautiful villain” who apparently has always been evil. His reasons for his whimsical evilness is more like “it's always been in his nature”. Unless the family part has a different role in his backstory (mirror option) and it's not a mere line for a player to play a “good aligned” Astarion when picked as Origin. I don't like to read much about it in that scene because the game still doesn't have companion Tags; those options in the mirror can be there just for the player to pick, flavoured with each origin, but not necessarily the three of them are canon. This will be seen once we have the companion tags activated as it happened in DOS2.

What we can say for sure is that Larian knew what they were doing when they picked Astarion's design; they choose a dangerous white guy with white hair and evil alignment: an archetype that catches a lot of people in many fandoms.

Part of his woobyfication process has a deep root there, in my opinion. Again, if he were a bugbear, a goblin, a githyanki, a monster-humanoid... we would not have 90% of the EA fandom collapsed with his image, or Larian focused on him to the point that after 4 patches he had new scenes, lines, corrections, and development, while Wyll is still there, sitting in the bench of “the less developed chars” (with around 2k less lines than the rest of the chars, and his personal quest bugged since the first day). Yes, I don't like the preference on one single companion when I am seeing the “future Beast” (from DOS2) in Wyll.

Second, he is a vampire. Vampires are a great element in any fantasy narrative. You know you will have a lot of fans behind a vampire char. Not by chance Vampire The Masquerade is one, if not the most important product of White Wolf, which keeps still giving them a lot of profit despite being decades old. Vampires are always a good element of personal horror, of lack of control of your own body, and also an allegory of abuse, power, and rape. This concept of “being a monster without control” that they embody helps a bit more for the woobification.

Third, people tend to mix a lot headcanon with what a character gives us as canon. We can have a long useless discussion about which is more worthy: canon or headcanon, or about why one should or should not respect canon, but putting all that discussion aside, and considering the previous two points, I see that a small part of his woobyfication comes from the fact that people love denial and self-projection instead of analysing of what they are given (and let's be honest, we know in tumblr, reddit and others social networks, people lack of reading comprehension skills, which makes analysis all about self projection without a real effort in understanding the character's perspective. It's all about the player unilateral perspective. How can you analyse a char you didn’t play with or explored in all its paths? ).

So if their beautiful character is behaving in a way they don't want to, they start considering him “random” (I read this so much that confuses me, because Astarion has clear patterns for everyone who wants to see them, like the rest of the companions. He is not random, he follows pretty well all what I listed here, that list helps you to predict what he will disapprove or approve) so they end up filling this apparent “randomness” with headcanons and self-projections. Don't get me wrong, I don't despise headcanons, I love them, I have a lot of them and create with them. But I also like honest analysis and separate what I want from what I get from a company (to correctly give them feedback, otherwise I will be giving them my headcanons).

If you don't want an aspect of a given char, and you want to deny it, it's perfectly fine. Do it, it's your entertainment, but be honest with the fandom about it, acknowledge this is a personal denial you enjoy. And mainly, don't use headcanons and self-projections to attack the rest of the chars you don't like in their own tags. We know how aggressive some people in this fandom are, and it's a bit frustrating to see aggression without the slightest effort in understanding the character they hate.

There is also something sad to say, related to self-projection, that contributes to Astarion's woobyfication too: a lot of players are survivors of abuse who connect with him from trauma, and I can understand if denying his past is a way to help them to release any kind of pain or need for vengeance against their abusers. It's a natural and totally understandable projection. The woobyfication, then, ends up in an intense self-projection where they give to the char something that they needed because their own trauma.

This is why I would like Larian to give us other survivor chars that people can project onto, whose stories are really about survivors of abuse who were not evil in the beginning. Because I feel a lot of people approached Astarion as a narration of a “victim who will become a victimiser” or as a “bad behaved victim”, instead of what I think it's shown: an abuser who found a greater abuser (and his story is about punishment of the abuser and the concept of justice in a world which has none), so trauma survivors will end up with disappointment if they think Astarion is something similar to the representation of what they experienced. Plus, vampirism is never good to use as allegories of abusers/victims because the relationship Sire/Childe is too sick and twisted. So, again, this is a mere opinion from all what I've been reading since the game came out.

I hope Larian sticks to the narration they seem to follow with Astarion: an abuser who found a greater one, and now wants to become the next Cazador, and this woobifycation doesn't change the real potential of a dark deep story that I believe they want to give us: not every char is redeemable, and sometimes evilness is capricious. We had chars like these in bg1 and bg2 after all.

#bg3 early access - answers

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mischiefandspirits · 3 years

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Exploration

Sequel to Odd One Out

Alternate title: Five times the batkids' teammates didn't realize they have powers and one time their family already knew?

At the request of etherealizt on AO3

One ~ Oracle

Barbara sighed as she sunk further into the water, blowing a few bubbles away from her nose.

She was having a night of rest and relaxation. She’d told the Birds she was taking the night off and had threatened all the other bats with eternal rickrolling if any of them interrupted. The soft music Dinah had recommended was playing from her phone’s speakers on the counter and the lights were dimmed. She was trying out the strawberry and grapefruit bubble bar Carrie had made and had finally opened the rosé Bruce had gifted her when she’d moved into the Clock Tower. An Alfred-made meal was warming in the oven, courtesy of Jason paying her back a favor. After her bath, she’d eat dinner then watch some of the movies on Dick’s Babs Needs to See This!!!! playlist before heading to bed early.

It was meant to be a nice quiet night.

Which meant that whoever had decided to call her not ten minutes after she had lowered herself into the water and gotten comfortable was going to have some very annoying problems with their technology for the next week.

She gave the phone a good long glare before laying her head back and closing her eyes.

“This better be good,” she growled once she’d connected to her cell and answered the call on speakerphone.

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry,” Mari said quickly. “It’s just… we went on this mission -- just a quick in and out thing, or it was supposed to be -- and we thought we wouldn’t need your help, but we kind of do and now it’s too late to back out.”

Barbara sighed. “I was taking a bath.”

About five thousand miles away, Vixen flinched and looked at her fellow Birds. She mouthed, She’s taking a bath.

Canary flinched as well while Katana and Huntress shared a look and Question shifted guiltily. All five women had stayed at the Clock Tower before so they knew how Oracle preferred to take showers because of how arduous it was for her to get into the bath, even with the bath lift.

The times she actually got to take a bath were to be treasured.

“Shoot, I mean, we’ll handle it.”

“I’d hope you wouldn’t have called me if you could handle it,” Oracle joked.

“No. I mean, yeah, we didn’t interrupt your night lightly, but we’ll figure something out. We don’t want to ruin your b-”

“It’s fine. I’m already logging into my system. What are we looking at?”

She’s already logging in? But that means... Vixen slumped back against the wall she’d been standing in front of as she realized Oracle must have started getting out before she’d even picked up the phone. They’d ruined her night the moment Vixen had pressed call. Well, no reason to waste even more of her night.

The mission went fast with Oracle’s help and the team was out in just under half an hour. They all gave their thanks and apologized again for interrupting her night, but she waved it away before signing off.

“I still feel bad about ruining her bath. Maybe we should get her something to make up for it,” Dinah said as they were on their way home.

“Maybe we didn’t. She got on pretty quickly. She might have just had a tablet near the bath,” Helena suggested.

Renee shook her head. “She had too many things going at once. She couldn’t have managed it all with just one device.”

Tatsu smirked and chuckled, “Even the great Oracle could not handle such limitations. We'll all chip in to show our thanks.”

Back in Gotham, Barbara sunk a little further into the water with a pleased moan.

While it was a headache to manage an entire mission remotely, it was worth it to remain wrapped in the warm water and fruity scents. Thankfully it was just a short one this time, but maybe next time she’ll ask Tim to cover her in case of another emergency.

She started the music on her phone again then reached out to dry off her hand so she could finally grab her wine and start her night of relaxation.

Two ~ Nightwing

Green Arrow frowned as he watched the goon in the interview room. He, Batman, Hawkwoman, Flash, and Cyborg had picked the guy up the day before while trying to locate an experimental power core that had been stolen from S.T.A.R. Labs. They’d tracked the core to a shipping yard, but lost it there. Most of the yard’s crew were clean, but the manager was clearly on the take and knew something.

The only problem was that he wouldn’t talk.

They’d tried intimidation, logic, bribery, and charisma, but nothing had worked. Since Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter were off-world and Zatanna was unreachable (something about alternate dimensions and a tiefling warlock’s pet eldritch book-dogs), that meant the lasso of truth, mind reading, and truth spells were out.

“There has to be some way we can get him to talk,” Vic said from where he was sitting on the floor next to Wally.

“I could get him to talk,” Shayera muttered, thumbing one of the spikes on her mace.

“No,” Bruce objected as he walked up.

“We’re running out of time.”

“I know, which is why I called for help.”

“Help?” Oliver asked.

“Me.”

Shayera and Oliver jumped and spun around to see Nightwing standing behind them, a wide impish grin on his face.

Fricking ninja bats!

“Oh heck yes!” Wally cheered before bending over in a coughing fit as he choked on the bite of sandwich that had been in his mouth, Vic patting his back.

Dick winked at his friends and looked through the two-way mirror. “Double-R filled me in. This is the guy giving you trouble?”

Bruce grunted.

“I think I’ll be able to take him,” Dick said, walking over to lean against his father. “I’m going to need to borrow Robin for a few days after this, though.”

Oliver swore he could see Bruce’s eyebrow raise beneath the cowl. “For a mission or fun?”

“I need someone small to help with an infiltration… and Jump Wildlife Park has a new Snakes of the Outback exhibit.”

Sighing, Bruce shook his head. “Robin’s benched for the next week, as I’m sure you know. He’s not getting out of it. You can take Catgirl if Catwoman doesn’t need her. I’ll allow a trip to the zoo, however.”

“I’ll take it.” Dick shot him finger guns as he backed towards the door. He then spun around on his heel, high-fived the now standing Wally and Vic, and skipped into the interrogation room. He dropped into the chair across the table from the goon, leaning it back so he could rest his feet on the table. “Hi, there, I’m Nightwing.”

The goon glared at him.

“No introductions then, alright. I’ll make this quick since I’m sure you want to get out of here and I’m currently in a game of hide-and-seek with some of the other bats and I’m not about to lose because B’s having an off day. You tell me what I want to know and I won't have to make you.”

The goon snorted. “Am I really supposed to be scared by that?”

Dick shrugged. “If I wanted to scare you I’d break your fingers. We can try that if you want.”

“The winged chick already offered and it didn’t scare me then either.” The man looked Nightwing over then gave a grin that Oliver was sure set off Batman’s dad mode, even if the man hadn’t responded in any visible way. “You’re welcome to try, though. At least you’re prettier than that bitch.”

Oliver grabbed Shayera’s shoulder when she stepped forward and Vic placed himself between her and the door without looking away from the mirror.

Dick hummed then dropped his legs. The chair fell back onto all fours and he followed the motion so he was leaning against the table, elbows on top with his hand clasped together to create a V that his chin rested on. “You think I’m pretty?”

Oliver blinked and focused his attention on Dick. His voice sounded… different. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was. It just sounded… nice.

Distantly, he was aware there was another voice talking as well.

What was it about Dick’s voice?

Suddenly Dick was standing up and patting the goon on the shoulder. “Thanks, you’ve been a big help.”

The goon nodded, blinking up at Dick in a daze.

Dick skipped back out of the room. “You got everything you need then?”

Did they? Crud, Oliver had zoned out of the entire interrogation. Bats was definitely going to tear him a new one.

Bruce grunted and Dick smiled. “You’re welcome. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get lost before Batgirl bribes my location out of Double-R.”

And with that, the younger Bat was booking it down the hall.

“I’m going to write up a report on the interrogation. Review the footage and meet up in conference hall F so we can plan our next move,” Bruce said before marching off.

There was a moment of silence then Shayera asked, “What the hell was that?”

Vic rolled his eyes and Wally nodded, “It’s always a little distracting, we know.”

“Speak for yourself,” Vic snorted, elbowing the speedster. “The Titans call it Wing’s Milk and Honey voice. He barely ever uses it, but when he does, he always manages to get the information we need out of whoever we’re interrogating. It’s freaky.”

“It’s awesome. Just wish he’d talk to me in that voice.”

Vic glared at Wally. “I did not need to hear that.”

The speedster snickered.

“Did any of you catch what the goon in there actually said?” Oliver asked reluctantly and was relieved when both Shayera and Wally shook their heads.

Vic made a so-so motion. “I know he said he was working for Luthor and the core got moved to a warehouse just outside Metropolis, but the rest kind of got lost. Dick’s…”

“Distracting?” Wally suggested and Vic elbowed him again.

“Just listen to the recording. It gets easier the more you hear it. Kind of,” Vic suggested.

“Standard Milk and Honey protocol,” Wally said with a nod. “Dick’s just too charismatic for his own good.”

Before anything else could be said, Dick’s affronted yelp came echoing down the hall.

“At least when it’s not one of his siblings.”

Three ~ Red Robin and Batgirl

The Young Justice team had just gotten back from a mission. Bart, Kon, Jaime, and Tim were all resting in the lounge. Artemis had retreated to her room while Cassie and Kara had had to head home. Stephanie had been hanging out with the boys, but had disappeared a few minutes in.

Kon was asleep on the couch with his head resting on Tim’s lap. Tim, meanwhile, was working on a report, his laptop on the couch’s arm so as not to disturb Kon. Jaime was sitting on the coffee table in front of them and playing a video game on the main screen. Bart was curled up in an armchair off to the side, working through his post-mission meal.

A cymbal-banging monkey toy sitting on the shelves behind Bart slid forward a little.

The speedster turned at the noise and blinked at the unfamiliar toy. He shrugged it off and turned back to his food.

The monkey slid a little closer.

Bart turned around and frowned at the toy. He stared at it for a moment then slowly turned back around.

A minute went by, then the toy slid noticeably closer.

Bart spun around, jumping out of his seat and pointing at the toy. “I knew it!”

Tim and Jaime both turned to him, but the Kryptonian-strength earplugs did their job and Kon didn’t wake.

“What are you yelling about?” Tim asked.

“The monkey, it’s moving!”

Both boys looked between the monkey and their friend.

“You’re crazy,” Jaime said, turning back to his game.

“It is!”

“Did you see it move?” Tim asked.

“Well, no, but it’s not in the same spot!”

“Your eyes are probably just playing tricks on you. Maybe your blood sugar’s low or something. You haven’t eaten much yet,” the vigilante suggested before going back to his report.

“Like you’re one to talk about not eating,” Bart muttered as he grabbed his chair and turned it to face the self. “It moved! I’ll prove it!”

Bart didn’t take his eyes off the monkey for the next five minutes, even as he continued to eat.

Then his shadow reached out and tapped him on the shoulder before quickly returning to its proper place on the back of the chair.

He looked up and scowled when he didn’t see anyone. He returned his focus to the shelf, only to find himself nose to nose with the monkey just as it started banging its cymbals.

Bart bolted from the room, screaming about calling someone to come deal with the possessed toy.

Jaime glanced up, then shook his head and resumed playing his game.

A few seconds later Stephanie walked in, her magic bracelet on her wrist, and high-fived Tim.

Four ~ Black Bat and Signal

“Hey, Halo. Don’t turn on the lights.”

Violet paused in the doorway of the pitch-black warehouse, hand on the light switch. “Signal?”

“BB and I are here too,” Lia called.

“Looker? Why are you three sitting around in the dark?” ey called as ey carefully tried to make eir way towards the group by sound and memory.

“Looker and Signal are playing poker. The lights are off so Signal can’t cheat with his vision,” Cass explained.

“And yet the kid’s still cheating,” Lia huffed.

“I am not!” Duke said in an offended voice.

“How are you guys reading the cards?” Violet asked as eir hands finally touched the card table ey hoped the three were using for eir game. “And who’s sitting where?”

A hand came from eir left and brushed against eir arm. “I’m here. BB is next to me and Sig’s across from her. There’s a free seat across from me if you want to sit with us until BL gets here. Also, we’re using cards with braille. I can see the pictures and Sig can read braille so we’re all good.”

“You can read braille?”

“Batman.”

“Yeah, okay, that makes sense.” Violet slipped around the table and reached around until eir hand found the chair. As ey sat down, ey asked, “Is Signal even old enough to play?”

“Does this look like a casino? Who cares? It’s not like I’m sneaking him alcohol or cigarettes or anything,” Lia scoffed.

“Nightwing let me try a sip of beer once. It was awful,” Duke said.

She snorted. “Big Bro probably gave you the shi-bad stuff to scare you off.”

“You know, I patrol Gotham. I’ve heard all the swears before.”

“I am not getting caught swearing in front of Batman’s baby, thanks.”

“Robin and Catgirl are both younger than me!”

“CG is the Cat’s baby and Rob’s an assassin lovechild. You are the Bat's baby.”

Suddenly the room flooded with light, earning hisses, groans, and curses from the quartet.

“Why are you four playing cards in the dark?” Jefferson asked and the four saw him walking up to the table once they’d blinked the stars out of their eyes.

Violet could also now see that Cass was leaning against Lia with one of her arms stretched over the table to hold hands with her brother. The two let go, however, at their leader’s approach and Cass sat up. All three were suited up like Violet, though Cass’s mask was sitting on the table.

“We were playing cards," Lia said. "The dark was supposed to keep the kid from cheating. It didn’t work.”

“Whatever you say,” Duke snorted, gathering up his winnings. He sorted through it, then gave half to Cass.

“Why does she get half?”

Duke shrugged and Cass smiled. “Family helps each other out.”

Lia looked confused while Violet nodded slowly.

Jefferson just sighed. “Right… Well, get this cleaned up then we can discuss tonight’s mission.”

Five ~ Robin and Catgirl

Jon smiled at Goliath as he stroked the dragon bat’s ear. “Who’s the bestest dragon bat? You are! Yes, you are!”

“Bestest is not a word, Kent. Don’t teach Goliath bad grammar,” Damian tutted from where he was brushing Alfred the Cat.

“Gee Damian! How come your dad lets you get so many cool pets?” Kathy asked from where she was laying on Bat-Cow’s back. “I mean, the cow, dog, and cat are normal, -”

“Normal for farm girls, at least,” Colin chirped from where he was scratching Titus’s belly.

“- but the dragon bat’s insane! And now you’ve got a tiger too! Is there anything your dad won’t let you have?”

“Tiger?” Jon, Colin, and Damian all asked and Kathy pointed off to the side where Maya was slowly approaching the Malayan tiger cub that was stretched out on a large pillow and watching the girl through half-lidded eyes.

“That’s Kelley,” Damian said blankly.

“Aw, you named her after your sister?” Jon said, grinning widely at his best friend.

His best friend scowled at him in return. “She is not my sister.”

“I mean, your dad married her mom. That kind of makes her your sister,” Colin shot back and the scowl was turned on him.

“Does she accept pets or am I about to get my arm ripped off?” Maya asked softly as she sidestepped a little closer to the tiger in a crouch.

“Why would you wait this long to ask?” Kathy huffed.

“Kelley couldn’t rip your arm off if she wanted to,” Damian scoffed and turned back to his brushing.

Like she could understand him, the tiger’s head whipped towards him and she bared her teeth. With a low growl, she shifted onto her feet. Alfred realized what was happening as the tiger started bounding towards the bird-themed vigilante and jumped off Damian’s lap just before he was crushed under a juvenile tiger.

“Get off me! Get off me right now or I will skin you and use your pelt as a rug!” Damian snarled.

Jon considered helping his friend, but the tiger wasn’t doing anything more than licking his hair now that she had him pinned. After a quick use of x-ray vision proved that Damian didn’t actually have any weapons on him for once, Jon decided to leave the older boy to his pet and focus back on Goliath.

“KELLEY!”

“You’re the bestest dragon bat in the world, aren’t you? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

Plus One ~ Jason

Bruce scowled as he typed away at the computer.

The mission was supposed to be an easy one. Just a quick in and out. But they had gotten just one wrong piece of misinformation and now most of Bruce’s children were lying in the Batcave boasting some form of injury.

Worst of all, Bruce hadn’t been there. He and Selina had been on a date night across the city at the insistence of all the children.

The father paused in his typing to glance around the cave.

Carrie was lying on her pillow in tiger form. Either Tim or Duke had managed to slip a cone around her neck since the last time he’d checked on the kids. Considering the lack of shouting, snarling, growling, or baby roars, Bruce was assuming she was humoring the cone for now. Normally he’d make the boys take it off since it impaired her vision too much for comfort in the cave, but she wouldn’t be running around for a few days and the cone would remind her not to lick at her stitches, something she occasionally forgot while in tiger form.

Speaking of the boys, Bruce could see the cocoon of shadows Tim had wrapped them in on one of the larger infirmary cots. The shadows were meant to help with Tim’s concussion while providing Duke with the darkness he needed to get to sleep. A flaw with Duke’s powers was that it was hard for him to get to sleep in anything but the darkest of rooms, especially after an adrenaline-heavy mission got his photosensitivity at its peak. Normally they’d send him up to rest in his room since Bruce had installed special black-out windows for just this occasion, but Alfred wanted him to remain hooked up to an EKG machine overnight due to an electrical shock he’d received during the mission.

Dick and Damian were on the training mats, though Bruce only knew the former because of the thin, whip-like tail poking out from the mass of feathers to wrap gently around Dick’s leg brace. Otherwise, his youngest was completely hidden within his eldest's wings, bundled up against Dick’s chest to keep the boy from attempting to “train” his recently relocated shoulder “back to form.”

Stephanie was nowhere to be seen, though Damian assured them she’d returned home with the group and the occasional nudging of Bruce’s mug towards the edge of the desk confirmed it. Her bracelet sat next to Bruce, the focusing stone in need of replacement. Thankfully he’d thought ahead and had extras on hand so he’d just need to bring the bracelet to a jeweler friend in the morning to have it set properly.

Cass was curled up in one chair at the meeting table with her legs resting on another as she nibbled at a sandwich with one hand and held an ice pack to her bruised ribs with the other. Her eyes had been closed and she’d looked half-asleep when he’d first looked, but as the sound of a motorcycle reached them through the tunnels, her head perked up.

Bruce turned as his second-eldest arrived. Jason parked the bike and climbed off before pulling his helmet off and looking around. He whistled.

“How’d your mission with the Outlaws go?” Bruce asked.

“Better than the mission these idiots went on, apparently.”

“We got some faulty information. You hurt?”

“Nah. Kory, Artemis, and Biz got to have all the fun this time. Roy and I played sniper. What’s -”

Jason cut off as a black form leaped onto his back. Cass quickly wrapped her arms and legs around him before he could toss her off. Nuzzling into his neck, she cooed, “Big brother!”

“Hey, do I look like a horse!” He huffed, tugging at her arms and legs. Suddenly there was a bird in his place, with a plump body and long legs and neck. He flapped his wings and shook, but Cass had anticipated the change and shifted her grip to compensate.

Bruce smiled at the two, knowing Jason was just putting on a show of being annoyed. It was obvious by the fact he didn’t simply change into pure flames so she’d have nothing to hold onto and the way the feathers around Cass’s chest were alight, the flames rising up to brush against where the ice pack had been resting before.

Phoenixes couldn’t actually heal as some stories stated, but their flames could promote healing and ward off infection. Most importantly, though, they could soothe pains. And despite all his huffing and puffing, Jason hated seeing the people he cared about in pain.

The young man gave one last gentle shake before hissing and stomping off to his and Dick’s nest. He lowered himself down and Cass rolled off his back. She moved around to his front and leaned against the edge of the nest while he draped his neck over her chest. As she began to carefully brush her fingers through the burning feathers on his neck, the feathers on his back lit up once more. From where he was, Bruce could just barely see the faint traces of Stephanie’s face in the flames.

At the same time, Carrie yawned and carefully climbed to her feet before shuffling over and into the nest. She nudged the cone into Jason’s side until he stretched out a wing for her to curl up under.

A moment later, the shadows rose on Jason’s other side and he draped his other wing over them with a click.

Smiling at his children’s antics, Bruce double-checked that Tim had left the shadows open for the EKG machine’s wires then went back to his report.

By the time he looked up again a half-hour later, the ball of near-black feathers had relocated to under Jason's fantail and phoenix flames were covering the whole nest in soothing warmth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cookie to anyone who actually gets the book-dog reference at the beginning of Dick's part because I've been spending too much time on Youtube.

Funny story about Halo: I was looking up different characters that have been on the Outsiders team to put with Duke and Cass since I accidentally put Katana with the Birds before realizing she's the only other member of their team besides Black Lightning and didn't want her to show up in two parts (I've decided she runs with both teams in this universe). I decided on Looker because she seemed cool then was reading up on Halo. I remembered the character from clips of Young Justice animated and thought they were cool. I wasn't too surprised to see the original character didn't wear a hijab, but I was surprised that Wikipedia uses they/them pronouns for the part talking about YJA's Halo post becoming Halo. I thought the character was nonbinary until I checked the YJA wiki for something and saw it uses only she/her pronouns. I'm pretty sure that means Wikipedia's just being weird, but I decided to make Halo bigender anyways so she uses she/ey pronouns in this universe.

#batman #batfam #everyone has powers #except bruce

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 4 years

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What do you think the Animorphs would be like playing D&D? Not "the Animorphs in a D&D world", but the Animorphs actually sitting down and having a campaign of D&D. Like the classes/races they'd pick, their play styles, wacky shenanigans (because we all know it would happen).

[Credit to Cates for 100% of the character builds, and most of the lore, in this AU. In case you were wondering, I’m the Jake-style “never read the manual” chaotic-dumbass bard of our campaign; she’s the Marco-style “uses the rules exactly as much or little as needed” DM.]

It was decided almost right away that one on the team had any alignment. As DM, Marco attempted to start there, only to have Ax begin questioning whether the manual’s explanations of “good” and “evil” truly captured human ethics on a grand scale. Tobias claimed that Ax was looking at it all wrong, that the moralities were only default behavior types within the game, and that within this particular context morality didn’t matter. Cassie got very concerned about the idea of context-dependent morality, Rachel declared that the book was stupid and short-sighted for claiming that destroying things was always bad, Jake quietly asked for the fourth or fifth time if this game was actually a good idea…

“Fine!” Marco announced. “You’re all amoral characters. Happy?”

“‘Amoral’ implies that we’re immoral, doesn’t it?” Cassie asked. “Or that we exist outside the spectrum of moralities?”

“Just…” Marco rolled his eyes. “Everyone leave that spot on your character sheet blank, okay? If it ever comes up, we’ll deal with it on a case-by-case basis.”

“Yes,” Ax said, “although you never did answer my question about the implied ethical structure of this universe.”

After that, character creation went fairly smoothly. Kind of.

“Why does Dennis need a backstory, again?” Jake asked, looking down at his sheet.

“Dennis?” Marco said. “Dennis?

“You already said I wasn’t allowed to use ‘Dylan’ or ‘Brad’, so…’”

“C’mon man, this is D’nD. There are no Dennises in medieval fantasy epics.”

“Fine.” Jake crossed out and rewrote the name at the top of his character sheet. “Why does Keith need a backstory?”

“To explain his motivation.”

“You just said that the whole time we’re going to be chased around by orcs and whatnot. Isn’t not dying enough motivation?”

“You really don’t understand this game, do you?” Rachel said.

“I really don’t understand this game,” Jake agreed.

“My character’s a dragonborn rogue named Joan, and she’s the greatest gymnast of all time.” Rachel added a Dexterity marker to her sheet with a flourish.

“I thought I was a dragonborn,” Jake said. “Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, we can have as many dragonborns as you all want.” Marco shrugged. “We just can’t have multiple bards. And since you called dibs on that class, and Rachel wants to be a rogue, we’re fine.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jake said. “I just want to help out the team. Or, uh, Keith does?”

“Great.”

“So that’s my backstory, right? Being a bard?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, at the same time Marco said, “No!”

In the end, Marco declared that if neither Rachel nor Jake could come up with a proper backstory, he was making their characters cousins. Tobias, who had a better flair for the romantic, declared that said cousins were from an internationally feared family of highwaymen.

“So does that get us any extra skills, coming from a family of pirates?” Rachel asked.

“Maybe it’d explain how good your character is at gymnastics,” Jake said. “Because of riggings and all.”

“Highwaymen.” Marco looked up from where he was trying to salvage Keith’s stats from the hopeless tangle of Jake’s incorrect math. “Tobias said you guys are highwaymen, not pirates.”

“What are pirates but highwaymen of the sea?” Tobias asked, tilting his head in thought.

“Just put us down as jewel thieves.” Rachel made a note on her own sheet. “Jewel thieves of diverse methodology. Wherever jewels can be found, there we are with threats of violence to take them away.”

“By the way, why is Ax now a tiefling?” Tobias asked Marco.

“I told Marco I have no preference for my class and race,” Ax said. “And the word is most pleasant, tea-fling. Ffflllling.”

“They’re blue and have tails.” Marco smirked at Tobias. “It’s perfect!”

Rachel and Jake might’ve been vague on the idea of backstory, but Ax was quite definite.

“I am Eldrias the tiefling, fffflllling, paladin. She was raised by cows,” he announced.

“Don’t you mean raised by wolves?” Jake said. “Isn’t that a thing, raised by wolves?”

“Uh-huh,” Marco said, “since your land-pirates make perfect sense.”

“Wolves are beautiful animals, but they pale in comparison to cows,” Ax said. “Among other things, wolves’ meat is not so succulent and does not pair nearly as well with french fries.”

“Okay then,” Jake said, “raised by cows. Got it.”

Becoming a barbarian was Cassie’s idea. She spun through the manual in a rapid burst of pages, brushing gentle fingertips over the beautifully rendered illustrations, and then pressed it shut. “Barbarian,” she said. “That’s the one that can protect the team the best, right? So I’ll be a barbarian.”

Marco laughed. “All right then. Barbarian it is. Anything else in mind, for this barbarian of yours?”

Cassie tapped a finger against her lower lip, fluttering through the first several pages of the manual once again. “I could make my character a big, tall guy, right?”

“Sure.”

“But I want pointy ears.” She grinned at the rest of the table, somewhat sheepish.

“Half-elf barbarian, then?”

“Half-elf barbarian.” Cassie looked down at the sheet in front of her. “He can be named Reisgalan Von Schwartzel of the Morsgalath Half-Elves, Lord of the Plains and Wielder of…” She glanced around. “What’s that thing with the spiky ball on a stick?”

“Mace,” Rachel provided.

“Mace is that spray you use on bears and muggers,” Jake said.

“And it’s also a spiky ball on a stick.” Marco glanced at Cassie’s sheet. “You have a backstory for Reisgalan Von Whatshisface?”

“Hmmmm. Can I be widowed and have a tragically dead prince I must avenge?”

“Is it me?” Jake smiled hopefully.

“What?” Cassie frowned at him. “No. That’d be horrible.” She looked over at Marco. “Uh, can my character be a guy and also have a dead husband? Is that allowed?”

“Yeah, sure,” Marco said. “I’m the ruler of this universe, so I say it’s fine. And Tobias is the designated rules lawyer, so he’ll probably have some reason that it’s not.”

“I am not rules-lawyering!”

Marco looked at Ax’s character sheet, and then pointedly back up at Tobias. “Ax, how did you end up as not just a paladin, but a paladin that’s even more overpowered than the standard build?”

“Paladins are allowed.” Tobias shrugged. “It’s right there in the manual.”

“Ax, how you have splint armor?” Marco demanded.

“Paladins can wear Heavy armor,” Tobias sing-songed.

Marco growled.

Ax squinted at his character sheet. “Tobias says when I get to Level Three, I will take the Oath of Vengeance and take a Vow of Enmity. I will know the spells Thunderous Smite, Command, and Detect Magic.”

Marco’s face was turning an interesting shade of red.

“Oh, and Eldrias the paladin is taking Great Weapon as her Fighting Style.” Tobias wasn’t bothering to hide his smirk. “It’s all perfectly legal.”

Ax frowned at Marco. “Banging your head against the table with that level of force may have an adverse effect on your brain’s ability to function.”

“I’m not rules-lawyering for selfish gain,” Tobias said loftily, looking over Marco’s prone form. “And besides, Ax is new at this. He needs all the help he can get.”

“You find yourselves in a magical land.” Marco made a wild gesture in the air. It was probably meant to look dramatic and mysterious. “A land known as Falicornia.”

“Marco sucks at naming things,” Rachel whispered loudly.

“Rachel sucks at listening,” Marco whispered more loudly.

“You were saying?” Jake asked.

“This magical land is under threat from the dread god Cthulu! You must stop him through using the Philosopher’s Stone, which is powerful but cannot be used except by those who do not wish to use it. It contains many powerful temptations for the bearer. You must journey across the land, facing many dangers, to bring it to the only magical mirror that can destroy it before Cthulu has the chance to rise from that mirror and take over the world.”

Cassie raised her hand.

“Yes?” Marco said.

“Why does Cthulu want to take over the world?” she asked. “Does he need it for something?”

Marco sighed. “He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu. Any other questions?”

“First question: did you steal more of this plot from The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter?” Rachel said immediately. “Second question—” She turned to Ax. “Have we showed you those movies?”

“He’s reading the books first,” Tobias said.

“I’m reading the books first,” Ax agreed.

“You were saying about Cthulu,” Jake said to Marco.

“Yes. He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu,” Marco glared at Rachel. “Just because.“

“Actually,” Tobias said, “the original version of Cthulu was kind of like the Silver Surfer of Norse Mythology, and his motivation—”

“He wants to take over because he’s Cthulu.” Marco took a deep breath. “Anyway. Moving on.”

“Okay, you’re here.” Marco pointed to the G.I. Joe figure sitting in the middle of their somewhat crudely drawn map. “The goblins are…” One after another, he set four white pawns from his mom’s chess set around the G.I. Joe that represented Jake, forming a half-circle that separated him from Ax’s Smurf, Cassie’s My Little Pony miniature, and Tobias’s Precious Moments angel figurine. “Rachel is, uh…” He set the teddy bear pencil topper several inches back, between two goblin-pawns. “There. So.” Marco looked up at Jake. “You’re under attack. You’re up first in initiative order. What’re you going to do?”

Jake frowned, surveying the scene in front of him. “I have magic, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Okay, so I’ll use magic to turn myself into a bird, and then—”

“Yeah, no.”

“Then I’ll turn my teammates into birds, and they can—”

“You cannot turn yourself into a bird, you cannot turn anyone else into a bird, no one is turning into a bird or any other animal at any point in this game.” Marco glanced over at Tobias. “No offense.”

“Oh, I totally agree,” Tobias said. “A Level One bard performing an animal shapes transmutation? Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Anyway.” Marco pointed at Jake’s G.I. Joe figurine. “Assuming we’re sticking to handheld weapons, what else do you want to do?”

“I… shoot the goblin?” Jake suggested. “With my…” He flipped over his character sheet, squinting at his own handwriting. “With my board-sword.”

“Pretty sure you meant ‘broadsword,’” Rachel said. “Okay, Jake killed the goblin, now what?”

Cassie peered over Jake’s shoulder. “It could just be a sword made out of boards, you don’t know.”

“Jake only has thirteen out of sixty odds of killing the goblin on one go,” Marco said.

Tobias flipped open his own manual to the entry on goblins. “Where are you getting these numbers from?”

Marco selected two dice from the pile, handing them both to Jake. “Oh, I just figure that if the goblin’s got an armor class of seven and five HP, then Jake’s got a thirteen-in-twenty chance of scoring a hit and then a two-in-six chance of it being deadly, given his hit dice. So if you reduce twenty-six over one-twenty down it’s thirteen in sixty. Like, point-two-one-seven out of one. Simple math.” He gestured at Jake. “Roll those.”

“You and I have very different definitions of the word ‘simple.’” Jake looked up. “Uh, ten and the other one says four?”

“You grievously injured but did not kill the goblin,” Marco said graciously. “Now it’s the turn for this leftmost goblin, who is going to run and stick a sword through Rachel…” He rolled, and winced. “That’s fifteen to hit, and two damage?”

“What’s that mean for my little rogue?” Rachel waved her pencil topper at him.

“You got stabbed,” Marco said.

“Uh-huh.” Rachel picked up her pen and sheet. “Where?”

Marco shrugged. “The leg, let’s say. Uh, upper thigh?”

“Mm-hmm.” She wrote that down.

“Okay, then.” Marco glanced at his sheet. “Next in initiative order is—”

“I cast psionic blast as a Level One spell, which would cause additional damage to fiends or the undead. Are they undead goblins?” Tobias asked.

Marco rolled his eyes. “Nope.”

“Then they each suffer three points of damage and do not have the opportunity to make saving throws for the next minute and a half,” Tobias said. “That’s my first spell slot today.”

“Okay.” Marco tipped over one of the goblin pawns. “That one’s dead. Cassie?”

“That one’s threatening Ax?” She pointed at the pawn within the same square as the Smurf figurine.

“Yep.”

She nodded. “Then I smash its head in with my mace.” She rolled. “Eight to hit, eight damage?”

“Oh yeah, you just annihilated that one.”

“Good, good, so now can I mace the one that attacked Rachel?”

“Cool your jets.” Marco held up both hands. “You don’t get to do multiple hulk-smashes in one round until several levels up from here.”

Cassie wilted a little. “Okay. But I want to run over next to that one to be ready to mace it soon.”

“All right, center goblin is going to try and swing his big old greatsword at Cassie as an attack of opportunity…” Marco rolled. “And that’s a miss. Rachel, you’re up.”

“I’m unconscious,” Rachel said.

Marco gave her a blank look. “No you’re not.”

“Yes she is,” Ax said. “You just allowed that goblin— gob-blin? Goo-blin? —to stab her.”

“I did not allow— The dice—” Marco took a deep breath. “Rachel, you only took two points of damage. Go ahead and make a turn.”

“Okay, you clearly said…” Rachel glanced at her own notes. “That the goblin stuck its sword through my upper thigh. And apparently these are pretty big swords. No way in hell that misses the artery, not if I’m only about human-sized at the time. You also said that the goblin has its sword back, which means it pulled the sword out, which means that by now I have definitely lost enough blood to be unconscious. It’s just basic logic.”

Marco opened his mouth halfway. “That’s not how damage functions in this game,” he said at last.

“No, she’s right,” Jake said. “She wouldn’t necessarily be dead from blood loss by now, but on the super-narrow chance she’s still conscious, she’s not going to have the, like, grip strength to be shooting people with arrows or anything. That’s just how getting stabbed works.”

“Actually…” Tobias looked up from where he was sorting his flash cards of wizard spells. “In combat time, each turn is six seconds. So it hasn’t been five minutes of game-time. It’s been less than three seconds.”

“So this goblin managed to stick its sword all the way through me, pull it loose, and then get back into position to make a different attack in less than a second?” Rachel said. “And I don’t need to take a second or two to react to having been stabbed?”

“Yes!” Tobias said.

“This game is not closely aligned with the timing and functions of real combat,” Ax pointed out.

Marco let out a noise somewhere between a sigh and a shriek. “No shit, Sherlock! Can we please just play by the rules?”

“I’m just saying it’s not realistic,” Rachel muttered. “You get run through the leg with a sword, you bleed to death. That’s how it goes.”

“Would you please shoot someone already?” Marco said.

“If you insist.”

At Level Two, Tobias’s gnome wizard joined the School of Divination for exactly one game. “He’s rules-lawyering things that haven’t even happened yet,” Marco cried, throwing out his hands like this was the greatest injustice ever visited upon humanity. At which point Tobias decided that discretion was the better part of valor and switched to the School of Evocation. Marco’s eye stopped twitching.

“No, no, no.” Marco leaned over to look at Jake’s roll. “You add your charisma modifier to your attack roll, and then your strength modifier to your damage roll.”

“So he adds twelve to his roll?” Cassie looked at her own sheet. “I add seventeen to my roll?”

“Modifier. Not the whole stat. Mod-if-i-er.” Marco groaned loudly. “Is Tobias the only one who even tried to read the manual?”

“C’mon, man.” Jake shrugged, grinning. “When have you ever known me to do the assigned reading?”

“I have Tobias here to summarize the manual for me,” Rachel pointed out. “Why bother?”

“I did attempt to read the manual. Man. Well. It was not the most boring human book ever written, but it was very repetitive.” Ax glanced around at all of them. “Not to say that all human books are bad, even if they are all repetitive,” he added quickly. “Take the books of Harry Potter, which are acceptable in addition to being repetitive.”

“‘Acceptable’?” Tobias shook his head. “‘Repetitive’? You, sir, are wounding my entire species — one of my species — Just don’t diss the Potter.”

“There’s no need to call me ‘sir,’ professor,” Ax intoned.

Laughing, Tobias leaned over to bump their shoulders together. “I take it back. I love you, Ax-man. Never change.”

“Anyway,” Cassie said, “we elected Tobias party leader, so he’s the only one who really needs to know how to play, right?”

“‘Elected’ is a pretty strong word for it. The way I remember it, I was like…” Marco put on a deeper voice, “‘Who wants to be party leader?’ and Jake yelled ‘NOT IT’ so loud that he probably startled pigeons in the next county over. And then Tobias was the first one to recover from the shock long enough to volunteer.”

“I didn’t yell it, I said it,” Jake mumbled. “Said it enthusiastically.”

“And you’re wrong. We did nose-goes.” Rachel tapped her own nose to demonstrate. “Tobias lost.”

Ax’s eyes widened. “So you and Cassie covering your noses was a primitive selection procedure in the manner of duck-duck-goose? I thought we were all simply being polite by hiding our hideous human orifices from one another.”

“Anyway,” Tobias said, “as party leader, I’m declaring that we can whine about noses — and bipedalism — at a later time. For now, let’s play.”

“Ah, yes.” Ax looked down at the dice, and then back up at Marco. “Who was attacking whom, again?”

Marco stared around the board, and then back at the dice. “Like I remember that now!”

It was a small miracle that they all kept showing up after that first week. Tobias and Marco were the only ones with both the skill and the enthusiasm to be any good at the game. Cassie and Rachel lacked the necessary motivation: Cassie tended to get lost in long conversations with NPCs and never advanced the plot at all, whereas Rachel was likely to start climbing the walls with impatience after half an hour of sitting still. Ax and Jake were both reasonably enthusiastic but terrible: Jake paid no attention at all to the math, and Ax paid too much. They had one set of dice between the six of them, if one was generous and called rolling a d6 twice the same as rolling a d12. (It wasn’t, but Marco’s and Ax’s attempts to explain this always made everyone else’s eyes glaze over.)

Seriously, though, Marco knew perfectly well why they kept showing up. And it had nothing to do with everyone getting on board with Tobias’s super-geeky idea. They’d tried Dungeons and Dragons, and they hadn’t actually started liking it.

It had nothing to do with the storyline. Or the dice. Or the characters. They weren’t here for swords or goblins. They didn’t drop everything to spend four hours a week in each other’s company because they liked the game.

Duh.

Of course, even their love for each other could be tested, at times, by their sheer incompetence as players.

“We’re still in the undercave?” Jake groaned, looking at the game board. “We’ve been down here for like six weeks!”

“Yeah, ‘cause we’re stuck.” Rachel glared around the table. “Because we keep trying to fight the ooze monster and then almost dying. Because we suck at this game.”

“Still say there should’ve been illithids,” Tobias muttered. “We’re in the cave of the illithids, but instead we’ve got apocalyptic ooze where there isn’t supposed to be any. That’s why we’re stuck.”

Marco sighed into his hands. “For the last time, man, we’re not having any stupid mind flayers in this game. There is a way out, I promise you, if you guys would just stop and figure it out.”

“I stab the ooze?” Cassie suggested.

“You take fourteen acid damage and permanently blunt your sword.” Marco didn’t bother to look up. “Just like last time.”

“Ugh.” Cassie wrote down her new HP. “At least I ruled out repeated stabbing as a way out?”

“Okay, okay.” Jake stared at the game board, yet again failing to take the this map not to scale memo. “We can figure this out. Is it a cave kind of like those caves under Leeran?”

Marco lifted his head, tossing his hair out of his face. “I got schlooped back to Earth before you guys got to see those, remember?”

“They were very beautiful,” Ax said, “and also full of toxic eels. So perhaps Prince Jake’s comparison is apt.”

“The real toxic eel is the friends we made along the way.” Rachel tilted her chair back, picking at her manicure. “Think we should just call it a day?”

“No, no, Jake’s right.” Cassie stared at the board. “I believe in us.”

“It was kinda cool in the Leeran caves, so sorry you missed it,” Jake said to Marco. “I was dead and missed the Battle of Trafalgar, though, so it all balances out?”

“The Battle of Trafalgar was not cool at all.” Marco rolled his eyes. “It was a battle. It was gross and loud and bloody. Is no one going to try anything else?”

“I pull out my rope and my flint, I set the rope on fire, we all die of smoke inhalation,” Rachel drawled. “There, I got us out of the cave.”

“And into the afterlife,” Ax said solemnly. “If, indeed, this game has an afterlife. It was designed by humans, so I assume… Soom. That it must.”

“Look, if we could just fight the mind flayer instead,” Tobias said, “there are clear strategies in place for how to fend off psychic attacks, and even if a few of us end up as mind-witnesses we could still use a handful of different spells—” He swung his copy of the manual around to face Marco, pointing to a spot low on the open page. “If you’ll just look at what the book says…”

Marco slammed the book shut, hard.

Tobias had to yank his hand back to avoid smashed fingers. “Watch it!” he snapped.

“Guys,” Jake said. “Let’s—”

“Rule. Zero.” Marco flattened a hand on top of the closed book. “I’m the DM here, and I get to say that there are no mind flayers and definitely no mind witnesses, because I say so. I’m the Ellimist of this little universe, and you don’t get a counter-argument.”

Rachel snorted loudly. “Bad comparison. Tobias argues with the real Ellimist all the time.”

“Only when he’s doing something stupid.” Tobias was looking at Marco, not at her. “Or breaking the rules of his own game.”

“Tobias…” Jake inhaled slowly, massaging the bridge of his nose. “It’s just a game, okay? Marco… We are kinda stuck, dude, no offense. Couldn’t we at least try to fight whatever it is Tobias wants, see if that gets us out of here?”

Marco pushed to his feet, face flushed. “I’m running this game, because you people decided I should. And I don’t give a fuck how much Bird-Boy complains, this game is not going to involve anyone getting psychically mind-controlled. It will not feature alien tadpoles that crawl inside people’s brains and take over their bodies.” He swept a hand across the board. “There will be no illithids, there will be no brain golems, there will be no controllers—”

Marco snapped his mouth shut.

There was a long silence. Tobias stared at the floor.

“Mind-witnesses,” Marco said at last. “I meant mind-witnesses.”

THUNK.

Figurines and dice scattered everywhere. The play-dough lump of ooze flattened underneath the second game board Cassie had just dropped on top of the first.

“Anyway,” she said, giving everyone an embarrassed smile. “How about we switch to Monopoly for a while?”

“I call being the little dog piece,” Rachel said, pulling the box open.

“I’m sorry,” Tobias whispered to Marco, as Ax began clattering through the pieces and asking Jake questions. “I didn’t mean…”

“Yeah.” Marco pulled the bank toward him and counting out notes. “Same here, man. Uh, y’know. Sorry I…”

“We’re cool. We’re cool?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Does this highly successful roll mean I have first chance to stab Income Tax with my—” Ax squinted at his game piece “—car? So I’ll be attempting to inflict damage on Income Tax by running it over?”

“Many have tried that strategy,” Rachel intoned. “None have succeeded so far.”

“You know that your beloved manual lists exactly the same stats for hawks, eagles, and owls, right?” Marco asked, grinning evilly.

“What? No.” Tobias frantically flipped toward the back of the book.

“Anyway, is he right?” Cassie asked as Tobias searched. “Are we all supposed to be dead right now?”

“I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Marco said. “Yes, the explosion would have done a lot of damage to all of you—”

“Thanks, Jake,” Rachel snarked.

Jake sighed loudly. “How was I supposed to know you had to throw the hand grenade after you pulled the pin?”

“You mean the part where Ax and Tobias were both yelling ‘toss it, toss it,’ and you were like ‘no, I’m gonna do an investigation check first’?” she said. “And then we all died?”

“Actually, I believe Cassie was raging at the time when the ceiling fell on us all,” Ax said. “Therefore, her damage would be halved.”

“Hell yeah!” Cassie laughed. “So it’s just…” She peered at Marco’s roll and winced. “Everyone else… in the entire party… who automatically failed a death check. Right, Tobias?”

“No,” Marco said loudly, “because Jake cast Teleportation Circle and got you all out of there before the ceiling fell.”

“But Tobias believes that that would be allowing too many actions on a single turn. Uurn. Earn,” Ax said. “And that Jake wouldn’t have time to set up the circle even if he did have a bonus action left.”

“For fuck’s sake, do you want to end on a total party kill?” Marco demanded.

Rachel smiled sweetly. “It’s not a TPK if Cassie’s still alive.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Oh, in that case—”

“Oh my god, you’re right!” Tobias sounded outraged.

“Am I dead?” Rachel pouted. “Just when this stupid game was starting to grow on me.”

“No, not that.” Tobias stabbed a finger on the page. “It says right here. ‘For hawk, see: eagle.’ It fucking classifies hawks as a fucking subspecies of eagle!”

“What were you just saying about us following the manual at the expense of our lives?” Marco said smugly.

Tobias stared in betrayed horror at the page for another second. And then he tossed the entire book clear over his shoulder and out of the room. It clattered loudly in the hall.

“So as I was saying, Jake cast Teleportation Circle,” Marco said. “And teleported you all out of there.”

“So we’re… not dead?” Cassie asked.

“Given the nature of teleportation, perhaps we are both dead and not, existing in the gap between states,” Ax said. “Like when our consciousness was trapped in z-space, and yet our matter remained on Earth. Or we exist in multiple universes at once, some in which we have died and some in which we yet live.”

“Yeah, cool, Schrödinger’s party,” Rachel said. “Blah, blah. Anyway, I’m gonna punch Jake in the arm for being a dumbass. In-game and out-of-game.”

“Good luck with that.” Marco cackled his evil DM cackle. “The only universe I care about is the one where the whole lot of you give me an initiative roll. Because I didn’t say Jake teleported you to a safe location, just a different one.”

646 notes · View notes

monster-madame · 4 years

Text

Impulsive Decisions (Breanna x Jackson) | Modern Orc Boyfriend x Human Witch Woman

Hello hello!

Here is a hetero NSFW orc boyfriend story, featuring a human plus size woman witch and an orc named Jackson!

I couldn’t figure out how to photoshop the tempting rugby player photographed green (what a problem to have), so use your imagination. <3

Details: This is a reader insert story, but I do name the character becuase I find “Y/N” distracting.

Word Count: 6,305 [800 ish is smut]

* * * * *

You blew your hair out of your face, pushing through the kitchen doors into the dining area. You normally didn’t work lunches, as you were taking computer science classes at the local university. Classes made the lunch shift nearly impossible, but you were on break between spring and summer courses.

Walking through the packed dining room, you mentally noted to avoid taking lunch rushes during the future. You definitely preferred the more relaxed pace of the dinner shift. The lunch shift seemed mostly made up of patrons who were on a time crunch for their lunch hour. You winced as their stressed energy grated against your Senses.

“Here you are,” you said to one of your tables, putting down your tray. The guests smiled at you and continued talking animatedly to one another, they all seemed to be friends. Their energy was open, fun and a little mischievous.

Vinnie’s attracted a more diverse set than other restaurants, and the table sat a good assortment of humanoids – a half-orc, a tiefling, a human (probably a witch by the tattoos) and a minotaur.

“Did you see that Jackson Scott is here?!” the tiefling whispered to the table. “I can’t believe we’re lunching where JACKSON SCOTT lunches! Wasn’t he just declared one of the riches men in Boston by The Globe?”

You raised your eyebrows at that. Vinnie’s was a nice restaurant, but it wasn't nice nice, like 5 dollar signs on Yelp! nice. What was he doing here?

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” you asked the table. The minotaur asked for another side of Mayo. “I’ll go snag that for you and be right back,” you said, mentally noting what drinks needed to be filled.

Turning to go back into the kitchen you heard a crash in a far corner. Looking over, you saw that it belonged to one of your BFFs, Jill, who was red-faced and mopping up what looked to be marinara sauce around a really pissed off orc. Jill is a slight dryad, and you could feel her stress emanating at you.

Striding over, you slapped on your best Hospitality Smile, ready to flex your energetic charms as an empath to diffuse the situation. You strided over, noting that the patron was seated in what the staff called the “Do Not Disturb” table, that was situated behind potted plants and in an alcove.

Well, at least other patrons wouldn’t be able to gawk at the lot of you.

As you neared, you realized why he was seated at the DND table. Oh fuck. He was a VIP.

It was, of course, Jackson Scott. Jill had a knack for ticking off the wrong customers. He was ripped, with the kind of body that would make Jason Moma ask for workout tips. Beautiful tusks and a real energy of “fucking pissed off” about him. Nearing 7 feet tall with dark hair, he was seated in one of the special chairs designed to withstand a taller being.

“Hello,” you said greeting him. “We’re so terribly sorry for the accident. We’ll of course cover the dry cleaning bill and help you get into different clothes. We can send you home with a take out order and a giftcard on the house? We’ll cover the Uber, so you can get changed?”

“This,” he grit out, gesturing to his linen suit, “is bespoke. And ruined. Do you intend to cover the cost of a new summer suit?”

Um, no, the restaurant probably couldn’t cover a suit that would cover six months of rent. Seeing your hesitation, his frustration grew.

“Look, I came here for a quiet lunch between meetings, and if I had known the staff was so incompetent,” he said, looking at Jill, “then I definitely would’ve gone elsewhere. Do you typically keep on staff that are so bad at their jobs?”

Oh, no he fucking did NOT. Jill was one of their best servers! Accidents happen!!

“Jill is one of our best staff members, and we so apologize for this accident,” you said, upping your mental defenses, just in case his energy became more aggressive. “We have an excellent dry cleaner, and I so appreciate you helping us get this sorted out,” you said. Sometimes thanking someone for being on your side helped them actually be on your side.

Seeing your words had no effect, you let out a trickle of an calm energy to the restaurant.

Unfortunately, that little oomph of calm you tried to use totally backfired. His tension ratcheted up. Your Hospitality Smile vanished right off your face.

“Are you fucking magicking me?” he grit out, shoving his chair back from the table.

Technically, no. You were magicking yourself and the energy around you, but you didn’t think he’d see it that way.

Desperately trying to figure out how to fix a situation that had totally gotten out of hand, you saw Gio, Vinnie’s son, headed towards them. Oh, thank god. Vinnie was human, and he was able to effortlessly engage with all types of beings.

Gio arrived on the scene, strategically placing himself so that Jackson had to move a bit to address him, shielding their party from prying eyes.

“What seems to be the problem here, Jackson?” he asked, addressing the Orc.

“Your staff is fucking incompetent and magicking patrons, Gio,” he bit out. “What kind of restaurant did I just put money into?”

At the word “money,” you looked at Jill, shocked.

“I’m sure it’s a misunderstanding,” shared Gio. “Breanna would never magick a customer, and her magick doesn’t even work that way –”

“Wait a moment,” you interjected. “He bought Vinne’s?!”

Jackson shifted his attention to you, realizing he had two shit shows on his hands. “I mean, he’s more of an investor–”

Well, crap. Spilling marinara sauce on one of Boston’s elite was bad. Ruining the suit of an investor was even worse. This could be disastrous for Jill.

Glancing at Jill’s face, you realized she had figured out the same thing.

Chewing your lip, your mind raced. BAM! You had a solution. Jill really fucking needed this job and, you, well, didn’t. The restaurant was trying to expand, and needed capital. Telling Jackson Scott to fuck off wasn’t an option.

You knew what you had to do.

Turning back on your Hospitality Smile, you turned to the Orc. Jackson. “Mr. Scott,” you said smoothly. “I so apologize for your experience today at Vinne’s. This is not the kind of service our staff is trained to give. Because I trained Jill, I take full responsibility for this issue. Faulty training isn’t up to our standards at Vinnie’s, so I’ll be replaced.”

You then took off your apron, and handed it to Gio. You then took out your mini-wallet that held your license, credit card and a few business cards. You peeled off one of your business cards.

“If you’ll please send the bill to the email address on that card, I’ll be happy to reimburse you.” You handed it to a stunned Jakson Scott.

The three of them stared at you.

“Miss, wait, I think there’s been a misunderstanding –” Jackson started.

“No, no totally my fault,” you said with your Hospitality Smile, emanating graciousness and competence. This needed to work. If he asked Gio to fire Jill, Gio would probably have to. Although to be honest, if a prejudiced Orc now owned the restaurant – excuse you, invested in it – you weren’t sure how long Jill would have a job.

“I’ll let Gio sort out your Uber and meal. Have a great rest of your day, Mr. Scott.”

And then you spun on your heel on and left the dining room, headed to the staff room to grab your bag. You felt hot tears at the back of your eyes as you walked back. No. You would not cry. You kept your Hospitality Smile firmly in place.

The people at Vinnie’s were your family, the only family that mattered. You knew you weren’t going to work here for the rest of your life, but you for sure thought you’d finish your degree before leaving. And even then you had planned to work the odd weekend shift or get more involved in the back office.

But Gio and Vinnie had been looking for an investor for ages, needing cold hard cash to update the restaurant and expand to another location, for Gio to fully run. They needed Jackson Scott. More than they needed you.

You grabbed your purse, dropping off a side of Mayo and a refill on the Iced Tea at your table, before heading out. “Another server will be taking over for me,” you told them smoothly.

You left out the front doors, and you didn’t start crying until you were a few buildings down the sidewalk.

* * * *

You wake up the next morning, blearily scrubbing your hands over your itchy and puffy eyes. What a crappy evening that had been.

You’d spent the evening googling the heck out of Jackson Scott. He was an MIT grad, and he had built and sold several technology companies, and he was an investor in a variety of industries. Photos showed him with his large clan, and he seemed involved in a good amount of charities.

Studying his photos last night, you could NOT get over how good looking he was. He was broad shouldered with muscles, he had a rugby player’s build. His gleaming tusks curved over his upper lip. Dark forest green eyes and great bone structure.

Plus, he had recently had an interview in GQ, and the stylist had had fun with a few shots – Mr. Scott was apparently a Calvin's briefs kind of guy. If those briefs (and what was likely under them) had made their way through your dreams, you couldn’t be blamed! You couldn’t control your subconscious!

He probably had a good PR team, but your Senses told you that this wasn’t the type of guy to make a scene at a restaurant. But he had made a scene, and you had had to quit.

You rummage around to try to find your phone in your bed, eventually snagging it.

*** 47 Notifications ***

You groan to yourself.

You’d turned your phone on airplane mode as soon as you left the restaurant, and promptly carbo-loaded as soon as you got to your apartment.

Sighing, you went to the kitchen to make some coffee. As it started brewing, you began cleaning up after last night’s pity party, loading your dishwasher and wiping down the counter.The buzzer on your apartment rang.

**** BZZZZZZT ****

You ignored it.

**** BZZZZZZT ****

Go away!” you said aloud.

Couldn’t the world respect your need to mope?!?!

**** BZZZZZZT ****

The buzzing became more insistent.

**** BZZZZZZT ****

You harrumphed and walked over to the speaker, pressing the button. “I’m not in the mood to see anyone today!” you snarked into it.

“Ms. Alexander, I apologize for disturbing you,” said the voice of the and only Jackson Scott. “We had a terrible misunderstanding yesterday, and I’d like to meet with you to remedy it as soon as possible.”

Your mouth dropped open in surprise. What in the actual hell?!“How do you know where I live?!” you said tersely into the speaker. Surely this asshat had something better to do than creep on chubby witches?!

He cleared his throat into the speaker. “Ahem, well, yes I may have glanced in your personnel file. I grew worried last night when you didn’t answer messages from myself or Gio.”

You opened your mouth to speak. Closed it. Opened it.

Feeling like a fish, you cast your eyes desperately around.

Pressing on, he said, “Would you be amenable to a breakfast meeting? Or a lunch meeting? I have to go run a few errands, and then I could meet you at that little cafe down the street in two hours?”

Realizing he was determined to meet with you, yet respecting your boundaries by asking you to a public place, you decided to cut him some slack.

You pressed the buzzer. “Okay sure. I’ll see you there in two hours.”

“Great, thank you for being so accommodating,” he quickly replied. “I’ll see you there soon.”

As soon as the crackle of the speaker stopped, you were seized with a terrible realization.

You were going to brunch with Jackson Scott, and you had no idea what to wear.

************************

One hour and fifty-three minutes later, you were waiting outside the cafe. After agonizing over outfits, ou had gone for what you hoped was chic casual, high waisted jeans and a front tucked white cotton button down with keds. You put your long hair in a messy bun, braiding a headband to make it clear you put in effort – but not so much that you cared too much.

You went up to put your name on the list, “Hi, table for two? For Breanna?” The place was packed, and you weren’t sure how long the wait would be.

“Breanna Alexander?” the human hostess asked you. .

“Uhh, yeah?”

“Right this way please.”

She took you to the back garden, where tables were interspersed in amongst raised flower beds. The flower beds gave the feeling that each table was in its own garden, and also made the air smell divine.

You loved this cafe.

Turning a corner, you could see Jackson Scott seated at a table (in a corner, of course). He was almost too tall for the chair, one leg crossed flat over the other. He wore casual dark jeans and a light gray hoodie sweater.

You brought up your Senses, shielding yourself from any aggressive energy that may come your way.

You got to the table, and he stood to greet you. The hostess placed some menus down, murmuring something you didn’t catch.

“Thank you for meeting me,” he said, his hand outstretched for a professional handshake. He seemed earnest and a little nervous.

“Well, I was a little worried you would stay outside of my building until I did,” you joked lightly, stretching out a hand and clasping his.

His hand engulfed yours. Oh dear.

He warmly grasped your hand, and then released it. You put your bag down, and then sat.

Okayyyyyy, you said to yourself. This is a professional breakfast meeting. You need to make sure you call him on his shitty behavior, keep it together and not drool.

He cleared his throat. “I want to start this out right. First of all, I want to apologize for my terrible behavior yesterday. This has been a month from hades, but that’s no excuse for howI acted. I apologized and made amends with Jill and Gio.”

Oh god is this going to be a non-apology? Wait, why had this been a month from hell?

“And now, I’d like to apologize to you,” he said looking deep into your eyes.

He looked at you steadily.

“I am so sorry for what occurred yesterday. I am sorry that you felt you had to quit your job to help resolve the mess, and I deeply admire your quick thinking in a tough situation. However, I’m not the kind of Orc who would expect or demand someone to quit over an accident. I know Gio has reached out to you to be clear your job is still yours if you want it, and I wanted to meet with you in-person to promise that I would not behave that way in the future.”

He finished and looked at you, waiting. You lowered the defenses a bit on your Senses, to try to get an idea of how sorry he was.

His energy was truly apologetic, truly apologetic. You were getting embarrassment, self-consciousness and a good bit of hope from him.

Just then, the waitress came by. “Have you decided what you’re having?” she asked, looking at you.

You hadn’t even looked at the menu.

“Can you give us another few moments?”

“Sure!” she said brightly. “I’ll just bring around some coffee if that’s okay?”

You nodded and then looked at Jackson.

“Have you had the waffles?” he asked. “Not that I’m biased or anything, but I think the combination of sugar and carbs could help put you in a more forgiving mood.” His eyes sparkled at you with humor.

“Or a food coma,” you joked back.

Now that the tension had eased a bit, you realized you didn’t really hate him. His apology had been full and fair, and hadn’t been one of those half-ass apologies you were used to the men in your life making. Aaaand, truth be told, you probably should’ve offered to quit and let him get a few words in, before marching out of Vinnie’s yesterday. You could be a tad impulsive.

“There’s no need for waffles to inspire forgiveness,” you said to him. “You acted like a total asshat, but I really appreciate you going above and beyond to fix things.”

His shoulders relaxed. “It’s good to hear that,” he said. “Do you want to look over the menu? I know what I’m ordering.”

“Me too,” you said instantly.

“Waffles?”

“No, pancakes! Which are better in every way.”

This then sparked a debate about breakfast foods, which turned into you talking about food in general and travel. Jackson was really smart and witty, and he was so fun to talk to.

As the meal winded down, you realized that you didn’t want brunch to end. You really liked spending time with him. And looking at him.

“So, there was another reason I was hoping to talk to you,” he shared, as the waitress took away the plates. His energy wavered, and you could tell this was important to him. “I invested in Vinnie’s because it’s one of the only restaurants in the city that accommodates different species, and I wanted to help grow that.”

You nodded. This was one of the many reasons you loved working there.

He continued. “That said, there have been limitations. Species that aren’t as humanoid, say Driders for example, are welcome to come – but the staff has to move around furniture and it can make booking complicated. Many beings want to come, but are worried about putting the staff out by having them have to go through extra work. I know you’re studying computer science, so I was hoping we could design some sort of online reservation system – like an app – that would help us better plan for and accommodate different beings. Someone could book through the app, and their profile would signal staff as to what changes need to be made. There’s a lot of kinks to work out – wait, before I go on, is that something you’d be interested in?”

Wow, you were NOT expecting this. You did have experience in app design, and you could probably license an existing reservation platform and modify it to your needs. Your mind starting whirling.

“Breanna..?” he asked, uncertain as to what you were gonna say.

“Oh, sorry!” you said, your face scrunching in embarrassment. “I would be absolutely LOVE to work with you on this project. How do we get started? How do you see this working, from a meetings and timeline perspective?”

His energy perked immediately, and you could feel his excitement.

“Well, we’d have to start with user interviews….”

****

About a month later, part of your apartment was covered in frameworks and sketches. Jackson had given you a small team to lead, and you were having a blast learning how to delegate different parts of the platform to the other freelance contractors on the project - as well as learning a lot in the coding and design portion. Jackson was pretty involved, meeting with you throughout the week and staying updated on progress.

Jackson acted more like a collaborator than a boss, trusting your experience and know-how. But, technically, he was your boss (client?) as he was approving your invoices for freelance development.

And you had a giant huge crush on him. You’d been having steamy daydreams about him for weeks, many of which involved you, him, the restaurant and a variety of sexual positions involving the bar.

Luckily he was an Orc with zero empathic abilities, or this would be really awkward. Guys like Jackson Scott did not go for chubby computer nerds, they dated, like, supermodels. Or high powered business women. Or high powered business women who were ALSO supermodels.

UGH.

Your pity party was interrupted by your phone chiming, and you jumped to grab it. You had assigned a specific ringtone to Jackson. You told yourself it was because this was your first fully professional project, but the butterflies in your stomach said differently. In a positively Pavlovian move, you scampered over to your phone, eager to see what it said.

Hey, Breanna – I’m going to need to move our meeting next week. I have to go out of town.

Ugh. Probably to take his supermodel-tycoon girlfriend on a trip.

The phone chimed again.

A screenshot of his calendar popped up.

Is there a time you see free that would work for us to meet? I realize it’s a lot to ask, but maybe in the evening?

Shoot. Looking at his schedule you realized your classes, study nights and group project meetings all happened when he was free.

The only time he was and you were free was tomorrow night, which was a Friday night.

Hey, no problem! You texted back. Our schedules almost totally clash, unfortunately. IDK if this works for you, but I could do tomorrow night? I realize you probably have some event or probably forgot to put something on your calendar, but I can move my Netflix marathon to a different night.

You sent it without thinking, then read it back as you waited for him to reply. Reading back over it, you groaned.

Great. You had just told Jackson Scott you had no life. You usually kept Friday night free to decompress, socializing on Saturday night or during the weekend.

Then another, even worse thought hit you. What if he thought you were trying to finagle this into a DATE?!

Nope, nothing on Friday night! He replied.

Thank all the gods.

Would you prefer to meet at the office? My home office? Wherever works for you.

Eugh, go into an office building on a Friday evening? No thanks. But also you were pretty sure you’d feel super nervous and out of sorts at his home. You didn't know what his setup would be like, and you’d probably get all jittery worrying about his tech working or having a whiteboard to brainstorm on or or or

Then it hit you. He could just come to your place. You had everything here already, and your walls were practically ready for a presentation. You had met with a few of the other contractors in your apartment, Skyping in the others who didn’t live in the city.

Would you be okay to come to my place? I already have everything taped up, gantt charts and all. You texted back, knowing it was definitely the best solution for you.

Sure! He instantly replied.

We could do a 6-9pm meeting? Order takeout and eat while we work?

Perfect! You replied. Just no waffles. ;)

****

“This is not a date,” you told your reflection sternly to your reflection in the mirror. “This is a professional project update. You are a professional. You are a leading business woman.”

You jabbed your finger at your reflection for emphasis.

“You are an empowered and capable business woman!”

**** BZZZZZZT ****

It was show time.

“Come on up,” you said through the speaker.

In a few moments, Mr. Jackson Scott was in your kitchen.

Righto.

“Hey,” he said. He swung his laptop bag off his shoulder and put it on the counter. Your mouth went dry seeing his shoulder muscles flex as he put it down. He wore his usual uniform of dark jeans and a button down dress shirt. You were wearing a jersey jumpsuit, your hair in a high ponytail.

“Food should be here any minute. I realized it would be faster if we had it delivered instead of me picking it up.”

“That makes sense,” you said. “Do you want to jump on in or should we wait for food to get here?”

**** BZZZZZZT ****

“Never mind,” you said with a laugh, and a few moments later you were dumping chow-mein onto a plate. You used your counter as a table, him on one side and you on the other, as your table was covered with project materials.

You chatted with him comfortably about school and Vinnie’s while you ate, and he told you some funny stories about his nieces and nephews. Whipping out his phone, he started showing you pictures.

“This is Carrie learning how to hula hoop,” he said laughing, swiping through photos of an adorable orc kiddo, who looked to be about 7-years-old. She was gleefully laughing in the photo, and she seemed pretty proud of herself.

“She’s so cute!” you exclaimed.

Just then a bubble notification appeared at the top of his screen. Before you could stop yourself, your eyes darted up to the top of the screen.

Just make a move already, dude!

Then another bubble

Just be honest with her, she’s not going to think you’re a creep…..

Then another bubble popped up

Waiting until the app is done isn’t gonna work, because it’s gonna need updates. It won’t ever be totally….. [read more]

Jackson made a choking noise, then pushed the lock button his phone, putting it facedown on the countertop. You stared at it. Why was his friend talking about making a move and their app…?

Oh.

Your face felt hot. Oh goddess, were you blushing? You bet you looked like a tomato right now. Your eyes met his.

He cleared his throat.

“So, um, this was not how I wanted to have this conversation,” he said, sheepishly running his hand through his hair. There were those dang arm muscles again.

“I didn’t want to say anything, because it puts you in a really awkward spot if you’re not interested in me, too.”

He glanced down at his phone. “But, since we’re here, I guess I’ll just try to be an honest adult about this.”

“‘I’m, uh, really into you. Like really into you. and I’m really attracted to you. You’re smart, gorgeous, funny, and I love spending time with you. I’d like to date, if, um, well, you’d be interested in seeing where this goes…?”

Your brain had fitzed out. Date Jackson Scott? Jackson Scott thought you were gorgeous?

Your daydreams and, ahem, sex dreams came running through your mind. Spending time with Jackson? Talking with him more? Kissing Jackson? Getting naked with Jackson? Sucking Jackson off on the bar at Vinnie’s–

“Breanna?” he asked. “If you need some time to think about this, I can totally go..? We can reschedule?”

You snapped back to the present, where real sexy-ass Jackson Scott had just told you he was into you.

“Oh, um, no! I’m sorry, I spaced out for a minute imagining jumping your bones. I’d love to, um, date you.”

His face broke out in a grin. “Jump my bones, huh?”

You felt your face return to its previous tomato state.

“Sorry, I definitely need to do a better job of thinking before I speak –”

He came around the counter, standing in front of you. “No, I think you did a pretty good job of stating your position,” he said, bending down a bit, so that his mouth was about an inch away fro yours. “I’m up for whatever you’re up for.”

Galvanized by his lips so close to yours, you leaned up into him. You kissed him hard, standing up and leaning into him. His hands came around you, starting at your waist.

You arched your back into him, going on your tip toes to get his hands to go a bit lower. He obliged, kneading your lower back as he tongued your mouth. His hands went lower, cupping your ass cheeks.

Needing to feel him against you, you jumped up on the counter, wrapping your legs around his torso. You had fantasized about this so many times, and you ached to just rub yourself on him. You loved the feeling of rubbing your clit over jeans.

He gasped into your mouth as he felt you grind your pussy over his crotch. “I’ve wanted to feel that for so long,” he said, panting and kissing his way along your neck.

“Mmmm, me too,” you moaned as he nipped where your neck met your shoulder.

Your breasts felt heavy, your nipples aching as they rubbed through your lacy bralette against his chest. God you really wanted his hands on your nipples.

You tore at the top of your jumpsuit, pulling it off your shoulders so you could feel his mouth on your breasts. He kissed the newly exposed skin of your shoulders as you shrugged out of it, his hot mouth making you ever more wet.

His hands traced along the edges of your bralette, teasing you. “Jackson,” you whined.

“Oh, am I allowed to see what’s under here?” he lightly teased you, as you writhed under his caresses.

“Yes, please,” you whined. “I need to feel your mouth on me–”

He shoved down your bralette, exposing your breasts. Your nipples were completely erect. He tweaked one breast and drew his mouth over the other. Sucking and nibbling your breast, you moaned low for him.

“Oh my god, just like that, please, oh my god I need more –”

“What do you need baby, tell me what you need,” he murmured.

“Harder, I need you to bite harder” you said, ending your words in a wail as he bit your nipple harder and twisted the other one.

“Oh FUCK,” you moaned, feeling an orgasm begin to build.

“Please, my pussy,” you whined, and his hand dipped down to your crotch.

“You want my fingers inside of you?” he murmured, his hand cupping you.

“Yes, please, fuck me, fuck me hard!”

He moved away from you, swiftly pulling off the rest of your jumpsuit in one fell swoop.

“You’re so wet for me baby,” he crooned in your ear, slipping a finger inside. “I can’t wait to have you ride my face. I can’t wait to feel you ride my cock.”

His finger pumped in and out of you. He added a second finger, looking at your reaction. “More, please!” you begged.

He added a third finger, and you could feel your juices running down your thighs.

“Please Jackson, please!! Fuck me hard!”

He growled, his chest rumbling. “Oh, I’ll fuck you hard, baby,” he said. He pistoned his hand in and out of you, and you met every thrust. Your orgasm built up inside of you, and he masterfully brought you to the edge, once and then twice – backing off before you could orgasm.

“Jackson, please!” you wailed.

“Please, what, baby?” he asked, grinning down at you as he continued fucking your pussy.

“Please make me cum!!”

His grin broadened, and he increased the speed. “Like that, baby? You want it like that?”

“Yes!” you screamed, the sound cut off as his mouth covered yours. You felt your pussy convulse around his hand, and you bucked with pleasure.

Wow.

Your head fell against his chest, as you tried to remember how to fill your lungs with air.

“How you doing?” he asked, tipping your chin up to be able to see your face.

“I’m feeling pretty ready for round two,” you said, your hand trailing around to cup his still hard cock.

He thrust into your hand.

“I have condoms in my room,” you said, rubbing his length.

He swung you up into his arms and into the bedroom.

“Jump his bones,” indeed.

I hope you enjoyed this story!! I’m excited to be writing more, and as with all authors, if you like it – reblog it! <3

Send me a KoFi here, or check out my fave erotic monster novels on Amazon here!

#orc boyfriend #monster boyfriend #exophillia #exophilia creators #orc/reader #orc/human #modern orc

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thegodofpelicantown · 3 years

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Character Master Post

Frida Applegrove is a Halfing Druid who lives in a small farming community in the Cindersap Forest. She refers to everyone in her community outside of her immediate family as her "cousin," whether they are related by blood or not. She has lots of skills related to faming, homesteading, and botany, and prefers evasive actions and healing to hand-to-hand combat. She is friendly, but kind of awkward and sky around new people.

She has a strong belief in taking only what you need from nature, and respects all living creatures. However, she won't hesitate to cut a bitch if they threaten her family, friends, or the wild. She mostly wants to chill with her chickens and drink tea, but will get involved when something threatens her community or the surrounding ecosystem. How she got mixed up with the rest of the party? Yoba only knows.

Rize Ro'aushee is a Eladrin Rogue. Folks who live near Pelican Town have probably bumped into them once or twice, and they own a little ranch on the outskirts of town.

They have 0 farming experience, and have started growing Rhubarb. When asked why, they seem to not understand that it's not common to have a diet of Just Rhubarb.

When asked by a townsperson if they are a man of woman they say, "no." They are fine with any pronouns, and don't have a firm grasp on why gender matters in societies outside of where they grew up. Compared to your average human they're middle-aged, but by Elvish standards they seem to just barley be out of what we consider "teenager" territory. They value knowledge and freedom, and moved to Pelican Town hoping to pursue a quiet life, away from remainders of their past.

Nieszka is a forest Nymph Sorceress. She grew up in a village of nymphs like her. They were often exploited and commodified by humans, and she's exploring the world for the first time on her own now.

She cares about others...very aggressively, and has some anger issues. She's a total slob, constantly a mess, and doesn't give a shit.

( Which.. she grew up in the woods? Can you blame her?)

She is very good at being in the wilderness and has many survival skills. Considering the climate of her childhood, and the oppression she faced, she's also very political- and vocal about it. She hates authority with a passion, hate rules. Vive la revolution!

Despite all her stubbornness, she's a fun, nature-loving, tree gal at heart. Her only fault being a name I have to double and triple check the spelling of all the time/j

Arsen Ericross is a Changling Druid. She was abandoned in the wood when she was 11, and spent many years wandering through the wilds, and finding towns to leech off of before moving on.

She knows some magic, and is determined to find another mentor to continue her training.

She is not the trusting type, and tries to hold others at arms length. She values nature, and holds the order of the natural world over the comforts of modern society.

She carries grudges, and doesn't stray away from making an enemy if its what the moment demands. She doesn't care about wealth, or rank, and is not a person you want to cross. (Pun intended)

Moe Monas is a Bard. Yes, that’s his name. Yes, it’s a riff off the name of the famous singer, Joe Jonas. I will be taking no more questions at this moement.

Now that that is out of the way, he is a spry, lithe half-elf from the very wealthy and musically talented Monas family. He lived an incredibly lavish and sheltered lifestyle, and he knew no wants or needs in his youth. His mindset changed, however, when he stepped outside his family’s estate to tour the countryside with his band, The Monas Brothers. After witnessing the poverty and destitution right outside his doorstep, he joined a revolutionary organization fighting for the common people. At some point, he sustained an injury to his left shoulder, rendering him unfit for combat. Though.. he can't quite remember how he got it. So he moved to Pelican Town for the quiet farm life.

He loves making puns, quoting Taylor Swift, delivering justice, and a certain purple haired tiefling who lives next door.

Syar Troobleman is a Werejackel Cleric and Worshipper of the moon. However, she does not believe in the physical moon, only the diety.

She found herself in the valley on a way to a religious conference. She is the sole heir to a cult dedicated to the moon, and knows how to navigate the upper circles. This doesn't mean she enjoys it. In fact, she quite openly detests nobility, and those that act like others are beneath them.

She has a wild soul, and acts on impulse often, much to the chagrin of her long-suffering Bodyguard.

She will always do what she can to help others, and values curiosity and charity.

Little Bit is a Elven Rogue. She was raised in the Gotoro Empire with her mother, and had many step-parents growing up. She is not trained in traditional rogue-ish arts, but can pickpocket if she needs too and charm about anyone. Or sell them a product that doesn’t exist. She gets a thrill from shop-lifting, which led to lots of time spent in assorted prisons, and values wealth and beauty.

She can’t always empathize with others and doesn’t feel the need to stay loyal if presented with a better option. She is rather self-absorbed, and looks after herself first.

That said, she loves being complimented, and is a social creature. Just because she knows how to work alone, doesn’t mean she doesn’t enjoy being around other people.

“Money can’t buy happiness, but it is far more comfy to cry in a Porsche than it is on a bicycle,” -Her at some point probably

#whew there we go #ocs?#I legally can't tag them ocs since they are other people's characters right?#dnd pcs #dnd characters #dnd #sdv

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michiigii-writes · 4 years

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Of Shadows and Tyr (1/??)

Summary: So, after 20 years of searching, I have stumbled upon a DnD group that is willing to deal with my absurd work schedule, and let me play with them! I have no idea what I’m doing, and I cannot fanart my way out of a wet paper bag, so I appear to have subconsciously decided to write a novel.

Craven and the other Tiefling have written more succinct and appropriately lengthed (that’s a word) summaries.

I have created a neutral 21-year-old Tiefling druid, named Strive. She has cinnamon skin, short garnet hair, black eyes, a whip-like tail, and horns that curve out and then slightly down and back (Bharal sheep horns). We have started our journey at level 2.

This is my version of a “the story, so far.” It is already too long. 8) I have no idea how many installments there will be; I already had to separate into a second part of our first session because I wrote too much. I also have an origins chapter for Strive because IM’ SORRY OKAY.

In the beginning: There was a city (part 1/2)

Master said it was time to see the world.

I didn't want to, of course. I was comfortable enough to live with the Lizardfolk tribe, secreted away in a little hut by the edge of the forest, serving as their healer when Master finally passed on. Why would I need to go out into the world? Our swamp had everything I needed, and that was enough.

But as usual, Master wanted more for me.

As per Master's orders, lightly veiled as 'advice,' of course, the safest way for me to see the world would be with a group. And apparently, the easiest way to find a group of adventurers was in the city.

He failed to mention how busy and loud and DUSTY the city of Kendrith was. I don’t like sand. It’s rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere.

There were too many people. Too many humans. It was a warm, sunny day, but I had to keep my cloak closed and my hood up to hide my tail and horns. Even in the depths of my big cloak, I felt exposed.

And the dust! There was so little natural life in Kendrith; barely any grass or trees. It had been less than a fortnight, and already I missed the lush reeds and soft, insect-ridden mud near Master's hut. The city was dry and lacking, like stale bread.

I was trying to find quieter streets when I somehow managed to almost step on a small figure, tripping them into the road. Naturally, I stopped to help them up, but my apology died in my throat when I saw her horns and tail.

She was a Tiefling, too. A young Tiefling with beautiful blue eyes and a spade-tipped tail.

But...her skin...it was purple.

Unbidden, I recalled warmth, and softness, and a smile resting on a purple-skinned face-

And then the Tiefling bared her teeth at me and the memory evaporated.

"Are...are you okay?" I asked, reaching out to her with an empty hand. She hissed at me and scrabbled back. I froze, then raised my hands, palms out, in a sign of peace.

“My name’s Strive,” I said softly, and asked her if she wanted help, but she just hissed and cocked her head at me. I wasn’t sure if she didn’t speak Common or if she just wanted me to leave. She made me think of my tribe’s hatchlings: feral to anybody aside from their family.

We were interrupted, then, by a human in armor. He had some kind of insignia on the breastplate, but what worried me was that the Tiefling hissed at him, recognition crossing her face.

He was following her and she did not feel safe.

I stood between the human and the girl, tried to brush the him off, but he continued to press forward, offering us shelter, of all things. Why on earth would a human want to help two Tieflings? People in general didn't trust our kind, but humans! I felt anger rising to flush my face. Humans were the whole reason...

If all Tieflings are not alike, the same must be said of all races, Master's voice echoed in my head, stopping my temper.

I wasn’t home, anymore. I had to be smart, and I had to keep a cool head.

I eyed the human knight carefully. He introduced himself as Valzan Corindal, and again, he said he wanted to help. I've always been good at reading people, and for some reason, I couldn't detect any lie in him. It was odd, but...somehow I believed him.

Almost like a natural 20 had been rolled on my insight.

It helped abate my suspicions when an elf woman wearing similar armor joined him, and he backed away. I relaxed a little, although the Tiefling behind me still seemed wary. I spoke a little with the woman. She seemed kind. Bitterly, I wondered if it was easy to be kind when your race was generally admired.

Nobody chooses their blood, Charity. Only their path, Master chided.

I did my best to shut down my concerns, and listened to the elf woman's spiel about their church. Her name was Elyssia, and according to her, she and Valzan were hoping to develop a church worshipping Tyr in Kendrith. I wasn’t particularly interested in converting. Semuanya, Master’s deity, was enough for me, valuing my survival instead of my dark heritage.

Thankfully, Elyssia wasn’t trying to change me, only offering me a place of rest, and then she retreated into a run-down old building nearby. That made me wonder: I'd been taught that churches were grand affairs with coloured windows, not dusty ruins. This 'church' didn't look anything like that; it looked significantly more forlorn than what I had imagined a church to be.

It was then that the Tiefling shook her head and looked even more upset. I didn’t see any flies buzzing near her ears. I couldn’t hear or sense anything, myself. But I knew I was missing something, and that bothered me.

My answer came sooner than I expected: a very tall gentleman decided it was time to join our group and with a booming voiced asked if he could be of some assistance.

I wanted to go home, personally.

The Tiefling girl spat an insult at the tall man, making him dizzy, somehow. I suspected he had done something to upset her.

I, on the other hand, looked at the newcomer appraisingly. He seemed otherworldy to me, somehow. In a loud, boisterous voice, he announced that Craven was his name. He was tall for human standards, but his hair stood up in a crest and his eyes glowed blue.

I had never seen anything like those eyes.

I also started to wonder if maybe the Lizardfolk and I were the strange ones and everyone else on earth had blue eyes. I glanced at the human. Nope, his were green. Stranger and stranger...

I decided then that I was going to try to convince the Tiefling girl to come back with me to the swamp where we would never have to deal with anybody on Semuanya's green earth ever again. That was the only logical thing to do. There were too many things happening out in the world and I, personally, was done with it. Master was clearly wrong; I did not need to see the rest of the world.

Instead, two men in black sauntered over, chains on their belts, and clearly looking for the Tiefling girl behind me.

The way she hissed and backed away from them, by comparison, she had been downright cozy with Valzan only a moment before. Forget not trusting the Paladin of Tyr; these two men, who were soon joined by a third, were definitely an active danger.

To my pleasant surprise, I saw that Valzan and Craven were also of the same mind; together, we fought to take girl’s enemies down.

The four of us made short work of the three men. I entangled the one who was closest to us, using vines, while the girl behind me spat curses with some kind of magic. The tall Craven cut down one slaver with his great sword, while the paladin finished off the other with a few swings of his axe. The third enemy tried to run, but was quickly caught by Valzan, and the coward passed out as soon as he saw his fate was sealed.

Craven carried their hostage into the church, but Valzan stayed behind, hoping to talk us into following them, once again talking about safety.

I looked at how thin the Tiefling girl was, then instead of properly answering him, asked if the paladin had any food. He pulled out some bread, offering it to her. She shifted back, ever distrustful. I didn’t blame her.

Silently, I took the loaf, took a bite of it to show that it was fine, then offered it to the girl. She hesitated, then snatched it from me, munching eagerly away at what I now knew was incredibly dry bread. I mentioned so to the paladin, but with a small smile and shrug he explained that it was rations. I nodded, chewing thoughtfully, noting that he didn’t snap defensively at me. A comment like that would have earned a slap, with Master’s tribe.

I was also impressed to see that the girl was almost done the loaf; quite a feat considering how dry it was. Without thinking, I said out loud that she reminded me of a chipmunk.

She did not appreciate it. She pulled a face, and I regretted saying it.

Again, we were invited to the church. I told the girl that it seemed like a good offer, and if she was anything like me, she didn’t have anywhere else to go. I slowly followed the paladin to the church, and was pleased to see that the girl stayed right behind me.

Crossing the threshold, I paused, and it was with some degree of relief to find that I would not burst into flames. The highest point of my day, so far.

In the main foyer of the church, we found that the elf woman, Elyssia, had prepared a wonderful spread for us. The Tiefling girl made a beeline towards the fruits and sweets, but my eyes gravitated to the cheese! There were great, big, yellow and red wheels of cheese, beside loaves of bread that were so fresh I could still see steam rising off of them. And wine! I loved wine. I’d only had it once or twice, but I knew it was so much better than the brackish moonshine the Lizardfolk made. But first, to business. Craven and Valzan hauled their unconscious slaver into the church’s basement, myself following silently behind. Elyssia stayed with the girl upstairs, so I figured she would be safe.

In the basement, a lone chair, small table, and candle awaited them, along with two large barrels of water. My mouth twisted, hidden by the shadow of my cloak. I could imagine what was coming. I reminded myself that their victim was a slaver, and a cruel one, if the Tiefling girl’s scars were any indication. Valzan splashed water into their victim’s face, effectively reviving him. Craven thought it would be a good idea to dump a whole barrel onto him; I rolled my eyes, hiding a smile at the unnecessary action.

It didn’t take much to make the man talk; almost immediately, he willingly shared everything he knew about his employers, even if it wasn’t much. I frowned when he mentioned that he was just a hired hand, trying to make his way in the world. He was a slaver. A slaver. How could he stomach such work?

But his insistence that he just wanted coin rang true. He needed to work to eat, and jobs were scarce. It just happened that what he had to do was vile.

I didn’t want to hear any more. Without the others noticing, I turned away and slipped back upstairs. I would much rather keep company with the cheese and wine.

--(part two)--

#Of Shadows and Tyr #dnd campaign #dnd #Strive not Charity

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umbra-caelesti · 4 years

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Zephan Journal Entries - I

-- 1

Feeling the sun dance across my skin and the wet grass beneath my feet is something I have not had the pleasure of experiencing in a long time.

Things have certainly changed while I was down in the Underdark. Various rumors of destruction plague this world. There are rumors of corruption within the Templar’s of Justice. Also, apparently an unknown entity is trying to take over the world and something about cults as well? Although in my line of work, it’s just your standard everyday thing. We do shady work for shady people.

You’d think that after eight or so years of being tortured and abused that a nice vacation in a sunny location would be in my near future, but it was too good to be true, unfortunately. I’m getting too old for this; I need a break.

Within hours of my freedom someone representing Mephistopheles approached me. The messenger explained that they need something only I can provide and in return, I’ll get that which I desire most.

I have absolutely no recollection of any client or person that I’ve come into contact with, with that name. Also, for all intents and purposes, I died 8 years ago so nobody should know I’m alive let alone my current whereabouts. This does not sit well with me. There are too many unknowns for this to be safe to consider. For I all I know it could be a trap, but at the same time it could lead me to him; if he is even alive anymore. He could be dead for all I know.

Not a day has gone by where he hasn’t been on my mind. I miss him.

-- 2

It feels weird working again, yet it feels as if nothing has changed at all. The skills that I learned and mastered during my time with the Myriad have become so ingrained into who I am that it is second nature to me at this point. I couldn’t unlearn anything at this point, even if I wanted to.

I still only hear from Mephistopheles through intermediaries. He’s honestly not making a good case for himself by not revealing himself. I like to know who I’m working for in case things ever go south at some point. And even though I still don’t trust him, he’s been helpful in providing contacts; those will definitely be useful going forward.

He keeps reassuring me that if I help I will get what I desire most. Does this mean he’s still alive? Is there a chance to see him again? If I could use Mephistopheles to find him then we could run away and finally enjoy life for the first time.

As a side note, I’ve noticed that all intermediaries that have been sent are tieflings. If his group is as big as he claims, why have I only seen Tieflings? Surely there are other races under his employ?

-- 3

I don’t think I understood the gravity of what I was getting myself into, but there is no turning back, at least not anymore.

After months of working through middlemen and making my way up, I finally demanded to speak to Mephistopheles, and what a mistake that was. There was nothing I could have done to prepare for what happened last night.

I went about my day as normal, woke up, went to work, came back, but it was while I slept that things changed. I drifted off to sleep and after moments my eyes shot open and I found myself in the middle of a terrible blizzard surrounded by enormous mountains made entirely of ice. I was not dressed for winter and there was no place “Is this what you wanted?”, said a voice that would have been missed through the howling winds. And then with a blink of an eye, I was suddenly in a very large ornate chamber, where a giant throne sat at one end of it and on that throne sat a large looming figure who I could only assume to be Mephistopheles.

Upon noticing me in front of him, he changed his form and appear to be more suitable for conversation. He took on the appearance of my asshole of a father, and then with a wild grin said: ‘Is this better, or would you prefer this?’ With a snap of his fingers, his appearance changed once more, but what stood before me was something I haven’t seen in a long time. Before me stood a 6’4 male with pale skin, long hair that started off black at the roots and faded to white as it reached the ends and golden eyes that shone brightly even in the darkest times; before me stood my greatest weakness; before me stood my husband.

As much as I tried to keep myself composed my face betrayed me and he could tell. He was using Ami to toy with me, but it also confirmed my sneaking suspicion that he was alive. Unable to control the anger within myself I yelled: “Leave him out of this! I swear I’ll kill you if you hurt him.”

‘Oh don’t worry, we all have our part to play in this. Also, I won’t be the one hurting him - you will.’ As he laughed maniacally, my vision faded to black and I awoke in my bed moments later.

I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into, but it is not good. The one bright side to this twisted reality I now find myself in, is that he’s alive and that is all that matters. I will protect him no matter what, even if it costs me my life.

-- 4

I swear whenever I get the chance, I’m going to kill Mephistopheles.

I should have realized sooner that what he was offering me was too good to be true. I’m just another pawn in his sick twisted game, but it’s too late for me. I’m in this way too deep and there’s no way out.

Ever since he brought me to his layer of hell, he’s escalated the pace of his plans and my involvement in them. The last mission he sent me on, I saw him, I saw him. I wanted to make my presence known and let him know that I’m alive and here, but I don’t want to let him see me like this. I want to be free like he is when I see him again.

He’s traveling around with a group of people, but I don’t trust them, especially since she’s there, Senthil’s second mistake. Why he left Neferu and I, for her I’ll never know. If he hadn’t left, Neferu wouldn’t have hurt me and left. Maybe we could have been a happy family. Instead I got abandoned and had to fight for my life.

Well that’s all besides the point. One day I’m going to take Mephistopheles down and save myself, save him. Then we could go live in peace somewhere quiet, maybe adopt a few kids and get some animals and live out the rest of our lives in peace.

Just wait for me Luci, I’m coming for you.

#Amias Ullaldram #Amias: Story #Stories #My Southern Wind #That'll be my Zephan Tag #Angry Pain In My Ass #Fixed it #That's my Twill Tag Now

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hellyeahheroes · 4 years

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Building Xiomara Rojas in D&D 5e

I had an awesome game of D&D today ad I feel so excited I decided to make a D&D build again. I mean, I recently learned D&D sells numbers comic books can dream of, so those I made may attackt hopefully some D&D fans to comics. And It’s been Lesbian Visibility Day earlier this week so let’s build one badass Lesbian from Teen Titans - Xiomara Rojas a.k.a. Crush, Daughter of Lobo

As always, I follow the template laid by Tulok the Barbarian in doing those, so we will start with Goals for this build. First, we have to be as tough and hard to put down and punching as hard as only a Half-Czarnian can. Second, we need to get a sentient chain that can move on its own. Third, we need ways to use Obelus to restrain out enemies.

For Ability Scores as always we stick to Standard Point Array - 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 and 8. You can roll or use point buy and treat my picks as guidelines, but remember that Strength and Charisma will need to meet Multiclassing Minimum, so you need at least 13 in them.

Strength: 14, you are muscle of the team after all

Constitution: 15, Czarnians are known for being extremly hard to kill and you took punches from Lobo

Dexterity: 12, there is no way what you are wearing is an armor. Okay MAYBE leather. MAYBE.

Intelligence: 8, sadly it doesn’t seem you continued traditional education after your parents were murdered

Wisdom: 10, you are reckless and fall for your father’s mind control.

Charisma: 13, must be at least good enough to attract cute girls

Now for Race. I was considering many options but in the end decided to settle on Goliath, who give us relevant abilitties and look kinda like bald Czarnians. They get +2 Strength and +1 Constitution, letting Crush start with two 16s. They are so big they count as one category larger for how much they can push, drag, lift or carry. They are so tough once per short or long rest they can roll a 1d12, add their Constitution to it and ignore that much damage and they shrug off extreme heights and cold climate.

Alternatives: Yeah, I mentioned other options - Tiefling, especially Bloodline of Zariel or Levistus, firts well thematically but I like to have it reserved for children of actual demons. Half-orc is another great option, so is full-blown Orc, but in the end I didn’t want to repeat Skaar, who uses a Half-Orc (Ironically guess which race I will likely use for his brother one day?).

Background: Crush entire story starts with a family who adopted her so we will go with that. Adopted background gives you three skills - Persuasion, Deception and Stealth, an ability to speak language of your adopted family and Trust Issues feature - both members of your biological and adopted race have issues trusting you fully but it causes members of other races take pity on you and trust you faster and easier. It kinda makes sense, humans fear you for being child of Lobo, and Lobo wants you dead. Meanwhile people who are in similiar boat about being aliens or other species on Earth are likely to get what you’re going through.

1st Level: Now to the Class Levels, we will kick it off as a Barbarian. Pick two skills, I’d go with Athletics and Perception. You get Unarmored Defense, meaning that as long as you are not wearing armor, your Armor Class is 10 + your Dexterity Modifier + Your Constitution Modifier. Which is good since there is no way this jacket is anything but leather armor at best.

You also learn to Rage, Twice for every long rest you can, as a bonus action, enter the state of Rage during which you deal extra 2 damage to every attack, gain resistance to bludgeoning, peircing and slashing damage and advantage on Strength checks and saving throws, but you cannot cast spells or concentrate on existing ones while you rage and it ends if you didn’t attack anything on your turn, taken damage since your last turn or are knocked unconcious.

2nd Level: And that was it for Barbarian. We will now switch to Fighter - 1st level gives us Second Wind, letting you once per long or short rest regain 1d10+ your fighter level hit points as a bonsu action. You also get to choose a fighting style. I will be covering martial side of this build first, so I’d advise you to choose depending of what you want to represent Obelus, but anything with Great Weapon Fighting would do the best possibly, as I’ll explain later.

3rd Level: 2nd Level Fighter gains Action Surge, letting you gain an extra action once per Long or Short rest.

4th Level: 3rd Level Fighter gets to choose a Martial Archetype. Brute gives you Brute Force, which lets you add 1d4 to damage of all your attacks.

5th Level: 4th Level Fighter gains an Abilitty Score Improvement, boost your Strength.

6th Level: 5th Level Fighter gets an Extra Attack, letting you attack twice on each of your turns.

7th Level: 6th Level Fighter gains another Abilitty Score Improvement, round up your Strength

8th Level: 7th Level Brute gains Brutish Durability, letting you add 1d6 to each saving throw you roll. This includes Death saves and if it would increase that roll to 20 or more you gain benefits of rolling a natural 20 on a death saving throw.

9th Level: 8th Level Fighter gains, you guessed it, Abilitty Score Improvement, letting you now increase your Constitution

Now that we have done the physical side of Xiomara, let’s focus on her chain Obelus. I wanted to get the martial stuff out of my way quick, but you can feel free to mix two havles of this build as you see fit.

10th Level: We will now take a 1st Level of Warlock. Fiend Pact Warlock is, weirdly, having the closest relationship with their patron to Crush and her father, what’s with having power from evil, ultimatelly feared bastich who wants to control you and make you do his bidding. This pact gives you Dark One’s Blessing - whenever you drop an opponnent to 0 Hit Points you gain temporary Hit Points equal to your Charisma Modifier + Your Warlock level, which is a good way to represent regeneration Czarnians are known for, especially useful in middle of combat, where you cannot cast healing spells due to your rage.

Warlock also learns Spellcasting. You get a number of spells known and a limited number of Spell Slots you brun up to cast them, as well as Cantrips that you can always cast. Your Spell Slots are always of the higher level you can cast as a Warlock and you get them back after short or long rest. If a spell requires you to make an attack roll you add to it your Charisma modifier and Proficiency Bonus and if a spell requires a saving throw, it has to beat a number equal these two +8.

You start with two Cantrips and two Spells and you wil llearn another spell at 2nd Level

Thunderclap let’s you stopm or clap so hard that the shockwave forces all creatures within 5 feet of you to make a Constitution saving throw or suffer 1d6 thudner damage. Or rather, because this is a Cantrip, which scale with your total level, not Warlock level, 2d6 damage and 3d6 once you reach 11th level.

Sword Burst lets Obelus swirls around and works just like Thunderclap but with Dexterity saving throw and dealing force damage. I don’t know why they named it Sword Burst when it should be Chain Burst, tho.

Arms of Hadar make Obelus burst and hit all creatures within 10 feet of you, dealing them 2d6 necrotic damage and making them unable to take reactions until their netx turn, unless they make a Strength saving throw, then they only get half of the damage.

Comprehend Languages lets you understand all languages for an hour with no concentration. Xiomara is a polygoth and this spell will last even in rage.

Cause Fear lets Crush intimidate one creature that isn’t undead or a construct, forcing it to make a Wisdom saving throw or become Frightened, it ends after 1 minute or if the target makes antoher saving throw at the end of each of its turn or you break Concentration.

11th Level: 2nd Level Warlock gains Eldritch Invocations, which are extra boons from your patron or in this case from your Czarnian Herritage. Pick up Devil’s Sight, which lets you see in darkness and magical darkness at distance of 120 feet. It is not a spell, it just is on you at all times. You can change Invocations when you take a level fo Warlock, which we will do in a moment so pick whatever as your second one for now.

12th Level: 3rd Level Warlock gets to chosoe a Pact Boon. Pact of the Blade let’s you summon or imbude with your powers a weapon. As long as you wield it, you are profficient with it and it counts as magical and if you are 5 feet away from you it disappears but can be summonned again. Improved Pact weapon Eldritch Invocation also lets you use it as spellcasting focus for your spells, makes it a +1 weapon unless it already had a magic bonus and expands list of possible weapons to ranged ones. Now we could talk about what Obelus is - you could use a flail for it or you could use an actual chain as an improvised weapon, maybe convincing the DM to treat is as a two-handed equivalent of flail to get the benefits of Great-Weapon Fighting.

Your spells are now all cast from 2nd level and you also get to learn a 2nd-level spell - Hold Person lets you force a Wisdom saving throw on a target or make it paralyzed for the duration or until it succeeds another save at the end of its turn. This is basically you making Obelus wrap itself around an enemy and hold it in place.

13th Level: 4th Level Warlock gets an Ability Score Improvement, round up your Constitution, and another spell and cantrip:

Lighting Lure let’s you shoot lighting throw Obelus around a target within 15 feet and force it to make a Strength saving throw or be pulled 10 feet towards you. If it ends the turn with 5 feet from you, it takes 3d8 lighting damage.

Shatter deals 3d8 Force damage to all creatures in 10 feet range from you, half if they pass a Constitution saving throw, but those made of inorganic materials make it with an disadvantage.

14th Level: 5th Level Warlock bumps their spell slots to 3rd level and gains a new one, and we will also use an option to exchange any spell known for another when you level up to grab two.

Exchange Comprehend Languages for Tongues, which is just stronger version of it that lets you also speak and be understood by anyone who can understand at least one language.

Fear works like Cause Fear but let’s you intimidate a group of creatures in a 30-foot cone, and if they fail a saving throw they are forced to spend their turns running away from you and get to repeat a saving throw once you’re out of their sight.

Okay, all fine and dandy, but Barbarian rage still turns off your spells so you have to choose if you rage or if you rage or cast. If there was a way to use these spell slots while you rage...Heeey, we get a new Eldritch Invocation. Eldritch Smite let’s you choose to burn up your Warlock spell slot when you strike a target to deal it extra 4d8 (1d8+ 1d8 per slott level and yours are on 3rd) force damage and if the target is Huge or smaller, you can also knock them prone

15th Level: We will now switch to Bard. Grab Acrobatics as your extra skill. 1st Level bard gains Bardic Inspiration - a d6 you can give your ally as a bonus action, letting them add it to an attack roll, abilitty check or saving throw they make within the next 10 minutes. You can do it a number of times equal your Charisma modifier per long rest. Be it cheering on Djinn or threatening Robin what will you do to him if he keeps his bs, it will certainly be useful.

You also gain Bardic Spellcasting. It works like Warlock’s but with following differences: 1. You regain spell slots on a long rest but get more of them 2. They are divided in levels and to cast a spell you need to spend a spell slot from at least its level. Your Bard and Warlock levels do not stack for determining how high spells slots or a number of spell slots you have an access to, but you can cast your Bard spells using Warlock’s slots and vice-versa.

You start with 2 Cantrips and 4 1st level spells known

Mending allows you to make small repair in objects, meaning you can help fix any damage Obelus takes for you.

Vicious Mockery lets you unleash insults that force the target to make a Wisdom saving throw or take 3d4 psychic damage and have a disadvantage on the next attack roll it makes before end of its next turn.

Earth Tremor lets you stomp the ground and force all creatures to make a Dexterity saving throw or be knocked prone and take 1d6 bludgeoning damage.

Cure Wounds lets you heal 1d8+your Charisma modifier of Hit Points.

Feather Fall lets you slown down your fall after you jump from large height make it that if you reach the ground in 1-minute duration of the spell, you won’t take any damage from the fall.

False Life lets you add 1d4+4 temporary hit points for an hour, no concentration. Cast it before battle and if enemy hits you, you can regain them with Dark One’s Blessing

You will get one more spell at next level: Heroism will make you immune to being frightened and let you regain temporary hit points equal your Charisma modifier at the beginning of each of your turns.

16th Level: 2nd Level Bard becomes Jack of All Trades, meaning you now add half your proficiency modifier to all skills you aren’t already profficient in. You also learn song of rest, letting you and everyone else reroll an extra 1d6 when you roll to regain HP on a short rest.

17th Level: 3rd Level Bard gains Expertise in two skills, letting you double your Proficiency bonus for them. I’d pick Athletics and Perception. You also get to choose a Bardic College. College of Creation lets you give a special Note of Potential alongside your Bardic Inspiration that can be spent while a character rolls it. If they use Inspiration for an Ability Check, they can roll it twice and choose a better result. If for an attack roll, they can make every creature within 5 feet suceeed a Constitution saving throw as if you cast a spell or take damage equal to Bardic Inspiration roll. If on a saving throw, they can also gain temporary hit points equal to what they rolled on the Inspiration die + your Charisma modifier.

You also get to learn a 2nd level spell but before that let me jump to 18th Level where 4th Level Bard gains an Abilitty Score Improvement,invest in your Charisma (or Grab Resilent Feat for it if it’s on an odd number), and gets to learn another 2nd Level spell and a new Cantrip

Message is the communicator allowing you to contact rest of the team by sending short messages and allowing a short reply.

Locate Object lets you focus and sense an object you have seen if it is is within 1000 feet from you and not behind any thick walls or barriers. It will help if anyone tries to steal Obelus again.

Enchance Abilitty lets you give yourself an advantage on one type of Abilitty check. If it’s Strength it doubles your already big carrying capacity. If it’s Constitution it gives you 2d6 extra hit points for the duration. If it’s Dexterity you don’t take damage from falling unless you’re incapitated.

19th Level: 5th Level Bard gets to boost their Bardic Inspiration to d8 and regains them on a short rest. You also learn a 3rd Level spell now and another on next level

Nondetection is a no-concentration spell that let’s you hide yourself from divination magic for 8 hours, which is useful when your enemies include a secret crime lord, a Gene Satan, world’s deadliest assassin, your dad and Lex freaking Luthor.

Dispel Magic let’s you cast it to erase effects of any spell of 3rd level or lower automatically and of highter levels if you past a Charisma check of difficulty 10 + spell level. You can use it to play shrugging off negative effects, like breaking whatever is holding you.

20th Level: Our capstone is 6th Level of Bard for two abilitties. Countercharm let’s you use your turn to give you and all allies within 30 feet an advantage on saving throws agains being frightened or charmed.

College of Creation meanwhile gives us Animating Performance, letting you bring a large or smaller item to life. It act after you, as a bonus action you can tell it to make an attack that deals 1d8+you Charisma modifier of damage and then take Dodge as a bonus action, it cannot have it’s form changed by magic, be charmed, exhausted or poisoned, sees up to 60 feet in the dark, has 16 ac, Hit points equal item’s base Constitution modifier + Yor Charisma modifier + five times yoru Bard level.

Overview: And this is my take on Crush: Goliath Barbarian 1/Brute Fighter 8/Fiend Pact Warlock 5/College of Creation Bard 6. let’s see how good this build is.

Pros: First of all, you can deal a pretty decent amount of damage with Rage, Brute Force and Eldritch Smite. Second, you should have close to 250 HP, making you a decent tank, especially with ways to gain temporary HP, heal or shrug damage. Third, you have a lot of abilitties that can be used to support you and your companions even while you rage - Dark One’s Blessing, Eldritch Smite, Devil’s Sight, Bardic Inspiration, Countercharm, Note of Potential and Animating Performance - none requiring concentration. Fourth, you also have a number of spells you can use once you run out of rages, instead of rage or outside of combat, meaning you’re always useful to the party and a threat to your enemies. Finally, you can have a helpful companion dealing additional damage, helping flank and soaking hits meant for others and you can use it as you use your weapon, maybe even agree with DM it’s two separate ends of the same big chain?

Cons: As good as rage is, it basically shuts down your spellcasting and you have limited uses of it, meaning you have to think carefully how to approach each combat and plan ahead. Second, you are MAD - multiple abilitty dependent. It means your AC is mediocre because of your low Dexterity and your saving throw dc, that many of your offensive spells rely on, is nothing to write home about. Third, in order to get Obelus be both sentient, as pact weapons are usually portrayed, and moving, we had to take basically low level dips into two classes whose casting doesn’t stack, leaving you with a number of low-level spells that at higher levels will not be as dangerous.

In the end however, you are pretty versitile tank, who can get into the combat and be really hard to put down. Remember that you cannot do things alone and you’re best at soaking damage and keeping the enemies away from your allies and I doubt even your dad could be a threat to you. All you need is a good support from second line, maybe an archer or a genie....

- Admin

#Teen Titans #Crush #DC #Dungeons & Dragons

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robophantom · 4 years

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Characters I’m Excited About But Don’t Have A Game For:

Adelaide Blackwood

Human

Grave Cleric

A young noble woman who has heard the voice of the Raven Queen ever since she was a child. Unfortunately, no one else believes her, especially since she’s always been a bit odd even when she isn’t supposedly speaking to deities. This came to tragedy when her sister brought home her new fiancé and Adelaide insisted to the point of violence that the fiancé was a vampire, and wound up institutionalized. She was proven right several months later when her family was found murdered in their home.

Adelaide became an adventurer when she either escaped the institution or was turned out since there was no longer anyone left to pay for her care. Adventuring parties were much more forgiving of her quirks, and much more likely to believe her when she said there was an undead around.

Aster Crucis

Scourge Aasimar

Divine Soul Sorcerer

Absolute Baby Unlimited. He was raised to be a Pope-like figure as a direct messenger from his god, but he was really intended to be more of a figurehead. He is thus a very sweet, very naive person who is great at public appearances but knows next to nothing about the real world and struggles therein.

He becomes an adventurer due to a comedy of errors beginning with one of his caretakers leaving out a book that detailed a king going out to visit his kingdom and culminating with Aster slipping his guard and getting caught up with a group of adventurers.

Sir Augustus Lucian Fairwell

Protector Aasimar

Devotion Paladin

A big, beautiful man and absolute himbo from a family line that has long been favored by Lathander. The Fairwell have all served the god as clerics, paladins, or the odd celestial warlock or divine soul sorcerer and Auggie is no different. Unfortunately, he’s dumb as a brick, but he makes up for it by being attractive, charming, and just a generally nice guy. He loves his family very much, and will brag about his sister, Ophelia, at any given opportunity. His one major vice is that he’s quite vain and somewhat spoiled due to being the former heir to a noble house. But he’s trying.

Auggie became an adventurer after abdicating the position of family heir to his significantly more clever little sister. Nonetheless, he is committed to serve Lathander to the best of his abilities as a free agent of the people!

Curiosity “Curie” Magellan

Standard Tiefling

Transmutation Wizard

Curie is, much as her name implies, a very curious being. She comes from a large family of tieflings and had a very happy childhood before deciding to study magic. After her schooling was complete, she joined up with a research group working with transmutation magic: her specialty. However, things were always a little odd in the lab, and one day Curie’s curiosity got the better of her. She snuck into the senior researcher’s labs to take a look, and found out that there was some very horrifying and unethical research being conducted. In a panic, she stole or destroyed whatever research she could find and fled.

Curie thus became an adventurer because she’s technically a fugitive. As soon as her sabotage was discovered, she was labeled a criminal and thus doesn’t have a lot of options. She’s making the best of it, though!

Edie Everhardt

Human

Hexblade Warlock

Edie is a simple country gal from a huge family. As the middle of nine siblings, she’s always tended to be overlooked, but she sort of enjoyed the anonymity within her own home, even if it could get lonely sometimes. This all changed when she found a weird sword while out exploring that pretty much begged her to make a pact and take it places because it was so f*cking bored.

Edie herself is very humble and sensible, and is an adventurer mostly to humor the spirit in the sword and raise money for her folks back home. She’s not really interested in the fame and prestige, but it’s an enjoyable enough way to spend her time and she likes the people.

Lady [Redacted] Greye

Protector Aasimar

Monster-Slayer Ranger

For centuries, the Greye family was famous for slaying even the most terrifying of monsters. If you had a problem and regular adventurers weren’t cutting it, you took it to the Greyes. They were duty bound to stand between the innocent public and creatures of the night, and did so gladly. It was thus an unimaginable tragedy (and horror) when one night the entire family was wiped out by an unknown enemy. Or so it seemed. The woman would would later style herself as Lady Greye was unexpectedly away from home that night and escaped the massacre. In her grief, she forswore her given name and dedicated herself to her family’s legacy.

Lady Greye is an adventurer because that’s what she’s always been. She’s just... not used to working with people who aren’t her family members yet. And if she maybe wants to discover the people or creatures who massacred her family and get revenge, well. That’s no one’s business but her own.

Mareille “Marley” Traith

High Elf

Arcane Trickster Rogue/War Mage Wizard

Mareille is the eldest—but illegitimate—daughter of the previous Duke Uthellon. She was born amidst a very juicy scandal involving broken engagements and a possible murder, and despite her father’s attempt to give her a good life the stigma has followed her. After her father married her stepmother and had her half-brother, Syril, Mareille began training to be her brother’s spymaster, though she kept as much of the traditional Uthellon’s magical teachings as she could.

Mareille became an adventurer following her father’s mysterious death and her younger brother’s premature ascension to Dukedom. She wants to use the profession as an excuse to snoop around and get to the bottom of the tragedies following her family and hopefully protect her little brother from sharing their father’s fate.

Nadya Thueban

Half-elf

Divination Wizard

Nadya comes from a long line of diviners in her home village. People came to her to inquire about the harvest, if their lover was cheating on them, how many children they would have, and other peaceful mundanities rural villagers concerned themselves with. Nadya also has a young daughter, age twelve, but was never interested in marrying, and a snake familiar that exists as a really dope tattoo when he isn’t summoned. But all the predictions in the world didn’t prepare her for the day when raiders attacked her village, killing dozens and kidnapping dozens more. Her daughter was among the missing, and it drove her to a grief so profound she still hadn’t clawed her was back out.

Nadya became an adventurer to find her daughter and the rest of the missing villagers. She’s also slowly learning to trust her divination again—although it keeps returning the strangest of messages about a plot she doesn’t understand...

Shinobu

Human

Beast Master Ranger/Samurai Fighter

Shinobu is a quiet, melancholic woman in her thirties. She was actually already an adventurer about a decade ago, but after her party was wiped out, she retreated to the forest to live out her “retirement” surrounded by the wolves she always felt an affinity for. She still struggles with survivors guilt, and has difficulty forming attachments to people knowing they would be killed just as easily as her previous party.

Although somewhat out of practice, Shinobu is forced to leave her retirement by events relevant to the plot OR the resurgence of whatever creature or organization killed her party, necessitating her involvement. She is accompanied by the (grand?)daughter of her original Beast Companion, Kagami.

Shizuka

Half-elf

Shadow Monk/Assassin Rogue

A trained spy and assassin who was raised by a secretive organization. On a mission to assassinate an important noble, they were critically injured and subsequently abandoned by their parter. Luckily they were found by a local who nursed them back to health. Presumed dead and thus free of the organization, Shizuka has tried to adapt to a more civilian lifestyle with... mixed success, not helped by the fact that they are completely mute and very few people speak their version of sign language.

Shizuka becomes an adventurer when some of the noble’s agents come sniffing around and they flee rather than implicate their saviors in their crimes. They are now traveling doing mercenary work while still trying to learn how to become a person.

Ulrike

Protector Aasimar

Abjuration Wizard

Ulrike is a cheerful soul who has only ever wanted to help people. She was a member of an elite team of wizard who travelled about dealing with cursed artifacts and locations. Unfortunately, and their last mission Ulrike got trapped within the artifact they were dealing with. The next thing she knew, she was being released from her prison decades or even centuries later with no idea what happened to her former team. She is now forced to deal with the intense culture shock of finding herself all alone in a future she doesn’t understand with no way to return. She’s doing her best to stay positive, but even her persist any cheer has taken a hit by the circumstances.

Ulrike is an adventurer mostly because she has nowhere else to go. There are few alive who still remember her, and even the organizations she used to work with are long defunct or unrecognizable from when she last last active. She is thus relying on the kindness of the strangers who found her, and perhaps hoping that she might one day find out what happened to her team.

Úna

Firbolg

Gloomstalker Ranger/Scout Rogue

Úna was born with albinism and struggled to live in the sunlight. Other people found her creepy—even her own family—and so she grew up playing alone after dark. Over time she began to adapt to nighttime living, and travelled further and further into the woods each night. On one such night, she stumbled upon a bandit camp. They nearly killed her, but her lack of fear and straightforward way of speaking to them amused their leader enough that they decided to take her with them. Úna had little attachment to her previous living conditions and so followed without protest. She quickly proved invaluable for moving around at night and in dark places, and became a fixture of the group. However; one day they caught a little too much heat for their crimes, and it was decided that it would be best to part ways for a while. After all, a seven and a half foot tall white firbolg draws attention no matter how sneaky she is.

Úna is an adventurer because her skill set lends itself to little else. She finds working under the cover of darkness soothing, and isn’t squeamish about the moral quandaries that follow adventurers around.

Ysara Djimon

Wood Elf

Open Hand Monk

Ysara was a martial arts teacher at her home monastery. A strict but fair teacher, she enjoyed working with the acolytes who passed through the monastery. One of her students was particularly gifted and Ysara found training them to be particularly rewarding. However, many years later they returned to the monastery and nearly wiped it out before departing again. Ysara was left critically injured, but managed to survive.

Ysara set out to become an adventurer once she was recovered enough to walk on her own. Her other skills have been slower to come back to her, though she is confident that she will one day return to her former prime. She left to track down her former student and extract justice and maybe a reason for the massacre.

#dnd #OCs #I just make so many characters but then they sit there with nothing to doooooooo #and this isn’t even scratching the surface of characters I have in reserve #almost had a game for Shizuka but they kept getting misgendered and the dm did some gross things so I jumped ship #a surprising number of Aasimar on this list #tieflings are usually my favorite but apparently I have an itch for angel people #a couple of these have some very obvious inspirations #can you guess who was inspired by what?

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ivadeshin · 5 years

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Careful Steps (Essik/Caleb) (3/n)

(catch up over on ao3)

One can often determine how much a person values a topic by how closely they hold it to their chest. Essik notices the moment Caleb determines that it is safe to discuss his colleagues with Essik. And after one story, it is a deluge.

A mention of high-ranking officials trying to conceal their personal lives leads to a strange anecdote about Jester, the tiefling, encountering and exposing several such officials in her youth. A discussion of preferred methods of travel leads to a brief summary of Fjord, the half-orc, and how his previous experience with the sea was crucial just months ago when they had to travel by ship.

Caleb speaks of his colleagues warmly, almost without exception. Many groups of adventurers or mercenaries get along solely in order to secure wealth, or to complete necessary objectives. Essik is professionally and personally familiar with many. However, these defectors seem to defy one standard after another..

Essik listens to the anecdotes with interest.

Caleb’s new attire is not from Essik’s tailor near the Conservatory, but it is certainly an improvement. The maroon silk shirt has fine stitching, with some modest shards of onyx embroidered into the v-shaped neckline.

“The woman at the front insisted I would look like a commoner if there weren’t any stones anywhere,” Caleb is saying with some tension.

Essik is trying not to be distracted by the orange-blond curls of chest hair visible from the neck line. The line of his throat, the curve of his collarbones, are an even fairer cream than that of his face. It is. Deeply unique and distracting. “Your tailor was correct. I understand that men of the Empire often avoid even semiprecious gems, but here, such an absence would indicate an inability to afford it.” Caleb looks mollified, so Essik continues: “I assure you that onyx is neither particularly expensive nor ostentatious.”

“Thank you.” Caleb nods a few times, fingering the lapel of the new black coat and trying on a weak smile. “I did try to follow your recommendation, near the Marble Tomes... a bit too rich for my blood, I’m afraid.”

A euphemism for being unable to afford it. Essik bows slightly at the waist. “Please accept my apologies. My suggestion was clearly unhelpful.”

“Nein, no, it is fine.” Caleb actually laughs. “Trust me, I am used to not being up to snuff in places like that. And, while I was getting stared at in the lobby, I got to see some displayed outfits that looked nearly as good as your cloak and mantle!”

Essik is far too modest to beam.

His most recent cultural discovery has been about about the delivery of flowers.

Either by messenger or in person, they have additional value if they are a type particularly admired by the recipient. Essik, having little botanical knowledge himself, goes to his garden and points at the ones Caleb admired upon his first visit. His servant informs him of the genus and assures him that they are only moderately difficult to acquire.

Essik arranges for six bulbs to be purchased, and planted in the garden outside Caleb Widogast’s Rosohna house. Such romantic gestures certainly make more sense in a place like the Empire, where flowers are said to be much more plentiful and even grow by the fields on wild plains. But Essik is not a man without means, and his younger servant, Ruanill, happens to have an aunt who specializes in the cultivation of non-fruiting plants.

He sends Ruanill with special instructions to only plant the bulbs where the firbolg and/or tiefling will permit. Essik remembers that those two were absolutely responsible for that building’s... upgrades, upon moving in.

There is a knock on the library door, and Ruanill enters and bows deeply. “Shadowhand.”

Essik looks up from the codex on the desk. “I trust everything went well?”

“Mr. Widogast was not at home. The firbolg, Mr. Caduceus Clay, received the gift with deep gratitude. He requested that he assist me in the planting process.”

“Considering his appearance and the tree, I fail to find that surprising.” Which is to say, Essik does not mind the change in plans. The cultural texts mentioned nothing of who did the dirty work.

“Mr. Clay also... invited me in for tea, sir.” Ruanill sounds uncertain.

Essik straightens a little in his chair. This must be a misunderstanding. “You made it clear you were visiting as a servant of my house?”

“Of course, sir, I made it very explicit that the gift was from you and for Mr. Widogast.” Ruanill bows again, deeply, and rises slowly. “He... asked for my name, and upon receiving it, used it to ask me inside to take tea.”

After taking a few moments to ruminate over this, Essik sighs deeply. Ruanill has been reliable and steady in his employ, and does not deserve such bizarre treatment. “Was anyone else present?”

“No, Shadowhand.”

This sounds like another social blunder, stressful but meaningless. “And did you discuss anything of tactical interest?”

“No, Shadowhand.” Ruanill’s eyes reach the ceiling as he tries to recall. “Mr. Clay inquired about my family,” Essik cringes in sympathy, “and then, about the care of flowering Xhorhassian plants, and then, about my knowledge of you.”

This is alarming. Essik rises out of his chair to his full height. “Explain.”

Ruanill shrinks immediately. “I must assure you that-”

To be so low as to press one of his employees, who visited his home in good faith, bearing a gift, is unforgivable. Caleb has mentioned Caduceus’s gift for extracting information from subjects... “Was he asking about my movements? My contacts over enemy lines?”

“Shadowhand, his questions were that of, of a,” Ruanill trembles a little as he rearranges his headpiece. “Please forgive my inelegant wording. His questions were that of a working class mother. Inquiring about her child’s suitor.” Seeing no interruption, he continues: “Your temperament. Your interests beyond magicks. How much time you are given by the Bright Queen to pursue personal interests.”

Essik’s eyebrows raise in disbelief. “And I assume he also inquired about the salary, and number of rooms in my home? The value of my estates? How many royal festival gatherings I attend?”

“N-no, Shadowhand, although that is a known line of questioning in some lower households.” Ruanill squares his shoulders, reclaiming his courage. “If I may be so bold, I would theorize that the firbolg acts as a maternal figure to the defector group. These... casual digs for intel are an attempt to determine whether you are a suitable personality, not financial or societal match, to the human.”

Essik digests this. “A... an interview by proxy, perhaps.” And how can he know how he fared in an interview he did not attend?

“Yes, Shadowhand.” Ruanill bows his head. “It is common for such questioning to be aimed at someone who is knowledgeable about the suitor, but not motivated to lie for them.”

“He underestimated your allegiance.”

“I was not offended by the implication.” A beat. “The tea was very sweet and included honey. I believe Mr. Clay was satisfied by my descriptions of your loyalty, conviction, and work ethic. Is that... sufficient for the report?”

“...yes. Please take the rest of the day off. I am sure you are out of sorts.”

The firbolg is considered a very wise, if unusual, font of knowledge by the others among the defectors. Caleb has told Essik as much. Essik’s anxiety has shifted from concern that one of the defectors is a mole, to concern that one of the defector’s opinion of him may sway his human’s feelings on him.

#critical fic #shadowgast #shadowhand essik #essik #caleb widogast

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joyful-mollymauk · 5 years

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Code’s Molly Theories

Molly Theories Index

1) indicators that Matt & Tal have stuff planned 2) possible ties between Molly's and Clay's backstories/arcs 3) Lucien's ritual: both his intent and the spellslinger's 4) possible NPC activity going on regarding a rez 5) what a returned Molly-Lucien-other might be like 6) the fire bird

Molly Theory part 1 Matt & Tal Indicators Matt’s first objective is to run a fun game for his friends, and his second is to tell an amazing and coherent story. Back in Campaign 1, resurrecting characters was standard practice, starting with Pike’s low-level death pre-stream. So we know Matt is not opposed to making every rez possible.

Tal has been crafting Molly’s character since way back in Campaign 1 and was itching to play him even back then. And when Molly died, Tal admitted that he cried all night long and didn’t get any sleep.

The M9 were gearing up to attempt a rez in episode 27 and then inexplicably acted like rez magic didn’t exist in ep 29. No in-game reason was given for this sudden about-face, so we can only conclude it was an out-of-game decision.

Only Matt and Tal have authority to call a halt on rezzing Molly. Given the rez frequency last campaign, all the loose story threads, and the sheer amount of love Tal poured into Molly, it wouldn’t make sense for him to just move on. So why else call a halt to rez attempts?

The only explanations I see are to wait and try at higher levels, when the chance of success is higher, let Tal play a different character temporarily, or leave Molly’s fate purely in the hands of the DM.

Matt has woven something grand into Molly’s backstory, including a whole cult following, a botched (?) ritual, and a mysterious spellslinger of unknown intent. He’s already had Molly rise from the grave once, giving him plenty of leeway (and a narrative drive) to do so again.

Further evidence of this intent is how gleefully smug Tal got whenever Matt made reference to Molly being dead. As if Tal was excited about that but trying not to say anything. Tal also built Clay with an easy way to leave the narrative whenever it suits him. This is very useful when you know a character is temporary.

Tal has mentioned that he keeps Molly leveled up along with the rest of the M9. He also slips right back into reacting as Molly whenever stuff about him is mentioned. This proves how ready and eager Tal would be to bring Molly back into the game! He’s waiting patiently but is definitely excited, and oh how ecstatic he’ll be at Molly’s return.

Molly Theory part 2 Lucien & Clay Backstories Clay’s family lived in the woods outside SCR. Something has been twisting the things that live there, and the firbolgs who went to investigate never returned. Lucien ran a cult (?) in that same forest. Whatever they were involved in was magical, secretive, and likely not something the public would approve of. What are the chances of these facts being separate when Matt loves to tie things together?

Lucien apparently died and came back to life, and Clay is a death cleric who opposes undeath vehemently. If Lucien is tied up in something necromantic, Clay is perfectly designed to combat that.

Given all this, my personal theory is that investigating the forest’s ailment for Clay will lead the party straight into Molly’s backstory. And, quite possibly, something occupying Molly’s body!

Molly Theory part 3 Lucien’s Ritual Cree’s impression of Lucien’s ritual was that he was trying to reach “The City.” Whatever the ritual entailed was similar enough to death that Lucien instructed them to not do anything right away if he appeared actually dead.

Entering a near-death state to travel sounds like astral projection. The lengths they went through and the apparent danger involved suggest The City couldn’t be reached by normal means. Or perhaps he just needed to get there without his body.

But! The ritual was being performed by someone outside of the Tomb Takers and did not have the effect Lucien expected. Either the spellslinger genuinely tried and failed or did something else under the guise of the ritual.

The ritual, as it was cast, left Lucien’s body as a nearly empty shell, with only fragments of his original self remaining. If this was the spellslinger’s intent, then perhaps she was trying to clear him out completely so something else could move in. This would mean her first attempt failed. But now that his body is truly empty, she might have the opportunity to try again!

So. Why Lucien? If we’re going with this theory, there must be something special enough about him to warrant that level of attention. Perhaps she was simply there to get the book and has no further interest. But those red “eye” marks are not mundane, and Matt very likely jumped on that detail and made them significant.

Molly Theory part 4 Possible NPC Involvement There are three NPCs in play who might involve themselves in “Molly rez” shenanigans. First, there’s Cree. She reveres Lucien far more than the Gentleman, knows that he has died “again,” and has people she can contact for help in bringing him back.

The most critical person for Cree to contact is that spellslinger from the capital. She both has the book and cast the original ritual that Lucien returned from. But, as mentioned before, this spellslinger may have her own interests with Lucien’s body.

And, on the other side of things, is Gustav. He has little in the way of resources, but he has been set loose by Clay to go take responsibility for whatever grievous wrong he’s been punishing himself over. Interestingly enough, Gustav is also from SCR! He somehow found Molly near his gravesite, cared for him patiently, and helped him grow to be a good person. He also somehow knew about those three demigod-like entities, turning their story into a circus performance way back in episode one! (He portrays the phoenix, or “fire fairy,” as a heroic warrior, fighting for the light.)

So. What is he guilty for? Is his story connected to Lucien’s as well? If Gustav gets involved in all this, he’s the only NPC who will be trying to recover Molly.

Tin hat: Once the M9 encounter Not-Molly, Gustav will reappear as an ally to help them get him back.

Molly Theory part 5 Not-Molly My favorite Not-Molly theory is an avatar of that bird creature, but we’ve got other options too. The spellslinger could be working with some other entity, like a powerful Kryn. Perhaps she wants him as her own puppet, winter soldier style. Or she could actually bring Lucien back, with or without Molly in there as well.

We’ve got a lot of unknowns, but one thing is certain: it would be silly of Matt and Tal not to do something with this!

Personal hope: we get to see Tal play an evil Not-Molly and giddily torment everybody.

Molly Theory part 6 The Fire Bird Matt has presented the M9 with a mural depicting Ukatoa, a fire bird, and a giant worm. And way back in episode one, Gustav told tale of a mystical serpent that gifts abilities, a “fire fairy” that fights for the light, and terrible beasts whose “bellowing roars will quake the lands of Xhorhas and beyond.”

“But from that night, a burning light doth keep back shadows’ bane. The strength to fight will set alight the morning sun again. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Ornna the fire fairy.” -Gustav, C2E1

So what’s the connection to Molly? Lucien’s name ALSO means “light,” and he was a (rare!) purple tiefling with a scattering of red marks and (going by the official art) dark gray horns. Interestingly enough, those are the same colors Matt gave the fire bird!

It’s unclear what Lucien’s motivations were, but he led the Tomb Takers to split away from their previous order because he had “a new path” for them. Cree later stated that he was their new path. (He had also adopted the title “The Nonagon,” which sounds connected to his nine red marks that could not be covered with tattoos.)

So. A purple-gray tiefling, named after the light, is granted nine magical red marks that bring him in perfect alignment with the fire bird’s aesthetics. He then becomes the new path for a cult. That sounds like a deliberate link to me.

Tin hat: Lucien’s body was sanctified to become that bird’s avatar. And when the M9 catch up to these events, they’ll meet The Nonagon instead.

And that’s what she’s got so far! If anyone has questions you’re welcome to send them in to joyful-mollymauk and I’ll send them on to Code! I’ll also update the Code’s Molly Theories tag when any new canon lore comes along to update these theories or spawn some new ones!

Thank you Code!!!

#Code's Molly Theories #critical role #critical role spoilers #Mollymauk Tealeaf #meta

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