#I love Dobrava so damn much

[abossycontrolfreak]

This is Dobrava, my former DnD character who I played in a steampunk-esque world called the Iron Kingdoms (minor spoilers ahead for the 3.5e campaign The Witchfire Trilogy). The wonderful art was commissioned from @binkyisonline.

Dobrava was originally a cleric of Menoth, a fairly fundamentalist and brutal religion, having grown up in the church and not really known anything else. Her domains were strength and war, and she was particularly good against undead (even for a cleric!) - basically, she was a battle cleric.

As she joined the party and got exposed to more of the world, she ended up converting to the Church of Morrow, the final straw being when Menoth refused to let her heal a cleric from a rival church who she’d been fighting alongside, and was on the brink of death trying to save the city from undead invasion. She converted, and devoted herself to knowledge - to learning as much as she could (including how to read for the first time) about the world that she’d always been cut off from.

More adventures followed - she acquired an ancient longsword, some bitching armour, and even cut off her own hand in a deal with the fey. (Luckily one of her party members could make her a badass prosthetic, including a badass magical/mechanical shield)

And then she arrived back to the city, to be met by a letter from her father - a Greylord, basically a wizard bishop - extremely powerful and extremely religious. She went to meet him, because she was never one to back down from a challenge.

In the final moments of her confrontation with him, she got close enough for her power to pierce illusions to kick in and realise that it wasn’t her father, it was an ancient demon. Or perhaps the demon had been her father all along? Either way, there wasn’t enough time to act on it, as she was overtaken by his power, her mind belonging to him. And that’s where I stopped playing her.

The rest of the party was told Dobrava had “returned to Khador for urgent family business”, and recruited a new member - Zamia (shadow rogue, and my current character)

They went off on an adventure, and recently returned to the city only to find it had been overtaken by a group which included clerics of Menoth, and the Greylord (Dobrava’s father) (not that anyone knew he was her father, she didn’t like to share much about her past). They party devoted itself to fighting back, and were on their way to rescue a few key allies from prison.

But one of the things we’d heard was there was a vampire stalking the upper city, the “night bitch”. Vampires in this world are fairy stories, and there was really only ever one and that was thousands of years ago, but the stories fit the myths. We decided not to go after her, but unfortunately on the way to the prison break, she found us.

It was a tough fight - she was very resistant, although we managed to do some good damage. She was kinda very terrifying though, including healing herself like 120hp in a single term, but when she was trying to run away and reposition, two party members crit on attacks of opportunity, which in this system go straight to “wound points” (much more limited numbers - equal to con score). And she died.

As she collapsed to the ground, the shadows that surrounded her fell away, and revealed first a metal hand, and then… Dobrava’s face. And with her final breath, she thanked us for freeing her from her horrific fate.