#cayden speaks

[cayden-grayson-mitchell]

I'm. Getting. NSFW. BOTS. FOLLOWING. ME. A. LOT. I. HAD. JUST. BLOCKED. AND. REPORTED. 3. OF. EM. THIS. IS. GETTING. ANNOYING! I. WANT. TO. ENJOY. TUMBLR. BUT. THESE. BOTS. ARE. SO. ANNOYING. MAKE. IT. STOP!! You know the Gif of Eddie Munson holding the Walkie Talkie, rubbing a hand down his face? Well this is me EVERY. DAMN TIME I SEE MY NEW "FOLLOWERS" ARE JUST THOSE GODDAMN BOTS!!

[psyscha]

.

[codecicle]

heres the torture scene I've been looping. it's so viv n vex experimenting on emizel and i was encouraged not only to say that but phrase it that way by several people. take my hand and join my Perfect World (severe content warning ahead for graphic descriptions + realistic screaming + Literal Torture lmao proceed with caution)

[aquaticcryptid]

Sketches dump! Unintentionally having two OCs with very similar names is a little fun.

Anyways, y'all ever fought a deity to keep your clueless boyfriend safe?

[mac-n-cheese-flavored-arson]

if youre a hardcore caffeine drinker and you also have anxiety, you probably don't realize how much caffeine is adding to your anxiety until you stop drinking it and then drink it again after months and you might not want to hear this because its what all the professionals tell you, but caffeine might actually be adding to your anxiety and it might actually help your anxiety to stop drinking it

[mayspicer]

Pretty obvious which one of the two was bought and printed after the big hero forge update xd

[starniolosposts]

behind the fame (1)

part one, part two

pairing: chris sturniolo x reader

summary: you are starting to drown in your life, from your job to your trauma— and don’t see a way out. then chris sturniolo comes into your life.

warnings: abusive behavior, inappropriate behavior, manipulation, abuse of authority (none of this is from chris)

notes: this is my first story/first time posting on tumblr so be nice :) and hopefully you guys like it

your heartbeat echoes in your ears as well as the loud commands from the photographer. your body moves on autopilot, listening to the strict instructions from your manager and photographer behind the expensive camera flashing into your eyes.

you uncomfortably shift, face crinkling in embarrassment as everyone looked at your exposed body. you wanted to cover yourself with your arms, but knew you would get punished for it. you also wanted to decline the shoot for the lingerie brand in the first place, but your manager had forced you to agree to it.

"almost perfect pose! suck in your stomach a little more— yep! stay right there!"

you suck in your already (unhealthily) flat stomach and ignore the burning and aching pain of hunger shooting through you. you hadn't ate all day and don't remember the last time you had a full nutritional meal.

"alright, lunch break everyone! we'll have you try on one more set before being finished for the day. thank you for accepting this shoot, by the way. and sorry for being demanding, i was kind of taught to work that way." the man behind the camera smiles sheepishly, and you feel more at ease at his explanation.

you wave him off and finally relax your tense body. "ah, i get it. this industry needs strictness." you try and smile, but its strained.

your manager is silent as you make small conversation with the photographer, and you can't help but feel like its the calm before the storm. its always like that with him. it builds up so much until you were both alone and he releases all his pent up emotions.

your manager finally speaks up. "lets go to change into the next set, y/n." he says, then smiles at the photographer as you walk away to the changing rooms, his hand gripping onto your shoulder painfully.

you gulp at the silence as you open your changing room and close it behind the both of you. you remember to lock it like he taught you.

"did you eat before the set?" the question from him is random, but makes you nervous. you wonder if there is a right answer before deciding to be honest.

"no, i only drank water today." you whisper, now covering up your almost entirely exposed breasts with your arms. you don't miss the way his eyes dart across your body.

his dark eyes then glance down at your stomach and become narrowed. "it doesn't look like it. you have bloating in your lower stomach, its really visible."

it's humiliating and degrading, making your cheeks flush and small tears to fill your waterline. you make sure to keep them at bay so he doesn't notice. the last time he saw you cry didn't go well.

"uhm.. i'm sorry." you mutter, looking down at your stomach and frowning.

he sighs before patting your shoulder, keeping his hand there to massage it. you tensed and stayed frozen in your spot. "its alright, just remember to suck it in. and remember to not eat anything after 5pm tonight, and nothing tomorrow morning. we have another shoot at 7am."

you want to speak up for yourself. you want to say how absurd his demands are, but don't. you force the words down and instead obediently nod in agreement, making him grin. you'd rather sacrifice your own well being and make him happy than disagree with him and make him angry.

your managers name is cayden anderson. he was a couple years older than you, you are 21 and he is 26. you’ve known him since you were 16 though.

your mom had hired him after your modeling career had become a more serious thing. after that, you never really connected with either of your parents on a deeper level, so you didn’t feel like you could go to them for concerns or problems you had. you felt like you had to just do it yourself.

that mentality applies to your relationship with cayden. you just dealt with it yourself, and felt like you didn’t have anyone to turn to.

a knock on the door makes cayden step away from you, and to your relief, his cold hand leaves your shoulder as well. “yes?” he responds.

“shoot starts in 3 minutes.”

“she’ll be right out!”

cayden looks at you like your stupid. “well? get undressed, you have to wear the other lingerie set.”

you nod, but then pause, humiliation burning in your eyes as you look into his amused ones. “can you turn around?” you whisper.

he rolls his eyes before sighing and turning around. “its nothing i haven’t seen, but alright.”

your stomach churns from horrific memories popping up in your brain from his words. you shake your head and quickly get ready for the next shoot in silence.

first part of this story! be patient with me i don’t know how to really work tumblr yet lol, and yes i know we dont get chris yet but you will soon ;)

[sickkies]

Wolves (movie) - Cayden

When they’re speaking and get cut off by a gag… GOTTA be one of my favorite tropes (see also Quentin in the Magicians, which is one of my favorite emeto scenes ever, and also Dean in Supernatural after he gets food poisoning)

[dailycharacteroption]

Book Review: Faiths of Purity

And with today’s entry we end off the week with a beginning, a beginning of a quadrilogy in the Pathfinder Player Companion line of books, focused on the various faiths of Golarion’s Inner Sea Region deities.

Now, I say faiths specifically instead of deities, since this book is less about the deities themselves and more about how the mortals worship them and incorporate their beliefs into their daily lives.

The reason that these books came to be was to help build the world and give a religious character that one was portraying plenty of inspiration for what they would value and what sort of holy days and the like they would celebrate and follow through with, which was a fair bit more than what we got out of deity descriptions in many editions of D&D. Sure, you knew their alignments, their domains, and they symbols, but beyond a paragraph or two, their lore was pretty sparse in most books, so it was a nice change of pace.

The book starts with a breakdown of the seven good-aligned major deities in the Inner Sea Region, specifically information about their faith and their worshippers, everything from what sort of classes favor the religion, what they wear to identify themselves to other members of the faith outside of holy symbols, how they worship, what they consider taboo, and of course, their goals. Additionally, there is a bit on what sort of relationship the faithful have with other belief systems. These deities range from the frivolous but heroic followers of Cayden Cailean, the wandering and wise Desnans, the parental (and condescending) followers of Erastil, the righteous devotees of Iomedae, Sarenites who honor the mighty but merciful hand of the Dawnflower, art-focused followers of Shelyn, and the stalwart followers of Torag.

The book goes on further to briefly speak of the goodly minor deities. While not gone into the same detail, gives a good idea of what sort of followers they attract. They even go into the Empyreal Lords as well!

From there, we get various organizations that are tied to the aforementioned religions but having more specialized goals than simply following the teachings of said divinity. Things like secret organizations that bring light to nations of tyranny, or knightly orders.

Beyond that we get new combat feats associated with the fighting styles of the god’s followers (but not the divine fighting style feat, that comes later), as well as spells associated with each faith.

Additionally, with the exception of chaotic divinities, these faiths all qualify as valid options for a paladin to follow, and each one actually has an entry about how the oaths of paladins are altered by the nature of the god they worship, such as Shelynite paladins never striking first except to protect innocent life, and valuing the beauty and cultural importance of works of art greatly and seeking to protect them as well.

Finally, there is a bit on the various holy days and observances each faith in this book observes, which can be a fun way to set up festivals when the party goes to town or even inspiration for characters that would observe them even far away from where their faith is common.

The lore offered in this book is a major worldbuilding boon, as characters and NPCs alike can be fleshed out a lot by how they interact with and observe their faith. Faith means a lot to many people in the real world, so why wouldn’t it for characters in a fantasy world, even if they themselves aren’t divinely empowered?

Additonally, I like that none of the art in this book is of the deities themselves. Instead, it’s all example art of various worshippers of the faith, tying back to the “divinity from the mortal perspective” angle that this book and it’s companions are going for.

I do love this book. It’s a fun expansion of lore into the various major goodly faiths of the primary region of our setting, with plenty of fluffy to inspire characters with a light bit of crunch like that bit of cookie in a Twix bar. Firm enough for substance, but not so prominent so as to overshadow the texture of that delicious caramel. I hope that simile makes any kind of sense.

I don’t have super lots to complain about in this book, but I will say some of it is a little outdated, from Erastil’s somewhat traditionalist ideals that got downplayed in 2e to the paragraph on Apsu claiming that he does not grant divine magic to non-draconic followers, something that proves expressly not true in later books. (There’s even a paladin archetype that is baseline assumed to be associated with him, after all). But overall most of it is still good.

And that does it for our first week of book reviews, and the reception has been quite positive, so I’ll definitely be continuing this special in the future! But for now, look forward to more archetypes next week, and more specials in the future.

[bizlybebo]

For your final thoughts on PD once you finish, I present to thee:

This ramble ask

How ya feeling?

HOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHITTTTTTTTTTTT ENDYYYYY

ENDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY IT. I WAS NOTTTT EXPECTING ANYYYY OF THISSSS AAAAAAAAAAJRGBTJKWEFREGTKWEFREGTKRFGNYT

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU'RE ASKING FOR BY SENDING IN THIS ASK. KJREHKJERHD

this is probably gonna be even longer than my ramble after completing the greyscale series so once again i dont expect you to read all of this but OHHH YM GODDD i need to dump my thoughts somewhere cause HOLY SHITTT

after writing this out i really only managed to touch on the last 2-3 episodes but yk. there are my thoughts on the ending so it makes sense. i dont think we wanna see how big my ramble on the entire fucking series could get

spoilers ahead for anyone else who sees this: literally all of prime defenders s1 and s2

ashe came home.

ashe fucking CAME HOME.

now, i had a feeling since about episode 35 that ashe was certainly coming home, because there was so much buildup, yakko did an ashe cosplay, etc. like it would have been stupid for her not to return at that point. plus i kept seeing people drawing a post-trickster ashe and was like huh.

so essentially, i thought that because i Knew, i wouldn't get blindsided by these final episodes. in fact, knowing almost made it more... bearable? i guess, because i could hold onto the light at the end of the tunnel that ashe was 100% coming home. it almost made me feel the same hope that the group was feeling about ashe, because i had that certainty and faith in the good ending.

and then william wisp fucking died. again.

i was really sleepy when i was listening to that scene but still persisting because my anxiety was slowly increasing as the episode went on, but when the trickster just. plunged his hands through william's chest i was FULLY awake just sitting in absolute shock. i'm not the kind of person to cry huge tears over media (i think the only time i non-happy cried watching riptide was ep 53), but when william died For Real i actually gave a good few sobs. i was no longer sleepy i was just in shock and then in grief.

and i was like. oh shit. maybe there is no good ending.

something like that ENTIRELY blindsided me in such a crazy way that it had me doubting ashe would even come home.

and i kept thinking, hey, no, he's risen before, he'll be okay! but then he went to the fucking spirit realm. he got dispensed there with kumori and began the first day of forever and i was like oh. shit.

william was gone.

and the REACTIONS from dakota and vyncent were both so guttural and real and true to their characters in their own ways. like so good it's nearly painful to think about.

dakota's loud. he's loud and he's rambunctious because he's dakota. he never speaks below a shout.

but when william was torn in half, he wasn't shouting, he was wailing. the absolute shock and denial he was in haunts me dude.

dakota's was begging william not to do this to him. he could forgive william for so much-- for lying to him, for not asking for his help, for fucking killing jade, but he could never forgive william for dying.

dakota's not the kind of kid to ask, y'know? if something doesn't go the way it should to him then he'll fight abrasively and outwardly for what he believes is right, or in the harder cases he'll bite the bullet and take the fall.

but here, he was pleading with william to just. not die.

and i think the final thing that shattered my faith that hey, maybe william wasn't gone was that tide was so accepting of it. he fell to his knees, he grieved and he was torn apart for a second, but then he was back up, holding dakota, going as far as to use a whole turn in initiative to only hug his boy despite the deadly circumstances. despite the world falling apart around them. to loosely quote my other mutual cayden (<333), "at the end of everything hold onto something and dakota had to hold onto tide because it was the end of everything for him" and i think that's just. the only way i can really phrase it. top 10 moments that rewired my brain chemistry

and dont get me started on dakota LITERALLY JUMPING THROUGH HELL FOR EVERYBODY. JUMPING THROUGH HELL, LOOKING THE TRICKSTER IN THE EYES AS HE DID SO. LIKE I'VE SAID THIS BEFORE BUT SOARING THROUGH THE BURNING SKIES OF THE CHAOS REALM? THE REALM THAT CORRUPTS AND WARPS EVEN THE STRONGEST DEMONS? AND STILL COMING OUT ON THE OTHER SIDE BECAUSE YOU'RE DAKOTA MOTHERFUCKING COLE AND YOU SIMPLY REFUSE TO SUCCUMB?? FUCKING INSANEEE.

and. fucking. fuck.

vyncent. MOTHERFUCKING. sol.

when i fucking catch condifiction.

vyncent sol is such an interesting fucking character. most of the time i'm like "there is something deeply wrong with him <3" in an endearing sense because yknow. he's a little strange. he's not from around here.

but oh my god.

vyncent sol, THE character development guy ever.

he starts off season 1 violent, unable to control his powers. he's violent, and he's scared, and he's homesick, and he's like a skittish dog who bites when it gets nervous because he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing here.

but he changes. he grows.

he gets his closure with fauna, yeah, but then he finds a new home. he finds himself in a flying car, chasing after the fucking lich, watching william and dakota fighting in the front seat like a married couple, and he just thinks yeah. this is home.

and he doesn't quite unlearn his violence or his vengeance but they do certainly shift gears (also tidbit-- the 'fatal flaw' of justice is vengeance which is part of why i chose him for that human soul in the undertale shit i was telling you about :D).

his character is about balance. he has to learn not to be reckless and violent like in season 1, while also not apathetic and taking inaction like he did in s2 episodes 31 and 32.

at the end of everything, he protects william with his life, ready to interpose any attack. he thinks that he can do right by somebody this time, act now so that there aren't any consequences later (y'know, like he never did with jade, or ashe, or the lich).

but william. still. dies.

the sheer anger that vyncent felt in that moment was overshadowed so strongly by his grief, but it was still there. i can't even put it into words without going on a whole nother tangent but oh my fucking god. dude. vyncent sol has irreparably rewired my brain he is all i'm gonna think about.

prime defenders honestly is just THE character development show in general. i haven't even touched on william's development, on how he put faith in his friends over mal even if he knew it was going to make things much harder because he trusted dakota and vyncent so much. on how he literally got killed, repeatedly, over and over, in the spirit realm for 12 hours straight. on how he dirtied his hands during the greyscale arc out of fear.

on how he finally. stopped. running. stopped trying to escape who he was. but still won't come out of the closet

and god this is a looooong fucking ramble and i haven't even said much yet, this is only me screaming about the last two episodes really, but so much has happened in them that i just AUUUUGUGHGGHGHJKTEHRKJ

and. holy fucking shit.

JADE??? MAY STILL BE ALIVE??? D OYOU UNDERSTAND HOW FUCKING FERAL IM GOING OVER THIS JADE CANTRIP VENGEANCE ARC. I NEEEEEED XAVIERRRR TO SEE HER AGAINNNN JADE AND XAVIER'S FRIENDSHIP MEANS SO FUCKING MUCHHH TO MEEEEE

AND ATLAS? BRO POOR FUCKING ATLAS. he really could not catch a fucking break for the ENTIRE series. when bizly started describing the 'odd fizzling' i was like 'man this guy is just going THROUGH it with his career i feel kinda bad for him' and then.

he was dead.

i think grizzly said it best, how bizly has to 'keep reminding us that prime defenders is r-rated' cause yk. the sudden violence/gore. it was so impactful you were so right when you were talking about tonal whiplash because holy SHIT.

like we were just in mario kart hell chasing after le frog who stole pizza he couldnt even eat cause he was vegetarian. and then atlas' throat was slit and he was marked with an x. (x as in xavier's vigilante persona????????RTEHRTTT$YRJHTTETR)

im just AUGUGHGHGH so FUCKING UNWELLLL OVER THIS ENTIRE SERIES. I'M SO STOKED FOR WONDERLUST BUT ALSO THAT MEANS PRIME DEFENDERS PROBABLY WON'T RETURN UNTIL THE END OF THE YEAR OR EVEN LATER.

i need a prime defenders christmas episode. dearly.

the bright side of this is that now i can write a shit ton of fic + inhale every single fic under the prime defenders tag on ao3.

but GODDD this is the most gutwrenching piece of media ever. i've never had such a strong hyperfixation since 2020 because the world is just so good. every single character and npc means the world to me. even summer and doug are constant subjects of my brainrot. even fucking lightspeed and harlem and aughughugnjtr.

thank you for the ask endy lmao im FUCKING CLAWING AT THE WALLS OVER THIS SHOW. AIUKGHEJHW

JADE CANTRIP REVENGE ARC PLSPSLPLSPLSPLSPLSPLS. I NEED HER TO COME BACK AND I NEED HER TO COME BACK WRONG AND I NEED XAVIER TO BE TERRIFIED OF HIS BEST FRIEND EVEN THOUGH IT'LL EMOTIONALLY DESTROY ME AKTJHETRKJTRWKERE

okay that's. all i can say for now

[cayden-grayson-mitchell]

GUYS!! FEBRUARY 2ND MOM GOT ME THIS!! IT'S CHAMP-SHINE BEAR! IT'S SO CUTE!! I LOVE HIM! BUT I WANT DREAMTIME BEAR, CHARM BEAR AND LOVE SONG BEAR!!

[psyscha]

Seeing pornbots randomly following my account here because I’m active again is like watching nature returning after nuclear fallout.

[codecicle]

sorry for posting about characters no one cares about. i physically Have To or my brain will explode on account of the i miss them. sad!

[toddlertimess]

Hi. I want to write something but idk what.

My life is pretty boring. I do the same 4 things - work, home, gym, C’s football.

Oh speaking of C’s football, he’s turned me into a sports mom. We went from tackle football, straight into wrestling, straight into flag football, and now we’re starting tackle and flag isn’t even over! Little boy keeps me busy. This was his first year doing wrestling. It was ok but I think Cayden is going to do basketball next winter.

[averymessydesk]

peacekeeper.

Koyalev Ilgazred squints at the half-polished guardsman’s badge in her hand, then dips a cloth in some alcohol and resumes scrubbing. She can’t see her reflection yet, so she –

The badge disappears under her pillow as she hears the front door swing open. A moment later, she hears her uncle come grumbling in. Koyalev sets the cleaning bowl aside and makes her way downstairs to see Kilgaius Ilgazred – broad shouldered, tall as a house, perpetually bumping into things in their too-small hovel - muttering to himself about sticking doors as he hangs his soaking wet cloak by a hearth fire.

He glances up at her on the stairwell and gives her a wry smile. “Pouring down out there, love, ‘fraid you’re stuck in with me tonight,” he says. “I see you’ve got the fire going already. Thanks for that.  Here, now, why are you looking at me like I’ve got something stuck in me teeth?”

“You’ve got…something on your face, uncle Gaius,” Koyalev says. “It’s all over your cheek. Let me—”

Kilgaius curses angrily, surprising his niece, and reaches for the corner of his drenched cloak, holding up his other hand to ward off Koyalev’s threatening advance with a washcloth.

“Don’t, love,” he mutters, the smile disappearing from his face as he wipes his cheek. “It’s alright. Sorry about that. Thought the rain would have washed it off.”

“Is it jam or something?” Koyalev does her best to sound like she doesn’t know very well what it is – a mercy for her uncle, who she knows worries over her.

“No, not jam,” Kilgaius sighs. “It…was a bad night, Koya.”

“What happened?” Koyalev says, crossing from the stairwell to her uncle. “Are you hurt?”

“Tended to myself already. Small cut in me side, nothing tragic.”

“Do you want me to take a look?”

“No, Koya, I’m fine, I promise.”

“…you didn’t tell me what happened, Uncle Gaius,” Koyalev says.

He turns to look at her again, his face curled into a pained frown. The expression wavers at the forefront of some internal conversation before Kilgaius pats her shoulder gently.

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “Can you get me some tea, love?”

“Only if you promise to tell me what happened,” she says. “I’ve seen people at funerals look less anguished than that, Uncle Gaius.”

“You are too wise for a teenager,” he grumbles, turning back to the fire. “Fine, you get me my tea and I’ll get you your story, aye?”

“Aye,” she says.

…

There is a part of him that wants to believe: it’s them or us. It was him or me. Either I did what I did or Koyalev grows up alone. She’s already lost her father and mother. I’m all she has left. I have to come home, every night. She’s just thirteen, for Cayden’s sake. This city would eat her alive. (It wouldn’t, he knew – Koyalev is smarter than she should have to be, and probably more capable than him, all told. But the city would rob her of her childhood, given half a chance. It already tried once.)

But there’s another part of him that knows if he and his colleagues hadn’t given chase, maybe the man wouldn’t have felt so desperate. It was a bag of gold pieces – a lot of money, for sure – but it could be replaced. The other men didn’t see it that way, of course, and if Kilgaius was honest with himself, neither did he, in the moment. There was a criminal afoot. He had to be caught. That’s what you did as a guard. You Kept The Peace.

Kilgaius retrieves a stained badge from his pocket, and stares at the bloody silver, his reflection marred by the spatter of blackened red across the metal. The Kaer Maga city watch is an informal force, at best – a loose militia of mostly respected persons meant to keep people and property safe in a city that, broadly speaking, didn’t take well to anyone standing up and making rules.

That was where the phrase came from. You weren’t there strictly to tell people what to do, as a Kaer Maga guardsman. You were there to make sure people didn’t kill each other and money stayed where it was meant to. You Kept The Peace.

Only, it wasn’t peaceful, the way the man ambushed them from around a corner with a shortsword he’d nicked off someone. It wasn’t peaceful when Merriweather went down, gargling a scream through the stab wound in his neck. It wasn’t peaceful when the man lunged after Kilgaius next, screaming furiously.

It wasn’t peaceful when Kilgaius managed to get his shortsword up and through the man’s ribcage in a terrified reflex, either.

Merriweather might be alright – the family knew some clerics, had some money. But nobody even knew the man’s name. A recent arrival in Kaer Maga, as far as anyone knew, and desperate for some starting capital, which he decided to retrieve from what he thought was an unattended merchant’s stall.

That man was dead, and would stay dead.

“Hard to get more peaceful than being dead,” Kilgaius supposes, placing the badge on the table between him and his niece.

…

“You did what you had to,” says his niece, sitting across from him as he sips his tea. “He was going to kill you, wasn’t he?”

“Probably,” mutters Kilgaius. “Bugger was handy with that sword. Got Merriweather in one. Knew to go for the neck where the collar doesn’t quite reach.”

“So—I don’t understand,” Koyalev says. “You made it home safe. You did your job.”

“…but a man is dead, Koya,” the guard mutters. “Over some gold.”

“It was you or him, wasn’t it?”

“It was some gold – we could have let it go, the merchant could have spared it,” Kilgaius says. “If we had just found somewhere else to be for a few minutes, someone would be alive who isn’t anymore. I know I made it home, Koya, and I’m glad for it, but…”

“But what? What else could you have done?”

“Anything that didn’t kill a man, Koya,” Kilgaius says.

Koyalev starts to protest again, then sees her uncle’s expression, and thinks better of it. They sit in silence for a long time, listening to the rain pounding down on the hovel’s roof, and watching the fire crackle as Kilgaius finishes his tea.

“I’m glad you’re safe, at any rate,” Koyalev says.

“Me too.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Uncle Gaius,” Koyalev says, and she stands to come and hug him around his broad shoulders. He marvels at it: last year she couldn’t so much as close her hands around the other side of him. Now she hugs him easily – when did she get so tall?

“You won’t have to find out,” Kilgaius says. “I’m alright, Koya.”

“No you’re not,” she says. “You’ll feel guilty about this for days. I know you, Uncle Gaius. You’re not half as subtle as you think you are.”

“I don’t think I’m subtle.”

“That’s exactly right,” she says, letting him go. “You rest. I’ll handle dinner tonight.”

“Thanks, Koya.”

“And no staring blearily into the fire,” Koyalev says, as she heads back to the larder. “Get a book off the shelf and try to relax, old man.”

“I’m not old! I’m aught but 40 years old, you perishing whelp!”

She answers him with a laugh, and he laughs too, despite himself – deep and loud and cleansing.

…

It isn’t until Kilgaius is most of the way through dinner when he sees that the badge on the table has been replaced with a half-polished one. He has no idea when this occurred – another sign of an increasingly distressing talent for sleight of hand on his niece’s part, he suspects.

“What the—”

Koyalev has, of course, made herself scarce; she found somewhere else to be almost immediately after finishing her food.

“How did she do that? Where did she get…” Kilgaius mutters to himself, staring into his own blurry reflection on the badge. “Has she been polishing my spare badges? The little rogue…”

The lettering curls under the muddled mirror: You Keep The Peace.

“…I suppose she does,” he says, quietly, to no one in particular.

[enddaysengine]

Aasimar (Paths Beyond)

“Are they curious about their immortal heritage or do they fear it?”

When I wrote that line about the suli, my mind immediately went to the aasimar. I don’t think people would question tieflings fearing their heritage, but when we see aasimar, we default to our OCC knowledge of celestials and their alignment. What would it be like if you grew up on legends of avenging angels and relentless archons? That’s why that question resonated with me.

How much weight and expectation must there be on an aasimar’s shoulders, knowing they're descended from celestial beings? What was their childhood like? Did their celestial parent pull an angel unaware and adopt a mortal guise to be with the child? Did they watch out for them from afar? Visit them in their dreams? Did they grow up surrounded by entities of pure goodness in the afterlife? Or did the poor kid grow up like Percy Jackson, hearing tales of a wonderful parent that left them behind?

And then there’s the question of how much you should fear celestials. Yes, they are good, but good does not mean nice or perfect. Many celestials are outright terrifying if you aren’t a hero and that’s before considering how close they are to divinity or how connected they may or may not be to any given apocalypse. That’s a lot for anyone to take in, especially from a young age. While not every single one of an aasimar’s motivations should be tied to their lineage, it is a good place to start and storytellers should think about how aasimar feel about it.

While I’m ostensively going in reverse alphabetical order, it’s nice to jump out of order one last time and return to the beginning ten years later. When we plot hook our way through the Bestiaries, we tend to give Aasimar the short end of the stick, not because we hate them, but because they are the first thing we write. I encourage you to go deeper into these celestial-touched mortals, as I think you will find them to be diverse and fascinating.

Rasa Lightbringer was literally Heaven-born, having been raised in Heaven’s Shore by three generations of aasimar relatives as well as her celestial great-great-great-great grandfather. Rasa hardly speaks to them these days though, as she finds Heaven’s definition of “good” excusatory and patronizing. She still lives along the Heathen Shore, but now she represents the chaotic interests of the Cayden Cailean and the Azatas. She is welcome within the city, but Rasa knows how to get under the other locals’ skins. Many Archons would rather deal with almost anyone else.

Stereotypes of the aasimar abound, but celestial heritage in no way guarantees good behaviour. Ayes Emeraldeye was once a champion of Ketephys in the elves’ war against Treerazer. Blessed by his celestial heritage with a long life even for an elf, Ayes eventually fell from grace upon realizing that everything eventually withers. Now he stalks the River of Souls on the behalf of Charon, although the still smites any minions of Treerazer he encounters.

Raised by the D'ziriak in Thronestep’s Shadow, Aziba is surprisingly well-adjusted to humanoid cultures. The aasimar knows nothing of her family, only that she was found by skull faeries as a babe, who brought her to her insectoid foster family. Now, she is a priestess of the Prismatic Ray: from Shelyn she sees beauty even in the darkness, Sarenrae lets her see the good in all people, and she emulates Desna as she guides people through her home plane. She opposes the machinations of the velstracs who haunt Razmirans umbral reflection and seeks aid in thwarting their latest plots.