#campaign: coming of the dark

[shorthaltsjester]

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

[worldsneverfilled]

DM went through our character sheets and gave us new feats.

Enil now has war caster and telepathy.

She can now carry a shield without it hindering her spell casting and her ac jumped up 4 points.

God bless the DM.

[gin-draws]

sometimes you’re just feeling a little femme, and a little like there’s a dead raven god sharing your body.

[multi-lefaiye]

[cut to me lying facedown in a puddle of tears]

[vyrion]

can we please just get the mythborne campaign. how long must i wait. ive been here for years how patient must i be

[duckuwu]

has anyone talked about the whole yin/yang thing imogen and laudna have going on? imogen's physically bright and light (hair and clothes) where laudna is dark and scary. but personality wise laudna is more light and friendly to (nearly) everyone she meets, generally positive minded / looking for a bright side of things. meanwhile imogen is wary and cautious, a bit intimidating, and definitely prone to being quiet when meeting new people (assessing the situation / figuring out if the person could be trusted or not).

they don't just tether each other, they balance each other.

obviously it kept them alive when they were on their own, but I wonder if they fell into place like two puzzle pieces when they met. just like 'oh, you're meant to help me through all this'

so, like, when they were separated, they weren't out of sorts just because their tether, nor their love, was gone and they didn't know if the other was alive. they'd lost their balance, their sense of true north was suddenly gone...and it was so much worse than what it was like before they'd ever met.

[waitineedaname]

finally finished taz steeplechase! that ending was Fucked

[akingoftrash]

blorbos from my campaigns,,

[blujayonthewing]

I don't know that I'm ever gonna actually pull the trigger on it but I do love contemplating giving Aubree a little divine magic without her realizing it

[ixhadbadxdays]

I'm cheap entertainment for my DM. I'd bet money on it.

Bitch drops the slightest hint about literally everything and I'm back at my spreadsheets with theories and shit like

[doctor-disc0]

I want to make an Elder Scrolls character based on my last D&D character but it's. Very hard. Because she was such a unique and weird character that it is hard to translate that into an in-game character (info on her and my thoughts about how I could adapt her into an es character below the cut).

Her name was Eva "Halfblood" Akannathi, and she was a half-orc, half-goliath 18 year old bard (college of valor). But she was kind of an unconventional bard. She hated lying and dishonesty. Like, really loathed it. This girl has not lied once in the 18 years she's been alive and does not plan on ever doing it. She also considers illusions to be a form of lying.

This made playing through the campaign very interesting. At certain points of the campaign, she had to roll wisdom saving throws whenever her party had to lie to someone. If she succeeded, she managed to keep quiet. If she failed, she would blurt out the truth. She also disliked whenever her party members lied about anything. It didn't matter if it was for the greater good. She would rather die than tell a lie, and she wishes others felt the same.

Now, adapting her into a playable Elder Scrolls character is a bit tricky. You would think going with the Bard class would be the obvious choice. However, one of their major skills is Illusion, and given Eva's stubborn dislike of illusion, that's not exactly going to work. I could, of course, make a custom class, but I have so much anxiety about getting custom classes exactly right that it ends up just stressing me out whenever I try to create a custom class. But, maybe I'll try a custom class. That would probably be the best.

The race is a little less tricky, but there's still that "damn, I wish I could choose two races." Her in-game race would probably be orc, since that's the race she looks the most like. In my head, though, I'm thinking she would be half-orc, half-nord. I mean, D&D goliaths are resistant to cold damage and are tall, and Nords are basically the same, even if their coloration is different (goliaths have greyish skin and markings on their face, whereas Nords have white skin and no natural markings). What I really wish I could do is just take the cold resistance from Nords and just replace the Orc berserk thing with it because going berserk isn't really Eva's style lol (she's no barbarian!). But whatever, I suppose she can survive without her cold resistance.

It just really sucks because I loved playing her so much in D&D, and now that that campaign is over, I kinda miss her. But she's such a weird character that she's hard to play in any other setting.

[worldsneverfilled]

Enil is about to do the unhealthiest 180 the next time the party sleeps. She's waking up as spring, autumn, or autumn/winter and acting like everything is perfect. Fake it til you make it, traumatized from grief edition.

[isaacathom]

bad alternate timeline is going well in that my character, a perennial wuss, realised that another pc has kidnapped her aunt and threatened her cousin and immediately went 'oh im gonna fucking kill him'

[bourbontrend]

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[horizon-of-the-lance]

No, I can't leave the world by itself —it needs me until "the end."

Based on the song taixu

A major villain in the one arc of our campaign and ex-fiance to my PC, Paladithel Vallana is a little very fucked up.

Everyone loves an Elf with delusions of grandeur and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve those delusions right?

He's a walking trigger warning

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Meet the Party

Session recaps here

[vyrion]

i hope suck is going well