#i need both terry's in this game

[whelpimnauthuman]

🔮 🎊📜 pick whichever you want to answer (if you are still doing the ask game, sorry if not)

Ahhh!! Yes, I am still doing this! (Also, I'm answering all of them. Because I want to)

(From my Wolvden Ask game!)

📜 Is there a naming system?

More or less? I use nature names, but if one of the parents is from another Pack that had a naming system I try and integrate that in! (For example, one of my friends that I trade with often uses Romanian names, so wolves I get from them tend to also have Romanian names, and when those wolves have pups I like to give some of them Romanian names as well! Just as a family thing)

🎊 Any interesting customs, celebrations, or ceremonies?

I can think of three:

For reference, the Sheer Cliffs Pack lives in a very mountainous territory. There is some forest, yes, but the majority is large, maze-like mountains, with steep cliffs that can easily kill any wolf who isn't paying attention. The territory is harsh, and food can be scarce in the winter - the Pack has just recently survived a harsh famine. As such, pups are forbidden during winter; it's seen as selfish on the parents' end to do so when food is hard to come by as is. The pups themselves are never punished (it's not their fault their parents broke the rules), but their parents will be fed last, and it's not uncommon for the father to be almost constantly out of camp hunting. If this does affect the pups... Well, the parents knew the risk. (While the pups may be seen as a hardship, those that survive are known for their durability, able to survive the hardest of elements)

The Pack has three main ranks* that a young wolf can train as- Hunter, Scout, and Fighter - and while all ranks receive relatively the same training, each excels in something. Starting at a year old, a wolf is able to finish their training and become a full adult by finishing something called a Trial

Hunters, being the Pack's main food providers, must be able to complete a hunt successfully. This includes not only a solitary hunt, but also a hunt with their future hunting team - Team Hunts obviously take longer, as the Team needs time to get used to each other, and it's seen as a time of great celebration when a Team brings down their first kill together.

Fighters mostly defend the Pack, and their Trial is... Probably the most difficult. Wolves training to be fighters must successfully defend the Pack in a fight, normally from a battle of some sort. However, if times are peaceful... Well, fights aren't always guaranteed, so, if a Fighter-in-training has reached 2 years old, and has yet to have their trial, they will be approached by an older fighter and have to prove their strength against them. This was put into place to help prevent younger wolves from seeking fights to prove themselves - whether they could win them or not.

Scouts are kind of a combination of the other two roles; they hunt and fight, as well as patrol and expand borders. In an attempt to teach the young wolf the territory, the Scout-trainee is sent out into the territory, and must survive alone for the next 24 hours. During this time, they are expected to mark and defend the borders, find new land, or make their way through the maze-like Winding Canyons by themselves. An experienced Scout does follow to keep track of where the trainee goes and what they are doing, and the trainee can decide to do multiple at once, so long as at least one is done and they return to camp safely the next day, they pass.

There are also trials for outsider wolves (mostly consisting of surviving the territory and actually making it to the camp), as well as Healers and Pupsitters.

*These are the "main" ranks. There are more - Second-in-Command, Heir, Healer, etc - these are just the ones that mostly make up the Pack.

The final ritual is perhaps the most somber. When a wolf dies, the Pack must howl for them, as it is believed that, if they don't, Lunen, the Moon deity who leads wolves to the dead, will be unable to find them, and their spirit will wander the mountains forever.

🔮 Are there any higher powers/supernatural beings? Any kind of gods, religion, etc?

I have a lot of old life I need to re-write at some point. The basics are "The Pack mainly believes in two God-Wolves that control the Sun and Moon respectively, as well as their own respective seasons, causing the seasons to be associated with their respective God and vice-versa."

Also the gods change depending on beliefs; if one wolf believes the God of Death (for example) is a terrifying beast to drag you to the afterlife, that's how they'll appear to you, but if you see it as something gentle and welcoming, that's what you'll get. Gods are just. Vague and built on belief, basically. (Kinda "gods fade/die with time" but instead of dying they change? Or like. Zeus vs Thor, both exist, just different)

Uhh, there are more/other gods, those are just. The main two/only two I really feel like. Fully creating rn.

ANYWAYS if you want the long (and somewhat outdated) version, it's under the read more!

The Pack (mainly) believes in two God-Wolves, Solaris and Lunen, who rule the heavens together. Solaris is a large male wolf who takes the form of the sun, Lunen's gender changes and takes the form of the moon. Stories of the two are mostly vague, beyond the fact that they rule their Pack (therefore the World) together, causing night and day, as well as the seasons.

Solaris is known to be a constant: he rises daily, gives the world life, watches over his creations, and rests. Lunen, however, is a bit more adventurous. Depending on one’s beliefs, it could be that they’re curious of the creatures they don’t get to see (living, at least, since Lunen is the one who guides the dead to the afterlife), or it could be they’re just bored. It may also be they’re sneaking off to visit Solaris. Whatever the reason, Lunen is known to “sneak off” from time to time and adventure the world, only to return later.

There are stories of what Lunen looks like, however, they all vary as much as anything else when it comes to the gods: some say a white wolf with black or gray splotches, some say a dark black, almost blue, wolf with white. Stories even differ on them being male or female. However, all report similar splotches along the wolf’s face and tail, and the same similar pale white eyes…

As Lunen guide’s wolves��� spirits to the afterlife, they’re seen as very important to the Sheer Cliff’s Pack. The winds that howl through the cliffs are said to be spirits that Lunen forgot, or, perhaps, Lunen themself passing by, delivering a message… Because of this, it’s believed Lunen loves music, and that, if a wolf dies, the Pack must howl for them, so Lunen can find them, or the wolf’s Spirit will be lost.

The Seasons

Winter Death, Hardship, Strength (From Overcoming Trials)

Spring Rebirth, Energy, Life, The Possibility for New Beginnings

Summer Relaxation, Enjoyment of Time and What One Has, Memory to not “Go Soft” and take things for granted.

Fall: Change, Death for renewal, Sacrifice for the greater good

[keyaho]

Heyyyyy!!! HERE ME OUT 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾. Terry x reader went out for the night and he gets a lil tipsy and by the end of the night he need dat😏😏. So so very nasty cuz he get real nasty after a few drinks🫣🫣

I Get Filthy

.summary. sanai and terry go out with their friends. between shot and music, terry let's loose, or was it all a game?

His breath was hot on the back of her neck and if it had been anyone else she would have cursed them out. Instead she was trying to push off her slightly drunk man and his wandering hands. They were in the middle of the club, bodies pressed together, while he downed another shot she had no idea he went and got. They were out with friends, celebrating a milestone for one of them and their career in medicine. She hadn't expected Terry to let loose, but when the third drink came to their table, and the two shots the flirty ass bartender passed were drunk, liquid courage filled his veins as the animal surfaced.

Currently swaying side to side, Terry had one hand on Sanai's breast, occasionally squeezing in time to the music. His thumb flicked across her nipple through the satin low cut material. 

"Terry!" She hummed, turning her head to look up at him.

His eyes were low, a little bloodshot and his full lips were parted as he breathed and sung to the music. He looked down at her and tried to wink, both eyes closing instead of one. She let out a laugh and patted his leg.

"You're drunk,' she says. "Are you ready to go home?"

Instead, Terry let her go and found his way to the dance floor, hyped up by his equally drunk friends. 

"I need that,' he grunted, ripping at her dress as soon as they stepped into their hotel suite. 

Sanai almost tumbled backwards in her heels before he caught her, hoisted her up over his shoulder, and half stumbled to the bedroom. Sanai landed with a thud and Terry began a slow strip tease as she watched. No music, but he sung the lyrics to I'm In Love With A Stripper. The last song the club had played as she tried pulling him from the dance floor to the exit. His Marine friends, along with her girlfriends had hyped him up, passing him shots because they all knew Terry didn't get this lit.

"Need what?" She said, teasing him as she pulled the straps down of her dress. 

"That pussy,' he slurred, giving her a cheeky grin. 

He dropped a knee to the bed and began a slow crawl to her. His cheeks were flushed, face slightly tinted red from the alcohol running through his veins. The was the last thing they needed to be doing. Terry was an animal any other time in bed, able to flip her up and over at his will. But drunk Terry? A demon. 

A hand grabbing her ankle pulled her from her thoughts. Terry pulled her downwards towards him and planted a long wet kiss to the corner of her mouth. Sanai laughed and adjusted his head, letting his long tongue pushed into her mouth. The kiss was nasty and wet. Their full lips smacking against each other as they took turns stripping each other down. Terry pulled his mouth away and pushed apart Sanai's legs, his dick was hard and heavy between his legs as it slipped free from his briefs.

"I've been wanting to fuck,' he starts, unable to finish as Sanai helps him by guiding his dick to her wet folds. 

She rubs his tip up and down in her wetness, coating his length as she stroked him. She knew his balls were heavy and while he was trying to balance himself she reached beneath him and cupped them, her hand massaging them as precum leaked from his tip into her palm. 

"Shit,' Terry hissed, 'let me, Nai, bay,' he stammered, his mind foggy as he tried to find the words to control the situation and her. 

"Nah, you said you need that. Let me give it to you Daddy,' she purred. "You're so drunk,' she teased.

"No I…not,' he pushed her into the bed and hoisted her legs over his arms, letting them rest in the crook of his elbow. Splayed out, Sanai reached between her legs, playing with her pussy as his hooded hazel eyes watched her. His chest rose and fell rapidly, his stomach muscles clenching at the thought of sinking into her pussy. 

So he did. 

Terry's first thrust was messy and hard. Sanai slapped her hands down on his shoulder, holding on as his hips drove forward. His thrusts were slopping and uncontrolled. The lack of coordination led to Sanai being able to push her thighs forward to drop them from his arms. Distracted, she wrapped them around his waist and flipped them over. Her hands fell on his chest, using him for balance as she began to rock her hips back and forth. 

"Let me be in control,' Sanai says, her voice even as she sinks back down on his dick. 

Terry grabs her hips, holding her for support as she rode him on her tiptoes, swirled her hips, and bounced until a white creamy mess was made between them. Terry was vocal. Panting and moaning about how tight her pussy was. How wet she was. How she wss wetting him up. Sanai reached up and grabbed his throat with one hand, his eyes shot open at her aggressive hold and she felt his dick twitch inside of her. Thick and pulsing, Terry lifted his hips, seeking out her warmth as she rode him. 

"Like a mechanical bull,' he sung, Beyonce's lyrics replacing his moans. "Fuck it,' he giggled, changing the words. This wasn't even sex anymore, this was a show. "Look at that horse, look at that horse, look at that horse,' he said, slapping her thighs each time. 

Sanai squeezed his neck tighter, he choked, and she leaned down to kiss him. 

"I'm riding my steed,' she mumbled. 

"For his seed,' he grunts out just before flipping them back over. 

Terry pushed to the hilt, his hips rotating in circles as his voice deepened. "Aight,' he said, sounding more clear than he had since before they left the house. "Playtime over,' he smacked his lips against hers, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth before biting her lip. 

He pushed his hips forwards, sinking deep into her pussy until squelching sounds fill the room. The scent of their combined sex fills the air around them, choking them both until they were gasping for air in time to his thrust. He laid on top of her, hugging her body close as he rocked his hips, pistoned them between her legs until her thighs were shaking. She could taste the hennessy on his lips, the lemon drop he stole from her lingered in the back of his mouth as her tongue explore his uvula. 

He pulled his head away just enough to whispered in her ear. 

I know my pussy creaming.

Wet that shit up for me. 

That it's baby, take it. Take it. TAKE. IT. 

Sanai was sure the people in the other rooms could hear them. The bed was smacking against the wall as she cried out for Terry to let up, his hips roughly pounding against hers. 

Tears prickled in her eyes and she turned her head into his neck, his sweat dripping onto her body as his hands wandered down to her waist. Brusingly, he held them and pulled upwards, holding her to him and impaling her on his length. 

"Terry,' she stuttered, hands going down to push at his stomach. "Please!" 

He smacked her hands away, his thumb finding her clit as he found his groove. Realization set in as they made eye contact and he winked. Bastard's alcohol tolerance was through the fucking roof. Of course it was, he was a fucking Marine.

"Nah,' he says, eyes never leaving the way his dick slid in and out of her pussy, 'you're gonna take this dick until I nut, then I'm going to fuck it back in until you do." He leaned down, the sudden push forward caused his dick to brush against her cervix, reminding her of how deep he could go if he wanted. 

"Then you're gonna get on your knees and lick all that shit up." 

Sanai's eyes rolled to the back of her head as he grabbed her chin in his hands, forcing her to look at him. 

"I've been drinkin'' he hummed.

This is exactly what Beyonce wrote the song for.

Taglist

@nayaesworld @peachbuttetfly @heauxvibez @avoidthings @mymindisneverhere @eilujion @heytaewrites  @insidefeelingofanadult @captainwithoutmakingitlove  @kindofaintrovert @jimmybutlrr @beenathembo  @virgomess  @theereina @randomhood @ash-ketchumzzz 

@wabi-sabi1090 @iterum-incipi @liquorlaughslove @eilujion @taureanstargirl @mzv11@Disc0fair @prettyfilmz @simplyzeeka @heytaewrites vivaalenaa theogbadbitch

Insertcatchynamerighthere writingsbytee pocketsizedpanther

[urfavblackbimbo]

Dutty-Wine and Games

(This the reader’s facecard but just imagined her being thicker ☺️ and this is what Terry’s wearing for tonight.)

Summary: It’s date night for you and your man Terry and he wanted to surprise you by taking you to the Caribbean Festival that  you were talking about to him couple months ago and Terry getting you a souvenir that tested his man-strength also not knowing that tonight you would get your man high for the first time.

Warnings: Est. relationship, black fem. reader, n-word usage, D/s dynamic, smoking weed (a joint), kissing, oral(fem. rec x2), cursing, spitting, choking, hair pulling, dirty talk, praise kink, ass-spanking, squirting, unprotected p-in-v, doggy-style, the reader’s legs are on his shoulder(idk the position.)

Word-count: 3.5 k 18+ (this is the song that use dutty-wine scene if y’all wanna listen you can🙂‍↕️)

You’ve been dating Terry for the past eight of months and it has been amazing with him since he moved here to Atlanta after winning his case against Shelby Springs Pd and getting a large sum of money for himself and paying back Mr.Liu in ten folds and to have the restaurant to be open for decades. You met Terry on a dating website for other black people to meet, once you saw his profile and them beautiful hazel eyes he had with his bulging arms and large print you knew you had to have him. And today is another date night with him even though you don't know where you’re going.

“So I have a surprise for you, it’s something that we’ve seen a couple of months ago and it’s finally here this weekend.” Terry pulls into an empty lot to find parking for his truck to back in, turning off the ignition and coming around to open the door for you and only grabbing your phone and your lipgloss since you won’t need your purse.

“Good baby you are so fine right now, you lucky there’s going to be people there cause if not-” You put a hand on his gold chain he had laying on his chest to pull him down to kiss you, his soft lips overpowering you, slowly being push up against his truck, putting your hands up against his hips to push away “Okayyy daddy, you are done you still have to tell me what my surprise is?” looking into his eyes and shifting to his lips and back to his eyes “Well for what I’m wearing that should give you a hint?” smiling back at you and stepping back for you while holding your chocolate hand.

Your eyes shift down to his shirt to see he is wearing his curacao shirt that was makin’ look like a full course meal, his shirt fitted around his arms so deliciously with his big ass guns he had on him with his khakis pants that filled his legs out sooo good and his white forces and then you realized and smelling many flavors of jerk chicken, plantains being cooked, and a light smell of weed; your eyes widened “The Carribean Festival, awhh Terry I thought you forgot that I  told you that I always wanted to go.” you poke out your bottom lip in happiness showing a down towards smile to him  “Awhh babygirl don’t cry, you’re gonna mess up your pretty makeup.” He swipes his thumb in the corner of your eye to catch your tear and wipes it on his shirt “All-right I’m starvin’, let’s go inside before I eat something else mhm.” Terry smacks right on your ass making your Jamaican colored dress giggle.

You both made inside with him paying for the both of you, this festival was fucking huge with rollercoasters, kiddy rides, carnival games and tents full of vendors selling their amazing food, Terry let you choose for what you both wanted for dinner, you ended up getting a plate of jerk chicken and rice and a side of fried plantains and Terry got a bowl of beef stew with rice, carrots and potatoes with two drinks, as he paid for the both of you again, both of you sit a table.

“So do you want to ride any of the rollercoasters while we're here babygirl?” Terry holds out both of his hands in front of you, nodding your head at him and resting your hands on top of his large palms “Yeah daddy you know I’m not  a scaredy cat. I’m a big girl.” sticking out your tongue at him, he licks his lips  and smirks “Oh so you a big girl now huh, so you don’t need daddy no more huh?” as he told you that you were zoned out on his veins and hands, lightly scratching your smaller hands ontop of his and looking up at him and looking into his eyes shaking your head no repeatedly “Noooo daddy.” almost coming out as a whine from you, he gives you a chuckle “You know I’m just playin’ with babygirl I know you in love with daddy’s dick.”  he leans over to give you a wet kiss on your lips.

“Order for Terry, Order for Terry.”

He comes back with the food and lays it in front of you, you were in foodie heaven and you were starvin’ like marvin too and both of you dig in eating your delicious food, you look at his bowl and somehow he already knew what you were thinking, he places a couple of pieces of meat and carrots with sauce on your plate you smiled at him and thanked him “Did you want some of my mine too?” he nods his head with still found in his mouth, you grab your fork to pick off the chicken and rice for him and had in the air for him and opens his mouth to you and gracefully took the food, you look at him as he eats the food, you were in a traced that someone could look so sexy while there eating once he swallows it and it goes down you couldn’t help but to look at his thick neck a sheen of sweat that made you wanted to climb over the table and tackle him.

Both of you walked around the festival once you guys were done eating holding each other hands and looking at people, rides, and hearing laughter coming from all around you see a dance floor in the middle of the festival with some dutty-whine music playing throughout the place you lead him to dance floor, slowly moving your hips to the beat of the song Terry comes up behind you to stop where you were at and put his hands on your hips and starts to dutty-wine with you, your hands were on your knees moving your hips in a eight figure then throwing it in a circle and Terry was right there to catch all the wines, you slowly bend over hips while still moving in a circular motion he grabs one your arm to hold your balance while you grind on him, you look over long black french curls braids to see him biting his bottom lip and gripping on your hips, raising back against his chest while twerking on him, he turns you around to face him.

“Fuck babygirl you got me so fuckin hard right now, grinding that ass on me I feel like I was about to nut if you didn’t stop.” you put arms around his neck and peck his lips also to block anyone that would see your daddy’s hard-on “We can stay like until your soft daddy.” he raises his head to look at you and gives you a sloppy wet kiss. A few minutes later Terry was feeling better and both kept walking through the festival in-hand and you stopped in your tracks to walk up to the booth and asked the worker at the tall sledgehammer machine.

 “Excuse me, how many games do I need to win that teddy bear up there?” the buck-tooth boy turns “Four ma’am.”

You turned around to look for Terry and seeing him already behind you not leaving you any room, his gorgeous eyes going straight to your heart and pussy “You want that big ass teddy bear babygirl?” you plead with your eyes and put on your best pouty face and wrap your arms around his neck and gettin’ all close to his face “Please please daddy- pretty please?” giving him a kiss on the lips he wraps his arms around your waist he takes a deep breath “One more-mhm one more- one more babygirl.” you giggle in his arms “All right babygirl here take my phone, I’m gonna get you that teddy bear.” and gives you a small love tap on your ass and pays the worker then grabs the large sledgehammer.

The first bell he got was effortlessly, the second bell as well, by the third bell he had a crowd around him and you were cheering him on, and by the fourth bell he used all of his might and went it ringed you screamed and ran to him then jumped on him wrapping your arms and legs around him, giving him kisses “Thank you - thank you - thank you so much daddy.” and you still kept kissing on his face, he snorts out a giggle out as he put you down on your feet and rest his hand on your hips “Your very welcome babygirl.” “Ma’am here’s your bear.” 

You got tired of carrying the bear and had Terry carry it for you as you both were walking back to the truck, he opens the passenger side first for you to get in then he stuffs the teddy bear in the back seat and gets in on his side and turns on the ignition “Back to your place baby?” you looked at him “Yeah daddy let’s go.” you take your phone to be dj for the both of you and listen to Paramore and some RnB songs on the drive home.

You opened the front door of your apartment to let Terry in so he can put the teddy bear on the couch and his night bag on the carpet you turned on some lights so you can see Terry  and closed the door “You know being at that we were just at the festival today and eating some good food  and dancing I have the perfect way to close out having this full caribbean experience, be right back.” You walked to your room to get your goodie bag and bring it out to the family room to show him. 

“I’ve never smoked weed before, I wasn’t allowed to do it when I was in the marines.”

You slowly put back your joints that you had in your bag “But....If I wanted someone to be my first for this I would want it to be with you.” he turns to look at you “Thank you for trusting me daddy and I’m gonna get you so fuckin’ high you have no fucking idea.” you give him a kiss on the lips and one more for good measure and grab your goodie bag to sit out on your patio and smoke Terry out for the first time. 

You spark the first joint in your mouth inhaling the smoke and exhaling it out, Terry was watching you  the whole time seeing how your body language became relax under his touch and you holding it out in front of him to take a hit   “You just want to do a little hit first, there you daddy.” He coughed abruptly out the smoke, you set down the joint to grab some water for him and came back with a glass of water for him and your pink Stanley for yourself, he took a couple of more hits before letting you hit it again “How are you feeling daddy?”  he takes an even deeper breath and rubs your chocolate thigh “I feel really good babygirl. Thank you for this.” you handed it back to Terry “You’re welcome daddy, hey have you ever done a shotgun before?” Seeing him inhaling the joint and blowing it out his mouth, you couldn’t believe that this nigga has never smoked weed before and with him under the warm sunset making him looking like he was a fucking emperor with him smoking this joint, shakes his no at you “What’s that?” you slowly pull your lips in a smile.

You fill your lungs with smoke as you ashed the joint in your bowl, then grab his face to come closer to your lips and push out the smoke into his mouth, lips lightly touching each other then he moves his head up to blow out the smoke. Your mouth was slightly parted as you stared at your daddy’s adam- apple move up and down and the veins that pop out the side of his neck out, he pushed out the last bit of smoke and looked down at you and smirked  “What?” still looking at him “You so handsome daddy mhm, with yo’ fine ass.” Terry grabs your hand and brings it up to his lips “Let’s go inside babygirl, I don’t want none of these little niggas know what I got, come on.” and opens the sliding glass door for you to go inside.

As you walked in, Terry closes the door and locks it and walks over to the front door and locks that one too then walks over to you to pull you into your bedroom, almost feeling like your were flying Terry turns on the bedroom light and walks over to you to pull you in for a kiss “Mhmm daddy I need you.” he gives you another kiss “What do you need baby, use your words.” he leans down to kiss your neck you moved your head the other side of give him room and moaned, moving your hands up his back to grab on the back of head his soft lips and tongue kissing all your spots making you want to his full lips somewhere else “Oh shit daddy I need to you to eat my pussy please ughh pleaseee.” 

“You want me to eat your pussy babygirl huh? this pretty pussy, you need daddy’s lips on you.” 

Terry took of your dress and threw it across the room and lifted you up to throw you on the bed, taking off your bra and throwing it in the corner of your room he climbs ontop of you he rests his crotch on your clothed pussy slightly moving his hips against you, he takes his hand to hold your cheek and give you a wet sloppy kiss in his mouth. You moaned in his mouth and Terry kissed down your neck to your chest then sucking on each of your breast and kissing your tummy, he sits up to take off his shirt ‘fuckkkkk meeee this nigga has to be the worldest finest man to walk on this earth’ you thought to yourself.

Terry kisses down your chocolate thighs and spreads your legs apart “Lift that ass up babygirl.” Terry takes off your panties and throws it behind him he grabs your thighs closer to his face and kissed both of your inner thighs then the bottom of your cheeks giving you little bites of pleasure “Ah- Ahh! Daddy stop teasin’ meee?” kisses your bottom one more time and hold on to your legs and dive right into your pussy, his tongue swirling all around you and bring it up to your clit slowly sucking on it, you put your hand on his head Terry moves his lips to eat you all the way up and flattens his tongue against you, moving his head against you then he lifts his head to spit at your pussy and growled against you.

“Fuck babygirl god I love this fuckin’ pussy soo much, do you wanna nut babygirl?” “Yess daddyyy.”

Terry kept eating you out with his tongue is flicking over your clit, your thighs were shaking and fighting against Terry’s hold, but it was no use then you grind out your climax on his face he gave you little kisses around your pussy and comes back up for air to face you, his goatee was dripping of you then leans down to kiss and tasting yourself on his lips the sweet and tangy flavor of it. You grab his belt to unbuckle it for him and he stopped you to pull down his khaki pants and took off his forces then got back on the bed, he grab your hips to him and got ontop of you with his fist next to your face “You ready for daddy’s big dick babygirl?” Biting your bottom lip  and nodding your head.

“Yeesss dadddyyyy I want your dick- I need it - I need it so bad daddy please - give me your big daddy dick.” you gave him kisses on his full pink lips.

Terry sat up and grabbed your legs to put them on his shoulders and slowly enters your pussy, moving to a pace to slowly open you up “Fuck your pussy is so fuckin’ tight babygirl, here baby relax your legs for me ughh fuckk mee ohh yeahh that’s it babygirl.” Your legs were spread wide to your chest under the firm hold of daddy’s fingers “Ohh shitt daddy you’re fucking. Mee. Soo. Good ohh ughh fuckkk.” Terry picks up his pace to fucking you deep in your guts, he leans over to give you a wet nasty kiss he slipped his tongue in your mouth and you suck on it then biting his lip “Babygirl I can feel your pussy grippin’ me, fuckk baby are you gonna nut on my dick? You can do it babygirl, nut on daddy’s dick.” Terry hips were fucking you dizzly and your legs started to squirm again “ugh - ugghhh - uggghhh ohh fucckkk” releasing your wet essence on his dick. 

“Turn the fuck around.” 

He grabs your hips to flip you over on your hands and knees then pulls your hips back to face him “Goddam babygirl look at this wet pussy, this is all for daddy huh?” you lay your head on the pillows and relax your back by pushing your hips out. You moaned his name “Yes yes daddy it’s all for you, please eat my pussy daddy.” Terry smacks both of your cheeks, you gasped feeling the lightning strike you moan that turned into a whine “Daadddyyy.” Terry grabs both of your arms to hold them behind your back and he gave you a long wet lick from your clit to ass and back down to your clit then kissing down your pussy his tongue swirling in your pussy  “Fuckkk daddyy ughh ohh fuckkk.” Terry used his hand held onto your hip to hold you in place so you take whatever he gives you. Feeling the heat rise again in your lower tummy, you try to scoot away but Terry leaned forward to give his tongue lashing and slurping your clit as well. 

“Oh my fuckin’ god daddy ughh oh shit, you’re eatin’ my pussy soo good oohh fucckk dadddyyyy I-I’m gonnna cumm.”

Terry just kept eating you up as you wetted his face, he growled into your pussy then gave you a few pecks down your ass and released your arms and made you be on your hands and knees and you groaned out “Daddyyy.” He pulled back your hips to him “Can you give me one more babygirl? Come on you can do it baby, you’re doing soo good for daddy, don’t you wanna make daddy nut?” he leaned over your body then grab your chin to look at him with his lips just barely touching you and push your lips to him and slides in your pussy once more, Terry stretching you out and grabbing a handful of your braids to sit you up as he drilled into you, he wrap his hand around your throat and slightly closing your airways under his grip. 

“Who’s pussy is this? Is this daddy’s pussy babygirl?”

“It-t’s  yourss daddy fuckkk it’s all your pussy ooh fuckk.”

“Open your mouth for daddy.” 

You sticked out your tongue and looked into his eyes Terry lets go some spit on your tongue and swallowing it down, he gives you sloppy kiss as he fucks the shit out you “Ughh daddy I don’t think I can cum ughh ughhhh.” Then feeling three wet fingers rubbing your clit, you horsley moaned loudly out and having your heat rise up in you for the last time “It’s okay babygirl if you wanna nut? I know you do. I can feel you mamas go ahead daddy’s gotchu.” You felt like you were exploding, shaking and shivering on Terry’s dick, him still fucking you through your climax and lets go of your neck so you fall on your pillow. He gives you a few more strokes before he cums deep inside of you.

You rest your head on his chest, listening to his speed-up heart “Thank you for this night daddy I had so much fun tonight I love you sososo much daddy.” he grabs your chin to have you look up at him “ I love you too babygirl. Daddy loves you very much and I'm glad that we went to that festival together babygirl.” Terry pulled the covers up from under the sheets and to see one large wet spot on the bed, you both looked at eachother with wide eyes and with you feeling embarrassed and covered your face then he slowly uncovers your face to hold your face in his hands.

“Heyy there’s no need to be embarrassed about this babygirl, I’m happy and proud that I was able to get to that point okay babygirl.” and gives you light pecks around your face “I’m gonna grab a towel and get a new comforter for us okay.” Once you both got situated in the bed and he had his arm wrapped around you pulling you close to him and relaxed behind you then you as well drifted off to sleep.

Holy fucking shit I can’t belive I just wrote all that 😳but I’m soooo happy that I did, I couldn’t help myself anymore thinking about this black king 🥵💕 and y’all this nigga got me like I want this nigga’s baby frfr 🤰🏿but if you had enjoy this thank you so much and I know in my heart that this nigga know how to dance I just feel it in my spirit, that nigga can and I wanted to talk about his heritage for the plot of the story. Andd High!Terry Bitchhh there was something in that weed that made him bionic cause nigga was hard for 4 rounds straight (like if he was the terminator) and Dom!Terry is always gonna do it for me especially if the nigga’s nasty, but thank you to everyone who read this it means really alot to me.

Love, Nazzy 💕

[dc418writes]

•Lemons & Limes•

✨Pairing✨: Terrence Richmondxblack!reader

Summary🪄: Safe to say, maybe you shouldn’t be left alone…and you should probably listen to your husband

🚨: mention of a deceased relative, pretty much all fluff💕

A/N🎤: hi☺️! So this is my submission for Terry’s Birthday Bash created by @megamindsecretlair ! I think it’s such a great and sweet idea that’ll definitely add some much needed fun to the community🌸! Feel free to participate if you’d like, and don’t forget to support the other submissions!

*DISCLAIMER!: I DO NOT CLAIM OWNERSHIP of pictures used as they were all found via Pinterest*

You just had to mess with that electrical panel.

All you had to do was wait until Terry came home so he could try to figure out what happened, - like he told you to do - but no. That overly confident, hyper-independent part of you was so convinced you could fix it after recalling an episode of some home renovation show that you half watched as you occasionally dozed off.

“Seems easy enough, I just flip the switch off and on, and things should work again,” you said to yourself as you opened the mounted panel. Sure enough, all the lights in the house switched off after pushing the large black switch to the left. When you pushed it to the right though, you were still surrounded by darkness. You tried again, and again, yet still nothing prompting your subdued panic to boil over.

Now here you sat in your husband’s Ford truck, nervously twirling your thumbs around themselves as you waited for him to get you both checked in at a nearby hotel. And of all days, on his birthday.

The chill of the night air briefly touching your skin has goosebumps raising along your arms as Terry slides into the drivers seat with a sigh.

“Everything okay?”

“They’re booked,” he answers pulling the seatbelt across his body until it locks with a click. “And so is every other hotel in town.” Gotta love college basketball playoff season.

“Oh…well one night without lights-,”

“We don’t know how long it’s gonna take to fix,” he counters carefully pulling out onto the busy road. “Might even have to re-wire everything, which could mean more than a night without lights.”

Well if you didn’t feel terrible before..

“It’s a motel about 30 minutes out. We can stay there tonight and figure out the rest tomorrow.”

“Okay,” you shyly mumble beginning to nervously twirl your thumbs again. Just as to the hotel, Terry doesn’t say a word during the ride to your next destination and you don’t either. The only sound coming from the truck’s rumble and the radio station playing a mix of old and new R&B.

You’re sure he’s just quiet because he’s trying to think of what to do next; how to handle your house’s faulty wiring and its impending cost. His silence only makes your guilt more suffocating though, convinced that it might be you and your hardheaded tendencies that’s finally snapped his last nerve.

“What do you wanna eat?,” he finally asks turning down the busy strip filled with bright, neon signs for clubs, bars, and restaurants. Admittedly most weren’t outwardly pleasing, but you could still find a good meal and an equally good time.

You shrug. “M’not really hungry.”

“…what all did you eat today?,” he asks taking turns looking at you and the cars ahead.

“Um…breakfast with you earlier…and some crackers...”

After turning into the drive thru for Wingz & Thingz, you can feel Terry’s sea-green eyes practically attached to the side of your face. That famous side eye already saying, “Girl please, we both know you starving so why you playin games?,” before he could.

“What?,” you ask daring to meet his eyes pretending like you didn’t know that he knew something was up. He simply kisses his teeth before answering the employee through the staticky speaker.

“Can I get a 10 piece hot honey, extra wet, with fries, and a 15 piece lemon pepper please?”

“I said-,”

“I heard you,” he retorts with a hint of a smirk to his full lips that has you bashfully biting at the corner of yours.

“Thank you.”

“Mhmm.”

-

The rusted, metal door of your room opens with a heavy thud as it knocks against the adjoining wall making it rattle. Ever the protector, Terry has you stand outside - but still close by - while he checks to make sure nothing is off. Both of your respective duffles slung over his broad shoulders as if they weighed nothing.

“It’s good,” he calls signaling it’s okay for you to enter. However once you cross the doorway, you can’t fully say you agree on ‘good’. The multicolored, geometric comforter was something straight out of the 70s, which matched the orangish-red carpet and overall aesthetic of the outdated room. Gingerly sitting in the light brown, swivel chair next to the window, you feel that pang of guilt again taking in your slightly depressing surroundings, and how all of this is ultimately your fault.

“I know it’s not the best, but-,”

“Are you mad at me?,” you finally ask just wanting everything out in the open rather than your mind constantly go back and forth.

“Why would I be mad?,” he asks with a quirked brow as he sets your bags to the side.

“Because I didn’t listen and messed up everything. Because we’re here in this room with questionable stains on the carpet, and I’m sure equally strange ones on the sheets, on your birthday when we should home and you stretched out in your favorite chair.” You could hear the brown leather crackle and pop now as he shifted to get more comfortable before eventually reaching out for you as you passed to join him. Hell, it was your favorite chair too.

“First off, I haven’t been excited about my birthday since I was…what..16? So I wasn’t expecting anything huge,” he replies stepping closer and closer until he can squat in front of you placing his large hands on your knees. “And I’m not mad at you. That’s what’s been bothering you?”

“Well, you barely talked in the car which is different than how you were this morning. Clearly it’s something and I figured it was me being hardheaded.”

“Respectfully baby, I knew you were hardheaded before we got married and know it’s not gonna change no time soon. I made my bed, I know how to lie in it.” Your feigned shock and playful smack to Terry’s shoulder has all his 32 showing in that adorable laugh of his.

“Hey, at least I admit it!” Unlike your own mother who swore she didn’t know where you got it from.

“You right.” Terry’s laughs settle into a low sigh as he lets his thumbs run along the insides of your knees. “Really though, I’m more frustrated and annoyed than mad. Again, not at you. My damn half-brained cousin should’ve been come to look at the wires, but it was always something. Guess I’m no better though still calling when I know he’s not gonna show.

“So if anything, all this is my fault. I know you were just trying to help.”

“It’s not your fault either,” you try to soothe resting your hands on either side of his neck. Your manicured nails lightly scratching his nape has a low hum of appreciation rumbling his chest. “Really, it’s whoever stayed there last because they knew and didn’t say nothing. I hope they always stump their pinky toe.”

“Damn, so violent.” You simply shrug making your husband deeply chuckle with a shake of his head. “Alright food first or shower?”

“Food! I’m starving and honestly scared of that bathroom...”

“Oh now you starvin?,” Terry smirks gently pulling you out of the chair. “Could’ve sworn-,”

“Yes I know, I know it’s in the past now,” you playfully roll your eyes shooing him towards your waiting containers. “Food please?”

With his back turned, you hope he doesn’t notice you sneakily digging into your bag to retrieve his gift wrapped neatly in shiny, silver paper. You should’ve known better though seeing that your husband was an ex marine trained to be hyperaware of his environment.

“I know that’s not what I think it is,” Terry announces as soon as you stand up again. His thick arms crossed in front of his chest when he turns around. “You didn’t have-,”

“I heard you,” you smirk stepping closer with his gift in hand. “It’s still your birthday though, and if you think I’m not getting you anything at all, you clearly don’t know me.”

You don’t miss the small smile that curls his lips when he takes the rectangular box making you giddily smile yourself. Once he’s ripped through the paper, his chest tightens at the familiar, gold, Casio watch waiting in its clear case. The underside purposely facing upward so Terry could see the inscription of his initials and a set of coordinates.

“It’s where your uncle was stationed. I talked with your grandma and she helped me find it.”

Terry adored his uncle Louie, practically idolizing him since he was a child. Wherever Louie went, little Terry wanted to go eagerly standing by his room door with shoes on the wrong foot waiting for him to walk out. Some of Terry’s best memories were riding around in the passenger seat of his black on black mustang - much to his grandmother’s displeasure - with the windows down as they sped down the highway going any and everywhere. Louie was ultimately the reason he signed up for the military, still wanting to be like his infamous uncle even in his young adult years.

Terry still had a hard time forgiving himself for missing the funeral. Was honestly still pissed at his higher ups for not approving his request.

“He’d understand baby. He knows how them people can be,” his grandmother tried to comfort over the phone. “He knows how much you love him.”

“She wasn’t quite sure if it was the same one-,”

“It’s perfect.” As many times as he got in trouble for putting it on, he’d be able to pick it out from any lineup. “Thank you.”

Free hand on your hip, he pulls your body closer so his lips can meet yours immediately taking the day’s earlier stresses away.

“Happy Birthday. It’s not exactly how I envisioned giving it to you, but-,”

“I don’t care about presentation and all that. I’m breathing. I’m with you. I promise that’s all I need baby.”

+ so I feel like this didn’t come out the way I wanted, but then again maybe it’s just me 🤷🏽‍♀️ lol. Either way I hope you enjoyed🌸 and Happy Birthday to my imaginary husband and baby fahtha Mr. Terry Richmond🥰✨!!

[kumkaniudaku]

Caught

Summary: When their guest is away, Terry and Patrice will play.

Pairing: Terry Richmond x Black!OC

Word Count: 3,067

Warnings: Smut (18+ content)

Recommended Reading: Spoiled

Author's Note: Spoiled, Back Up, and Caught all happen on the same linear timeline. Consider them present day events. Hopefully that helps pull things together because you'll need the context later. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

"Mommy, the recipe for the hand pies is so good. Thank you for finding it for me." 

"Oh, of course, baby. One day, I gotta get you to help me put all your Nana's recipes in a book or something. I'm tired of digging through all these scraps of paper." 

"I didn't wanna say anything, but that's insane. I can barely read her handwriting." 

Rosalyn scoffed on the other end of the phone line. "You and me both. I have to call Sybil every time or end up making up what I think goes there. I cook. I don't decipher chicken scratch."

Patrice laughed along with her mother as she passed a piping hot meatball over her shoulder to satisfy her taste tester for the night. He hummed his approval of her gift, providing a thumbs up as his rating before returning his hand to her waist and swaying them in time with the slow rhythm of Christmas music playing in the background. 

Christmas Eve brought preparation for the big day on the other side of a wake-up and a smaller get-together to celebrate Imani's and Jesus's birthdays in one evening. Patrice had offered to continue the tradition at her house to accommodate her cousin's request for loud music, liquor, and good, grown folks' fun. In a few short minutes, she and Terry would have a house full of adults gorging themselves on party food and fighting fits of giggles during a drunk game of Taboo. For now, she'd enjoy the calm before the storm with her shadow attached at the hip.

"The cinnamon smell for the apple version was way too strong, though. I almost skipped those altogether." 

Rosalyn responded with a sound of cautious curiosity. "Really? You usually love the smell of cinnamon." 

"Right," Patrice exclaimed. "Maybe I had a bad batch or something. It doesn't taste bad, but it smelled awful."

"Hm." Rosalyn filed the information in her head for a later moment of privacy, preferring not to stress her daughter with the questions buzzing around in the mind of a mother who knew her child better than anyone in the world. Instead, she continued. "Terry, did you like the hand pies?"

"You don't know if Terry is even in here, mama. He could be anywhere in the house," Patrice answered, her face screwed in confusion.

"Child, don't insult me. If you're in the kitchen, Terry is in the kitchen."

She wasn't wrong. A few too many glasses of Patrice's special holiday cocktail mixed with his ever-present desire to feel his wife at all times had Terry sticking to her like glue. Even after she'd given in to each of his kisses and allowed him to taste her the moment Imani stepped out to run a few errands, she still couldn't shake him. Whiskey was in control. Terry was only along for the ride.

He chuckled into the crook of Patrice's neck before confirming his presence. "Yes, ma'am, I loved the pies. Treece made a few on the side for me so I wouldn't have to share." 

"She still got you spoiled, I see."

"Nah, not too bad. You know she gets sweet once a week. I caught her on a good day." 

"Oh, hush."

Patrice's attempt to get out of Terry's grasp came up empty, prompting him to hold her tighter and press wet kisses onto the back of her neck. She was sadly mistaken if she thought she could get away from him that easy while Uncle Nearest was pumping through his veins. 

"Well, let me let you two go," Rosalyn started with a small laugh. "Tell me how the chicken salad turns out. I might throw some together as a little snack for your daddy tomorrow. You know how he gets when he's ready to eat." 

"Mhmm. Just like somebody else I know."

Terry patiently waited for Patrice to wrap up her conversation and safely end the call before resuming his handsy approach to PDA. His hands slid up and down the fabric of her cotton pajama pants, the pair matching his at her request. Full lips attached to her neck, creating a light suction with every open-mouthed kiss. 

His wife rolled her eyes as she loaded a pita chip with dip for his culinary opinion. "You are insatiable, TJ. Taste this." 

He obliged, opening wide as she slid food into his mouth and waited for a response. Instead of a verbal assessment of her work, he kissed her cheek twice to signal his approval, then returned to his shameless groping.

"How long before Imani gets back?" 

"I don't know. Fifteen minutes or so. She only went to grab some more cups and water." 

Terry's eyes flickered to the digital clock on the stove before sliding his hands up Patrice's torso and leaving a trail of kisses on her shoulder. "Think you got a few minutes to get back to what we started?" 

"Haven't you had enough of me yet? We've been going at it every day since New Orleans."

"What you think?"

Having enough of her touch, the feeling of her body against his, or her attention was a foreign concept for Terry. If he could quit his job and be totally devoted to her pleasure, he would do so without a second thought. Fortunately for him, though, extended absences from the slough of office life due to the holidays provided the closest opportunity to spend the whole day in it. 

Patrice smiled to herself as Terry slowly removed the serving spoon from her hand, bringing her delicate palm up to the back of his head. Coarse hair grown into a short tuft of curls and shaped by his barber tickled her fingertips as she closed her eyes, officially caught up in how Terry caressed her with the care afforded to precious works of art. 

A low purr slipped past his lips as his hands slid beneath the hem of her camisole to rub her stomach, filling her ears and mind with filthy sounds and images from earlier in the hour. Had he had enough of her? She wasn't sure she'd had enough of him. 

His fingertips inched higher, further intoxicating Patrice until a full squeeze on both breasts at the same time made her hiss and wince in pain. 

"Easy, baby," she complained as she gently pressed down on his arms to direct him away from the sensitive area. "They're super tender right now. I'm not sure why." 

Lust was quickly replaced by concern as Terry dropped his hands and turned Patrice to face him. "You okay?" 

"I'm fine, Pooh. It's probably the tattoo healing. 

"Yeah, but it shouldn't be making the entire area hurt. Especially not on both sides. Let me look."

"Terry, you never just look."

His attempt to slide the thin straps of her tank top down her arms was quickly cut short as Patrice brushed off his contact to save herself from what she assumed would come next. Her aching was a serious matter. Terry getting a look at her bare tits was not nearly as high on the list. 

Terry softened his eyes in unmistakable sincerity. "I'm serious, Treece. I know what it should look like. Come here."

Patrice didn't protest as Terry led her to the kitchen table. She stood perfectly still until Terry was comfortable in one of the chairs and then placed her between his legs. 

He gingerly pushed her tanktop straps down her arms before bunching the thin fabric at her waist to free her breasts, watching for any sign of discomfort.

"You don't think you're like…sick, do you?" 

"I think it's just tenderness," she quickly retorted, wanting to push the thought of more grave explanations for her discomfort far from her mind.

"Okay, okay. I'm only asking." 

Her brows furrowed as he lifted the right side to get a look at the moment from a charged few days in his family's old stomping grounds. 

A day alone and nothing to do but explore had them wandering into the same shady tattoo parlor where Terry got his first piece for matching ink. Terry opted to tat their wedding date on his ribs after having to be talked down from plastering her name on his neck. Patrice, however, was set on making her first experience one to remember. 

Slanted script crafted from his handwriting spelled Terry's full first name, curving just under the crease of her boob and the spot that he liked to grip in the depths of passion or simply at his leisure. Terry ran his thumb along each letter to check for abrasions or abnormalities. 

He looked up at Patrice to gauge her reaction. "That hurt?" 

"Not really. It's more here," she added, gesturing toward her areola. "Anything rubbing against it is so uncomfortable. I can barely wear a bra." 

"I noticed. They've honestly been looking a little bigger. Do they feel heavy to you?" 

"Not heavy. Mostly…full? They look great, though. I'm not complaining about that part." 

She joked, the attempt sounding silly once it received no reaction past Terry blinking as he used the pad of his thumb to ghost contact over her pebbled nipple to test her pain level. It was challenging to stay present, with a third of her upper half unnecessarily exposed in their kitchen for no real reason. The entire ordeal felt like a farce. Terrence wasn't a doctor, and him holding her titties in his hands like fleshy snowglobes was as much an actual check-up as WWE was real wrestling. 

When she giggled like a teenager learning about sex for the first time, Terry looked up at her with a quizzical expression, and his left eyebrow lifted high. "What's so funny?" 

"You, Doctor Richmond," she laughed. "How can you tell they're bigger? I couldn't even tell until the other day." 

"I spend a lot of time with my girls. I better notice when they change. Been looking at them since I was sixteen." Terry answered, a boyish grin making his cheekbones nearly touch the corner of his eyes. 

"I knew you used to look!" She exclaimed, finally feeling vindicated in her suspicions from childhood. 

"Looking was the least of what I was doing." He shrugged as he gently pushed both breasts together for his own viewing pleasure. He kissed the small crease they made two times over, then looked up at Patrice through long lashes. "Unfortunately, ma'am, I couldn't diagnose you, but I think I have some treatment available if you're interested." 

Patrice bit back a smile to play along. "Oh yeah? How much is this gonna cost? It's the holidays, and I ain't got it." 

"I offer payment plans that we can discuss in that room back there later tonight." 

"I like the sound of that," she answered, previous problems vanishing into thin air as he roped her back into his web of liquor-charged desire. 

"I knew you would," he winked. "Don't move."

Tingles rippled across Patrice's skin while she listened for any indication of Terry's secretive treatment plan. The soft crack and subsequent rush of cool from the freezer created goosebumps on her bare chest, making her nipples jut out proud from the sensation. Next came the cupboard opening and shutting in two seconds time. From the direction, she could tell he was grabbing a glass from over the sink. 

Ice cubes clinked against the cup like little masters of whispers attempting to give Patrice the scoop on what to expect. Terry quietly shut the freezer and took heavy steps back to his seat, smiling at how Patrice truly hadn't moved a muscle in his few minutes away. 

He placed the glass on the table behind him before tugging her hand to guide her closer. "Cold hot therapy. I sprained my knee once, and this got me back up and running in no time. Ice for the cold…" Terry's voice trailed as he plucked a piece of ice from his glass and pressed it to her nipple. He watched her jaw drop with a sharp inhale, intently focused on the way her eyelids fluttered closed at the sudden shock of frozen water. When a single drop began to make a trail down the swell of her breast, he pulled the ice away and brought his mouth closer. "And I'll take care of the hot."

"Oh…my God." 

Whispers of unexpected pleasure sent Terry into a far-off place where he was only concerned with running a flat tongue across supple skin. Patrice rushed to steady herself by bringing her hands to the back of his head, cradling him while he went to work. 

Ice cold. Soothing warmth. Ice cold. Soothing warmth and a light suckle. Again. And again. 

He eyed her like a lion watches prey, taking notes of every little sound and twitch to know that he was fulfilling his job. 

"Good job, baby," Patrice whispered, her head tossed back and praises spoken to the ceiling. "Good fuckin' job."

Terry ran his hands up the back of her thighs to roughly grip her ass. He groaned at the affirmation before pulling away to retrieve more ice. He held a small cube between his teeth to multitask, running it across her left nipple and areola until it had melted enough to fit both in his mouth. 

Was it fixing her tenderness issue? Not really. But Patrice would be damned if his subtle slurping and moaning with her backside firmly in his clutches wasn't sufficiently taking her mind off things. So far off, she'd lost all concept of time and space. 

While Terry pulled Patrice into his lap for a more intensive inspection, Imani entered the house high off the exhilarating freedom that can only come for night drives with a carefully curated playlist blasting from the speakers. Being stateside for the first time in a year was the perfect opportunity to experience one of life's simple pleasures. 

Grocery bags rustled and knocked against the wall as she hummed along to the fragmented lyrics from a song on her Spotify playlist still coursing through her brain. A short pause in her personal concert to lock the door left space to hear a string of curious noises. Muffled half-sentences and a sort of trembling sigh made her quirk an eyebrow. She thought to herself that Terry and Patrice left the television on far too often for a pair of people who claimed to not spend much time in front of the tube, but quickly found that they'd taken to making a scene the old-fashioned way. 

She stood in the open space, a perfectly shaped eyebrow pushed high on her face and an impressed smirk tugging at the right corner of her lip while she watched her baby cousin makeout with Imani's newest family member with a ferocity she didn't know Patrice had in her. 

Patrice held Terry steady by his jaw, slightly hovering over him while she had her way leading a sloppy kiss. When she moved to push his head back toward her chest with a string of words filthy enough to make a pornstar blush, Imani cleared her throat to finally announce her presence.

"Oh shit," Patrice yelped, rushing to tap Terry's back and end his check-up. 

His head popped up to survey the room, then slowly found a home on top of Patrice's once she pressed close enough against his chest to cover her naked breasts. The vibrations from his concealed chortling made Patrice pinch him in frustration. Nothing was funny, at least not to her. 

Imani held her hands up in faux surrender. "No, please. Don't stop on account of me," she laughed. "Y'all were just getting started." 

"We are so sorry, Moanie. This isn't what it looks like. Well, this part is exactly what it looks like, but I promise it didn't start like this. Terry was looking at my boobs to check on my tattoo and -" 

"Girl, you do not have to explain anything to me. This is your house! Honestly, if I had those big ol' mommy titties, I'd want them in somebody's face too. And you got them for free! The girls gotta go under the knife or get pregnant for those. How does it feel to be God's favorite? Terry, can you help me get the water out of the car when you finish?"

Terry looked down at his visibly distressed wife and then back at Imani to save face for the both of them. "Yeah, I got you. Gimme a minute." 

Moanie didn't notice how she'd launched her cousin into an internal spiral as she pranced off to busy herself with getting ready in her room for the week, but Terry did. He carefully sat Patrice up and helped redress her, careful to ease into conversation. 

"You alright?" 

"I had my cycle this month," Patrice rushed out, her gaze far off as Terry lifted her arm to put it back in her camisole strap. "It can't be that. I had my cycle." When her focus returned, her eyes snapped to Terry's for confirmation. "Right? I did, right?"

He nodded, unsure of how to proceed to quell her fear. "You did, baby. But, maybe…"

Sure, it was lighter than usual, but she'd had a cycle. Her body functioned like it did every month, on time and without pomp and circumstance. There was no cause for concern. 

But…maybe. 

Patrice looked down at her belly then back up at Terry, searching for answers in his sympathetic expression. He leaned forward and held her head with both hands to give her a kiss she couldn't return before he spoke. 

"Don't drink tonight. Just in case. We'll figure it out in the morning. Okay?"

"Okay." She whispered back without truly processing the gravity of his instruction. 

Terry slowly lifted Patrice from his lap to fulfill Imani's request for assistance, leaving her to stand perfectly still in the kitchen. She counted backward in her head, retracing her steps and important dates until a headache sent her to take a seat. 

It was just tenderness. It'd go away by morning, and all of this would be a silly story to tell whenever they got together in the spring for their European honeymoon. She'd drink an entire bottle of wine over heaps of pasta, turning the whole situation into a fond memory before raising her hand to call the server for another round. All water under the bridge, right?

But…maybe.

------

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[mysecertdiaryofableedingheart]

A Lil Office Romance

Terry Richmond X OC (Troi)

No warnings: Light heart fluff. AU Terry

This was the year, Troi was going to be unafraid, bold, Free to be herself not just in the comfort of her head or bedroom.

The first step was not to go straight home after work and finally take her Manager Celeste up on after-work dinner. Celeste extended the offer for two weeks since Troi being promoted to her junior accountant

"That's a yes? Have I woken up in an alternate universe?" Troi playfully rolled her eyes at Celeste's teasing. Celeste is someone she could consider a friend if Troi's shyness would allow their relationship to blossom outside of the four walls of their shared office. And Troi knew that to get a friend, you have to be a friend—at least that's what her mom keeps telling her.

" I thought we could go to starland yard around 4pm. The Puerto Rican Truck you mentioned is going to be there" initiative people like that, Troi remember the recommendation from her Mom. "You remembered! Troi you are the sweetest! How about we ride together I can come pick you up around 3! You live way closer to Starland yard than me" Celeste excitedly reached over pulling Troi into a side hug

Troi set out a sigh of relief. Step 1 complete.

♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️♣️♥️

Troi could help but be nervous, the worst scenario always popped into her mind. Like Muscle memory. What if Celeste thought her outfit was ugly, or her card declined in front of a bunch of people.

Troi took a deep breath. " You're overthinking it. Celeste wants to be your friend, your outfit is cute, and you have more than enough money." She smoothed down the simple tank top while repeating her affirming statements in the bathroom mirror.

The vibration of her phone on the counter startled Troi. Celeste's message lit up the screen

Hey Boo! I'm outside in the black Camry

Troi took one more deep breath and coated her lips once more in gloss attempting to give her a little more confidence.

Hey I'll be right out!

Checking her crossbody bag, once more to ensure all the essentials were there, phone keys, wallet. After locking her front door. She spotted Celeste bopping along to a Megan the stallion verse.

Troi could help but smile, Celeste had an infectious energy that rubbed effortlessly. It made Troi comfortable

"You look so cute Troi! I ain't know you was hiding all of that in those work clothes girl!"The heat on Troi's face had nothing to do with the June heat in Savannah. She had always been self-conscious about her body. In shorts and a tank top, she felt exposed at the mention.

"You don't think it's too much? I can go and change. I probably need something over my arms"

"Troi hush! It's 7pm Friday and 95 degrees" Celeste quoted Glorilla "Well maybe not 7pm but the 95 is true. We're gonna work out this confidence cause you are too cute to be acting like you ain't"

Troi hand was still on the door handle when Celeste locked it and pulled off effectively shutting down Troi's inner turmoils

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Starland Yard was fairly busy, the outdoor space made from old shipping containers with a bar, rotating food trucks, live music, and even games like Jenga.

Celeste ordered both of their drinks, Troi was way too inexperienced to even know where to start, the most experience she had with alcohol was taking a sip of her mom's wine at home and her only ever drink at a bar that her Dad ordered for her.

"Food ordered , drinks in hand so now I can ask what made you finally come out with me girl. I ain't mad just happily surprised " Celeste bumped shoulders with Troi. Celeste's boldness was something that She admired.

Troi gulped down the drink "well....umm So I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. And the first was to make a friend here, and you're always so nice to me I thought you'd be the perfect one"

Celeste barely contained her excited grabbing Troi into full on hug. " Girl you've been my work besties scratch that off your list! You gotta tell me what else is on your list, as your official work and outside work friend it's now my job to help you complete it"

Troi couldn't contain her smile, and opening her notes she pasted it over to Celeste

* Make a friend * Go on vacation * Stand up for myself * Be confident * Go on a date * Have first kiss

Troi notices Celeste's eyes widen at the last two.

"Troi you've never been kissed? Not even a little peck in high school"

Troi couldn't help but hold her cheeks in embarrassment " Me being shy isn't something new, I was always the nerdy girl and guys don't notice me"

"Well I can tell you that's a lie right now, you've been getting eye-fucked from the moment we walked in her. Niggas love you!"

Troi sucked her teeth "be so for real. Celeste"

" I'm serious, at work for example Terry always coming over and taking your reports to be sent way for you. And hand delivering your mail! "

" he's just nice! They put my mail cubby supper high and he saw I couldn't reach it, so he just grabs my mail when he gets his!"

"I'm gone touch your hand when I say this. Please if that man was so nice he'd take mine, he politely gave me the extension to the courier. And he doesn't even work in our department! He comes down to see you!"

Troi twisted her hands together, She loved it when Terry came by her desk, he'd always compliment her blue light glasses, and gave her a blinding smile over plump lips that made her belly clinch up.

Celeste eyes narrowed "You like him! I knew it! All those lingering looks when he's walking to the elevator. That is a big hunk of man. And y'all into each other!" Celeste reached over to grab Troi's phone. She flipped it over to show off the edit to Troi's list

* Go on a date with Terry Richmond

Troi's heart almost beat out of her chest, but the smile on her face almost made her cheeks hurt.

Troi felt different, maybe it was the new dress for work the Celeste picked out for her it's was fitted showing off Troi curvy figure, hitting just above the knee to show off her "gams" as Nana Troi grandmother would have said.

They decided to pair it with a low pair of wedge sandals to show off the pedicure Celeste and Troi indulged on their impromptu girls weekend.

She pulled and stretched the dress eyeing her usual black slacks and dress shirt combo. Troi could hear Celeste playful threats play back in her mind "if I catch you in them slack sis I'm sending you home!" After spending the whole weekend with her Troi knew she wasn't bluffing. At least a cardigan, Troi could argue the office is always blowing the AC.

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Troi loved where her office building was located right off Bay Street, where you could see the Savannah river with cargo boats headed to the bustling ports and a part of South Carolina across the water. She got lost in the view quite frequently.

"I knew it would look good on you, Terry might actually loss her marbles when he see you in that dress! " Celeste said in a low tone. The whole office didn't need to know about Troi's newly realized crush.

"I don't know, it's probably going to just prove he is being nice."

Celeste rolled her eyes "well we're gonna see now, cause here he comes"

Terry was an impressive man,6'3 full of muscle, sienna brown complexion, a wonderfully maintained goatee that looked just as soft as the lower caser hair cut that was accentuated by waves. And his eyes where a whole different ball game. 

"Mail buddy, looks like you were popular this weekend" as he waves a stack of papers in his hand leaning on the door frame of Celeste and Troi's shared office his eye honing in on Troi "oh hey Celeste" Terry quickly added in.

Troi slowly turned in her office chair and stood to retrieve the mail in his outstretched hand. Upon reaching Terry she tilted her head up to make I contact with him even with her wedges Terry still towered over her.

As she approached Terry’s eyes raked over from from soft pink polish on her toes, then the exposed shining brown calves, the olive green of the dress that complimented her skin tone and the gold necklace she always wore. "You look be- very nice today Troi" Terry’s voice dropped an octave. Troi couldn't help but shift from side to side a mixture of embarrassment and enjoyment from him noticing the dress she quite honestly wore for him. "Not that you don't every day.greens my favorite color and it looks great on you."

"Thank you Terry...I really like green on you too" Troi eyes widened at the words that managed to slip out of her mouth.

Terry returning smile may have mimicked the Chesire Cat. Troi couldn't help but return it forgetting her embarrassment a moment ago .

Celeste cleared her throat breaking up the two's moment before it became too awkward. "Oh Troi I almost forgot I'm gonna have to work through lunch so I can't join you today in the square. I know you didn't want to eat alone"

Troi brown furrowed, they hadn't made any lunch plans for yet.

Terry was quick to speak, " I could be your company if you want I could use a break from eating in the engineer lounge. That burnt popcorn smell is unbearable"

"Sounds good, she'll meet you down stairs at 12pm" Celeste chimed back

Troi couldn't believe what was happening did Celeste just set her up? She couldn't complete her thought before getting a whiff of Versace Eros and the smell she could only assign as pure Terry.

"Is that okay Troi, feel free to say no I can keep the burnt popcorn upstairs company" Terry dipped his head down to meet her eyes.

Troi's eyes connected with his seeing the sparkle with amusement at her shyness "yes, I'll see you downstairs at 12pm" in almost a whisper.

Terry slowly backed out of the small office in almost a skip. "Alright Mail Buddy now we're turning into lunch buddies"

Once Terry was out of view, Troi plopped exhaustedly into her chair

"Pssss , yeah that man is into you. Your ole blind ass" Celeste spoke up looking over at Troi "and you oblivious ass is just as smitten"

Troi couldn't help but swat at Celeste's smirking face with the her reports she just acquired

"And just so you know this doesn't count as your date with, but the way he was looking like he wanted to throw you over his shoulder and have his way with you. Your bottom two things are going to be crossed off sooner rather than later"

[songbirdseung]

mr. green flag / park jongseong

synopsis: after dating the wrong guys, you wanted to give up love and relationships. although, a man named park jongseong changed things for you.

pairing: nonidol!jay x nonidol!yn

warnings: cheating, red flag boyfriends, love triangles, cuss words

The bartender was most likely your best friend now since you basically came to the bar every week or two. Crying over a guy who definitely not worth your tears and time. But the bartender was very understanding of your situation and tried his very best to provide comfort and reassurance.

You found out his name was Terry. He's been working at the bar as his second job just to make extra money. Such a nice genuine guy, someone you wish you could date but for some reason, the universe hated your guts, or you just did so horrible in your past life that you need to be punished in this life.

"Okay, last one for tonight. You still got to drive yourself home" he slides your drink towards you with a serious but caring look on his face. "When are you going to break up with that douchebag?" all the arrows pointed to breaking up with him, but since you were so blinded, you couldn't just let him go. As stupid as it was, you loved him despite all the foolish and childish things he has done to you.

"I love you; I do. But I hate seeing you walk through the door with a frown on your face and tears running down your face. It's time you be single or date a good guy" terry doesn't know how many times he had already said these things to you, but he has to remind you every time.

On the drive home, you were dreading it. What if you open the door to your shared apartment with your boyfriend and see him banging another girl? why did you have to be so stupid and such a coward, why couldn't you just say the words "let's break up" or "I'm done" then follow up with a "get out of my apartment" then be over with it.

Luckily for you, the universe wanted to be a little bit kinder to you, you opened the door to your apartment and no, your boyfriend wasn't hooking up with someone. But you knew, he probably already did earlier in the day. As you make your way into the kitchen to drink some medicine and water, you receive a text from terry.

terry: don't forget what I said earlier, you can't say you forgot because we both know you're not drunk.

You sigh and head to your bedroom where your boyfriend is playing video games. You turn on the light and he immediately spin around in his chair and starts yelling at how you disrupted his game.

This is it; you just have to do it. Just say the words yn. "I'm breaking up you, by tomorrow morning, I expect you to be out of this house and my life."

That was a whole month ago, now you were currently single and moving on. Instead of being at the bar with terry, you were at the mall. "I'm proud of you yn, it's been a month and from what I've notice, you're doing great" you smile and nod, "I honestly did not know where the confidence came from when I broke up with him."

You recall all the times you got broken up with by your past 2 boyfriends. they all treated you the way your 3rd boyfriend did. Realizing that all these three, when you started dating them, they would put up a persona, a facade as if they were good guys and they would treat you the way you deserved. They promised things that turned to be absolutely bullshit and empty promises. Then down the road, they would slowly show their true colors and behaviors.

"Maybe I'm meant to be single, maybe i should just give up on relationships" terry listens to your rants and future goals. Listing down all the things you want to do now since you were free from manipulators and controlling men. "Who knows, Mr. right is just around the corner" he pretends to look around, but you miss the real intention or message behind that remark from terry.

Relationships and love were now long gone from your life, and you wanted it to stay that way. Being in those toxic and shitty relationships, you lost yourself. Now it was time to bring that lively and passionate girl back. to do so, old passions, goals, dreams were revisited and worked on again. as months passed, the old you started to resurface. You felt happy, you felt like yourself.

Once day, you went to visit your family house, and in that house, there was a basement where your old stuff was placed in boxes. You placed them there so no one could mess with them and for your old room to be used for whenever they had guest over. Looking through your stuff, you reached over for your guitar that was in its case. The instrument that was your whole life. It was quite upsetting that whenever you would play guitar in your apartment, your ex would get mad at you, claiming how loud you were and how bad you were at playing. it caused you to stop and feel insecure over something you so sure of since you were little. You placed the guitar on your lap and started playing, you haven't played in a long time, but muscle memory was helping you so much.

You got back on your game, focusing on school and looking for a part time job to earn money. You were spending so much time with yourself, you forgot to spend quality time with your friends too. You had terry, chaeryoung, and jake. You weren't a group, but you used to hang out with them separately.

Putting down the paint brush and picking up the disregarded phone on the floor, you dial jake's number. After a few rings he picks up with a sassy but not serious tone. "You remember I exist huh, yn?" you laugh in an apology and ask him if he wants to go out. To which he agrees and tells you he'd be there to pick you up in 15 minutes.

Jake and you go way back, you met him in Australia when you were on vacation. Everyone in your family were appreciating the view as they were sight-seeing. But you were more interested in the golden border collie that was staring back at you and wagging her tail as you made grabby hands at her. Only being 10 years old, your parents didn't let you go anywhere unsupervised, so they kept a tight hold on you, but you just had to pet the cute puppy. With enough wiggling out of their grasp and run away. "Hi, can i pet your puppy?" looking up at the lady who was holding the leash. She gives you the green light and starts asking you questions. "what's your name?" "Where are your parents?" "How old are you?" obviously, you answered her with respect. later, a young boy, who seems to be the son of the lady comes up and says hi. A very friendly boy with an Australian accent asks you if you wanna be friends.

That's where it all began. it was a long-distance friendship, not until jake decided to go back to Korea. You two have been glued to each other's hip since then, he was there for you for everything, for the good and bad. he's seen all the men you'd dated and unlike terry who was the "good cop", jake was the "bad cop" telling you how it was and even if it had to be said in the harshest way, he'd say it. When you told him you ended your recent relationship, happy was an understatement with how Jake felt.

Today, he still is your best friend. "Jake, stop letting me win, it ain't fun that way" stern look on your face as you stare at your best friend who is standing by the goal post. "I'm not, you're just really good" he shrugs his shoulders with that award winning smile. "you're not even moving; you're not even blocking the ball" you whine as you walk up to him.

The whole day was probably spent with Jake, it was getting dark, and it was time to part ways. or so you thought. Jake comes back to you after taking a call from a friend. "Hey, my friend Sunghoon called me saying how he has two extra tickets to that movie we were just talking about, you wanna go?" saying yes, you alert your parents with a text, letting them know you'll be home late.

On the way Jake opens up the topic of romance, asking for an update. "you're not seeing any losers, aren't you?" he chuckles, and he looks at the sour face you made. "No, I'm going to stay single for a long time" emphasize on the word long.

The whole time, you just thought that it would be the three of you, that you only had to meet Sunghoon. But no, you were standing there, with maybe the most good-looking guy you have ever seen. Jake would probably disagree and say it was him. Once you arrive and jake found Sunghoon, you immediately greet him and share banter, then another guy comes from the bathroom and greets you as well.

"Hi, I'm jay. You must be jake's friend he keeps complaining about." He jokes, and when he smiled, you might have just melted, he turns to Sunghoon, and you saw how sharp his jawline was. He was incredibly handsome that it makes you question if you should really give up on love or not.

"What do you mean, complaining...jake?!" you slap jake's arm and face your whole body towards him. "What have you been saying to them?!" you kept slapping his arm until he stops laughing and taking a hold of you. "I tell them how crazily stupid you are when it comes to dating and how I am tired of trying to save your ass yn" he explained while laughing like there was no tomorrow.

"If I was dating you, I think I'd be the one crazily in love" jay speaks and it makes your mind literally stop working, the cogs in your brain stopped and malfunctioned. "Damn you just met her, and you're already smitten?" Sunghoon chuckles and shakes his head, leading you all towards the room where the movie was going to play.

As the movie played, you couldn't help but steal glances at Jay, his profile illuminated by the flickering light of the screen. Each time your eyes met, a playful smile danced on his lips, igniting a warmth in your chest that had nothing to do with the theater's heating.

When the credits finally rolled, and the lights brightened, Jay turned to you with a grin. "Well, that was a rollercoaster," he remarked, his voice light with amusement. You chuckled in agreement, feeling a sense of ease settle between you. "Definitely kept us on the edge of our seats," you replied, matching his playful tone.

Stepping out into the cool evening air, the bustling chatter of the crowd surrounding you faded into the background as you and Jay fell into conversation. It was effortless, as if you'd known each other for years rather than mere hours. You found yourselves sharing anecdotes, swapping stories, and delving into shared interests with an enthusiasm that felt electric.

"So, what's your favorite movie of all time?" Jay asked, his eyes alight with curiosity as he turned to you. You paused, considering his question with a thoughtful expression. "Hmm, tough one," you mused, a smile quirking at the corners of your lips. "But if I had to choose, I'd say 'Inception.' The whole concept of dreams within dreams just blows my mind."

Jay nodded, his own smile widening. "Ah, a fellow fan of mind-bending plots," he replied, a hint of admiration in his voice. "I'm more of a 'Shawshank Redemption' guy myself. Can't beat a classic."

As you continued to chat and laugh together, the connection between you deepened, each shared moment cementing the bond that seemed to grow stronger with every passing second. It was a feeling unlike any you'd experienced before, a sense of belonging and understanding that left you yearning for more.

And as you walked side by side, the city lights casting a gentle glow upon your faces, you couldn't shake the feeling that this unexpected encounter with Jay was just the beginning of something truly extraordinary.

After the movie, as you all parted ways, Jay lingered, asking if you'd like to grab a coffee sometime. His smile was genuine, his eyes kind, and in that moment, you felt a glimmer of hope stir within you. Maybe, just maybe, there was something worth exploring beyond the scars of your past relationships.

As you said goodbye to Jay and watched him walk away with a quickening heart, Jake nudged you playfully. "Well, well, looks like someone's got a fan," he teased, grinning mischievously.

You rolled your eyes, but couldn't suppress the smile that tugged at your lips. "Shut up, Jake," you replied, nudging him back. But deep down, you couldn't deny the warmth that Jay's presence had ignited within you, a flicker of possibility in a heart once shrouded in doubt.

In the days that followed your encounter with Jay, your mind became consumed with swirling doubts and questions, overshadowing the initial excitement and warmth you felt in his presence. Despite the undeniable chemistry and the effortless connection you shared, the scars of past heartbreaks loomed large, casting a shadow of uncertainty over your burgeoning feelings.

As you went about your daily routine, thoughts of Jay lingered in the back of your mind, a constant presence that refused to be ignored. You found yourself replaying your conversations, analyzing every word and gesture, searching for signs of hidden agendas or red flags that might betray his true intentions.

"What if I'm just setting myself up for another disappointment?" you whispered to yourself, the weight of past betrayals heavy on your shoulders. The fear of being hurt again, of having your trust shattered and your heart broken, threatened to suffocate the budding hope that had dared to take root in your chest.

You confided in your closest friends, seeking their advice and perspective on the situation. Terry offered words of encouragement, reminding you of your resilience and strength in overcoming past obstacles. "Don't let fear dictate your happiness," he urged, his voice gentle but firm. "Take a chance, yn. You deserve to find love again, and Jay might just be the one to help you rediscover it."

But despite Terry's reassurances, the nagging doubts persisted, gnawing at your confidence and filling your mind with endless what-ifs. What if history were to repeat itself? What if Jay turned out to be just like the others, another heartbreaker in disguise?

As you tossed and turned in bed, sleep eluding you in the late hours of the night, you couldn't shake the feeling of uncertainty that gripped your heart. The prospect of opening yourself up to love once more felt both exhilarating and terrifying, a delicate balance between hope and fear that left you teetering on the edge of indecision.

With a sigh, you sank into the soft cushions, the weight of your worries pressing heavily upon you. "I just... I don't know what to do, Chaeryoung," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. "I'm so afraid of getting hurt again, of making the same mistakes I've made in the past."

Chaeryoung listened attentively, her gaze unwavering as she reached out to gently grasp your hand in hers. "I understand, yn," she said softly, her voice filled with empathy. "But you can't let the fear of the past dictate your future. Sometimes, taking a chance on love means embracing the possibility of heartache, knowing that the journey is worth the risk."

You nodded, tears welling in your eyes as Chaeryoung's words struck a chord deep within you. "But what if I'm not strong enough to handle it?" you whispered, the fear of vulnerability threatening to consume you.

Chaeryoung squeezed your hand reassuringly, her expression filled with unwavering support. "You are stronger than you know, yn," she said firmly, her voice filled with conviction. "And you don't have to face this alone. I'll be here for you every step of the way, no matter what happens."

The day of your coffee date with Jay arrived, and despite the lingering doubts that still gnawed at the edges of your mind, you found yourself determined to embrace the opportunity with an open heart. As you stood in front of the mirror, smoothing down your outfit and running a nervous hand through your hair, you couldn't help but feel a surge of anticipation mingled with trepidation.

When you arrived, Jay was already there, waiting patiently at a table near the window with a warm smile on his lips. As you approached, his eyes lit up with genuine delight, and you felt a rush of warmth flood your cheeks at the sight of him.

"Hey, yn, I'm so glad you could make it," Jay said, rising from his seat to greet you with a friendly hug. "You look amazing."

You returned his smile with a shy grin of your own, the tension in your shoulders easing slightly at his easygoing demeanor. "Thanks, Jay," you replied, feeling a surge of gratitude for his kindness and understanding.

As you settled into your seats and engaged in conversation, you found yourself swept away by Jay's charm and wit, his easy laughter and genuine interest in getting to know you better putting you at ease. With each passing moment, the doubts and insecurities that had plagued you began to fade into the background, replaced by a sense of connection and possibility that left you breathless with anticipation.

Midway through the date, as the conversation flowed effortlessly between you and Jay, you found yourself laughing at his animated retelling of a recent mishap at work. His eyes sparkled with amusement, his infectious laughter filling the air and drawing a smile to your lips.

"You wouldn't believe it," Jay exclaimed, his hands gesturing wildly as he recounted the comical series of events. "I swear, if it weren't for my quick thinking, we would have been knee-deep in paperwork!"

You chuckled, shaking your head in amusement. "Well, I'm glad you were able to save the day," you replied, unable to tear your gaze away from the twinkle in Jay's eyes. "Sounds like you're quite the hero."

Jay grinned, his dimples deepening as he leaned back in his chair. "Oh, you have no idea," he teased, his voice laced with playful exaggeration. "I've got a cape and everything."

The two of you shared a laugh, the tension easing between you as you basked in the warmth of each other's company. With each passing moment, you felt yourself growing more comfortable and at ease with Jay, the initial nerves of the date fading into the background as you lost yourself in the easy banter and shared laughter.

And as you shared another round of laughter with Jay, the doubts and insecurities that had once clouded your mind seemed to melt away, replaced by a growing sense of hope and possibility that whispered of new beginnings and endless horizons. With a smile on your lips and a lightness in your heart, you leaned in closer to Jay, eager to savor every moment of this unexpected journey that had brought you together.

As the evening drew to a close and the coffee shop began to empty out, you and Jay found yourselves lingering at your table, reluctant to part ways just yet. The easy conversation and shared laughter had created a bond between you that felt both comforting and exhilarating, leaving you reluctant to let the night end.

As you gathered your belongings and prepared to leave, Jay rose from his seat and offered you a warm smile. "Well, yn, I had a really great time tonight," he said sincerely, his eyes meeting yours with a gentle warmth that sent a flutter of excitement through your chest.

You returned his smile, feeling a sense of gratitude wash over you for the unexpected connection you had shared. "I did too, Jay," you replied, your voice soft with sincerity. "Thank you for such a wonderful evening."

As you made your way outside, the cool night air wrapping around you like a comforting embrace, Jay walked beside you in easy silence, his presence a reassuring presence at your side. The streets were quiet now, the bustling city fading into the background as you walked side by side, lost in your own thoughts.

When you finally reached your doorstep, you turned to face Jay, feeling a mixture of reluctance and anticipation swirling within you. "Well, this is me," you said with a hesitant smile, gesturing to the entrance of your building.

Jay nodded, his expression softening with a hint of regret. "Yeah, it is," he replied, his voice tinged with a hint of sadness. "I wish we could stay out here all night."

You chuckled softly, feeling a pang of disappointment at the thought of saying goodbye so soon. "Me too," you admitted, your heart heavy with the weight of impending separation.

For a moment, the two of you stood in silence, the unspoken words hanging in the air between you like a delicate thread. And then, without warning, Jay reached out to gently grasp your hand in his, his touch sending a jolt of electricity through your veins.

"I really want to kiss you right now, yn," Jay said softly, his eyes meeting yours with a mixture of longing and respect. "But I don't want to rush things. I want to take things slow, and I want to make sure you feel comfortable every step of the way."

His words were like a balm to your weary heart, a reminder that not all men were like the ones who had hurt you in the past. And as you looked into Jay's eyes, you saw nothing but sincerity and kindness reflected back at you, filling you with a sense of warmth and gratitude that you hadn't felt in a long time.

With a grateful smile, you squeezed Jay's hand gently, feeling a sense of relief wash over you at his understanding and compassion. "Thank you, Jay," you whispered, your voice barely above a whisper. "I really appreciate that."

And as you stood there in the soft glow of the streetlights, the night stretching out before you like a canvas waiting to be painted, you knew that this unexpected encounter with Jay was just the beginning of a journey filled with hope, healing, and the promise of a love that was worth waiting for.

A few weeks had passed since your coffee date with Jay, and life had quickly resumed its hectic pace. Between work commitments, family obligations, and the occasional outing with friends, you found yourself swept up in a whirlwind of activity, the days blurring together in a haze of busyness and distraction.

Despite the outward appearance of normalcy, however, there was a lingering sense of restlessness that gnawed at the edges of your mind, a quiet unease that whispered of unresolved worries and unspoken fears. You had thrown yourself into your daily routines with a sense of determination and purpose, but beneath the surface, a part of you still felt adrift, searching for something elusive and intangible.

Your friends had noticed the change in you, their concerned glances and probing questions a constant reminder of the facade you had erected to shield yourself from their scrutiny. Terry, Chaeryoung, and Jake had all voiced their concerns, offering words of support and encouragement in their own unique ways, but you had brushed off their worries with a casual wave of your hand, insisting that you were fine and that there was nothing to be concerned about.

But deep down, you knew that wasn't entirely true. The truth was, you were struggling to keep up appearances, to maintain the facade of strength and resilience that you had carefully crafted to hide the vulnerability and uncertainty that lurked within. You were tired of pretending, tired of wearing a mask that no longer fit, but you didn't know how to let it go, how to break free from the chains that bound you to a life that felt increasingly hollow and unfulfilling.

It was on one such day, as you sat alone in your apartment, lost in a sea of thoughts and doubts, that there came a knock at your door. Startled from your reverie, you rose from your seat and made your way to the entrance, your heart pounding with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity.

When you opened the door, you were surprised to find Jay standing on the other side, his expression a mixture of concern and determination. "Hey, yn," he said softly, his eyes searching yours for any sign of the turmoil that lay beneath the surface. "Can I come in?"

You hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say or how to explain the maelstrom of emotions that churned within you. But as you looked into Jay's eyes, you saw nothing but warmth and understanding reflected back at you, and you felt a sudden surge of gratitude for his unwavering support and compassion.

With a nod, you stepped aside to let Jay into your apartment, the weight of unspoken words hanging heavy in the air between you. As he took a seat beside you on the couch, you felt a sense of relief wash over you at the prospect of finally opening up to someone who truly cared.

For a long moment, the two of you sat in silence, the only sound the soft hum of the air conditioning and the distant rumble of traffic outside. And then, at last, Jay spoke, his voice gentle and reassuring.

"yn, I've noticed that you've been… distant lately," he began, his eyes searching yours with an intensity that made your heart skip a beat. "And I just wanted to check in and see how you're doing. Is everything okay?"

You swallowed hard, the lump in your throat threatening to choke off your words. But before you could reply, Jay reached out to gently grasp your hand in his, his touch a comforting anchor in the storm of emotions that raged within you.

"You don't have to pretend with me, yn," Jay said softly, his voice filled with quiet understanding. "Whatever you're going through, whatever you're feeling… I'm here for you. You don't have to face it alone."

And in that moment, as you looked into Jay's eyes and saw the depth of his sincerity and compassion, you knew that you had found someone worth opening up to, someone who would stand by your side through thick and thin, no matter what challenges lay ahead.

With a grateful smile, you squeezed Jay's hand gently, feeling a sense of relief wash over you at the prospect of finally sharing your burdens with someone who truly cared. And as you began to open up to Jay, pouring out your fears and insecurities with a vulnerability you had never shown anyone before, you felt a weight lift from your shoulders, replaced by a newfound sense of hope and optimism for the future.

In the days and weeks that followed, you found solace in the unwavering support and understanding of Jay, who stood by your side through every twist and turn of your journey. With his encouragement and guidance, you began to confront the demons of your past, slowly but surely breaking free from the chains that had bound you for so long.

Together, you navigated the highs and lows of life, sharing laughter and tears, triumphs and setbacks, as you embarked on a journey of self-discovery and healing. With Jay's love and support, you found the strength to confront your fears and insecurities head-on, embracing the challenges that lay before you with courage and resilience.

As your relationship with Jay blossomed and deepened, you found yourself constantly amazed by his thoughtfulness and consideration. Jay seemed to possess an innate understanding of your needs and boundaries, effortlessly navigating the intricacies of your heart with a sensitivity and empathy that left you feeling cherished and valued.

One evening, as you curled up on the couch together, lost in the pages of a book, Jay reached out to gently brush a stray lock of hair from your face, his touch light and tender against your skin. You looked up to find him gazing at you with an expression of quiet adoration, his eyes filled with a warmth that made your heart flutter with affection.

Without a word, Jay leaned in to press a gentle kiss to your forehead, his lips lingering against your skin in a silent promise of love and devotion. And in that moment, as you felt the weight of his affection wash over you like a soothing balm, you knew with a certainty that this was where you belonged, in the arms of a man who loved you unconditionally, flaws and all.

In the days and weeks that followed, Jay continued to show his affection in the small but meaningful ways that spoke volumes of his love for you. Whether it was leaving notes of encouragement tucked into your lunch bag, surprising you with your favorite meal after a long day, or simply wrapping you in a warm embrace when you needed it most, Jay's gestures never failed to brighten your day and fill your heart with joy.

But what touched you most deeply was the way Jay always respected your boundaries and comfort levels, never pushing you to do anything you weren't ready for or comfortable with. Instead, he met you where you were, showering you with love and affection in the ways that felt most natural and comfortable to you.

And as you snuggled close to Jay on the couch, his arms wrapped protectively around you, you couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the man who had come into your life and filled it with so much love and happiness. With Jay by your side, you knew that you were truly blessed, and you vowed to cherish every moment you shared together, knowing that the love you had found was a rare and precious gift that would last a lifetime.

And as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, you found yourself growing stronger and more confident with each passing day, no longer defined by the scars of your past but by the boundless possibilities of your future.

In Jay, you found not only a lover but a confidant, a partner who shared your hopes and dreams, fears and insecurities, and who stood by your side through thick and thin. Together, you forged a bond that was stronger than any obstacle, a love that transcended the trials and tribulations of life.

One evening, as you sat together on the balcony, watching the sun dip below the horizon in a blaze of fiery colors, you found yourselves lost in conversation, sharing your deepest thoughts and feelings with a vulnerability and honesty that only strengthened the bond between you.

"I never thought I'd find someone like you, yn," Jay said softly, his voice filled with sincerity. "Someone who truly understands me, who accepts me for who I am, flaws and all."

You turned to look at Jay, a smile playing at the corners of your lips. "I feel the same way, Jay," you replied, reaching out to take his hand in yours. "You've shown me a kind of love and acceptance that I never knew was possible, and for that, I'm eternally grateful."

As you sat together in companionable silence, the soft murmur of the city below providing a soothing backdrop to your conversation, you felt a sense of peace settle over you like a warm blanket. With Jay by your side, you knew that you could weather any storm that came your way, knowing that his love and support would always be there to guide you through.

And as the stars began to twinkle overhead, casting their gentle glow upon you both, you leaned in to press a gentle kiss to Jay's lips, your heart overflowing with love and gratitude for the man who had come into your life and filled it with so much joy and happiness. With Jay by your side, you knew that anything was possible, and you vowed to cherish every moment you shared together, knowing that your love was a bond that would last a lifetime.

And as you looked towards the horizon, your heart filled with gratitude for the unexpected twists and turns that had led you to this moment, you knew that with Jay by your side, the future held endless promise and possibility.

With a smile on your lips and a lightness in your heart, you stepped forward into the unknown, ready to embrace whatever adventures awaited you, knowing that as long as you had Jay by your side, you could weather any storm that came your way.

And so, as the sun set on one chapter of your life and rose on the next, you took Jay's hand in yours, ready to embark on a new journey filled with love, laughter, and endless possibilities.

For in Jay, you had found not only a partner but a soulmate, a kindred spirit who had walked through fire and brimstone to stand by your side, and for that, you would be eternally grateful.

And as you walked hand in hand into the sunset, the echoes of your laughter mingling with the gentle rustle of the wind, you knew that no matter what challenges lay ahead, as long as you had each other, you could overcome anything.

And so, with hearts full of hope and love, you stepped forward into the unknown, ready to embrace whatever adventures awaited you, knowing that as long as you had each other, the future held endless promise and possibility.

[zoradementio]

Block Tales Predictions & Headcanons Because This is my New Hyperfixation

Predictions

So the next sword is 100% the Firebrand. And what better fire level is there than an active volcano? I believe the next demo will open up the docks & we're gonna be sailing to a tropical, volcanic island for the Firebrand.

Added with that, I believe we'll meet the ship captain mentioned by Mayor Monty (can't for the life of me remember the name rn), as he'll be the one to sail us across.

I also believe that this Chapter or maybe the Windforce one will be weilded by Kyoko's sister, since Kyoko's dialogue in Chapter 3 hints that at the very least something is going wrong with her.

On the UnkownSpaceGuy Youtube channel - the channel that uploads both demo trailers & the OST - there's a track listed called Space Battle. While some might think the background & track are misdirects, considering the Weird Battle OST teased enemies from Chapter 3 well before it was implemented, I think it's possible this could also be hinting at future content. Specifically, I believe the Chapter taking place on the moon will either be the Darkheart or Illumina one.

Once the game is finished, there'll be a New Game+ mode where you can actually have the chance to beat Terry at the beginning of the game.

Headcanons

~Cruel King~

Dude needs a different moniker than "Cruel King" because that is a misnomer and a half. So, unless he's given an official name, his given name will be Rex to me.

His favorite foods include warm drinks like hot chocolate & coffee and frozen desserts, especially ice cream.

His favorite ice cream flavor is strawberry.

He likes Mexican cuisine but it also destroys him.

Had a German Shepherd when he was growing up.

~Griefer~

While Mayor Thaniyel is mostly right about Brad not being 100% like that before the influence of the sword, he still was a bit of a little shit. It's just that Thaniyel didn't see most of it and it was mostly relegated to online games/forums.

Despite what his soda addiction may lead you to believe, he really likes fresh fruits, apples being a particular favorite.

Likes sherbet & sorbet more than ice cream.

Really likes spicy food. Man would fuck up a bag of Flammin' Hot Cheetos & puts jalapenos on everything he can.

It is often said that the highest honor one can give a fictional character is to headcanon them your personal lived experiences and traumas. Thusly, Griefer has mommy issues. Undecided whether I prefer her being kind of a bad mom or if she simply wasn't around when Brad was growing up.

Big fan of Pokemon. Favorite Gen is 3, both in terms of the Gens in 2010 and all Generations to modern day. Favorite starter is Treeko, though Grooky would be a close second.

~Greed, Solitude, & Fear~

I like to group these three together as The Vices.

Greed is a bit of a fashionista, keeping up to date on the latest trends.

Greed likes carbonated drinks. Particularly, they like champagne.

If Greed were to order a steak, they'd order it Blue.

Solitude gets uncomfortable in large crowds. A large crowd to Solitude is more than 2 people.

It's difficult to tell at any given moment if Solitude is concentrating really hard on something that caught their attention or if they're just disassociating.

A picnic in the park might not fix Fear, but it would do a whole lot to improve their mental state.

Fear's favorite foods include fruity drinks/juices, comfort food, and baked goods.

Fear's favorite colors are dark blue and dark green.

Despite them literally being the embodiment of fear (or perhaps because of that), Fear is fiercely protective over those they care about. Can't have courage without fear after all.

[efingart]

Fic request 🥺👉👈

In Bo6 they kind skated over Alder and Woods’ friendship and I wanna see more. Could you write a little fic of them interacting?

Hey anon! Thank you for this request!! 💙

This was so very interesting. Both of these guys have these huge emotional walls up. I imagine friends are a challenging thing for both of them to make and keep. Not exactly the type to talk about their emotions. Which is great I love when everything is just under the surface. I think I'd like to write another one of these from Adler's perspective to see how it goes.

Frank lit a cigarette and stared out at the dark water. He often took to doing this at night when the Safehouse began to quiet down. He thought about his team. Felix and Sev had been arguing earlier, but he could now hear their laughter travel from the kitchen. He was sure Troy was upstairs reading over a letter from Terry, working over his next move in their correspondence chess game. The same move he'd been mulling over before they had to cut and run. The soft sounds of the TV news must have meant Case was on the couch likely dozing off. The guy pushed himself too hard.

Frank stuck the cigarette between his lips and rubbed the tops of his knees or what was left of them. It had become a habit of his, one he didn’t like too much when he realized he was doing it. Reminded him of some of the old guys he had met over the years. Always talking about their aches and pains. He was sidelined sure, permanent desk duty yeah, but he didn’t feel like an old guy. Neither he nor Alex had ever seemed old to him. An ache clenched at his heart as he thought about Al. Al would never be an old guy. They would never be those crusty old vets sitting at the VFW drinking beers and talking about the good old times.

He pressed his thumb against one eye and reached across the bridge of his nose with his forefinger, the pad of his finger against his closed lid. He dragged his fingers across his skin bringing them together to pinch the bridge of his nose. Footsteps on stone behind him, he quickly moved his hand away from his eyes to pluck the cigarette from his mouth. He knew from the confident footfalls that it was Adler.

Adler already had a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. He cradled a mug in one large hand which from the smell of it contained some of Felix’s stew.

“Figure out Felix’s mystery meat yet?” Frank joked. Adler stirred the contents with his spoon and inspected a white chunk. “Best guess is rabbit.” “Probably a good guess.” “Let’s just say I’m not about to ask him to confirm it.” Frank chuckled at that.

Adler tucked his cigarette between two fingers and picked up his spoon again. Steam trailed from the mug only to be quickly swept away by the sea breeze. The silence between them lasted until Frank’s cigarette was just a nub. He stubbed it out on the railing and flicked it away. Then he winced. Another bad habit. He remembered the last time he visited David the kid had given him a lecture about recycling and putting his cigarette butts in the trash instead of tossing them on the ground. He even showed Frank some cartoon about it. A blue guy fighting pollution… or something. If it made the kid happy he was willing to do it. He wondered if Adler's kids watched the same show. Adler certainly didn't care about where he tossed his old cigarette butts.

Adler finished his stew and went back inside without a word. Frank thought he was alone again, but before long Adler was back carrying two beers by the neck between his fingers. He handed one to Frank who popped the cap off against the railing and took a swig. Then he examined the label on the bottle. “Gotta clear our names so we can get back to the States and get some real beer.” Adler nodded and tapped the neck of his bottle to Frank’s. “Drink to that.”

A silence passed between them. That was one thing Frank liked about Adler- he never needed to just talk. He was comfortable with quiet. Some guys jabbered on and on. Talking about nothing. Filling the air with words so they wouldn’t have to sit with whatever they were dealing with in their heads. He tried to picture himself and Adler at the VFW sharing a beer and laughing about the old times. Maybe it’d happen. Never in a million years did he think it'd be the two of them that were left. Everyone else was gone, but not them.

“See you dusted that old thing off,” Adler said pointing with his beer hand at Frank’s bandana. It pulled him from his thoughts. He touched the cloth that covered his forehead.

“Yeah, helps me keep my head in the game… Or something.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Adler adjusting his sunglasses. He rarely ever took them off, even at night. Frank had always suspected they might be corrective. But either way, they all had their things. The objects that made them feel more like themselves. And maybe acted as a barrier between them and the rest of the world. It was how they could stay so tough in tricky situations. Keep their cool.

“Guys like us can never leave this.” “Nope,” Frank agreed. Adler cleared his throat before lighting another cigarette. He was always a chain smoker and, of course, most guys liked to have a cigarette with a beer. But he knew Adler well enough, worked with him long enough that even though he put up a front he had his tells. They were just harder to see in him than other people. Frank knew he was stalling.

“Something on your mind?” Adler let out a soft hah!. “Come on you’re not exactly as mysterious as you like to pretend.” Frank nudged Adler’s side with his elbow. He cleared his throat again. “Just wanted to say thanks,” Adler said more to the sea than to Frank. The confidence in his voice never faltered. Always the arrogant bastard. Frank had to admit he liked that about him too.

“For what?” Frank asked with a laugh. He knew the answer. Adler was grateful Frank believed him. Not just to help him, but it made a difference to know there was someone in the world who had his back. Even a guy like Adler needed that comfort sometimes.

“You’re not gonna start getting emotional on me are you?” He asked.

Adler chuckled in response. Then he stabbed out his cigarette on the railing and flicked it over the edge.

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[qm-vox]

Man Who Talk To God Have Difficult Life - Playing Clerics In D&D

(St. Nokta Kinslayer, whom you'll meet further down in the article. Art by the esteemed @druid-for-hire who quite frankly cannot be thanked enough!)

Guess who's back motherfuckers. When they ask how I died, tell them, still angry. After the paladin article I asked around about classes to cover "next" and got a lot of requests; rogue, warlock, sorcerer, so of course I have elected to be a good friend by losing my will to live for months on end and then doing none of those. Let's talk Clerics, shall we? I'll not lie to you, this is going to be an angrier article than the paladin one, in no small part because it's inevitably going to go into contentious ideas like alignment, fantasy religion, and others that the player base has been knife fighting about since mammoths still walked the Earth. There are going to be moments when I look y'all in the eyes and say with my metaphorical human mouth that the problem is you Doing It Wrong, and I can only ask that you hear me out. Not to assign you homework about my fuckin' cleric article or anything, but the one I previously did about The Many may be helpful here as well. There's going to be a bit of a focus on D&D 5e here, and I'll be frank about that: most people are playing 5e these days, and as I'll be arguing further down, Pathfinder's take on Clerics and more broadly on faith are a worthless poison that actively worsens the world.

This article's title is drawn from Small Gods by the esteemed Sir Professor Terry Pratchett. As always, credit goes to Afroakuma for teaching me a great deal of the examples I'm going to give, though citing specific sources are going to be difficult as many of the books in question have been out of print for decades and I am neither an academic nor a machine.

Now for the obligatory Content Warnings. We're looking at discussion of fantasy religion & comparisons to real-world religion, violence, discussions of atrocities such as torture, desecration of the dead, and destruction of culture, as well as traumatic deaths/backstories for the sample clerics at the end. As mentioned above, there is also going to be some alignment discourse. You have been warned; do as thou wilt.

Without further ado, let us begin with...

O Mighty Smiter - Clerics Through D&D's History

We begin the obligatory text wall.

Clerics have been here since the beginning. They were around back when "Elf" was a class, and while their history is complex it has, eternally, been colored by the bit where Cleric has an inherent identity problem. In many ways it is, as a class, too broad, so wide-open that getting something coherent out of it is an exercise in frustration or even futility. It'll be easier to talk about what Clerics aren't than what they are, and oh boy, will I. A brief note here: while Druid is going to come up in the context of 1e and 2e, and again a bit later when I start talking about priests (yeah, that's a separate conversation, we're gonna get there), this article is not otherwise dedicated to Druid. I'm gonna need a significant amount of whiskey for both me and my priestess before we god damn go there.

AD&D 1e and 2e: Deus Vult - Do the world a favor if you ever pass near Gary Gygax's grave: piss on it. Ol' Gary G rooted Cleric in his classic blend of obsession with medieval ideas and piss-poor research, invoking many myths about priests of the Crusades and applying them as a one-size-fits-all vision of war-clergy of Every God. He would personally run into problems with this in his own writing before he got out of the game, and rather quickly at that, as he tried to write faiths whose imagery and ideals did not fit the Crusader Priest ideal, but since he was, and I cannot stress this enough, a hack with all the morals and emotional intelligence of mustard gas, he never quite solved those problems for himself. I'll hop off my screed now, I just want this said up front, especially since it's the fundamental evil that chases Cleric to this day.

The O.G. Cleric was described as a melee combatant that took a close second-place to Fighter in that arena, with proficiency in heavy armor and a variety of useful weapons, though they were forbidden from using "edged weapons that spill blood" (there's those Crusader myths). Random fun fact, the very first incarnation of Cleric only had spells up to 7th level, but the level tables for their class went up to level 29 or so, and man, ain't that just wild. As your Cleric gained levels they also became more highly placed in the church of their god, eventually hitting High Priest and just kinda sitting there as they leveled up. Interesting note here: Clerics couldn't be Neutral (that is, not Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil) back in the day, and instead anyone wanting to run a Neutral Cleric had to take a subclass you might have heard of by the name of Druid, which in turn eventually had to face other Druids in SINGLE COMBAT in order to level up past a certain point. Why? I don't know. Summon Gygax's ghost and ask him between rounds of spiritual torture. This original version of Cleric had Turn Undead, a feature that's been attached to almost all Clerics by some name or another in all of their incarnations, and boy, Turn Undead used to be fucking wild. Roll a dice, consult a table based on your result and your level, and end up Turning or Destroying a number of very specific kinds of undead. AD&D 2e would put "undead gods" on this list starting at 13th level or so, and let me tell you: this came up in published material more often than you might think. Last but not least, like most characters back in 1e and 2e, Clerics eventually got to run a building full of people. At first the Cleric attracted about 20-200 "fanatics" who would work for free and help them build a shrine (no word on how TF you feed and water these fanatics) but eventually was given the right to build a proper castle-temple and produce 1 silver per month per resident via "trade, taxes, tariffs". Ladies and gentlemen, D&D.

Aside from the aforementioned alterations to Turn Undead, AD&D 2e introduced a concept known as Spheres to Cleric casting. Now, stop me if you've heard this before: each god gave access to 1 or more Spheres, which were specific lists of spells that their Clerics had access to (fun fact, Paladin casting was "as Cleric of 9 levels lower", but only with access to specific Spheres). So if you worshiped, say, Lathander, you had access to Healing, Sun, Divination, and IIRC a couple of others, and that's it, that's the whole ticket. Now, you may remember Kits from the Paladin article, and Clerics did have some of that action, but more than that they had "specialty priests", a sort of even-more-hardcore version of this whole proto-Domain deal; a Specialty Priest had different class features in comparison to normal Cleric, and access to different or more Spheres, both of which were determined by their god. Each Specialty Priest was, in its way, its own separate subclass of Cleric and if you published a god back in the day you had to get one of these installed. Were they all good? No. Fuck no. God no. Are you kidding me? But they were often very distinctive.

This doesn't get talked about a lot, at least not until we hit Pathfinder, but Clerics have had codes of conduct like Paladins for as long as they've existed, sort of atomized across their various gods. The rules around these have always been vague, and rarely culturally enforced in the player communities, but they did and do exist. A cleric of Kelemvor raising a zombie has done a bit of a blasphemy; raising a ghoul or vampire probably entails divine retribution, a reduction in character level, or even the loss of their powers. Oh, and other gods are probably trying to court you since clearly you're looking for new management and a trained cleric is a resourced that's hard to pass up.

No version of Cleric has ever particularly had a strong identity, but this original version may have been the closest to having one...because it's bad. To the credit of 1e and 2e, the eventual installation of Nonweapon Proficiencies, later to become the Skills system, did let them be competent as actual like, priests? Cleric got access to the stuff needed to actually minister as a spiritual leader with some extra socked away to practice sacred arts related to their god (ex. bookbinding for a cleric of Denier) and maybe even some god damn hobbies too. But outside of the ever-more-niche & esoteric arena of specialty priests, themselves presented as particular fanatics, agents, or chosen ones, every cleric was a Crusader, and every god's clergy were war-priests. And that's weird, right? And so now we must move on to the demon that never dies.

D&D 3.5: The Word Of My God Is 'Begone' - Quick question, have you ever wanted to roleplay someone perceptive but otherwise deeply stupid and utterly incompetent to move unsupervised through human society, who is, nonetheless, OMNIPOTENT? Welcome to the 3.5 Cleric, one of THE casters of all time in the absolute Caster Supremacy Edition. I hope you came ready to hear casual mentions of mechanics that would make a Victorian occultist cry. If you go looking at the class page for Cleric you might notice there's both jack and shit there, and for my readers who got into D&D at 5e the following might be a bit of a shock: Cleric was one of the strongest classes in 3.5.

In terms of the actual mechanics related to Cleric in 3.5, Turn or Rebuke Undead and spontaneous casting were some of the big ones. Well, "big" ones; Turn Undead qua Turn Undead was actually kind of shit and would often just not actually like...turn...the undead, but the charges of Turn Undead a Cleric kept around could be used for many other options that permitted alternate spending, notably here to include Divine Metamagic. These alternate spends were better than using Turn Undead for its actual intended purpose more or less always, and Divine Metamagic (DMM) in particular was an unholy monstrosity that underlied a lot of Cleric's power later in 3.5's run, letting them customize their prepared spells on the fly without having to use up higher-level spell slots. Now, I really cannot stress this enough: Cleric was one of the most powerful classes in core alone, without adding any supplements. DMM and similar options made Cleric even stronger but they were very much gilding the lily, to be frank. "Hey Vox why are you saying this," you would not believe the number of ignorant pricks who made a literal moral crusade out of going to "core only" in 3.5 claiming it made for a better balanced game. The good version of 3.5 has never existed, destroy anyone who claims otherwise.

Where was I - spontaneous casting, yes. Now, Clerics were still prepared casters, they had X spell slots every day at very specific levels and had to pick specific spells to fill them. That is, if you want to cast create water more than once in a given day, you need to memorize create water more than once that day. However, Clerics could convert a spell of any level to either cure wounds or inflict wounds of the same level, depending on the alignment of the Cleric (Good Clerics Turn Undead and cure wounds, Evil Clerics Rebuke Undead and inflict wounds, and Neutral Clerics not otherwise restricted by their god get to pick one for their entire career). This gave 3.5 Cleric a lot of flexibility, very valuable flexibility in a game environment where casting a heal mid-combat was basically always the wrong move, but out-of-combat healing was still an invaluable resource. RIP to Evil Clerics though, inflict sucked ass.

Lastly, we have domains. Now, if you check through the domain list on the SRD you may notice that they are rather less defining than the 5e Domains, granting a single power apiece and a list of spells you get access to. Most gods in 3.5 granted access to 3+ Domains, and their Clerics got to pick 2; together, these are the "kind" of Cleric you are, the aspects of your god that you kinda embody which then shape your power. Clerics got special extra spell slots solely for Domain spells in addition to their usual progression, and could memorize these Domain spells in normal slots as well. 3.5's list of Domains was deep and wide to the point of self-parody, and the power that gave a player to customize their Cleric's aesthetic and mechanics could be immense. Sure, many Domains were much weaker than others (Magic Domain is bonkers and that asshole is in core) but ultimately every Domain is stapled to Cleric, and since Clerics don't learn spells, only memorize them, there's a floor as to how weak you can possibly be.

So, what are your restrictions on Cleric? Not many. Non-War Domain Clerics had a sort of mid list of weapon options, sure, but if you're not casting you're playing wrong already so who gives a shit. Heavy armor and full access to shields meant a lot of build flexibility as far as that goes, so no problems here. The biggest thing is that a Cleric needed to be, and remain, within one alignment "step" of their god, plus or minus any other specific restrictions. That is, a Cleric of Liira, who is Chaotic Good, must be Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, or Chaotic Neutral; becoming Lawful Good, True Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc would result in losing all Cleric powers and being unable to take Cleric levels until they fixed their shit or found a new god. Strictly speaking, these Clerics could/would still Fall a la paladins if they sufficiently blasphemed against or angered their god, but in practice this sort of thing was just...not common.

This is the section where I would talk about other divine classes in 3.X but honestly they were all so god damn weird and specific that no comparison really could be made. Shugenja, for instance, just isn't cognate to Cleric. The closest thing is the Healer class, no points for guessing what their deal is, but the thing with Healer is they have more in common with paladin, so like. Cleric or bust baby, welcome to fucktown.

Which brings us back to what Cleric was like narratively, the answer to which is: confused. The thing is...Clerics have always, likely will always, want high Wisdom, which makes them perceptive, good at detecting lies, weirdly talented at handling animals, competent to navigate the wilderness, and also I just described a Disney Princess. The trouble is, nearly everything else is strictly secondary. Every caster wants and needs Constitution in 3.X so they can make those Concentration checks and also, you know, not die, so okay, you're perceptive and you can hold your liquor, but after that nothing else matters. On the one hand, this makes for a great deal of versatility in terms of your ability scores, but on the other hand Cleric had 2+Int skill points per level on the most dog shit skill list in the game so being a very smart Cleric rarely bought you anything. Higher Charisma could be cool, but hey, see that skill list? It's still shit, and if you aren't also buying Intelligence you quite literally can't afford to keep up the social skill tax. A true war-priest wants Dexterity so they can act before their enemies and command the battlefield but that's more or less all you buy out of Dexterity on Cleric so congratulations, you're an almighty quickdraw and also illiterate. "What about Strength," what about it.

I really cannot overstate the paralyzing nature of that skill list, because priests - which 3.5 wanted Clerics to be, which it thinks they are - need more of them than most people think. A proper spiritual leader needs to buy up Insight, Knowledge (Religion), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Nobility), and Persuasion at a minimum, and they sure do also want Intimidate and Perception. You get two of those. Two. Just two. If you buy up Intelligence after you eat your vegetables like a good player, you maybe get to buy four of those. And that's it, that's all you fucking get. Clerics are not competent to be priests, which is going to be true of them going forward from this edition on. Now, I'm painting with a relatively broad brush here, and there's definitely religions on Earth these days which did, or still do, separate out roles that might reasonably be called a priest & Cleric vs. those roles that are community leaders and interpreters of doctrine and law, but there's a shocking amount of "here's my vision of what priests are and do" that Cleric wants to be, and isn't, because of this whole fucking deal.

But while 3.5 was extremely blind to the bit where Clerics just were not what it thinks priests are any more, it was very much not blind to the terror and power of their spellcasting. A high-level cleric, in the narrative of any given setting, is a terrifying force - an army unto themselves, a one-woman political bloc whose existence is an implicit threat of violence on a civilizational scale. I didn't spill all that ink about the power and mechanics of Cleric up there for nothing; 3.5 was very interested in how those mechanics could manifest within the narrative, how they are inextricably bound to said narrative. Hell, in Expedition to Undermountain alone the backstory of the dungeon includes one non-relevant sect of Clerics who was, in-universe, trying to game the spell slot system, alongside another unrelated sect that the PCs trip over by accident and fight inside their half-constructed fortress of partially undead bone which they control via Rebuke Undead.

Lemme say that again just for emphasis: there's an adventure where an accidental encounter is a long siege through a half-animated evil fortress that can be controlled through pure divinity, which was invented because its builders, in-universe, were trying to optimize their power and create an advantage they could control but their enemies couldn't. And this is just my favorite example, it's hardly the only one. Even the fucking novels got in on this sort of thing. We all joke about how wizards have no rights, because they don't, but watch a Cleric hit level 7 or so and you'll realize quickly that they are becoming something to which mortal laws are more like polite suggestions. Nor is this necessarily solely the sign of greater favor and thus potentially restriction from their god; indeed, a Cleric has to bring things to the table themself, narratively speaking! Divine spellcasting is a real skillset that you get better at with practice and experience, and part of the reason higher level Clerics get so much attention from other gods - aside from the obvious "this person can solo an army and still go home in a mood to have sex with their wife" angle - is that a skilled Cleric is a rare resource worth stealing.

Overall, 3.5's vision of Cleric is perhaps the one that suffers most from Cleric's identity-draining lack of specificity. Its Clerics were powerful, but they were also largely all the same; they could change their spells every day, but that only really meant that your list of spells doesn't really matter beyond personal preference. Domains offered some customization, but they didn't go far enough, and indeed if they were to go far enough the all-consuming might of Cleric would only be even more flagrant. So let's return to the most honest edition of D&D, shall we?

D&D 4e: Healer Calls The Shots - There are a lot of reasons that D&D 4e was born dead, and a big one is that classes with healing abilities were labeled 'leaders'. This seems absurd these days, especially if you're into esports at all; the support player being the team leader has become accepted strategy in a variety of games, in no small part because one simply cannot win without them, and yet at the time the D&D fanbase - still in an awkward transitional period of nerd masculinity that I don't have the time or the PhD to write about - rebelled against this concept with fountaining violence. The "girlfriend classes", leaders? Absurd. Preposterous. Clearly Sir Dipshit the Fighter with no mental stats or applicable skills is the leader.

I'm not fucking bitter, you are.

So what was Cleric's deal, exactly? Cleric qua Cleric was a Leader, as mentioned before, that could primarily be built either as a scrappy melee type or a more hard-support implement caster. "What's an implement caster?" glad you asked; back in 4e you had to hold a casting implement to cast your spells, something like a rod, staff, wand, holy symbol, your mother's haunted skull, whatever, and these had specific mechanical effects that altered your abilities. Some classes, like Cleric, could also or instead use a weapon as their implement, but in practical terms the strict wealth-by-level guidelines meant you got one or the other and would build your stats accordingly. Keep this in your back pocket for later, it's going to come up again. Also for your back pocket for later: these implements were, well, implemented as part of 4e's item progression, and the expectation was that you would spend your available resources (in this case, gold/phantom gold, collectively Wealth By Level) on better implements that would make your abilities work more work-y. Limited wealth meant that while in theory you could have both a magic weapon and a magical implement, in practical terms you get one or the other 'cause there's other shit you gotta buy.

What Clerics did with these implements was sell healing and healing accessories. While 4e introduced the concept of Radiant damage (used there as especially good against fiends, undead, and other forces of evil) and Clerics did indeed have access to some of that as well as buff abilities, their main thing was being the ranged healer par excellence, able to heal or cause healing far in excess of their peers in the role such as Warlord. Here, then, we return to the throughline of the divine healer which stretches all the way back to fucking BECMI, and which modern audiences may recognize more readily as the JRPG archetype of the White Mage - itself rooted in BECMI again! This hobby is an ouroboros, I say, with love.

Joining Cleric here are a selection of other classes with divine powers who take on a similar conceptual space. I talked a bit about Invoker during the Paladin article so I'm not gonna go over them again (this shit is long enough as it is), so we're gonna talk about Warpriest and Runepriest.

Introduced in the Essentials line, Warpriest was - like most Essentials classes - a simplified take on Cleric meant to be more accessible to new players. It shifted just about everything towards Wisdom in terms of writing one's character. Warpriests were these tanky all-around characters who gave up some of Cleric's team support for better attacks, and notably did not select powers on level-up, but rather got a progression based on their Domain. Readers familiar with D&D 5e might see some similarities here.

Runepriest, on the other hand, was a weird freak of a Defender whose thing was projecting offensive or defensive Auras that they could amplify with their support abilities and swap out every time they attacked. Their primary stat was Strength, drawing on a similar idea to the later revised 5e Barbarian or, perhaps more familiar to y'all, Beast incantations in Elden Ring. Very much not simplified, Runepriest offered some initial build diversity but didn't get a lot of support as the gameline continued, ironically ending up as very limited despite seeming intentions of breadth.

Narratively, these classes were somewhere in the range of 'village preacher with a hidden badass streak' to 'war missionary' to 'literal thug for the literal god of literal fascism'. 4e here stands out for being the first edition to acknowledge that a Cleric is not really a priest as such, and is much more like...a chosen one, a conception that very much fit well into 4e's idea that adventurers are inherently freaks who do things no sane person would ever consider. If you're thinking, "gee that sounds odd, why wouldn't there be like Clerics just existing inside cities", I point you at works like Dungeon Meshi who advance this same idea. Fundamentally, the skills one uses to break into ancient tombs full of undead are not skills you develop while working as a spiritual leader or a bureaucrat or even as a military officer. Adventuring is not a career you get into because your life is going well.

Of course, as mentioned, D&D 4e was born dead, so now we need to talk about the demon that ate its corpse and was, for a time, the unquestioned king of the TTRPG space by dint of its treachery and malice.

Pathfinder: Deus Vult Part II: World Holy War - Keep Pathfinder in your back pocket next to casting implements, they're gonna star in the religion section later as I express a fundamental anger that borders on inhuman rage. You have no earthly idea just how much I'm cutting out of this section alone considering that like many, I was there for Pathfinder during the beta and thus got in on the ground floor of a great deal of incompetence, malice, cruelty, outright betrayal, unexamined double-think, and egotistical bullshit.

That said, let's actually talk about Cleric.

In terms of Cleric qua Cleric, you may be noticing that the table there looks a lot like 3.5's Cleric, and indeed in many ways they're pretty similar. The biggest immediate difference is the addition of Channel Energy, which lets a Cleric become a healing bomb (or harm undead bomb, or vice versa) a certain number of times per day linked to their Charisma modifier. This is in addition to spontaneous casting, so it's a strict addition; further, it being a 30-foot burst means a channeled heal might actually be worth your Standard Action at some point in your career. It won't be, but it might. Additionally, Pathfinder Clerics are proficient in the Favored Weapon of their god by default (more on this later), which - by contrast - was often much harder to access in 3.5.

Like D&D 3.5, Pathfinder has a dizzying array of Domains to go with a default setting packed full of gods (more on this in the religion section later), ranging from things as broad as 'all magic ever' to things as embarrassingly specific as 'ambushes as laid by kobolds specifically'. Seriously, look at this list, it's absurd. And while by sheer numbers and specificity it's roughly equivalent with 3.5, I'm not about to claim 3.5 has the high road here, Clerics in Pathfinder get more abilities from their Domains and thus your choice of Domain and/or Subdomain is far more important to your Cleric than it ever was in PF's parent game.

Indeed, option paralysis is going to be the name of the game here. Clerics in Pathfinder, in addition to Domain and Subdomain and their choice of god, also get to pick out variants on the Channeling ability that I talked about and, like all Pathfinder classes, have access to a dizzying array of Archetypes. These Archetypes in turn range in scope and concept from variations on how one has trained as a Cleric (such as Crusader, keep that name in mind for later) to like, race essentialism as class features such as Fiendish Vessel. Sit on that statement for a bit. Really internalize it.

Now, while the rules for Pathfinder give provisions for older versions of Clerics such as Clerics of ideals, Planar Clerics, etc, in practice Pathfinder is very much married to its one-and-only setting, Golarion, and to its particular vision of Clerics as the dedicated priests of a single god. This is a difficult vision to accomplish, as they still aren't competent to be priests, but it's also one that adds another layer of information a player has to juggle, as Golarion makes a much bigger and yet somehow much smaller deal about Clerics falling and losing their powers; each of its gods has a published code of conduct, Obediences you can perform for mechanical benefits, and sometimes even exclusive spells. I said I was gonna cut my beefs with Paizo out of this section but I really cannot resist just one: this is from the creators who made their first bones by arguing that mechanical bloat was the cardinal sin of 3.5 and advertised a return to the purity of Core. It would be funny if it weren't so fucking infuriating. If you can't hack it as a Cleric of your god, you lose your powers until you either start hacking it, or find a new god that agrees better with your current behavior, and those gods are very much in the market to hire.

In addition to Clerics as the hypothetical main priests (both as PCs and NPCs), Pathfinder introduces Inquisitors, Oracles, and Warpriests and we're gonna have to talk about all of them so I hope you weren't doing anything else with your day. Let's start with Inquisitors. Meant to be to Cleric what Ranger is to druid, Inquisitor is a wildly revealing take on how Paizo thinks about religion and ethics. To wit:

"Grim and determined, the inquisitor roots out enemies of the faith, using trickery and guile when righteousness and purity is not enough. Although inquisitors are dedicated to a deity, they are above many of the normal rules and conventions of the church. They answer to their deity and their own sense of justice alone, and are willing to take extreme measures to meet their goals. Role: Inquisitors tend to move from place to place, chasing down enemies and researching emerging threats. As a result, they often travel with others, if for no other reason than to mask their presence. Inquisitors work with members of their faith whenever possible, but even such allies are not above suspicion."

James Jacobs would like to tell you, with a straight face, that this is a normal and expected way to engage with religion, to think about religion, and that Inquisitors as presented here can be of any alignment and serve any god, all of whom will keep them around on purpose. In a related story, James Jacobs is a sniveling wretch. In another related story, the aesthetics and proficiencies of Inquisitor are very much like, the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing. I do not say this as an insult to either Inquisitor or to Mister Van Helsing, his aesthetics slap, but do keep that in mind for what I'm gonna say later.

Mechanically, Inquisitor drops a lot of control and damage, gleefully sacrificing most of the support a Cleric offers in favor of singling out particular targets and persecuting them to death. They also get a surprising amount of out-of-combat utility, adding their Wisdom modifier to Knowledge checks to identify "monsters" ("hey what's a monster" good FUCKING question), gaining bonuses to tracking like a Ranger, and adding a FAT bonus to Sense Motive (this becomes Insight in 5e) & Intimidate checks. Their combat style is a mix of hard control spells and self-buffs to damage so they can sandpaper their enemies to death; very functional, but also very much a particular vision of a holy warrior. And lest we leave this unsaid, Inquisitor spells were very much concerned with rooting out "heresy", heterodoxy, and punishing "sinners" within their own faiths, which is a wild-ass statement when you remember, again, that they can follow any god. You wanna tell me the god of revolutions runs secret police whose job it is to murder heretics? You wanna tell me that, James Jacobs? That's what you're telling me? Fucksake. Adding to this is that while Inquisitors can take Domains, they more commonly take bespoke Inquisitions that, well, make them better at being the secret police. You know how the god of the harvest runs the Grain Gestapo and they're the good guys somehow? Like that.

This, however, is where I drop the other shoe. Look at Inquisitor's skill list. Look at their skills per level. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? They're competent to serve as spiritual leaders, indeed, infinitely more competent to do so than either Cleric or Warpriest are or ever will be. The rest of their abilities make that idea just a little bit absurd, but if you don't mind every local village priest being an apprentice serial killer on their off hours Inquisitor is the only divine class that can do the job. The only one. There are no others. The next-closest candidates are fucking Bard and Rogue.

Which brings us to Warpriest, I think. I will not mince words here: Warpriest fucking sucks. Pitched as one of the many so-called "hybrid classes", Warpriest's parent classes are Fighter and Cleric, and it really got the worst end of both. Cleric is cracked enough that even with 6th level casting Warpriest evens out to doing fine, but my fucking god. Warpriests get some minor buffs to their weapons and armor, allowing them to customize those items and granting a phantom buff to the budget they can assign to them, as well as access to Blessings, their particular spin on Domains. These are good ways to extend their spellcasting but are, essentially, equivalent to a secondary pool of spells and buffs; likewise, their Fervor ability is a pool of healing/harming in theory, but in practice you burn Fervor to self-buff as a Swift action (Bonus Action for you 5e folks) or you're doing it wrong. The problem here is that Warpriest is just...worse Cleric. The phantom buffs to their weapons and armor, as well as their pool of bonus Combat feats, do not make up for the bit where they swing less accurately, less often, than an equal level Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, etc. You're casting or you're failing, and if you're already a hard caster, you're a Cleric - and Clerics, y'know, are already war-priests.

Oracle is the weird one out of this list. A spontaneous and Charisma-based divine caster, Oracle stands out for having a more limited list of spells that they get to use more often, and for having flexibility with their use of Metamagic feats the way a Sorcerer does. "What if I don't want to use Metamagic feats," I'm afraid you'll need to go fuck yourself, this is what you're doing. Oracle was an instant smash-hit with the player base of Pathfinder for its strong aesthetics and customization; where most Clerics are essentially the same with minor differences, every Oracle is, in some way, different. In particular, each Oracle has a Curse which makes them like, literally & textually disabled in some way but also grants them power, ranging from "you're just deaf, that's it that's the curse" to "you've been infested by an alien hive-mind from literal space, good luck fucker", and also pursues a Mystery that gives them themed abilities and further customizes their spell list. Unfortunately this is still a Paizo class; in terms of the actual mechanics, most Curses are essentially meaningless, with a rare few either being so bad that they're unpickable or so good that you kinda have to justify why you didn't take them (Deafened is the latter, incidentally) and most just being nothingburgers that matter not at all.

Now, notable here before I talk about Mysteries is that Oracle, like Cleric, is living that 3/4th base attack bonus life and can natively wear up to medium armor. Unlike Cleric they are not natively proficient with their god's Favored Weapon but otherwise they're fronting as a gish (spellblade for you youngbloods, a character that mixes magic and melee). The thing is, while that 3/4 attack bonus is great for spells that make attack rolls - here Oracle is handily beating contenders like Wizard or Sorcerer in terms of accuracy - they are, you know, ninth-level casters. The correct move for your turn is "I cast a spell". There are not exceptions to this. In an extremely related story, most Mysteries are full of not-spell things to do with the actions you would normally use to cast spells, and while some of them - such as the endless parade of ways to boost your Armor Class - replace certain spells, essentially saving you a slot, many of them are just kinda...weak blasts or control abilities that don't meaningfully compete with, again, "I cast a spell". And like, the flip side of your choice of Mystery often not mattering is that you're free to pick something that seems thematic to you, but riddle me this: if you never use the abilities you pick up, does it matter that you have them?

There's some obvious winners in Mysteries, as there always is. Lore and Time are cracked as hell, and you can get away with something like Metal that has mostly passive abilities, but here we need to talk a bit about the theme and flavor of Oracle. Paizo sold the class on the idea of mysterious connections to the divine, a sort of divine mirror to their Witch class whose associations with the otherworldly are potentially unknown to them and move them without their consent. They then immediately abandoned this faster than my father abandoned me; every published Oracle is the Oracle of one god in particular, Mysteries are associated with gods the way Domains are, and this means that in all ways Oracle is a Cleric who can get laid. I am, perhaps, disproportionately angry about this, both on a professional level (lying to your readers is a bit of a dick move) and on a personal one (I wanted the Oracle they sold and did not receive it). And that's...a bit of a let-down, right? Paladins are already god-locked in Pathfinder too, so at this point Oracle, while having strong imagery, is not meaningfully different from its peers in a way that you can really latch onto. I dunno. It's a waste, y'know?

Overall, Paizo's vision of its divine classes is not able to be separated from its vision of religion as a zero-sum holy war in which everyone is desperate for converts, no one trusts anyone else, and rooting out one's own flock for heretics and heterodoxy is considered normal and morally acceptable behavior. Paizo deadass thinks the Spanish Inquisition are the good guys, if not literally, then in spirit, and that is, not to put too fine a point on it, disgusting. Mechanical innovations are present here, but to be frank the signal-to-noise ratio is awful, and it's very much not worth the effort to pillage their work for the few good ideas that have managed to survive.

Which brings us, at long last, to:

D&D 5e: The Power of God And Anime On My Side - I apologize for nothing and I will do this again.

So, right here up front, before I talk about anything else, anything else at all, Fifth Edition Clerics are, for the first time, both not priests and not trying to be priests. To quote Pages 56-57 of the 2014 Player's Handbook: "Not every acolyte or officiant at a temple or shrine is a cleric. Some priests are called to a simple life of temple service, carrying out their gods' will through prayer and sacrifice, not by magic and strength of arms. In some cities, preisthood amounts to a political office, viewed as a stepping stone to higher positions of authority and involving no communion with a god at all. True clerics are rare in most hierarchies.

When a cleric takes up an adventuring life, it is usually because his or her god demands it. Pursuing the goals of the gods often involves braving dangers beyond the walls of civilization, smiting evil or seeking holy relics in ancient tombs. Many clerics are also expected to protect their deities' worshippers, which can mean fighting rampaging orcs, negotiating peace between warring nations, or sealing a portal that would allow a demon prince to enter the world.

Most adventuring clerics maintain some connection to established temples and orders of their faiths. A temple might ask for a cleric's aid, or a high priest might be in a position to demand it."

Merciful fucking Illmater, we made it y'all. Not that the player base, by and large, has noticed; many people continue to play clerics as priests, to think of all clerics as priests and spiritual leaders, and to expect them to be such. And they are not priests. As I've argued already they've never been priests, but 5e does have a firm vision of Clerics - they're shonen protagonists. The chosen many, as it were, and that vision is clearer and more thematic than Cleric has been since mammoths still walked the Earth. Y'all are doing this wrong. Please stop.

Anyway, mechanics! The more things change, the more they stay the same; Cleric still has a dog shit skill list, they're still a mid-armored all-rounder with anti-undead features, they're still pretty good at resisting mind control. The Optimal Cleric(tm) is rocking high Wis and Dex so they can act first and get off their powerful control spells, which in turn implies light armor in an unusual first for D&D, but I'll be real with you: Cleric has one of the best spell lists in the game, as long as your Wisdom is high you can do whatever you want and never be punished for it. Notable here in comparison to previous editions are the flexibility of the Cleric's spell slots in 5e - you can cast any spell you have prepared out of your slots rather than locking 1 spell to 1 slot - and Ritual Casting, a feature most people associate with Wizards but which is very, very much available to Cleric and gives them similar out-of-combat utility. Turn Undead and Destroy Undead return, both more functional than they've been in decades, and are now linked to rests of any kind and also used to charge Domain features. "What about Divine Intervention -" what the fuck about it.

Which brings us to Domains. And the thing about Domains is there's still a lot of them in the context of 5e; the Player's Handbook alone published seven of them, and just about every player-oriented book after that had 1-2 more, sometimes as many as three. Cleric is feasting, and while most of the food is decidedly mid it still doesn't matter because it is, again, stapled to Cleric. Like I could wax poetic, at some considerable length, about why Domains like War, Trickery, or Grave are bad options, but y'know, the thing is, they're still fucking Clerics, they'd be doing fine with no Domain at all. I'm not gonna go into a massive breakdown of the pros and cons of any given Domain, but in general you'll have the most harmonious time with Domains that don't expect you to be spending your actions doing things that aren't casting spells. War, for instance, is gonna be a let-down because it really wants you to be making weapon attacks and you do not have the tools to make that remotely worth it; conversely, Grave also sucks, but it mostly fills in actions that your spells can't or won't, so you'll have a much smoother time playing Grave. For those wondering, the hands-down winners of the Domain list are Knowledge, Life, Light, and Tempest, though an extremely dishonorable shout-out goes to Order as a control & utility pick that is completely unaware of its own existence as a cosmic fucking horror story. See the sample Clerics below for that shit.

Now, remember when I told you to keep implements in your back pocket? 5e also has them, but they're introduced a bit...unevenly. Magical items do exist that do what magic implements used to do, namely, boost your spell DCs and spell attack modifiers - the caster equivalent of a magical weapon - but not many were ever published, and the ones that were are mainly for arcane casters. Fans of Critical Role may be recognizing items like the Spire of Conflux or the Hand Cone of Clarity as taking this role (and indeed quite a bit of Mercer's world and mechanics draws influence from D&D 4e), while players of Baldur's Gate 3 are pointing at the screen and naming some of their favorite caster-focused shields, gloves, and helmets right now. Any of these are a pretty neat way to engage on this idea as long as you keep things under control (you don't wanna exceed a total of like, +3/+3 here), but you as the DM, or you and your DM if you're a player, can and will be making this shit up yourself for your Cleric.

So, what's 5e's vision of Clerics, narratively? Well...see, the thing is, the text I quoted above is mainly it. D&D 5e is remarkably lore-light on the player-facing end, instead investing a lot of its lore writing in wild reworks of various cultures such as drow or gnolls, which I will not comment on because I do need to end this article at some point and I'm still in the fucking context section. There's a soft sympathy towards the position that 5e's Clerics, as they level, are holier Clerics, rather than more skilled Clerics (again, see above), but even that is a very tepidly held position, one which in novel writing and related media is far from consistent or primary. That said, I couldn't walk out of this section with a straight face if I didn't talk about the WILD fucking Domain assignments 5e makes for its gods, which in some cases is an artifact of many more specific Domains no longer existing, but in other cases appears to be the product of some of the most ignorant Protestant bullshit you can possibly imagine when thinking of the gods in question. Again, see the existence and flavor of the Order Domain as an example here, but like, in what fucking universe is Helm associated with the Light Domain? Since when was Wee Jas a Grave Domain kinda goddess? Not to hype this up twice in two paragraphs, but you will notice when we get there that I have chosen to ignore this whole affair for many of the upcoming sample Clerics and when I do there'll be some discussion about it. I do these things to myself and I really wish I didn't but this is who I am as a person now.

Going to the Land Of Context is like going to the Underworld, it takes you three days no matter how fast you travel. But at long last we have arrived, and we can conduct the actual fucking article. May Oghma pity me, for I myself will not.

Gotta Go, The People In The Important Pajamas Are Mad - Clerics At Your Table

Before I say anything else, that headline is not my original line but I cannot for the LIFE of me remember what early aughts webcomic it's from. I am likely misquoting it but if anyone on this hellsite recognizes it and can point me back to it for a proper credit I will be quite grateful & also get the citation in.

The following section is meant to help you in fleshing out a Cleric concept to play or even to use as an NPC. While some of this advice is edition-agnostic and indeed when we get to the religion section we're gonna return to some Takes Through The Editions and I will be very sad and also angry, a great deal of it will be slanted towards 5e because, let's face it, that's what people are playing. Make of this what you will. Also covered here will be same-paging (again), Clerics & alignment, and common pitfalls of playing Clerics (and suggestions of how to avoid them). So, without further ado:

Same Paging - In Which I Blow The Meta Joke About This Being In Any Class Article I Do Early Like A Damn Fool

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. If this opener to the section sounds familiar, it's because I copy-pasted it from my last class article and there's nothing you can do to stop me. In the specific case of Cleric, the elephant in the room you need to explicitly talk about and not just assume shit about is the sort of relationship you're looking to develop between your character and their god(s) and, y'know, any themes or ideas about spirituality that you explicitly would like to see included or, conversely, very much need to not see included. We're gonna get into it more in the religion section later but man it truly does fucking blow chunks if you're looking to have, say, a serious exploration of your character's faith and its relationship to society, but the rest of your group is on some Reddit Atheist shit, right? Hell, it's not even pleasant if you unexpectedly end up doing the inverse. In addition to this, if you're looking to explore ethical or doctrinal dilemmas (i.e. if you're really into the idea of playing a Cleric of Eldath as a dedicated pacifist, or dig into the conflicts that might arise between the Orders of Denier who preserve knowledge vs. some kinda magical infohazard), this is the time to say it and chew it over with your group. And again, as long as everyone's having fun and not hurting someone else any way you play it is fine - a kick-in-the-door style campaign is a perfectly fun campaign to have. The point is to set expectations up front, not to like, ensure that the group is playing in the one ordained way to play. Which is bold words considering how many times in this article up to this point I've deadass accused people of playing wrong, but I do mean it. I contain multitudes.

One Day, A Tortoise Will Learn To Fly - Making Your Cleric

The Pratchett quotes will continue until morale improves.

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other, it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There are many ways to do this, though the two primary schools are mechanics-first and narrative-first. That is to say, opening up with something like "Using the Knowledge Domain to pick up proficiencies on the fly sounds fun to me," works out great, as does opening up with something like, "My Cleric learned her ex-wife was literally a goddess about three weeks ago and is having a wild one about it." However, this article is about to be long enough already without me trying to write a mechanical guide to 5e Cleric, let alone any other Cleric, so we're gonna focus on the narrative approach. If you need a mechanical guide, I promise you that the player base of whatever edition you're into has made several and that the author of each one has some kind of passionate beef with the authors of all of the others. Consider the following questions for your Cleric:

Why Did You Become A Cleric? To be a Cleric is to be of the chosen many; inherently, you're gonna be a bit weird. That weirdness may be because of the conflict between your perceived social station vs. who you are as a person (to wit, people might expect a Cleric of Oghma in the Forgotten Realms to be a stuffy scholar and be surprised when he shows up to strongman competitions or turns out to be one of the Sword Coast's most prolific authors of erotica), but in all honesty odds are much higher that you're a freak. Incredible divine power doesn't erase the bit where adventuring is not a career one takes up because one's life is going well. That said, just because you're a chosen one doesn't mean you didn't also get to choose. Did your Cleric pursue Clerichood for some reason, and if so, why seek that power? If they didn't seek it out on purpose, how do they feel about this change in their relationship to divinity and the burgeoning power within them? This is where you can get both characterization and plot hooks; a Cleric forged when she swore herself to the Red Knight in a desperate attempt to defend her farm from bandits is a very different beast from one who sought power and station from Bahamut so they could enact reforms in their society. Look for connections to the game world and reasons to care about it.

How Did You Learn? There's some obvious things to answer here - your Cleric learned how to wear up to Medium armor, the proper use of shields, and basic combat techniques - but the more interesting question to dig into is your spells. D&D has actually had many different schools of thought here, some of them co-existing or competing with each other. D&D 5e, as mentioned above, breaks on the idea that a higher-level Cleric is a holier Cleric, and that their casting is an almost intuitive process of seeking intercession or requesting miracles in advance in case they need them. Many people play their Clerics this way, but here I will once again climb atop my mountain of old-ass lore and offer an alternative: divine spellcasting as a skill you actually have to learn and practice. In this school of thought, a higher level Cleric is a more practiced and powerful Cleric, and is intrinsically attractive to "rival" deities not simply because they are a great champion of their own but because they are a potent resource. For those in the audience wondering how this makes any fucking sense, I will point out, gently, that this idea is actually still prevalent in Japanese media and its White Mage archetypes, as well as in popular videogames like Elden Ring. These Clerics learn spells from somewhere, and the "somewhere" has a broad variety of answers; they unlock the secrets of their rites through cryptotheology, they experience divine revelation, their god teaches them personally, they're mentored by more experienced Clerics. Indeed, Ms. Jester Lavorre of Critical Role fame engages on her divine casting in this mode, often expressing that the Traveler has been telling her about new spells or teaching them to her personally, and while this is set up as something suspicious about the Traveler in her story it's actually a quite storied idea of Being A Cleric with deep roots in many D&D settings. Regardless of your choice here, though, consider this next question:

How Do You Relate To Your Power? This is another arena with a lot of unquestioned ideas that do not necessarily like, relate to how Clerics have been historically or even what they could be if we took only 5e as gospel. In most cases, people take a very Protestant slant to their Cleric; their spells and powers are divine gifts which can and should be revoked at the whim of their god, who is in turn a being of higher morality who intrinsically knows better. And like, I'ma get into this in the religion section here in a bit, but this is a wild idea when you actually look at the gods in question, let alone when you remember that to be a Cleric is to build a relationship with one's deity. Pious service as thought of by Christians is a way to relate to your deity, sure, and there's even some hanging around that are into it (Torm, f'rinstance), but like, Waukeen would find such a relationship distasteful, would say to such a cleric, "Girl, you're selling yourself short." So put some real thought into this, and you may come to surprising answers for your Cleric. Do they see their divine power as bringing forth the holiness intrinsic to the world? As an outflowing of their own passions and obsessions? Could your Cleric read as a grim cynic to others because they view their spells as not fundamentally different from arcane magic, and caution sternly that power is power regardless of source? Are they gifts from the world of wonder and horror, which anyone could use if they knew the right way of seeing? Your Cleric's abilities are not like a second layer on top of their personality, they're part and parcel of who they are as a person; give it consideration.

What Are Your Values? Hear me out; this seems like an obvious question, something every character should ask, but here I'm going to introduce an argument that I'll elaborate on later - gods in D&D are, essentially, worldviews. And while the worldview embodied by your Cleric's god(s) is obviously the one most important to them - they did become a wholeass Cleric about it - D&D has some specific-ass gods. A Cleric of like, Azuth (god of spells, patron of wizards) is not getting a party line about a whole lot of basic ethics and kinda has to figure that shit out for himself. So ask yourself not just who your Cleric believes in, but what, and how this might relate to their faith or grow from who they are as a person. A Cleric who is the fourth child of a noble house (kicked out to a life of adventure because they ain't inheriting shit) may well have opinions about noblesse oblige, politics, and power that have absolutely nothing to do with their chosen god; likewise, D&D has a rich tradition of Clerics of fairly evil gods such as Auril, Loviatar, or Umberlee who are out here selling the wonders those dark powers have on offer because they genuinely believe in helping people or, you know, have Standards, the thing professionals are supposed to have. A frontier Cleric may well have opinions, for better or worse (traditionally worse, D&D has a long history of being friendly to empire) about the colonial project they're a part of, or a Cleric up from the Underdark might be spending her free time in academic knife fights defending the beauty and splendor of her home's ecology. Your Cleric is a real person in a real reality, not an extension of her god; that's the kind of thing that gives a person some fucking opinions, no?

What's Your Relationship To Your God(s) Like? And in a related story, this point! Unless something really odd is going on, your Cleric is not a divine being free from mortal needs or the burdens of history; it therefore follows that she is not about to be a perfect incarnation of her god(s) ideals. That's, y'know, the neat bonus you get for having an afterlife. Let's leave alone for a moment that there is a pretty strong possibility that your Cleric is so uneducated and/or fucking stupid that they don't know the textual dogma of their own faith (though please, do not forget this, it's one of the funniest things about Cleric); the ideals of that faith, and of their god in particular, are something they are probably growing into. This really should not be a controversial take, not after Critical Role blew the fuck up with the likes of Caduceus Clay and his spiritual journey in the name of the Wildmother, but you might be surprised. It is, genuinely, okay if your Cleric is kinda bad at following their god(s) in some ways! Maybe even many ways! A dwarf Cleric who's out adventuring instead of at home using their magic to help their clan is already failing at least one major ideal of the dwarven pantheon, for instance. Clerics and even priests of Sune Firehair (goddess of art and beauty, a chaotic and capricious foe of evil whose mantle is the splendor of the living world) have a partly-deserved reputation as shallow hedonists who reify existing beauty standards; the entire faith of Lathander has a serial inquisition problem that they haven't stopped having an ongoing civil war about since the fucking Dawn Cataclysm. So how does your Cleric see the divine ideals to which they are meant to aspire? Is their deity their teacher and guide? A stern master to be obeyed? A distant and dazzling figure almost disconnected from matters of dogma in the Cleric's mind? Their literal actual lover? There can be many answers here, and while I don't want to downplay the delicious angst of a well-done "I'm a bad worshipper of my god and I'm guilty about it" arc...well, the signal-to-noise ratio there is real bad, let's say. More on this in a later section.

Hobbies? Pick some. I really should not have to be saying this and honestly it's a dependent consideration with the whole 'what are your values' thing but if I see one more Cleric whose entire life and job is religious service with no interests outside of it I'm going to drop the moon on Europe and whatever happens will happen. Fucksake, this isn't even a 'many D&D players are culturally Christian' thing, this is just lazy writing and historical illiteracy. Did you think all those monasteries and temples in like, Redwall and such making beer or growing crops was just the authors having a fuckin' laugh? Come on.

Playing With The Big Boys Now - Cleric Aesthetics

You may be remembering this section as where the Paladin article talked a bit about refluffing. This is...sort of like that. As one of D&D's full casters, Cleric is deep in its particular idiosyncrasies, and using the Cleric kit to make a non-Cleric thing, while possible, is still going to have a...a particular shape, let's call it. If, for instance, your setting doesn't have any separation of arcane and divine magic & "clerics" are just a different school of magical study, you're probably fine. If you're trying to do a fully technological setting where "spells" are high-tech gadgets, you're gonna run into a bigger set of problems much faster. All of that said, though, there's still quite a bit to talk about in terms of bringing out unique flavor for your Cleric, some of which are habits that the 5e player base has already rushed ahead to hold up as good practice and others which are rarely thought explicitly about. I do hope you came ready to learn about obscure TTRPG audience drama that has never wholly died out. Let's start with the easy one first, shall we?

Spell Aesthetics - I'll not lie to you, I should probably be angrier about this topic but the convoluted history of the player base's relationship to "what do your spells look like?" is too fascinating for me to really build up the fury it deserves. There has been, indeed, in some senses still is a shockingly vitriolic argument within D&D circles about whether or not all spells of the same name look the same, and while I am vastly simplifying the two perspectives generally break down into "they need to look the same so that they are identifiable for balance reasons" vs. "having your own personal brand is sick as hell". The latter has traditionally won by default in terms of the overall body of D&D's work, especially in the spaces defined by the novel-writing, though the influence of CRPGs like Neverwinter Nights who break on the side of spells looking the same for everyone (for obvious reasons) shouldn't be downplayed. D&D 3.5 had a Feat for this that makes your spells a little harder for people to recognize via the Spellcraft skill but mostly just gives you absolute reign to customize the look of your casting; Pathfinder, by contrast, doesn't want you customizing jack shit (and indeed late in its run also edited Silent Spell and Still Spell so that your casting of spells is still detectable to the naked eye, cowards that they are). That said, and to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody, I break very strongly on the side of "having your own personal brand is sick as hell", as do many of the major works of modern 5e, here to very much include Critical Role but also many other actual plays such as Dice Shame or Planet Arcana.

So, what goes into deciding what your spells are like? First things first, the mechanics; an aesthetic that doesn't do what the spell does, or have the components the spell uses, is right out. It's one thing if your group handwaves certain ideas for ease of play or because they don't interest y'all (see here the common practice of replacing expensive material components with just subtracting the gold from your sheet when you cast), but like, your guiding bolt fires Something that requires an attack roll, it deals Radiant damage, and it causes some kind of light that clings to an opponent. Verbal components, mechanically, must be spoken in a clear voice. Somatic components...exist. To be perfectly honest no one has had a clear idea of what Somatic components are ever aside from a vague idea that they require your hands (this is mechanically explicit in 4e & 5e) and even then there's exceptions, dishonorable shout-out to the scene in War of the Spider Queen where a wizard casts with his fucking feet. Notable here is that casters in 3.5 through 5e can replace non-expensive material components with a focus/implement/character feat, such as a staff, orb, wand, crystal, or in the case of Clerics, their holy symbol; these implements are touched, invoked, involved in the somatic components, or otherwise pretty obvious. The next bit of this is gonna be all about selecting your own aesthetics but I do want to reiterate first something I have said before and will continue saying over and over and over and over and over and over and over again: in any conflict between the narrative and the mechanics, the mechanics win by default. This is because they are the tools with which you actually engage with the game world. When your Cleric of Umberlee casts flame strike, there is some manner of dealing Fire damage involved. Maybe it's boiling sea water, maybe you hit a motherfucker with an underwater volcano, maybe you just go "the classic burning column of fire is fine", but you can't bitch slap people with that spell and then say it's actually the cold ocean depths. Alright? Alright.

So when you're looking at "what do my spells look like" there's three places I like to interrogate. The first and most obvious is, what's the deal with my god? This can be a pretty broad thing to look at; gods are worldviews, and those can be interpreted very differently. Not to return to a super famous example here or anything, but when your friend and mine Caduceus Clay (Critical Role) has spiritual guardians that look like swarms of beetles and manifests his damage spells as aspects of decay, another Cleric of the Wildmother may well lean into vines and trees, or their guiding bolt might appear as hurling a whole-ass rhino at your face that then explodes into light. Here, then, we roll into the second question: what domain is your Cleric? This is the aspect of your god or your faith that you're the closest to, which is dearest to your heart, and will therefore manifest in the act of spellcasting - which in turn is derived from your relationship with the divine. A War Domain Cleric of say, Eilistraee, may well emphasize the martial prowess of that goddess in their spells, manifesting spiritual armor, blades of moonlight, mighty shields, numinous warriors, while a Twilight Domain Cleric of the same goddess is gonna be all in on the moon and stars, the sky at night, crescents, and the like.

Lastly there's the physical action of spellcasting to consider, and here I would like to hasten to point something out. While it is common practice to simply use one's holy symbol as a divine focus, it is not required. Many faiths on Earth have holy symbols or something cognate to them, but there are also many that do not, and for those looking to explore a faith in a D&D god which doesn't practice that sorta thing Clerics are, like all casters, perfectly empowered to use a Component Pouch and cast spells in a more formal, ritualistic fashion than the typical image of calling out to one's god and seemingly producing a miracle without actually casting a spell (but more on this in a bit). Is your Cleric a student of divine magic, going through carefully-practiced forms? Are they intuiting their way through spellcasting, a razor's width away from being something like a Sorcerer? An almost saintly figure, whose spells appear for all the world as miracles (and if they are how do you square that with the dumb plans the average adventuring party engages with)? Do they speak their spells in a booming voice, announcing the presence of the divine? Are the rites they chant almost business-like, a concession to the needs of the casting but perhaps not seen as properly holy or reverent? What language are you casting in? Give it some thought.

Turn Undead & Other Features - Surprise bitches, there's old-ass lore about this too. While all Clerics can Turn Undead no matter how little sense it makes (look my in my lich eyes: what the fuck does Azuth care about undead?) and this is for Doylist reasons of legacy design, how they've gone about doing so and why have multiple interpretations. Way back in AD&D 2e this was something you were encouraged to think about and design for your cleric (see: The Complete Cleric's Handbook & The Complete Paladin's Handbook), both in terms of the physical action and what the power looks like. The classic wave-of-radiating-force look, displayed in Baldur's Gate 3 and used extensively in Critical Role, is indeed an old one with a lot of pedigree, associated with Clerics of sun deities such as Pelor or Lathander, but also with militant deities like the Red Knight, Bahamut, or even Wee Jas (it might seem weird that the goddess of necromancy is out here sponsoring Turn Undead but for the Ruby Lady specifically it's less 'begone, unnatural horrors' and more 'behold, my eviction notice'). Going with this has traditionally been some kind of plainly-spoken invocation or prayer; 'disperse and dispel', 'back to dust', 'return to sleep', that sorta thing.

However, this is far from the only possible look or interpretation. Indeed, popular these days is simply lifting one's holy symbol and calling upon one's god, which I have some objections to - it's not appropriate for every god, and it's also just kinda unoriginal - but is perfectly serviceable. Turn Undead as a sort of spell, with obscure incantations or formal rites for gods like Azuth (here making one's Turn Undead similar to dispel magic rather than any intrinsic divine abhorrence) could fit your Cleric, as could Turn Undead as a power move where you assert your god's greater authority over the undying (excellent for many non-nature Evil-aligned gods, and hilarious for gods like Loviatar). Likewise, Turning or destroying the undead can and should be flavored by your god and Domain; a Cleric of Chauntea that Turns Undead may well terrify them with the reminder of the grave, the bounty of the earth that will grow from their stolen bones, while a Cleric of Mystra simply unbinds the magic that holds them together (and, again, the eternally hilarious Clerics of Loviatar manifest the power of their goddess to beat the shit out of the undead). One move might even be to say your Cleric of a god who doesn't give a shit about the undead is actually drawing on another god from their pantheon who does; the aforementioned Cleric of Azuth is actually invoking his vassal, Velsharoon, who has authority over necromancy.

When it comes to one's Domain powers, you kinda live and die by your brand here. Every Tempest Cleric in 5e is gonna have the exact same fucking power list, so if you're not making your Tempest Cleric of Umberlee different from a Tempest Cleric of Gruumsh what the fuck are you even doing. While the way your god interprets these themes is obviously important - your character chose to follow them for a reason, after all - perhaps more important is the way your Cleric relates to them. A Chaotic Neutral Cleric of Umberlee who has a love of the terrible beauty of the sea conjures storms of sublime awe, like something out of a Gothic novel, while a more traditional Chaotic Evil one may well lean on storms as instruments of vengeance and punishment, sharing in her goddess's petty malice. When your War Domain Cleric takes that attack as a bonus action, is he seizing a moment, or drawing on berserk rage? What kind of Light or Life do you have? The opportunities are here y'all, seize 'em.

Radiant and Necrotic Damage - These are relatively young as far as D&D goes, and while they have bones in with earlier kinds of damage they're actually a bit thematically confused. Just to give you an idea here, Radiant damage is dealt by guiding bolt, the Light Domain power, ACTUAL FUCKING LASER RIFLES, and also flame strike. It has replaced instances of "this damage derives from pure divine power and cannot be resisted", Positive Energy damage, and also just fire damage for some fuckass reason. So when your Cleric is dealing Radiant damage, something all Clerics do, what is it? Nearly any of the above is a potential option, though I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the Positive Energy damage where you give living beings super-cancer that devours them in moments and/or unbind and dispel undead. Complicating this is that in the 5e paradigm, Radiant and Necrotic damage are both associated heavily with divine classes, and have nearly equal claim to holy power.

Which brings us to Necrotic damage, which is dealt by inflict wounds, as well as spells like blight, and also associated with Evil Clerics via spiritual guardians and similar spells. This one is derived from Negative Energy damage historically - that is, pure entropic power, not just death but "stop", "cease", "still", "silence" - but this is not always the case, and it very definitely has been used in 5e to represent things like blood drain, soul drain, pure unholy power, and also flaying someone alive. Similar considerations to Radiant damage apply, but they apply especially when you're out here casting Necrotic blasts when you, say, worship a nature or life god. What exactly are you doing? Why is it you're doing it that way? How is this, too, a miracle?

I May Have Started Worshiping Umberlee Because The Priestesses Are Hot - Clerics & Alignment

So here's the thing. As I mentioned above in the 69 page long context section, Clerics have had Falling mechanics for awhile, even if they have been consistently downplayed or ignored in comparison to Paladin. There's also been a very long time in which Clerics were required to be close to their god(s) in alignment, and there's something to be said there; how can one build up a deep and intimate relationship with a divinity that you have nothing in common with? But there are many groups that don't want to fuck with alignment (I'm gonna do that alignment article one of these days and on that day I will die), settings where alignment and worship are less connected (see: Eberron), and of course in 5e these ideas are no longer formally connected in that fashion, with alignment requirements being removed. Hell, books like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduce some wild-ass ideas on the random fucking tables like "your Cleric has an ongoing relationship with an imp she doesn't fuckin' like". That seems pretty functional, so, why am I talking about it? Glad you asked: I'm an ancient-ass lich and a bit of an alignment apologist, and also this is my article and I'll infodump about alignment bullshit if I want to.

Now to make a proper run at this I'd really need to actually do that alignment article, so I'm gonna ask you instead to journey with me to an imaginary land where everyone is engaging on alignment in good faith and understands two foundational principles that the modern zeitgeist has kinda left behind; the first being that alignments are broad categories that describe beliefs which have things in common, and the second being that any given one of the nine alignments has room for many, many variations on those beliefs. Not to put like too fine a point on it but just as one f'rinstance there are no less than three different Outer Planes you can point to and say "this is Lawful Good" and each and every one of those three separate dimensions of Lawful Goodness contains its own internal array of differing beliefs and expressions of what it means to be Lawful Good. And in that sense, your Cleric's god is going to be a worldview that is included in their alignment, but is not necessarily, often, or even ever a generative force for that alignment. Evenhanded Tyr is not a fount of Lawful Goodness from which mortal beings drink to become more holy; he has a worldview, beliefs, and dogmas which one can describe as being Lawful Good, and he/his church seeks to teach them. Likewise Umberlee, the famous Bitch Queen, is not Chaotic Evil in the sense of 'overthrow all governments' but in the sense that the sea recognizes no master, is sovereign in itself, and will not be denied; that she is friendlier to Chaotic worshipers comes down to a sort of mutual comfort and expectation. A Chaotic person might not like that her goddess is a divinely infamous bitch, but she like, gets it, y'know?

So when it comes to your Cleric and alignment, there's an easy ask: what is it about their faith that attracted them to it, and in what ways are they aligned with that faith & in what ways are they lacking, opposed, or still have things to learn? The gods of D&D are stranger and wilder things than people give them credit for, to be sure, but the thing is that being a perfect embodiment of your god(s)'s worldview is one of those neat bonuses you get for being a dead person, not something people generally pull off while yet living. And, not to leave this bit on the table, not all or even most of those conflicts are necessarily what one might call a dealbreaker. It can be something as simple and doesn't-need-to-be-solved as like, a follower of Azuth spending time running for political office (a Lawful/Lawful disconnect; Azuth doesn't really give much of a shit about mortal law), something profoundly wrong but understandable (a follower of Oghma who passionately hates certain kinds of literature or poetry; Oghma is the god of all language and written art), or even really major which can form the core of an arc where either the character or god has to give (Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 goes through this, but for the one person on Earth who hasn't played yet a different example might be a worshiper of Bahamut who ended up joining the colonial invasion of Chult, directly angering his god because he has failed to understand some fundamental fucking lessons here).

All of this is a lot of words to re-argue a previous point; your Cleric is not a sovereign being, capable of acting without reference to the real reality or by pure ideal alone. They have baggage, they have community, they have or had a family, they have beliefs shaped by being a real thing in a real reality. Look at the ways these aligned beliefs both touch and conflict with their church, their god, or both, and you will find a bounty of characterization and plot hooks. Keep in mind as well that the gods of D&D are fallible beings; they are students of their own ideals as much as they are teachers of such, and there are, indeed, perfectly usable hooks to be found there as well. Your Cleric is not a saint or a savior, usually; they are a student and teacher of divinity who seeks to understand it, and going on that journey together with one's god is something that has been lost in the current paradigm of the D&D audience being friendly to fucking Reddit atheism.

Call It A Girlfriend Class One More Time Motherfucker - Common Cleric Pitfalls

I'm not bitter, you're bitter.

D&D is a snake devouring itself, and like many such ongoing communities and fandoms it therefore has a lot of cultural baggage which is, how do you say, completely disconnected from objective fucking reality. This section covers some common pitfalls people walk into when making and playing Clerics. If some of these end up sounding like personal callouts...dunno what to tell you. Examine your shit.

Healbot.exe - Yeah we're starting off with the big one. Look me in my eyes. Look me directly in my fucking lich eyes. Clerics are not healers. No one in D&D is a primary healer. There have been exactly two effective primary healers in all of D&D history; the first is the Vitalist, a Psionic class published by Dreamscarred Press as part of a third-party supplement for Pathfinder 1e, and the second is Life Domain Cleric in 5e. That's it. End of list in all of history. "But what about -" no. I promise you, whatever you're thinking of is not a primary healer in the fashion you think it is. This is an ancient misconception, rooting all the way back to when only divine-type classes could heal (Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger), but even back in that day healing was valued more highly than its actual effectiveness; the archetype of a videogame healer, someone like Mercy in Overwatch who can turn the tide by keeping vital people alive long enough to make big plays, that has never been part of D&D - at least not before players have access to the spell heal, which radically flips the math by itself. Much like the question of alignment, I do not have the page space or the fucking game theory degree to give this topic the attention it truly deserves, but the very short version is that PC hit points are very low, damage is quite high, and healing doesn't solve either of those problems. When you burn your action, Bahamut fucking forbid your one spell per round, on a heal what you have done is a few things: failed to advance the combat towards a conclusion, failed to meaningfully mitigate damage, burned a spell slot that could have done one of those first two, and quite possibly put yourself out of tactical position. There are cases where a heal is the right call - the spell heal as mentioned already, or in 5e getting someone to stop making Death Saves - but in general if your options are healing or doing literally anything else, pick literally anything else. Am I coming at this very strongly? Yes, but the thing is that the perception of Clerics as being "healbots", expected to memorize primarily healing spells and cast the same, has been an equally ancient and infamous perceived drawback to playing Clerics; indeed, there was a time when tables would offer incentives to someone for playing the Cleric because "someone has to be the healer" and nobody wanted to be. Does that sound like a fun experience to you? Is that the future you want to keep having? No? Good, STOP FUCKING HEALING.

Now, I said I don't have the game theory degree to unpack this, and I don't, but that was aggro as hell so I do owe a bit of an explanation. Healing being bad in D&D comes down to a few incentives, some of which I just mentioned above, but there's another big one - the only hit point that matters is your last one. Your PC, and indeed NPCs/monsters, are just as effective at 1 hit point as they are at 100 as they are at one thousand as they are at one million. Meanwhile, especially in 5e towards which this article has a significant bias, average NPC/monster damage is more than double that of an on-level heal until, again, heal; therefore, a cure wounds or healing word for someone who isn't unconscious has, at best, bought them half a turn of being alive, and given that the real swing is much larger than actual average damage the odds that you get that half a turn - pathetic in and of itself - are not in your favor. Your party does not need to be healthy, only alive; this, then, is why you only start healing once they stop being alive. Area-of-effect heals like mass cure wounds change this math a bit especially in response to area-of-effect damage which is typically lower than single-target damage, but here I will finally hold to my repeated statements that I lack the education to unpack this; if a mathematician wants to compare a devil's fireball to mass cure wounds in the notes here, please, be my guest, genuinely.

Zealotry - Welcome to the Cleric version of "stop making your paladin a cop", which readers may remember from the Paladin article. Here I need to cut a fine line; the average D&D player likely has a pretty strong idea of a particular kind of person when I say "zealot", and that kind of person is the scum of the Earth. And, indeed, while masterful roleplaying and acting might make running a fanatical missionary interesting for your play group, this is a common failure mode and I do not fucking encourage it unless you're really sure that you are, in fact, the god-king of Big Dick Mountain. However, this mode of like, the Baptist preacher is a very narrow and specific kind of zealotry and passionate belief, and I am here to make the argument that a good Cleric is, indeed, a zealot on some level, at least in part because odds are good that you, person reading this article, are yourself a zealot on some topic or other! The esteemed Kendrick Lamar, for instance, is a zealot of hip-hop. I am a zealot of old D&D lore. Ed Greenwood, praise fucking be, is a zealot of anthropological worldbuilding. To be a Cleric, one of the chosen many, is to have a deep and passionate connection to the ideals of your god; it is to care about those ideals, and to learn them further, to be a student and teacher of them, to be a disciple and practitioner of them, and that indeed is a kind of zealotry that has nothing to do with trying to convert people or oppress them (usually). Kill the part of you/your Cleric that cringes; if you're running a Cleric of like, Sune Firehair, right, pour in your passionate opinions about art and beauty and love. Go on rants about proper trade and taxes when you're running a Cleric of Waukeen. Get fuckin' homoerotic about the ocean with your Cleric of Umberlee. When your Cleric is moved to share their wisdom with others, look for ways in which these lessons are relevant to their lives, and commit to the fuckin' bit. These are the things which are, definitionally, most important to your Cleric, closest to their heart. By all means, act like it, yeah?

Slapfights And Other Bad Ideas - Way back in 1e, D&D described Cleric as a secondary weapon-user, competent to fight in melee but lesser than Warrior-group classes. This is a lie. This has always been a lie. 5e furthers this lie with the Divine Strike class feature, but the thing is that while you are not technically doing nothing by making a weapon attack you really are not doing much and should be looking into doing literally anything else; if you're not casting, you're doing it wrong. There are going to be levels in which Divine Strike edges out a Cantrip, but ultimately you are not a weapon user and should not be acting like one. Going further here, the sanctioned action for Cleric is to bump your Wisdom as fast and hard as you can, because it controls all the Cleric things you do. Here I again return to my statement that in any fight between mechanics and narrative, the mechanics win by default because they are how you engage with the game world. Once you eat your vegetables, then you can go off doing wild shit like taking strange Feats. If you need to see this in action, look no further than the oft-cited Ms. Jester Lavorre of Critical Role fame (Campaign 2, The Mighty Nein).

St. Dipshit the Illiterate - Man I hope you're ready for a third version of this joke when the inevitable Druid article happens. Like with the Paladin article, this isn't so much a pitfall as it is a for-your-consideration; Intelligence has long been a real easy dump for Clerics, and that's gonna shape how they move through the world. While D&D 5.5 (the 2024 releases) went some distance here by giving Clerics the ability to add Wisdom to their information-style checks, for every other Cleric you have someone who is very attuned and attentive to the living world (high Perception, Insight, and Survival), but very bad at formal learning, academic study, and the like. Does your Cleric compensate for this by seeking aid when they need that kind of intellectual rigor? Taking more time (that is, making more rolls) so they can correct for their own shortcomings? Do they embrace the intuitive knowledge they can gain via their Wisdom-based skills rather than attempting to record or examine? Of course, I should not leave this on the table either; as of 5e, Charisma is also an extremely easy an attractive dump stat, and since CLERICS ARE NOT PRIESTS exploring a low-Charisma Cleric who can only really show her troth through works rather than words could be quite interesting, should you be inclined.

The People In The Important Pajamas - "Cleric" NPCs

Again, if anyone can track that webcomic down my life is yours.

You may remember this section from the paladin article and be wondering what the scare quotes are about. Following through with my argument that Clerics aren't priests, some of the potential NPC roles I'm about to outline aren't Clerics, strictly speaking, but would have been Clerics back in 2e (when they could be priests) or 3.PF (when everyone was in fucking denial). Our first entry is going to cover a concept that you could pillage for worldbuilding purposes, and then the rest are potential Cleric roles. Ready set GO!

Adepts (Revenge Of The Old Lore) - Introduced by this name back in D&D 3.0 and rarely used by Dungeon Masters or, if we're being honest, the game writers, Adepts were an NPC-only class back when PCs and NPCs were built using similar rules. Sorta like a Cleric, and sorta like a Druid, and sorta like a Wizard, but absolutely dog shit at all three of them, an Adept is the spellcaster who is worse than other spellcasters at everything; that is, they're meant to suck shit, but can be competent to, say, buy a remove curse from, to manufacture magical potions, to help enchant divine-type magical items, and the like. Notably, being an Adept means you're not part of the chosen many - this was the class associated with people who put in the work to learn divine magic the hard way, or who for one reason or another could not commune with their god in a manner that might be more associated with a Cleric. As little use as it saw, this is a concept that could use some bringing forward - many, many D&D settings, here to include Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Eberron, blithely assume that these services are on offer, and indeed that in a big enough city you might even be able to buy raise dead or stronger magic. You know who sells that but isn't qualified to be the kind of freak an adventurer is? Adepts!

Retiree - Of course, sometimes Clerics do survive being adventurers, often "intact" for a given value of that (having regeneration in-house saves you a fortune on prosthetic limbs). This kind of Cleric-as-NPC are going to be famous figures, perhaps thrust into positions of spiritual or communal responsibility they might not be equal to; after all, Clerics aren't priests. Make an NPC a lot like a Cleric, turn them middle-aged or old, call it a day. Someone like this may have taught a PC Cleric, especially if they caught said PC early on and intervened to try and ensure this youngblood doesn't die screaming between learning the difference between "my god is with me" and "I'm invulnerable."

Rival - As a PC Cleric gets more powerful and starts, you know, slaying fucking dragons and shit, the strength of their legend may well give their word weight on dogma, doctrine, and ethics. Someone more happy with the status quo of their faith, or someone with a differing vision, these can be great Cleric NPCs, rife with potential for social conflict and always able to be tapped for an epic caster-on-caster showdown. Your goal here is to make someone who could be a player character, they just aren't; bring in passionate ideals, think through their reasons for supporting the vision of faith they do, and, oh yeah, don't forget the weird pile of magic items endemic to all adventurers.

Cackling Villain - Did you know Clerics have been either the best or second-best necromancers in D&D for nearly every edition? They're third-place in 5e, behind Necromancer Wizards and Oathbreaker Paladins, a first-time event for them, but quite literally every Cleric of 5th level or higher can wake up in the morning, decide to raise an army of the dead, and then do that. They can just do that! Even outside of strict necromancy Clerics have that combination of zeal, competence, perceptiveness, and, let us not forget, terrifying magic that can make them excellent setpiece villains or even non-villainous antagonists. Your party thinks a wizard is behind this bullshit? They're gonna wish it was a wizard.

Religion In D&D Part 1 - Context Part II: Revenge Of The Context

Do I need to break this up into two headlines? Strictly, no. However, this thing is already a fucking doorstopper, I might as well give a place where people can pause.

So remember, eighty years ago, way back at the top of the article, when I said this was going to be an angrier article than the last one? Despite writing that warning myself I have, during the course of this, been shocked at how salty and aggressive I've gotten about things thus far, and this is coming from someone who knows he has anger issues in the first place. I genuinely did not realize the depths of passionate opinions I have on offer about Cleric. However, that warning was for these next two sections, as I'm very, acutely aware of my beef here, my deep well of bitterness, and my years of confused rage that have become a kind of formless hate for the way the discussion on fantasy religion across the genre, but especially in D&D, has been discussed. Y'all got a lifelong atheist out here about to tell you that you're being harsh and reductive about religion as like, a concept, and to make matters worse the behavior of the D&D audience in general has been such that I am now in a position where I need to do apologetics for known genocide enthusiast Gary fucking Gygax. Do you have the slightest idea how little that pleases me?

So let's start this off right. A lot of folks operate on incomplete, incorrect, or just plain nonexistent ideas of what faith has, historically, looked like in various D&D settings, so I'ma play the hits here and then we're gonna get into the next section where I make some suggestions. Alright? Alright.

Greyhawk: Weirdly Coherent - Commonly and incorrectly hailed as the first D&D setting (rest in peace Blackmoor & Dave Arneson), Greyhawk (known in-universe as Oerth) was written primarily by Gary Gygax, though shaped heavily by his home games and the players thereof. Now, I'm not gonna veer into a hit piece on Gygax (and even if I wanted to better ones already exist), but notable in the context of his writing on fantasy religion is that Gary Gygax was a fanboy for the Crusades, but also a massive (and half-educated, poorly researched) fanboy for ancient Celtic legend. Some of the oddities for this strange mix have already been mentioned, such as how the original Cleric is based on Crusader priests and the modern Cleric is still feeling that influence, but this - alongside growing up very culturally Christian in, you know, the United States of America - was also very much influential on how Gygax would come to write his fantasy faiths and also run up on his own limits with the same.

Faith in Greyhawk is polytheism as brought to you by someone who almost sort of understands the idea of polytheism. Genuinely, Gygax made a good run at this and kinda tripped over his own shoelaces at the end...well, his own shoelaces and his unrelenting race essentialism, thanks for the racial pantheons buddy. Greyhawk is home to many faiths, which worship and/or fear and/or oppose multiple gods (for example, Erythnul is associated with the so-called New Faith of the Flaeness but is more of a demonic figure of evil than a god you are, socially, expected to 'worship'). For your average person, the buck stops here. While an individual god may have greater prominence in a given region for political, social, or mythological reasons (for example, the relative prominence of Boccob the Uncaring in the Free City of Greyhawk in no small part due to the influence of the legendary Cleric known as Riggby) and therefore have a grand temple or dedicated cults in their name, this isn't the norm everywhere. When the Church of St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel installs a building in your frontier village they're here on a mission, it's weird, and you should be worried. On a normal day, your average lay member performs acts of worship as part of their day-to-day life, calling upon the god(s) who are relevant to their endeavors to give thanks, to ask for blessings, to honor them, or to plead mercy. Clerics, in turn, while socially conflated with the more specific cults are often pantheistic Clerics, drawing upon many gods as representatives of the overall faith. Dogmas are typically a little light on details when it comes to the afterlife, in part because the idea of an unearthly reward for one's faith is often seen as a little distasteful, and in part because going to the afterlife of a particular god is actually pretty rare on Greyhawk. Your average person is drawn to the Outer Plane that most aligns with their worldview, and goes on their spiritual journey in the hereafter without reference to a particular god.

Which is where we get to the weird shoelace tripping, because you only get an afterlife related to your faith if you've developed an intimate and intense relationship with one god in particular. When this relationship has become a defining, perhaps the defining part of your life (whether or not you're a divine caster), then you go to that god's afterlife when you die. The typical case here is someone with a deep passion for work that falls under the purview of a god, such as a master thief ending up with Olidammara, or a mountain man passing into the dominion of Elhonna. Clerics, though rarer, are prime candidates for this sort of afterlife, but also like...the fuck were you on, Gygax? Admittedly not all faiths in the real world particularly concern themselves with the hereafter or claim to have answers about what it might be like or what it entails, and in that sense Gygax's Planar afterlives as soft mysteries and a sort of default state aren't entirely out there - it's the strange dash of monotheism at the end that gets me. And, not to leave this unsaid, Gygax is not a particularly good fantasy anthropologist, so sometimes he just. Wrote shit. That he perhaps should not have written if he wanted to retain the chunk of his dignity that he lost by publishing it. I'd say to do a shot every time he writes something weird about women as gods or women in faith but you'd get through one book and be dead already.

Forgotten Realms: The Original Sin - Ed Greenwood you are this hobby's cool grandpa and also mine and I'm so sorry that I need to put you on fucking blast here. I can only hope that you've heard all this already; it's been being bitched about for twenty years, after all.

Statistically the first D&D setting that you personally have encountered, the Forgotten Realms (the continent of Faerun on the planet Toril, in-universe) was originally written by Ed Greenwood and has been contributed to by a list of other authors entirely too long for me to cite without dying of starvation at this keyboard. Most commonly known for its gonzo locations, intricate worldbuilding, and being absolutely riddled with famous high-level NPCs engaged in high-level bullshit with one another and the world at large (a status encouraged by the staggering array of novels and videogames set in it), the Forgotten Realms is also infamous in the audience for requiring that people worship a god that is their closest and most favored god and to be true to that god or face punishment in the afterlife. Those who are False to their faith face an eternity of civil service in the City of the Dead, while the Faithless end up mortared into the Wall of the Faithless to suffer until eventually becoming one with the Fugue Plane. It's very easy to point the finger at Ed Greenwood's Catholic faith when it comes to these worldbuilding elements, and while I'm certain that has something to do with the state of affairs I need you to take a walk with me.

The Forgotten Realms is a land of miracles and wonders. It is lousy with gods; indeed, if you ever go look up a full list (do NOT fucking use the FR Wiki) you may well spit your drink at the screen. Faerun is home to gods native to the world, interlopers from other Primes, gods from human cultures that ended up here when their faithful were kidnapped across the Planes (here to include gods from Ireland, Egypt, and Finland, raise your hand if this sentence is how you learned that there are gods native to Finland), alien horrors from beyond the stars, Planar luminaries, ascended mortals, and more. These gods gather into pantheons, though to be frank that relationship is often quite uh, feudal, or familial. Trying to claim the gods of someone else's pantheon don't exist or are lesser than your own god on Faerun is a real fast ticket to getting your ass beat by said gods while your own gently asks what you've learned from this experience. Among other things, though, this means that "converting" within your own faith basically isn't conversion; if you grew up in a family of Chauntea worshipers and you get real into Mielikki this event, socially, is fucking nothing, it's a non-event. It might be a different story if you turned around and started worshiping Mystra, but even then that question is very much mediated by one's culture and geography; converting even far outside one's current or native faith is a non-event in, say, Waterdeep, but it might be a little more surprising in Neverwinter.

Here's the thing: the Forgotten Realms does not experience a separation of "religious life" from "normal life". This is gonna be a hard idea for my American readers in particular to grasp, but while Jane Average Realmswoman has a single patron deity and she is trying to emulate that god's example as much as possible, it is perfectly normal for her to pray to other gods, ask for their favor, and interact with their worshipers, and this is in no small part because they are inescapably bound with Jane's everyday life. The local cults of Azuth and/or Mystra bankroll the parchment makers who print the novels Jane reads (because parchment is required for scrolls, and both churches are also in heavy on magical industries), the fishermen who catch the food she buys offer fearful worship to Umberlee who is both their provider and their destroyer, the faithful of Sylvanus, Chauntea, or Eldath maintain the city parks and fight tooth and nail to keep them wild. When she feels lost in her life and needs guidance, the temples of Selune are open at all hours of the day and night and are the closest thing the Realm has seen to A. therapists and B. benevolent therapists. The weird BDSM club she goes to every now and again opens every party with a hymn to Loviatar. The Temple of Illmater doesn't run a fucking bake sale once a month vaguely for poor people in general, they go forth amongst the downtrodden and help them every god damn day, offering food and potable water, healing, healing again, healing a third time it's a bit of a theme, a listening ear, and campaigning for their interests in the political arena. Jane herself is a worshiper of, oh, let's say Deneir, she runs a bookstore and dedicates herself to the Goddess of Libraries; she goes to the temple of Deneir for copies of their holy texts to give away to those who ask, to verify rare tomes or donate them for the public good, and for those rites which are held in the temple, but when she went and got married a few years back she and her wife were joined in the temple of Sune Firehair, goddess of love. These gods and the organizations they run have been part of Jane's community since that community was founded, and each advances something in the living world that they see as holy and worth having; they are entwined, active, earnest. You've gotta be chill about people worshiping another god or being part of another faith entirely or your social life is going to just fucking explode.

This, then, is the full and glorious flower of Ed Greenwood's zealous dedication to anthropological worldbuilding, and unfortunately it has been sorta softly hidden and scraped under by years of corporate writing. Back in AD&D 2e, the books Faiths & Avatars and Powers & Pantheons went in deep on this subject, digging on all levels into how these religions practice and their role in everyday life, but from 3.0 onward this theme has seen less importance alongside a plethora of other writers who did not understand the vision, not that I'm looking at any RA SALVATORE YOU FUCKING HACK in particular. The end result is that the average player for 20+ years has been introduced to the part of faith in the Forgotten Realms that is deeply weird monolatry, and has reacted to that vision, but been denied the full view of a strange but very functional polytheism whose bones are still in the setting. That vision of strange monolatry is also one that other settings have been copying for a dog's age, here to include our next subject, Pathfinder. Strap in, I am going to say a lot of things and none of them are kind.

Golarion: World Holy War - Originally written by James Jacobs and contributed to by a plethora of freelancers and internal staff members at Paizo, Golarion is a shallow theme park of a setting characterized by incuriosity, disinterest in the human condition, incompetent homages to other, better settings, and thoughtless, distinctly American sympathy for empire. Like with many things James Jacobs claims to love but refuses to understand, Golarion's model of divinity is very much based on what people think the Forgotten Realms model is, and even in the context of that already-corrupt shadow, Golarion's is much worse. Much of the worldbuilding around divinity and cosmology is utilitarian; for instance, Mr. Jacobs is on record stating that gods on Golarion empower Clerics and other champions because direct miraculous intervention would set off a chain of mutually assured destruction that would leave no mortal life behind. Other bits are clearly more personal; as a key for-instance here, gods on Golarion are generative forces for alignment. That is, a god defines what it is to be, say, Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral, and to defy a god is to have your alignment changed (see: Wrath of the Righteous). It is for this reason that the churches of Golarion concern themselves to an extreme extent with orthodoxy ("right thought", contrast orthopraxy, "right action"). Sharp-eyed readers may be recalling that I talked about paladins in Golarion being expected to root out heresy; this situation is also why every god on Golarion supposedly maintains Inquisitors, as seen prior in this article. Further, these literal thought police deploy spells like castigate which punish and humiliate victims, primarily those of one's own faith, into confessing their "sins", which, while we're right here, how did the literal god damn Catholic remember that not every faith has sins or engages with the idea of sin and James Jacobs fucking couldn't pull that shit off?

Churches on Golarion do not have broad faiths that include multiple gods. Any given god may have divine friends, allies, or slaves, but ultimately the churches they run all have missionary work & attempted conversion in common. There was a good chunk of time in which Sarenrae, goddess of redemption, was running a fucking slave empire into swordpoint conversions, and only as of Pathfinder 2e has that been being fixed at all, in no small part because, again, James Jacobs does not understand the things he claims to love and dug his heels in when readers told him to his fucking face that this was a bad look. Likewise, these churches are separated from "normal" life quite a bit, being a place where one walks to in order to get one's worship on before returning to the rest of one's life, a particularly Protestant model of worship reproduced so thoughtlessly that I'm shocked Mr. Jacobs didn't achieve a state of no-mind and escape Samsara. Sometimes they sponsor religious organizations such as knightly orders or wizard colleges but these are exceptions, not the rule, and even then "oh hey the Hellknights are coming to town" isn't exactly a day to day kind of fuckin' event, is it? Mechanics like Obediences attempt to walk this back, but the thing about requiring you to spend resources to get mechanical benefits from worshiping your god is that you've turned around and made this a strange thing. Praying and honoring, say, Shelyn every day is no longer something you just do, it's something weird freaks do and they get divine power from doing it. There is no escaping the blade of the ludonarrative; mechanics win all conflicts because they influence the actual game world.

Now, while I sincerely hope my complete contempt for James Jacobs has come across here, I do have an obligation to be evenhanded. Pathfinder 2e has walked some of this back, but the root problems remain. The second edition of Golarion has, for example, removed Alignment entirely, which certainly solves one problem, but it also replaced castigate with crisis of faith, a Cleric spell designed to kill other Clerics by making them doubt their gods. Likewise, Pathfinder 2e has been mum on certain cosmological revelations from late in Pathfinder 1e, one of which being the idea that only one god will survive the end of the universe and they get to be the supreme god of the next one, which is given as the motivation for them being so far up on the nuts of getting converts. This idea is, to me, completely repulsive, but it's also just such a revealing take on what Paizo thinks gods are and what they think of faith. And unfortunately, the broad zeitgeist of the current D&D audience is very sympathetic to that idea, which brings us to:

Religion In D&D Part 2 - I Cannot Believe I Of All Fucking People Have To Tell You To Stop Being Such A Cynic

Man the little icon on the scroll bar is gettin' real fuckin' small at this point. This will be the last major set of arguments for the article; following this section will be one sample Cleric for every Domain published in 5.0 (5.5, released in 2024, is a bit young for me to bother just yet), so just stay with me here y'all. It's been a long, angry, bitter journey, and yet there is this final hill to die on.

So, what's this broad zeitgeist I was just talking about? To be frank, it's a combination of thoughtless American Protestantism and some r/atheism bullshit. As the audience for D&D has gotten more left-leaning and queer, in no small part due to the wild successes of shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 (and WotC's weak, half-done, and yet unambiguously open support for including queer players, players of color, and others traditionally gated out of D&D), there has been a...conflation, shall we call it, of the fictional religions in various D&D settings with, not to put too fine a point on it, real-world Evangelicals and others who perpetuate harm in the name of faith. And, y'know, I get it. I'm a whole-ass bi dude from the edge of the Bible Belt, I used to get fuckin' jumped every other day or so, I lived in Kansas for six mother fucking years, I get it. But uh, remember when I said I'm a bit of a zealot for the old lore? Remember my consistent theme in articles of not liking it when things with great potential are left on the table because there is an Approved Way to view them? Yeah. So. Let's talk. We're gonna lay out some arguments and some suggestions.

Everything Old Is New Again - "But Vox," the strawman who teleported into this sentence is saying, "you yourself have said that the stuff you're into is old! Surely there needs to be an accounting for the changes in play culture, let alone real-world culture?" And like yeah, sure, but here's the thing: edgy-ass immature atheism (I say, as an edgy atheist) is also old as hell in D&D. Like, old-old. Late-game AD&D 1e old. Older-than-me old. Now, D&D's first serious and nuanced internal conversation about the nature of divinity and its role in mortal lives was part of Planescape, whose bones remain in all modern settings to this day (even Exandria, primarily written by Matthew "I Am In Every Videogame, Yes, Even That One" Mercer), but like a lot of settings it was very...inconsistently brought forward during 3.X, leading to the loss of a lot of its strangeness, its philosophy, and even its earnest willingness to simply be cringe but free. Though this was by no means confined to Planescape, as many writers of D&D novels were extremely willing to question the utility, motives, or even divinity of the gods - here to include Paul Kidd (author of the novelizations for White Plume Mountain, Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits), who I usually claim as my gold standard for D&D novelizations but whose attitude here is, quite frankly, embarrassing in its confident thoughtlessness and cynicism. The ideas that gods are super-predators, that they are a class of abusers, that they are false idols, that they cannot claim divinity because they are limited/can be killed, these ideas are, statistically, likely to be older than you are. Better writers than you have been fumbling this since before you learned how to read.

Jesus Christ Is An Outlier And Should Not Be Counted - So here's the thing. The idea that a god needs to be a transcendent being, with attributes that render them sovereign from the living world, removed from time and supreme in all senses? That's just Christianity. If you go talk to like, a rabbi, an imam, if you can have a frank conversation with a Hellenic pagan or a Zoroastrian or a follower of Voudoun, they'll offer quite different perspectives, often a number of different ones from within their own faiths. There are more conceptions of what it is to be divine, to be a god and to worship gods, than there are cultures that have believed in gods, and to be frank the best advice I have for you here is to go outside and touch grass. Then, take some of the grass with you and have some fascinating & frank conversations with anyone who is not Christian. Even Gary Gygax, fanboy of the literal fucking Crusades, tried to handle his shit here and got more than nowhere in terms of success. When you insist that the gods of D&D need to be like the god of Christianity, you are both limiting yourself creatively and engaging on a great deal of art in bad faith, bringing with you your own baggage which you are failing to question. These conversations are gonna be difficult! You're going to feel ignorant; you may try the patience of the people you're seeking to learn from. But to learn is an unalloyed good, and here I am speaking of far more than the hypothetical benefit it's going to bring to your Cleric in your happy elfgame time.

The Lord Is God Of Both Good And Evil - Surprise bitches it's a second alignment section. First tings first, I want to repeat again that gods in D&D are not generative forces of virtue; rather, they are worldviews. This changes if you're playing Pathfinder, but if you are playing Pathfinder, stop immediately. And this argument can seem like I'm splitting hairs, but it changes the game quite a bit; a lot of players and readers wonder why, say, Liira isn't out here trying to solve all of the world's problems, but that is not Liira's fucking job, y'know? Her job is to be the goddess of joy, the pure light and laughter of seeing the world of wonder, to be god of delights and surprises, and it's not exactly fair to ask her to be something else. If your character is a Liiran and you have some concerns about, I dunno, the homelessness problem in Waterdeep, that's on you to work towards.

Broadly, though, there is a problem in the fanbase that was laid out excellently in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, written by the esteemed Ursula K. Le Guin; people find it very easy to assume that if something is described as good, as benevolent, as truly kind and compassionate and full of wonder, there has to be some kind of catch. There is a hidden evil, there is a dark cost, there is an ulterior motive. And like, look, the gods of D&D are fallible beings, they make mistakes, but the thing is that when D&D tells you a god is Good, it like...means it. Does the writing always bear this up? No. The writing is often friendly to things that are in fact bad. But even figures like Bahamut or Tyr, infamous for their associations with fantasy cops, they're trying to be the gods of like, Sam Vimes, not the gods of police brutality. Likewise gods are not the primary drivers of the battle between good and evil - they are prosecuting their worldviews, and those worldviews relate to a Prime Material Plane that is of both wonder and horror, that is full of the creations of many gods and even many mortals. It is the law of the living world that wasps lay their eggs in living things, but so too is it the law that the land is bountiful, that a shocking number of alien beings would love you to pet them, that the sunrise after a storm is uncommonly beautiful and glorious.

As far as evil gods go, let me link my article there again so I can expand on it. Broadly, evil gods in D&D can be thought of as part of two camps; Greenwoodian evil, and Dickensonian evil (shout-out to my close friend and priestess - don't question it - the Celt for this framework). Greenwoodian evils are parts of nature, unrelentingly bound to the living world, who are gods over things that are terrible but necessary. Talona (goddess of plagues), Umberlee (goddess of the sea), Auril (goddess of winter), Loviatar (goddess of suffering), these are Greenwoodian evils, and if you're noticing that most of these are women, well, Ed Greenwood seems constitutionally incapable of writing a woman who is not, at worst, both glorious and terrible, and this is a compliment. Now, Greenwood has gods that don't fit this conception - look no further than Bane, god of tyranny - but the great joke at the expense of these gods is that they are not, contrary to their own belief, sovereign from the living world, they are not above it, removed from it. They are, instead, bent, defeated, broken, and beaten down until they service the natural order, and each time they attempt to shatter the cage the world of wonder has woven around them they lose some part of themselves in the process.

Now, Dickensonian evil is named for the works of Seth Dickenson, which concerns itself with the Sword Logic, the logic of empire. The argument it makes is that reliance on others makes you vulnerable, and only through becoming a sovereign being can you be safe and complete; the ideal being, in the conception of Dickensonian evil, interacts with others not at all, or, if it must, interacts with them only to consume them for resources. Bane is a Dickensonian evil, as are Bhaal, Myrkul, Gruumsh, Hextor, and the like, and the thing about the Sword Logic is that it is persuasive, powerful, and wrong. However, while it is ultimately self-defeating, the harm done to real people in the meantime is an incalculable tragedy, and thus it needs to be opposed at all times. As edgy bastards say constantly: you can't let God do all the work. This style of evil appeals to people who are, themselves, cruel, ruthless, and inclined towards consumption, but it also appeals to people who are hurt, who have been betrayed, whom the world has let down, and in that sense there is quite a lot to explore here. The ordinary person does not give in to the logic of empire without cause.

For gods of both good and of evil, the question at the root of it all is this: why do people willingly worship them? What worldview is on offer, and why are you sympathetic to that worldview? What would it mean to change, adopt, or oppose that worldview? If you take nothing else from this section, take that and ponder it.

Death Is For The Dead - Going with the above, holy fucking hell y'all the cosmology is not as important as you think it is. There is a vast emphasis placed by the player base upon the afterlife, one which sometimes bleed into the writing (in Starfinder, published by Paizo, "choosing your own afterlife" is seen as the ultimate expression of religious freedom) but you know what most people know about the afterlife? Nothing useful! Jane Average Realmswoman knows that she will in some way be with her goddess when she's dead and that it'll probably be pretty cool and that's about it, and as far as these things go Jane is correct. People tend to react with shock and horror when they learn for the first time that the usual spiritual journey someone goes on in the afterlife will end with them becoming one with the Plane and/or god they're associated with, and to an extent I have some sympathy for this. Lifelong atheist, remember, the idea of "losing myself" to become part of something greater sounds terrifying...but is that what's fucking happening? If one is to experience an afterlife, that is, a form of life, one must be able to change. There is no escape from eventually changing so much that you would be unrecognizable as the living person you once were, and for those who want to try we have undeath on offer (except we don't, undead also experience those sorts of changes and as a result there is truly no escape from being a real thing in the real reality). And in this cynicism for the afterlife people miss the forest for the trees. When you end up, say, in the divine realm of Oghma and are filing books in his infinite library, Oghma isn't using your soul for slave labor here. You're a newly dead person who needs time to acclimate to not having the needs of the living, and moreover you're a newly dead person whose greatest, most ardent passion was language, poetry, prose, nonfiction, the glory of writing in all its flower, and now you have unlimited access to such, an endless opportunity to truly understand and grow closer to this thing that was so important to you. I'm not saying not to involve cosmological themes or to not take adventures to divine realms, don't mistake me, but...maybe try to open your mind to the idea that this thing which is supposed to be good and natural is, in fact, good and natural.

Gods & You - This is more or less re-stating some arguments from above, but put some thought into the churches and faiths your character has a relationship with. Are they part of a broader faith? Is such a faith big where they live, and what does that mean for them? What sorts of interactions and opinions, right or wrong, do they have with the local religions and why? It doesn't have to be anything huge, but the faithful are, again, inescapable. People's lives in these settings are religious, and that faith infuses their day-to-day; so too does it infuse your character's. And while I'm right here, having beef with those faiths and/or the gods behind them? Legit. Not just legit, but on the table to be consummated; there is a long and strong tradition in D&D of killing gods with your own two hands, and while gods can be hard to keep dead (look at Bane), killing them always means something. Maybe you can take their place and try your hand at being a better god than they were. Maybe you're just trying to stop their evil schemes. Maybe they slept with your mom and you take some exception to this. Whatever it is, these sorts of conflicts both have bones in with real-world religion and a storied history in D&D itself, and they shouldn't be considered outside the scope of your ambition if you really wanna go for it.

Y'all, it's been a journey. If you've made it this far thank you for reading, and as always I remain open to feedback and criticism. Please don't let the incredible length of this piece or my unrelenting, undying fucking rage intimidate you; I wouldn't be making articles like this if I wasn't trying to have a legitimate dialogue with my audience, y'know? Now, I have one last bit for you. In an effort to be helpful, to fucking flex with my writing, and as a little treat, the following section will present some example Clerics. All but one (Matthias Winters) are from the Forgotten Realms. If you make the egregious mistake of looking up the Forgotten Realms wiki, it will tell you that Matthias's god is an aspect of Velsharoon; this is incorrect, and the first person to try to tell me otherwise will be turned into a bowl of spaghetti and served up at a high school dance. This is the one thing I will be entertaining no arguments about. That said, please feel free to take these characters as inspiration, mine them for ideas, or even just to play them yourself if you're inclined to indulge my staggering arrogance in such a fashion.

One last note; you will notice that I have often disregarded the Domains associated with various gods in the books. This is in no small part because WotC did those assignments with incredible, mind-blowing fucking incompetence, and also because a great deal of their former Domains or Spheres no longer have adequate representation. I have chosen to ignore them on purpose and with malice aforethought.

Now, without further ado, may I present:

The Chosen Many - Sample Clerics

Our sample Clerics will be formatted as follows:

[NAME]

Species Domain Cleric [Background]

General pitch of their concept & plot hooks

Personality Traits: [HERE] / Ideals: [HERE] / Bonds: [HERE] / Flaws: [HERE]

Matthias Winters

Human Death Cleric [Guild Artisan]

Mattie was only an apprentice when the monsters came to his village, ravening things set loose by an unwise summoner. People he knew died, until the Shrouded Lady came and destroyed the beasts with a dark and divine grace he had never before encountered. This Lady did not ask for money, and she did not ask for favors, but of the proud and simple people of the village she did ask two things: to let others know that they had a friend in the lich-god Mellifleur, Friend of Heroes, and for Matthias's services as her apprentice. Both were granted, with many tearful goodbyes and promises to write, which have been, it must be said, kept. It's a strange life, working as a Cleric to the Lord of the Last Shroud. Matthias isn't terribly educated, no, but he's no fool: he knows his god is evil, far more vile and underhanded than Matthias himself would ever want to be. And yet, "Friend of Heroes" seems to be no empty title. Matthias is sent on odd errands all across the land, all of them ominous and to some nebulous good. Go here, says the Shrouded Lady, and warn the town that a drow raid is coming; go there, and deliver these potions to the Moonstone Four, who will have need of them. Matthias has guarded caravans, healed the sick, slain the wicked, and placed far more magical items into chests within crumbling ruins than he ever thought plausible. During less pressing times, his work as a smith still sees use, crafting items of unusual make and odd, threatening beauty for more powerful spellcasters to enchant. One day, the Shrouded Lady has promised, his training will be advanced enough to create his own.

Mellifleur is evil. Matthias knows this. But does it matter so much, if Matthias is still helping? Does the promise of lichdom for himself really matter, if he can do more right by the world with all that time? He thinks about this, between hammer strokes, and he has no answer yet.

Personality Traits: "I tend to work when I need to think." & "I ask people what they think of death." & "I eat big and hearty; quality is a distant consideration." / Ideals: "If you've helped others, the method shouldn't matter [Neutral]." & "Professionals have standards [Lawful]." / Bonds: "I might uh, be in love with the Shrouded Lady." & "I seek a lost artifact of Mellifleur that can divine the plots of other evil gods." / Flaws: "When I don't know what to do, I take the first order I'm given that sounds right." & "There is no kill like overkill."

Elrissa Morrowmoon

Drow War Cleric [Soldier]

Born on the surface as the first generation of her family to be so born, Elrissa was raised in a community devoted to Eilistraee, actively involved in shepherding escapees from Lolth's dominions. She grew up idolizing the warrior-priests of her goddess, their grace and confidence, their surety, but never felt that for herself; big for a drow, hell, big even in comparison to a human, she despaired at ever achieving her dreams of becoming one of Eilistraee's paladins, even as she trained every day with gritted teeth and tearful eyes. When her community was found and raided in an attempt to capture the escapees as sacrifices to Lolth, Elrissa lost her father, and the very next night she stormed into the sacred grove and screamed her demand for vengeance up to her goddess.

She was answered.

In a sick way, Elrissa feels sometimes it might have been better if she wasn't. Now she's a holy warrior, now she knows she has the favor of her goddess and none can deny it, but she's still the plodding, clonking, clanging thing she was before, hunting the faithful of Lolth in her plate armor like an army of pots and pans. She lacks subtlety; she lacks grace. But while Elrissa is still in some ways the little girl who was never good enough in her own eyes, watch her change when the innocent are threatened, or when the priests of the Spider Queen are within striking distance. She does not leave survivors. She will not heed surrenders. She is coming, in a tide of moonlight and hateful sorrow, until no brick stands atop another.

Personality Traits: "I am very earnest and forthright." & "I get easily distracted by nature." & "I maintain my own equipment; no one else gets to." / Ideals: "People get better when they're offered love and support [Good]." & "For drow to have a future, Lolth must die [Neutral]." / Bonds: "I will find the ones who killed my father and repay them in kind." & "Sacred groves, even those of other gods, are worthy of my protection." / Flaws: "My hatred of Lolth can blind me to practical realities." & "Alcohol isn't a problem, it's a solution."

Gemma Rivergard

Half-Elf Forge Cleric [Noble]

Gemma acquired her vocation the way she gets most things: she bought it. As the fourth child of the noble Rivergards, who make their money in trade, her life was always a bit of a loose end. On a dare, she walked into a temple of Waukeen, laid out a spread of gems and gold and art pieces from the family vault, and announced her intention to purchase the exalted station of Cleric. She was as surprised as everyone else when the Goddess of Coins agreed.

Gemma is still a bit of a loose end. Waukeen blessed her with the power to make the goods her family merely trades, and much more besides, but lacking a specific holy mission she's taken to traveling, and it's broadened her horizons. One walk down a poorly maintained road might lead to a quest to cull the monsters threatening it, or politics with a greedy lord who has forgotten the value of commerce. She's set predatory contracts to rights, fought to the death against slaver rings, and purchased a truly concerning amount of amateur art from various goblins. And yet while she's happy with her growth as a person, Gemma still feels like she's lacking a purpose. Surely she can't purchase that.

…Surely not?

Personality Traits: "Is this some kind of peasant joke I'm too rich to understand?" & "You not understanding if I'm joking kinda is the joke." & "That really updated my journal." / Ideals: "To broaden one's horizons is to improve oneself [Good]." & "Every man has his price. That's not always a bad thing [Neutral]." / Bonds: "I haven't left my family! I'm still looking out for them." & "I still keep up with the goblin artists I've bought paintings from. I'm kinda their patron." / Flaws: "You bet I can't? Hold my beer." & "I forget sometimes that my experiences aren't universal."

Neela Wagonborn

Halfling Trickery Cleric [Haunted One]

So, here's the thing. This isn't Neela. Neela is not here at the moment, and you can't leave a message. Neela, you see, was captured by a Thayan looking to build a better Mirror of Opposition, and the wizard's experiment spit out Aleen, the Lawful Evil reflection of the original Neela, who had spent her life to date as a Cleric of Liira, Goddess of Joy. The mirror's enchantment, normally used to compel the summoned copy to kill the original, did not do this to Aleen, who was swiftly captured herself, brutally experimented upon, and then turned loose with the promise that her "creator" would be watching.

She's been hiding for all her life is worth, posing as Neela and playing a nerve-shredding game of balancing distance from Neela's loved ones with staying close enough to not arouse suspicion. Who knows if she'd survive getting killed in this Faerun, which is so unlike the one she knows? Praise be to the gods both above and below, though, Aleen here has an excuse: she's been receiving revelations from Liira, which are guiding her on a quest whose objective is unclear to her, but which has enabled her to become more powerful as a Cleric. If she's tricked the Lady of Illusions…well, that speaks well of her odds, right?

Liira has not been tricked. This journey of self-discovery into the world of beauty and wonder is about to be the funniest prank the Lady of Mists has pulled in fucking centuries.

Personality Traits: "The road calls! Immediately!" & "I remember those who wrong me." & "I have a weakness for musicians." / Ideals: "A deal is a deal [Lawful]." & "Everyone else is looking out for themselves first. Why should I be better? [Evil]." / Bonds: "That Thayan needs to die. Screaming." & "No one can find out who I am. No one." / Flaws: "I'm a good liar, but not as good as I think I am." & "My cruel streak can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

Fila Firetouched

High Elf Tempest Cleric [Entertainer]

Descended from a long line of Waterdhavian elves, Fila broke with family tradition by converting to the worship of Sune Firehair, goddess of beauty and patron of the arts. During their more youthful years they lived down to the stereotypes of the many lay members, producing a frankly embarrassing catalogue of love poetry, ex-lovers, and amateur paintings, but after the loss of their sibling to a sea storm their art took a rather more gloomy and Gothic direction. Storms and landscapes featured heavily, and with their newfound focus Fila was praised as an artist to watch, with a keen eye for the sublime. Their parents and community did their best to support Fila, but they were determined to process their grief in their own way, seeking to capture the "true heart of the storm", which they feared, hated, and also loved.

It was atop a hill in the Dessarin Valley, during a savage spring storm, that Fila was struck by lightning while trying to paint. They died in an instant of eternal agony, but it was not to be their end. Rather than claim Fila's soul, Sune Firehair offered them the chance to return, to continue their art and seek out others whose beauty was hidden by the cruelties of the world. Fila accepted, and returned to a body branded by the storm and crackling with divine power.

The plate armor is still taking some getting used to, as are the odd glances and awkward greetings from the church, but the storm, oh, the storm…

It feels like an old friend now, beautiful and terrible. It's all too happy to help with Fila's work.

Personality Traits: "Hold a moment, I need to sketch this for later." & "There is a party person in me that comes out sometimes." & "The amateur poetry will continue until morale improves." / Ideals: "The world is good, the world is beautiful, the world is worth fighting for [Good]." & "If you don't challenge norms and expectations, people will never examine them [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "I don't always get on with my family, but I'd still do anything for them." & "I haven't forgotten any of my ex-lovers; they can ask a lot more of me than I care to admit." / Flaws: "My resurrection was a miracle, but sometimes when people say my scars are a curse it still feels like they're right." & "I may be a little too excited about my newfound powers of violence."

Nattie Kells

Human Order Cleric [Hermit]

Nattie's family likes to say she was born morose; a depressed and somber child, she never quite got on with the people of her river town, and made few friends, not even during her wild years of late adolescence when she carved her way through every interested lass available only to seemingly lose her passion. Oh, yes, people tried to help, but the things they found meaning in just didn't quite resonate with Nattie, and she dabbled with this church and that career and suchlike before, inevitably, dropping them in favor of her only seemingly eternal passion: reading. Eventually she scraped some money together to go traveling, looking for anything that could speak to her, and she found a long-abandoned shrine to Jergal, the Last Scribe, assistant to Kelemvor and Lord of the End of Everything. It wasn't meaning, not exactly, but the idea that all would be ash one day, that meaning was not required, it had a comfort to it.

She was 23 when Jergal came to her in her dreams and requested her services, which would necessitate a return to lands where other people dwelled. Nattie awoke to find a pile of equipment near her, along with a holy symbol, and she set off, learning the ways of divine magic in her dreams as she made the long and pointless trek back to "civilization". Now, as the Quill of the Last Scribe, Nattie enacts what she thinks of as fate. A charm spell here, a nudge there, and things happen; a man meets his future husband by taking a road he would have walked past, a goblin scout is devoured by an owlbear he would have avoided, a horse spooks and kills its rider. Nattie has hurt people. She has saved people. She tells herself it doesn't matter, but beneath the layers of lassitude and nameless sorrow there is an uncertainty. What is she becoming?

This, too, is Jergal's design. Nattie is determined to live in misery, but the Last Scribe can wait for her to realize better. He can always wait.

Personality Traits: "Ugh. People." & "Primary sources motherfuckers! Write some! Keep them safe!" & "Nobody talk about the kind of person I am around furry animals. I mean it." / Ideals: "It means something, that you were here, and that you were alive [Good]." & "People return to dust eventually. It doesn't matter if they return to dust faster [Evil]." / Bonds: "My lonely home in the shrine is sacred to me." & "The bookstore I used to go to as a child was nearly going out of business, but as long as I keep spending adventuring money there it will never die." / Flaws: "I don't really have any bad feelings about people dying. People die all the time. They're very good at it." & "I wish I felt more blessed by the attention of my god, but he's such an aggravating little bitch. Why's he gotta be so annoying?"

Dagill Tapper

Shield Dwarf Knowledge Cleric [Background]

The son of miners, Dagill quickly proved to have a keen interest in learning, if little talent for academia. For much of his youth he found employment running books for the clan's mines, until - on the advice of the local priests of Moradin - he was sent to Neverwinter to be educated in magic, as the gift was in him and his home had little resources to explore it. Wizardry did not work out for Dagill, despite his passion for the Art, but that passion saw him into the worship of Azuth, God of Spells, and eventually he was chosen as a Cleric.

Dagill's interests lie in the recording and advancement of magical knowledge, and his new faith keeps him busy. Between expeditions to recover lost knowledge and study traditions of spellcraft, he assists in scribing scrolls and seeks out potential mages in under-served populations. Though his clan doesn't approve of his conversion, he's still a dwarf's dwarf, with a deep love for the gods of his people, who returns home often and pays his dues in gold, labor, and knowledge for the good of his people. They'll come around eventually. They must.

Undiscussed with most is Dagill's dearest ambition: to find one of the lost scrolls penned by the very gods, and cast it with his own hands. What else could bring him closer to his new god?

Personality Traits: "Have you heard the good word about how great wizards are today?" & "Despite it all, I'm still a dwarf's dwarf in a lot of ways." & "I make a big deal out of Azuth. All the time! People should appreciate him more!" / Ideals: "The advancement of the Art is meant to help people [Good]." & "We have obligations to truth, and to history [Lawful]." / Bonds: "I still send money to my clan, and I should visit again soon. I might have an arranged marriage coming up." & "The wizard who tried to teach me is a good woman; I need to repay her kindness." / Flaws: "I have a bit of an inferiority complex about wizards." & "I am easily distracted by puzzles and riddles."

St. Nokta Kinslayer

Goblin Life Cleric [Outlander]

Honesty can change a life, you know. Nokta's warband came up against a pack of tall-folk adventurers, as goblin warbands sometimes do. She was a soldier, then, seemingly destined to be smeared beneath a mercenary boot, but when she was captured the adventurers said: talk, and we will let you live. She talked, of course she talked, Maglubiyet teaches survival at all costs, but her fellows found out, and intended to kill her along with the adventurers during an ambush.

The tall-folk fought like demons to save Nokta, because they had said she would live, and they meant it. Despite their best efforts she died, to an arrow in the throat, only to wake with the battle still raging, brought back to life by diamond and spell and the tall-folk shaman in his metal armor. Three times did Nokta die, and three times was she brought back, only to watch the tall-folk shaman take a blade to the heart. Gripped by something she couldn't name, Nokta raced over, and took his diamonds, and tried to speak his spell, fervently calling out for his strange tall-folk god to spare him.

Nokta was answered in the name of Illmater, the Lord on the Rack, god of mercy and of self-sacrifice, and has served him since. For dying and returning, her new church calls her Saint, but her people call her Kinslayer, and the Traitor Shaman, and more besides. There will be no peace, and though Nokta knows her suffering reduces that of the world, this cannot continue. If the Fire-Eyed God wants her head, there can only be one recourse: break his priests until the cost of war sickens Maglubiyet , and he accepts peace. Saint Nokta is unafraid, and she is unmerciful.

Personality Traits: "What, tall-folk - uh, I mean, yes, my child?" & "I don't hate vegetables, I love meat." & "The Tall God says His blessings are for all. For some reason." / Ideals: "Peace for peace, wrath for wrath [Neutral]." & "I don't understand the compassion I was shown, but I do treasure it [Good]." / Bonds: "The adventurers who fought for me have my service for the asking." & "I'll drop everything to fight the servants of the Fire-Eyed God." / Flaws: "I don't know what this 'love' is, and 'trust' is also still pretty difficult for me." & "My fears drive me to violence far more often than the Tall God likes."

Jelka Threebones

Orc Grave Cleric [Acolyte]

Jelka came to live amongst the Sky Pony tribe of the Uthgardt as a young adult, one of several political hostages exchanged between her own tribe and the Sky Pony as part of a peace agreement; with both in the shadow of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, wise leaders on both sides sought to cool traditional conflicts between them in favor of looking to the greater threat to their mutual north, and Jelka was selected for her cool head, proud bearing, and great foresight for such a young orc. The story might have ended there, if the Cult of the Dragon hadn't moved into the area looking to pillage the spirit mounds and burial grounds of both tribes' warriors to secure a supply of corpses for their necromancies. Outraged at this desecration and disrespect, Jelka called upon Gruumsh and Tempus in the name of both her peoples for the power to revenge herself upon the defilers, and her prayers were answered.

Today, Jelka continues her campaign of revenge in the name of Gruumsh, hunting down those who raise the dead, defile graves, and bend the minds of warriors. Her list of enemies is long and only growing longer, and she is keenly aware that she is not yet mighty enough to face down the likes of dracoliches or, say, the entire sovereign nation of Thay. But she will be. She must be. Wrongs have been done, and she wades into battle chanting the litany of them in an endless roll of accusation and reprisal, screaming hateful hymns alongside her chosen allies. Her new mission has made for strange bedfellows, but for all her outward fury Jelka remains the curious and level-headed young orc she was when she was selected all those years ago. Perhaps there are other enemies she might make peace with, to gain the satisfaction of her almighty vengeance.

Personality Traits: "Raise a cup with me! We should celebrate!" & "I'm very curious about new cultures, sometimes to the point of being annoying." & "I love a good story." / Ideals: "The world will hit you hard. If you don't take revenge, all you'll get is hit again [Evil]." & "If you don't have the guts, you don't deserve the glory [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "My word of alliance, once given, is absolute." & "I have siblings in my first tribe who should be adults soon. If they need my help, they have it." / Flaws: "I never forget a sleight." & "I pick fights I can't win sometimes."

Kellard Frosthalt

Rock Gnome Nature Cleric [Folk Hero]

Kell should have been a druid. He knows it, his clan knows it, druids know it, there's even odds that mushrooms in Menzobarrenzen know it, but he's always had a deep phobia of shape-shifting, so for a long while he was content to study nature…academically. Sure, his papers were trite, but the man published and that's not nothing. When he was hired to catalog finds for an expedition into Netherese ruins, the team found an ancient shrine to the goddess now known as Chauntea, and beset by undead guardians. Unwilling to let the sacred place be defiled, Kell took up arms for the first time, and found himself blessed with power.

Now Kell spends his time in lost places, seeking revelation and tending to the needs of rural communities. His new position is intimidating. More than many other followers of the Lady of Waving Grain, he understands that his goddess is an ancient and persistent foe of evil. Only…can something better truly be grown from her foes? Is Kell ready?

Personality Traits: "I love nature! Let me tell you about this parasitic wasp!" & "I know it doesn't fit my station, but I just, I need to be dressed sharp, okay?" & "I tell jokes with a completely straight face." / Ideals: "There are no pointless things; all things of the world have a treasured place in it [Good]." & "Generosity is the highest virtue [Good]." / Bonds: "Fuck Netheril, fuck the Netherese, burn their ruins and salt the ashes." & "After that first fight in the ruins, a peasant family took me in. I owe them my life." / Flaws: "I have a deep and abiding phobia of having my body changed against my will." & "I never, ever, ever, shut the fuck up."

Dolly Bookchild

Half-Drow Peace Cleric [Investigator]

Most half elves lose their human parent first, but as the child of two adventurers Dolly wasn't exactly surprised when her drow mother bit the big one doing battle with a demon accidentally released from an ancient binding. Seeking to understand her loss, Dolly started spending time in the sacred libraries of Deneir, and eventually converted after falling in love with learning. Academia isn't exactly her strong suit, but Dolly has a lot of practical knowledge that isn't often written down in an accessible fashion. Her new church was proud to fund the publishing of Dolly's Practical Survival Guide.

Still, a new love of learning isn't closure, and Dolly yearned to be an adventurer like her parents. After her second book went off to the printers, she stayed up in vigil to ask Deneir for a cleric's power, vowing to use it to find and advance knowledge, and to protect the ignorant. Her wish was granted, and now she bears the peace of the library wherever she goes. Every day is a lovely day for learning.

Hopefully one of these lovely days Dolly will figure out that the demon isn't done with just her mother.

Personality Traits: "It's a beautiful day to learn something new, isn't it?" & "Ah, the great outdoors!" & "I skip when I'm happy. No really. No, really." / Ideals: "Knowledge belongs to everyone [Lawful]." & "Extend grace to the ignorant; they truly do not know better [Good]." / Bonds: "Dad's getting on in years. I need to make sure he isn't worrying about me when he passes." & "I still return to my temple pretty often; it feels more like home than home does." / Flaws: "Sometimes I forget that my fun adventures can have deadly consequences." & "I'm from the big city where my heritage isn't a big deal, so it's surprising every fucking time that it's a big deal elsewhere."

Jonas Cobbler

Aasimar Light Cleric [Urchin]

So here's the thing. Jonas had a bit of an odd childhood. Raised by a then-single mother who is a devout follower of Lathander, Jonas was maybe six, seven years old when he mentioned in his prayers that he's a boy and asked for some help being a boy because he knew Mommy worked very hard and didn't have a lot of money. His first direct experience with divinity was his god's gentle voice in his mind saying: yes, my child, your new dawn is upon you. He had some explaining to do the next morning, and his mother was happy for him and seemingly cross with Lathander, for some reason?

It wasn't until Jonas was about seventeen that he got answers to that particular mystery; he came home to find his mother, her partner, and a golden-haired stranger waiting up for him. His mother introduced the stranger as Jonas's father...

...Lathander.

Maybe running away from home in a bit of a panic was the wrong move, but uh. Jonas has at least one parent looking out for him now, right? It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It's all gonna be fine.

Personality Traits: "I am extremely food-motivated." & "Let me teach you my secret handshake!" & "Uh, I've got, a spell for this, uh - fuck - uh, in the name of the new dawn uh -" / Ideals: "You don't need a reason to help people [Good]." & "The best time to be a better person was yesterday. The second-best time is now [Good]." / Bonds: "My old friends mostly went off to real careers, but we still stay in touch." & "There's a hidden place in the old neighborhood that I take care of." / Flaws: "I cannot walk into church any more without thinking, holy shit this guy slept with my mom." & "I am embarassingly weak to a pretty face."

Freddie Wright

Human Twilight Cleric [Criminal]

Hailing from a family of Selunite wererats in Yartar, Freddie used to have a fairly exciting life spying on Zhentarim operations, right up until she blundered into a cell of Sharrans in the sewers. They pushed her into a portal to see what would happen, but not before somehow stripping her of her lycantheropy to ensure she would suffer and die. Freddie arrived in Undermountain with nothing but her faith, and in her time of need the Moonmaiden answered. Against all odds, Freddie survived, scrounging up equipment, learning the traps, and eventually staggering out of the Well into the Yawning Portal Inn. She still has nightmares, but Freddie is grateful every day that she's alive to have them.

Now the former wererat stalks the Sharrans up and down the Sword Coast, seeking the return of what was taken. She hates her heavy armor and despises being caged in one body, but despite her snappish ways she takes her duty as a guide very seriously. That's part of the problem, actually. The dead of the Underhalls haunt Freddie and beg her intercession so that they might move on, and with every ghost laid to rest her prey gets further away. But what's a girl to do, ignore them? No. Freddie has faith. This righteous path must, will, make her whole again.

Personality Traits: "Time is money, hurry it up." & "Sometimes I overcomplicate things because I'm biased against direct solutions." & "Hey that reminds me of something that happened in my family -" / Ideals: "If you give people what they need to grow, they become their best selves [Good]." & "No one else can walk your path for you [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "Yartar is still my favorite city, and I stop by to do good by it when I can." & "The dead of the Underhalls that follow me have none other to speak for them." / Flaws: "Do you have any idea how much this stupid monkey body pisses me off?" & "I've got a vengeful streak that is not uh, approved Selunite behavior."

[anon-sect]

Pic source: Tumblr account @7ef6

Miles, Terry and Will had been roommates for at least several years. One thing they had in common, was that all three were big fans of the Dragonball Z universe and avid players of Xenoverse 2. As all three were highly competitive, they were all trying to prove who was the best at the game.

Terry came up with a bet that the one who loses first in a free for all has to be socks for one of the other two for thirty days. The one who beats both opponents gets to wear the one that lost first. Miles and Will agreed to the conditions as well. Terry only made that the bet, because he played the game a little more than the others and thought he would definitely win.

Terry found himself the first one being defeated while using Majin Buu. Miles and Will paused the game to gloat a little since Terry was the one who made the bet. Terry placed his TF Phone down for one of them to pick up once the winner was decided.

Will end up winning their fatal three-way fight using his favorite character, Vegeta, super Saiyan blue form. Terry wanted to back out initially, but a bet was a bet. He had to see it through despite that he was predicting that he would be using his device on one of them.

Will picked up the device and made the settings. "It's only for a month. I am sure you can survive my feet for that long." He spoke laughing while he flashed it at Terry. Terry vanished and in his place on the couch was a brand-new pair of white socks. He picked up the socks and tried them on his bare feet. "These new socks feel great." He said to Miles, not even acknowledging Terry. Terry was a pair of socks for the next thirty days. There was no need to acknowledge his socks. "He or it really feels that good?" Miles asked. He too decided to not acknowledge the sock's former form. "Yup, I think I will wear my new socks every day. I really want to see if this pair can survive my feet without getting a hole in them for the next thirty days. Normally, I have a hole in my sock after two weeks. Maybe this pair might be different." He laughed as both he and Miles started up another game.

Terry instantly knew his bet was a terrible idea. Will's feet had a slight odor to them, but not horribly bad yet. He was just an object on his roommate's feet. The fact that neither of them acknowledged him made his new existence feel even worse. Yet hearing that his socks has a hole in it after two weeks scared him. If he develops a hole, it would be nearly impossible to transform him back to normal. He would be forever trapped as a pair of socks. He mentally pleaded for Will to turn him back to normal before a hole could even develop, but he was a pair of socks with no voice or even movement. The only motion he would get is by his owner's feet. He just hoped that he would be durable enough to serve the thirty days.

THIRTY DAYS LATER....

Will had put his new socks through so much. He literally wore him every day. He wore his new socks to the gym, and every workout session. He wore him to work and just simply hanging out. He slept with his new socks on. The only time he didn't wear them was to bathe, jerk off in them on occasion or as a cum rag. A tiny hole had developed on the sixteenth day of wearing his socks, but they were his possession for thirty days and he was going to keep true to the bet. When it was finally day 30, he took off his socks. He found Terry's human setting and flashed the socks, but nothing happened. He tried it again, yet still nothing happened. He asked Miles what the problem could be, but he didn't know either. They found the manual in Terry's room. There was a warning. If you become clothing, make sure you don't get torn or ruined or you might be forever trapped as that object. Transforming back to human might be impossible. Looking at the large hole in one of the socks, Will realized that Terry was forever trapped this way. He put the socks back on. He felt slightly sorry for what his feet had done to his former roommate, but he did say that socks usually don't survive his feet unharmed. This seemed to be true for even human transformed socks. He decided he would keep his new socks. If they get torn too bad, he could always keep them as his favorite cum rag.

Terry's mind was completely gone by the end of the 30 days. He tried to hold on, but once the hole started to develop, it started to unravel his mind. He lost all sense of free will in his mind. He was just a dumb sock slave serving his master's feet. His only pleasure was being worn by his master. He even forgets that he was once human. He loved being used and worn by his Master Will, even though his existence was one of pain every time being worn and sometime reek of foul foot odor. As long as his master was fine using him, he loved his life of being just socks.

Will was completely unaware of his feet had done a number to his roommate over the course of the 30 days. HIs feet had completely destroyed his mind and turned his former roommate into a dumb sock slave. Even if he could transform him back, Terry would be down at his feet begging to be close to him. Now his fate was sealed, to forever be owned by his former roommate as just an object on his feet.

[block-tales-headcanons]

holy peak i need to expand on a vs hatred-possessed-player battle because its Awesome [🌫️ anon not focusing on the embodiments/emotions for once? shocking]

ngl i think the party woudl have terry, kitchen wizard, kyoko, and griefer i think it would be cool to have griefer in like right after recovery and he would have some of his bubonic plant parts still there.....it would make for cool attacks

maybe there could be 2 phases to the battle with hatred-possessed-player in the first phase and hatred breaking out of the player when the "player" gets defeated for the 2nd phase

actually wait hatred progressively breaking out of the players shell of a body like japhet off throughout the 2nd phase.....maybe not out of their mouth but maybe just their head IDK

idk how i didnt think of "spectral slash" as a ghostwalker attack for them.....maybe it could have a bleeding effect when hit idk how that would work. or it could just inflict the confused effect actually

ok my explanation for griefer being part of the team is maybe he heard about the hatred situation through very fast spreading rumors [the player IS shedletskys chosen one and the hero after all......and someone becoming the new ghostwalker wielder and crashing out hard is pretty crazy] Idk turitopulis is preeetty far from the manor idk if this guy would reach the actual fight in time ill say yes for the plot

attacks i have down so far [excluding terrys bc i dont really have ideas for him besides his og missile attack maybe something with kitchen wizards hat idk] are for griefer: his crowbar attacks [uses the same ui and stuff as the sword but double attack instead] + a claw swipe attack that inflicts the poison effect [or maybe all his attacks inflict poison? idk but its useful] [also hes immune to poison obviously], for kyoko: ranged suitcase attack that flies towards hatred-possessed-player and has a chance to inflict the dizzy effect [hitman 2 reference i had to research that btw]

kitchen wizard has hp + sp restoring spells maybe....perhaps he has spell versions of cure, resurrect, both charge cards, free ice and fire, and sp wire.........

idk how to balance stats but highest max hp from greatest to least is terry, griefer, kyoko, kitchen wizard, highest max sp in the party is kitchen wizard im not figuring out the rest💔

ok unrelated but someone should make a toxichero or another griefer ship idk animation of sk8er boy which was used in that one shedletsky 2010 roblox skateboard video with a suspicious looking avatar that may or may not be what griefers appearance is inspired by

also I WAS RIGHT!!!! HAHAHAHAH DELTARUNE IN 59 DAYS!!!! DELTARUNE TOMORROW TRUTHERS STAY WINNING I DONT THINK IM SURVIVING JUNE 5 ILL PROBABLY INSTANTLY EXPLODE SEEING CHAPTERS 3 AND 4 AVAILABLE ON THE STEAM PAGE

- 🌫️ anon

i actually like dletarune but I can’t play the actual game 💔

[theliliesofwatersedge]

Okay I need an Iggy and Ian friendship.

Like just imagine Iggy and Mickey reconnecting after Terry's death and one day Mickey comes home thinking there's a fight because his brother and husband are yelling and swearing in every direction.

But he turns the corner and there they are playing Mario cart.

And Mickey is just standing there dumbfounded watching these two idiots in front of him until Ian finally wins the game (causing a very swore-loser Iggy to grumble and throw some popcorn in his brother-in-law's direction) and both of them turn around at the sound of Mickey grunting. Ian jumps up and lovingly greets his husband while iggy calls out from the couch "Sup little bro!" and "Gayyyyyy!"

[laurfilijames]

Like My Dreams

Part 5

Intro Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

Pairing: Pete Dunham x female reader

Words: 9.9k

Warnings: Rated E, 18+. Swearing. Alcohol consumption. Unprotected intercourse. Sex in a public place. Blood, cuts and bruises. Dressing of wounds. Cockwarming. Mention of stab wound and life-threatening injuries. Assault. Threat of rape.

Summary: Right when you and Pete seal the deal on your relationship, more car trouble and a visit from an ex stirs up drama and pops the blissful bubble you waited so long for.

A/N: 😅 this chapter really got away from me but I had the best time writing it!! I had an idea for part of it and pitched it to the wonderfully supportive @ramadiiiisme who encouraged me to go for it and helped me pull it off, so big thanks to you a million times more 💗 The scene with Mrs. Platt was inspired by a conversation with @stealfromthedevil about her dear grandmother who's cheeky words are included in the dialogue 💗💗

The linked song is one I've been listening to non-stop while writing this chapter and is just so lovely and fits in with all the fluffy bits of not only this chapter, but this series as a whole.

---

It had been a couple of hours since Pete had gone home to shower and clean up after the friendly game with the lads, now sitting in his favourite seat at their table watching the Hammers struggle to get a lead against Chelsea, the match currently tied at 1-1. He would normally care a bit more about it, but knowing you were on your way to meet him there had taken all his focus and energy, feeling more excited to see you than bothered that his team might end the game in a draw, or worse.

He slouched against the old chair with his arm over the back, taking a long sip of his beer before setting it back down and licking his lips.

“Oh, come on! Fucking unbelievable!” he muttered at the screen, the referee pulling an outrageous call against West Ham.

Whatever happened next in the game no longer mattered to him all that much, seeing you walk in the door and through the crowd of people standing between you, his smile growing as he watched you tug your scarf out from around your neck and head over to the bar where you stopped to say hello to Terry and order a drink.

Pete stood and walked over slowly, admiring you from across the room as you chatted with Terry for a moment, your smile making his heart nearly stop when you turned and directed it at him as he reached you.

He said nothing, his grin too large to control any words to come through it, instead opting for a greeting he had been waiting all night to give.

Grabbing your cheeks, he leaned in and kissed you, inhaling with a low moan as he felt you melt into him and release your breath, your hands landing limply on his biceps.

A few people cheered around you, making both of you smile again after you parted from each other, but the need to get you alone was quickly becoming a priority in the realization of how many people were preventing him from doing all the things he wanted to do right then and there.

“Hi, love,” he said warmly, the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes making desire stir inside you.

“Hi,” you sighed with a love-drunk smile, the single word a breathy whisper.

Pete bit his lip as he reached for both of your drinks off the bar, nodding in the direction of their table in the corner.

“Come on, gorgeous, we’re over here.”

You were greeted warmly as usual, the spirits of everyone high after the Hammers scored a goal, and with all members of the GSE and their respective partners present to watch the match, little room was available at the booth.

Ned and Ike shifted over to make a spot for you beside Clair and Dave, leaving a space that was too large for your liking between you and where Pete sat in his designated chair, his hands folded together with his elbows resting on the arms of it as he looked fondly at you mixed in with his favourite people.

As much as you loved being at The Abbey enjoying conversations that made your cheeks and stomach hurt from laughing so much, the company that Pete kept people you now couldn’t imagine your life without, it was difficult for you to focus tonight, your mind constantly wandering to how the night was going to turn out just as much as your eyes continued to find Pete’s automatically.

It was like he knew everything you were thinking, his blue eyes glowing with a telling want and his looks loaded with insinuation, every swipe of his tongue over his lips or the way he rolled the toothpick that hung out of his mouth teasing you and driving you mad.

You squirmed in your seat, your fingers toying with the soggy coaster that had been spilled on too many times, forcing yourself to peel your eyes away from him whenever you felt the heat inside you becoming too much, only to steal another glance a moment later, finding him still looking at you hungrily.

The game was coming to an end, and with the Hammers still holding onto their lead, Pete was more than happy to miss the rest of it in exchange for seeing something he had wanted to all day, and as you slowly trailed your hand down your neck to your chest before reaching for the drink you had nursed most of the night, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

Waiting for you to glance over at him again, he watched you intently, imagining your bare form beneath him, pressing his lips against every single inch of you.

Finally, you met his gaze, a sultry look weighing in your eyes, and with a subtle nod toward the door, Pete silently told you it was time to go.

You smiled almost sheepishly, your face seeming to glow in a mix of embarrassment and excitement as you rushed through your goodbyes, your friends all shouting teasing jeers at you in knowing the reason behind your early exit.

Pete winked at you as he shrugged into his tan trench coat, adjusting the collar and tugging it up at the back so it covered his neck, flicking the toothpick he still had in his mouth onto the table.

He took your hand and lead you through the pub with a pride that didn’t go unnoticed by those you passed, finding yourself bashful in thinking that everyone knew what was about to happen based on the look on your face, having to bite your lip to stop yourself from grinning and cast your eyes down at the worn carpet as you made your way out.

The door hadn’t even shut behind you before Pete had you up against the brick wall, his hands holding your waist with a claiming grip as he leaned into you and kissed you breathless, his want for you inarguable.

“Let’s go home,” he said with surety, his smile lighting up his eyes when he stepped away from you, pulling you with him with his hand clasped around yours again confidently.

The walk to Pete’s wasn’t long, but was made longer tonight by how often the two of you stopped to kiss, unable to keep off of each other for the duration it took to land at his door.

There was thankfully no sign of Mrs. Platt hanging around to make comments, the time it took for Pete to fish out his keys and unlock the deadbolt incredibly delayed due to interrupting the process in favour of kissing, your bodies now pressing together more closely and your hands becoming bolder where they roamed.

Pete finally opened the door and walked through it, and after tossing his keys onto the table, turned to grin at you and take your hand, pulling you inside with him.

“Get in here,” he said through his smirk, the playful tone of his voice undisguisable despite how much lust showed in his eyes.

He brought you in against him, his lips teasing yours as he whispered, “I need you.”

You smoothed your hands up the back of his neck as you kissed him, melting when he moaned into your mouth as the sensation of your fingers raking through his hair made him desperate for more, the intensity of the kiss increasing quickly.

Within moments you stood naked in his room, holding each other close while playful kisses were shared and hands began their worship, the excitement and anticipation that had slowly built up to this moment stirring within you.

It was clear that Pete felt the same, his smile unable to be wiped from his face each time you parted to look at each other, and as he moved closer to the bed with you, he tucked his bottom lip in his teeth to try to restrict it.

You sat on the mattress, leaning back on your elbows where he followed closely, crawling over you as you fully laid down in his bedding that lingered with the scents of him and you. His smile turned into a sweet chuckle as you giggled too, having him settle between your legs and laying on top of you making you feel unbelievably elated, the sensation of his readied cock resting against your core solidifying the fact that you couldn’t possibly wait another night.

His expression turned serious for a moment as he peered down at you, a soft groan coming out of his mouth as his cock rubbed against you when he shifted slightly.

“You sure you’re ready?” he asked, his voice somewhat shaky with restraint.

You nodded, and spoke with as much certainty as you could have in a moment where you felt on the border of being totally consumed by lust and longing, “Fuck me, Pete.”

He didn’t hesitate, pushing into you with a confident drive of his hips, your head tilting back as you cried out, the stretch of him filling you bare without a doubt the best thing you had ever felt.

Together, you quickly found a pace that suited you both, his thrusts slow and rolling but purposeful, his kisses growing more desperate on the skin of your neck and chest as each minute ticked on.

It took hardly any time at all for your climax to fire up within you, the anticipation of sex with Pete having let the intensity of it lay in dormancy right under the surface only to bring it forth faster than ever, his body linked with yours igniting and awakening every part of you.

You clawed at his back in a signal of your oncoming pleasure as well as a silent plea for more, half of you wanting to experience it immediately while the other half begged to prolong it all.

Clenching around his cock, you couldn’t ward it off any longer, moaning into his mouth as he continued to slam into you in a tempo that sent you to the edge but you could tell was beginning to falter as his climax took him in its clutches.

Your orgasm came through you hard and fast, shattering every inch of you as he followed right along with you, feeling him pulse and swell inside your walls, soaking him at the same time he filled you.

Pete kissed you almost frantically as he slowed his movements in you, savouring every second of being inside you while seemingly starving for more, your whines quieting out in his mouth as his breathing worked to calm to normal.

Emotion overcame him at the thought of never being able to experience this with you, the reality of him almost dying without ever having kissed you or touched you or loved you made his eyes burn, and closing them tight as he parted from your lips, he held your face in his hand and brought his forehead to rest against yours, his thumb moving to pull down your lower lip as you shared more laboured breaths.

You made love again and again through the night, resting between rounds only long enough to recharge, the addiction you had to each other increasing each time.

It was well after three in the morning when you had finally fallen asleep, exhaustion eventually taking over the nagging need for more, the cold comfort of the open window and your bodies wrapped together truly feeling like heaven.

The sound of rain and Pete stirring against you woke you up, making you scoot back against him to get closer to him, his arm that was wrapped around your waist tightening its hold and pulling you in.

He hummed in your hair, his body beginning to wake before his mind fully did, feeling him harden against your bum while his lips lazily kissed down the back of your neck.

A long moan sounded from you as you indulged in the blissful sensation, wriggling against him until his cock was firmly pressed between your cheeks, beginning to rock your hips languidly back and forth until his sleepy kisses turned to warning nips.

“Babe…” his sleepy voice purred in your ear, his lips pulling your lobe between them before his tongue swept along its shell.

“Pete…I need you.” His name fell from your lips in a whimper as your hand took hold of his and guided it between your legs, his fingertips gently stroking your clit until he had you begging for more.

Pete sat up and guided you onto all fours, positioning himself behind you where he gripped your cheeks with his hands to part them while he stroked your folds with the head of his cock.

Despite feeling how wet you were, he was aware how you would likely be sore from the amount of times he’d fucked you already, reaching over for the bottle of lube on the nightstand where he squeezed some out and coated his length until he hissed from the sensation of his own hand and slowly guided himself inside your tight walls.

He watched your hands grip the sheets as he filled you, your fingers relaxing slightly as he pulled back out, only to grip them harder and cry out when he pushed in again.

“Fuck, you take me so well,” he muttered, keeping a slow tempo even though he was tempted to quicken it and destroy you.

He heard your soft hum of appreciation for his praise over the pouring rain, everything you did adding up to drive him insane and make him fall more in love with you, suddenly feeling as if being buried inside you wasn’t enough to appease his heart.

Pete wrapped his arm around you so his hand splayed out over your stomach, applying pressure to guide you to sit up and onto his lap, careful to keep himself locked in your cunt.

Spreading the remaining lube onto your clit with his fingers, Pete began to steadily work you, his other hand holding you up while also squeezing and massaging your breasts, his mouth worshiping the space between your shoulder and ear in an intoxicating way that had your head lulling back onto his shoulder.

Goosebumps erupted over your skin as a brisk gust blew in through the window, adding to the over-stimulation that assaulted every part of you, doing your best to focus on the fullness of Pete driving inside you as you rocked yourself on his lap.

You reached your arm up and around his head, stroking his hair and gripping at him as you rode him, feeling yourself beginning to lose all control but placing all your trust in him to take care of you just how you needed.

Still holding you firmly against him, he continued to strum between your legs, knowing how close he was getting you from how you subtly tried to escape his grasp and your body convulsed to his touch, feeling your hands tighten on his head and forearm that was wrapped around you to keep you in place.

“That’s it. Come for me,” he panted in your ear, feeling you angle your hips against his hand in order to gain more friction on your clit, chasing your end as he increased the power behind his hammering thrusts.

Quiet whimpers grew at a steady pace as they spilled from your mouth, your whines of pleasure drowned out in your own ears as you focused on the sound of Pete’s heavy breathing and the praises he was showering you with, the pouring rain tapping furiously against the glass panes.

You unraveled together, the way your body tightly coiled before turning limp milking out his climax at the same time, his breath fanning out over your dewy skin as he rested his parted lips on your shoulder and stilled inside you.

Lifting yourself off his lap, you sank onto the mattress on your stomach, closing your eyes as exhaustion completely took over you, a faint smile tugging at your lips when you felt Pete follow, kissing up along your back until he collapsed half on top of you.

He took hold of your hand and brought it to rest between your bodies, kissing your knuckles softly until his breathing began to turn shallow as sleep quickly dragged him into its grasp.

These were the moments you knew you couldn’t live without, willing to sacrifice sleep night after night in order to love and be loved like this, the gratitude that filled you at being the one laying beside him as he slept outweighing any desire to close your eyes and miss even a second of it.

You knocked twice on the door before opening it anyway, letting yourself in just as Pete had told you to whenever you came over, the urgency you felt to get inside and out of the hallway too much to handle even if you weren’t allowed to walk in as you pleased.

Pete gave you an amused look, one of his eyebrows hooking high on his forehead as he placed the pen he had been holding in his mouth and reached for another paper to grade off the coffee table, your laughter sparking his curiosity.

“What?” he asked, letting out his own chuckle at your flustered state as you leaned against the door and ran your hand over your head.

“I was just stopped by Mrs. Platt. She told me she can hear us and to keep it down!”

Pete burst out laughing, shifting on the settee so his arm rested on the back of it to face you more.

“It’s not funny!” you argued, even though you were still laughing yourself, shaking your head in disbelief at the conversation you had just had with the crotchety woman in her eighties.

“Oh, it is!”

“Pete!” you urged, as if saying his name would scold him into not making fun of the situation, walking through to the living area where you plopped your bag down on one of the chairs as you passed.

“She actually said, ‘It’s not my place, but do you two ever sleep? All I hear night after night is that bed banging against the flaming wall!’”

Pete only laughed harder, hanging his head back over the sofa where you stood behind it and leaned down to grab hold of his face, begging him to stop laughing before kissing him in order to try to shut him up when he didn’t.

He was still chuckling when you pulled away from him, prompting you to smack his chest as you cursed at him.

“I can’t keep being stopped in the hallway to listen to this poor old woman make comments about hearing us have sex!”

“Ah, she’s just winding you up!”

You turned to walk into the kitchen only to be stopped by Pete’s arm wrapping around your waist to pull you back to the couch that he leaned over the back of, looking at you with mischief in his eyes that made you melt and suddenly not worry about anyone hearing the things you did together.

“Come on, love,” he purred. “She ain’t heard nothing yet.”

“Is that a promise, or a threat?” you asked, smirking as you freed yourself from his grip and made it into the kitchen, filling up the kettle.

“Both!” he replied, sitting back down on the sofa where he resumed marking his student’s homework.

“I need to take my car back to the mechanic,” you explained, shifting the conversation to something ordinary after a couple minutes of comfortable silence while placing a tea bag into your respective mugs.

“Yeah?” Pete asked somewhat distractedly as he focused on his task.

“Yeah, it's been making a funny noise whenever I accelerate, and it sort of jolts when I shift gear. Hopefully it’s nothing major or expensive, they were meant to be the best mechanic…”

“When are you taking it in?”

“Tomorrow morning. My sister’s going to meet me there and take me to work after.”

“I can do it if you want,” he offered, glancing over at you.

“Nah you’re off the hook,” you smiled, “she’s got some holiday time so I’m off duty being Jack’s chauffeur for a week!”

“Ah, look at you!”

“I know, right? She’s even taking him to practice this week.”

“That means I won’t get to see you there then, nothing good to look at on the sidelines and distract me,” he pouted, making you roll your eyes before pouring the hot water into your mugs.

“I reckon you’ll live.”

“Ah, then Mrs. Platt will just get to hear an even better show than normal when I get back home to you,” Pete laughed, ducking when you threw the tea towel at him.

The drive to Millwall took longer than normal due to rush-hour traffic, but it didn’t bother you as much as it typically would knowing you had a late start to your day that had been approved by your boss.

You pulled into the open bay door of the garage, parking your car and stepping out, giving a friendly smile to the mechanic who had helped you before.

“Giving you some grief, then eh?” he asked through a grin, nodding to your car as he wiped his hands on a rag.

“Yeah, as I said on the phone it’s kind of clunking when I’m shifting and the sound it makes when I accelerate worries me a bit…”

“We’ll put ‘er right, not to worry!” he beamed at you, extending his oil-stained hand to take your keys that you held out for him.

He stared at you for a moment, making you avert your gaze slightly, feeling somewhat uneasy.

“Say, you don’t happen to know the Dunham’s do you?” he asked, his question making your head whip up again in surprise. “Steve and Pete? They’re brothers.”

You tilted your head, your curiosity somewhat guarded, “I do, as it happens…”

The way his smile changed and the shift in his eyes put you on edge and raised your suspicions, but you did your best to remain confident, interested as to why he was asking and how he knew who they were.

“I thought as much,” he nodded.

His response took you back, and you blinked quickly, trying to wrap your head around this whole inquiry.

“Sorry, how exactly do you know them?”

He hesitated, staring you down for a few seconds before answering, almost as if he was being careful to formulate a proper response or like he was unsure how much to tell you.

“...We’re old mates,” he said slowly, his smile not leaving his thin lips.

You nodded, glancing down at the embroidered name tag on the chest of his overalls, the name ‘Martin’ one you wouldn’t forget.

“Right,” he broke the silence, his tone more cheerful in disrupting the somewhat tense air. “We’ll have a look at it and likely get it back to you at the start of next week…give ya a ring when we know what it needs and what the damage is.”

“Ta,” you thanked him, giving him one last look before turning and walking out of the garage, heading to your sister’s car where she was parked on the road out front.

You pulled the handle on the door and sat down into the passenger seat, looking out the window into the shop where Martin stood with another man of equal stature, both of them glancing out in your direction.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, pulling you from your thoughts.

“Hm? Nothing, it’s fine,” you assured her, smiling at her as you put your seatbelt on. “Can we stop for a coffee on the way?”

It was a typical Thursday night at The Abbey, everyone gathering at the table one by one as they flowed in from work, a pint and some laughs with mates seeming to be of the same priority for each hardworking hooligan alike as the week started to take its toll and winded down to an end.

“Where’s Pete?” Ike asked, sitting down beside you with his fresh pint.

“Oh, he’s coaching tonight,” you explained, spinning what was left of your gin and tonic in its glass. “He should be here in an hour or so.”

Ike nodded in confirmation as he took a long sip of his beer, both of you drawing your attention to the Bjorno’s as they walked in with a cheerful greeting.

Dave planted a kiss on Clair’s lips as he stopped at the bar to get the drinks in, letting her continue on to the table where she sat down with a sigh.

“Long shift?” you asked, catching the weary look that she couldn’t easily hide.

She glanced at you exasperatedly, “Oh, don’t even get me started!”

“Here you go, my love,” Dave said while leaning down to place her drink in front of her, kissing the top of her head as he did.

You found it difficult to focus on the conversations happening around you, your attention glued to the small group of women standing at the far side of the bar, the looks they kept shooting your way making you feel uneasy.

“Hey, do you know who they are?” you asked Clair, subtly nodding in their direction as they leaned in over the bar to get closer to Vicky, the barmaid, before all staring back at you again.

“Those tarts?” Clair began. “Yeah, they’re mates of Vicky’s. Bunch of slags.”

You nodded, taking it in but still not having an answer as to why they seemed so interested in you, thinking of all the times you had nice enough conversations with Vicky, or so you thought.

“Pete used to have it off with the blonde one,” Bovver piped up, blowing the smoke from his freshly lit cigarette in your direction as he spoke.

Your eyebrows raised high on your forehead as you took in the information, finally having some clarity as to why these women you had never seen before were obviously unhappy with your presence.

“Fucked like crazy for a few months…” he continued, the iciness of his blue eyes holding something of a threat as he told you.

“Oi! Don’t be like that,” Dave scolded him, shoving his arm. “Why do you have to say it like that?”

“It’s true!” Bov scowled, his loyalty to his relations with Vicky clearly extending to her friends over you.

You sighed, trying not to let it bother you, reminding yourself that everyone, including you, had a past, and hoped that whatever issue she had with you would pass soon.

“Right, I need another,” you stated, shaking your empty glass in your hand as you stood.

Just as you anticipated, the daggers coming from across the bar dug into your back, still doing your best to ignore them while waiting for Terry to fix your drink, but that became impossible when the blonde who was apparently an ex of Pete’s slunk over to you and stood far closer to you than you would’ve liked.

“I didn’t think it was true, but here you are,” she began, her accent sloppy from the drinks she had tossed back already, her breath smelling of stale fags and the tartness of the cranberry juice she mixed with her vodka.

“What’s true?” you asked, giving her no more than a sideways glance as you fished the change from your pocket to pay for your drink.

“That Pete is dating a plain, old slag.”

“I’m sorry, and who might you be?”

“I was you only a few months back,” she grinned, her smile vicious and proud in her admission that she had been Pete’s at one time.

You huffed as you smiled, taking your drink from Terry who eyed you up as if offering his help, turning to go back to the table. The thought of him being with someone as vile as her made your stomach lurch, and not wanting to give it any further attention, you ignored her.

“I’m not done talking to you, you soppy cow!” she shouted, her lack of couth on full display to everyone around as a hush fell over the pub.

When you continued on your way over to the group, all of them watching with bated breath to see what would happen next, the satisfaction on Bovver’s face boiling your blood more than she was, her shrill voice sounded out again, making you pause.

“He said I was the best he’s ever had, and I’ll be right here to remind him of that.”

Your heart was pounding in your chest, the adrenaline making you feel shaky and on the verge of doing something stupid, but instead you neglected to give her the drama she sought and took your seat again, praying that Pete would get there soon.

“Don’t let her get to you,” Dave assured, leaning over Clair who had already offered to fight her twice. “It wasn’t that serious…”

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” you assured, hoping it sounded genuine or at least believable.

“I mean, they were at it together for a few months…” Keith added in, earning a scolding from both Dave and Swill, making you swallow thickly.

You took a long sip of your drink as you tried to tune out the sound of the lads bickering and the jeers still coming in your direction from across the bar, your eyes closing as you tried to slow your breathing.

After a couple more minutes, you stood and made your way through the bar to the loo, praying no one would follow you, your newfound enemies calling you names as you passed.

Pete finally made it to the pub, strutting through the crowd and desperate for a beer after a long day at work and then coaching out in the cold rain, the sight of his ex leaning what she thought was invitingly against the bar making him scowl as he passed.

When there was no sight of you at the table, he did a quick glance around, distractingly returning everyone’s greetings as he shrugged out of his jacket and sat.

“Oi, what’s she doing here?” he asked Dave, nodding over in the direction of the bar where they continued to stare over at him.

Dave shook his head, “They’ve been causing trouble, pal.”

Seeing Pete’s face fall into worry as he looked around for you again, Dave continued. “She’s in the toilets, she seemed a bit upset…”

“For fuck’s sake,” Pete muttered, standing and going through the pub in quick strides, not giving his ex even a glimpse as he passed.

He pushed open the door to the ladies room more aggressively than he intended, his anger at the situation and that cheap tart upsetting you getting to him, his anger quickly turning to surprise when he saw you standing in front of the tarnished mirror reapplying your lip gloss, appearing fine and unbothered.

“Can I help you?” you grinned, watching him in the mirror with unhidden amusement at his presence.

His head tilted a bit to the side, walking toward you slowly while still assessing you, his concern still creasing his features even though he was smiling back at you.

“They said you were upset…”

You laughed and shook your head, screwing the cap back on your lip gloss before sticking it in your pocket, turning to look at him directly instead of in the mirror, your bum sitting on the edge of the sink.

“Upset? Over those twats? Come on…” you shrugged, trying your best to play it cool even though it had bothered you more than you were letting on.

Pete closed the space between you and leaned his forehead against yours, still searching your eyes for any hints of you being hurt or shaken up.

You let your eyelids close, instantly feeling relaxed from him being close to you, breathing in deeply when he brought his hands up to hold your face.

“We all have a past, Pete,” you whispered, saying it more for your own conviction than his, the frustrated exhale he let out at his past involving that awful slag fanning over your lips.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, his lips moving against yours as they hovered there, teasing a kiss.

“Don’t be sorry,” you answered, your hands trailing up his chest where you took hold of the collar of his jumper and slid the material through your fingers, his body moving closer to yours. “Just kiss me, Pete.”

He did, crashing into you so hard your head was forced back but stopped by his hands still gripping your face, his tongue delving into your mouth hungrily and greedily where you didn’t hesitate to match his fervor.

Everything was rough and desperate, kissing with a need to prove that each other’s lips were the only ones ever worth kissing, your hands pawing and groping in a crazed act of passion.

Pete’s fingers tore at the button and zipper of your jeans before diving his hand inside them, his long fingers stroking through your folds until your wet coated them, your moans reverberating in his mouth as you continued to kiss, your lips moving against each other sloppily and hastily.

After a minute, he withdrew from you, roughly tugging your jeans and panties down your thighs, his steely eyes staring at your exposed cunt as he quickly unfastened his own jeans and pulled out his hard cock before crashing against you again.

You spread your legs as wide as you were able to, giving him enough access to your core where he guided his leaking head, smearing his precum on your clit a few times until you were moaning and begging him to fill you.

Pete happily obliged, pushing inside your tight walls where he paused once he couldn’t go any deeper, kissing you frantically and groaning into your mouth from how good you felt.

Like he lost all sense of control, he slammed in and out of you, fucking you hard and fast while his mouth hung open and panted against yours in his efforts, the sink creaking precariously as you rocked your hips in time with his brutal thrusts, your fingers digging into the back of his neck and shoulders as you held on tight.

You were both so entranced in each other that neither of you noticed the door opening, his ex standing in the doorway in shock of the scene she walked into, scoffing as she turned and left.

“Fuck, babe,” he growled, pulling his face away from yours slightly where he watched his cock slide in and out of you, the sight encouraging him to move even more furiously within you, your cries growing louder as your climax quickly built up.

“Pete!” you bellowed, a desperation in your voice that told him you were on the brink, and knowing you were at risk of screaming as you came, he covered your mouth with his and proceeded to pound you mercilessly, swallowing your noises of unbridled pleasure as you clenched and shuddered on his cock.

Only seconds behind you, Pete bucked into your soaked cunt until he pumped you full of his hot spend, feeling it leak out of you as he continued to slowly thrust, drawing out every moment of your highs that he could.

You laughed as you comprehended what just happened, smoothing your hand over your head as your chest rose and fell sharply, Pete chuckling as a mischievous and prideful look dressed his flushed features.

“It’s impossible to get enough of you,” he admitted, his eyes flickering over your face as he leaned his arms against the sink, caging you in.

You hummed appreciatively, wrapping your arms around his neck to pull him closer, kissing him long and slow and in a way you hoped conveyed everything you felt for him.

“You sure you’re alright?” he asked when your kiss slowed to a pause, the blue of his eyes more vibrant and full of emotion.

“Yeah,” you nodded, smiling at him softly while your finger traced the crease beside his mouth.

“Okay, darling,” he cooed, nuzzling his nose against your cheek as he inhaled deeply, his face moving into the side of your neck where he pressed kisses into the sensitive skin and made you squirm and giggle.

Stopping, he brought his face back up to look at you, his expression serious again, his hand finding yours where he laced your fingers together and gave it three gentle squeezes.

“You know you’re the only one I want, yeah?”

You nodded, squeezing his hand back three times, smiling bigger as his own grew.

“I do, though I wouldn’t mind you showing me again…”

“Careful what you wish for!” he laughed burying his face into your neck again where he nipped and sucked at your skin, your laughter echoing against the tiled walls.

Pete walked out of the bathroom with you confidently after cleaning up and composing yourselves, even happier to see that his ex and the rest of Vicky’s horrible friends had left, the expressions on everyone’s faces as you sat back down at the table telling you they knew exactly what you had been up to.

“Oi, that colour suits you, mate,” Ned commented, pointing to his lips as he stared at Pete’s that were tinted from your lip gloss.

“Yeah? It’d suit yours too,” Pete said, leaning over and planting a kiss on Ned’s cheek quickly before he pushed him away, cursing and wiping his cheek dramatically.

Pete laughed as he took his seat, downing his pint that had been waiting for him to return to, leaning back in his chair where he pulled you onto his lap to have you proudly perch, the atmosphere more relaxed and as it normally was.

Red dripped into the sink one drop at a time, flowing steadily from so many places on his hands and face he wasn’t even sure where it was all coming from.

Pete tugged more tissues out of the box, bunching them up and holding them to what he thought was the deepest cut on his chin with as much pressure as he could, the ache in his hand preventing him from doing a sufficient job. He didn’t think he’d cracked on that Zulu cunt as hard as he did, but his knuckles proved otherwise, split open what felt like to the bone.

Any effects the pints in his bloodstream had provided him had definitely worn off now, his head pounding and every cut on him stinging and burning like mad, the severity of each fresh injury hard to determine as he looked at himself in the mirror through one good eye, the dark, puffy welt spreading up to his other from his cheek.

He stood with a towel wrapped loosely around his waist, his blood and sweat-stained clothes discarded in a heap on the floor, his reflection revealing bruises on his side and abdomen that refused to be ignored when he had lifted his jumper over his head.

It was late, and as quiet as he tried to be, Pete knew better than to think you wouldn’t have heard him come home, your inability to stay asleep for long without him something he secretly loved and made him swell, always feeling equally as eager to get back home and in bed with you.

“Hiya, love,” he muttered, smirking at you in the mirror when you appeared in the doorway, your sleepy face quickly changing to shock when you saw the state of him.

“I’m fine!” he stressed, knowing what your next words were going to be, the worry on your face breaking his heart a little.

“Pete…” you whispered, not in an accusatory or scolding way, but out of sheer love and care, your hands cupping his cheeks gently despite getting blood on them, your eyes searching his for truth in his claim of being okay.

“Fucking Zulu’s…” he trailed off, a small laugh blowing out of his lungs.

Never once had you asked him to stop fighting, and he knew you wouldn’t now, taking the aftermath of his hobby on the chin just like he did multiple times tonight, his love and appreciation for you making him feel a bit emotional as he watched you open the cupboard and get out the first aid kit to tend to his wounds.

He blinked back the moisture that had quickly accumulated in his eyes before you were facing him again, closing them when you pressed a careful kiss to his bloody lips, letting out a long sigh when you pulled away.

“Sit so I can see better,” you instructed, your voice soft and soothing to his ears.

Pete turned and stepped toward the tub, perching on the edge of it so he faced the sink for you to work, watching the deep red spots staining it dilute into a rusty colour as water ran from the tap and washed his blood off the porcelain.

Carefully, and for as long as it would take, you gently cleaned all of his wounds, wiping the blood that had dried and stuck in his blond stubble and dabbing the cuts that still oozed, your touch becoming lighter whenever you noticed a wince that involuntarily snuck past his attempts to hide them.

Luckily, nothing needed stitches, and even though Pete knew you were done cleaning and disinfecting each cut he’d sustained, you continued to linger, admiring his bruised and battered features.

Wrapping his arms around your waist, he pulled you close to him, letting his face lean into your stomach, breathing deeply as you raked your fingers up his bare back and through his hair. His shoulders relaxed, letting go of the tension held in them from taking the painful sting of peroxide seeping into his cuts over and over, his hands smoothing up your bare thighs and your bum.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” you whispered, your lips pressing against his scalp.

He hummed, pulling his face away from the warmth of your body in his sweater.

“Yeah. C’mere,” he offered, shifting slightly so your legs had room to straddle him.

You seated yourself on his lap, smiling when his own broke out on his damaged face, your back arching into him when he placed his hands under his sweater that you had now worn more times than him to card up your back.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, admiring you for a moment before kissing you softly, his nose moving back and forth on yours a couple of times before nudging your cheek, resting his face against it while he closed his eyes and breathed slowly.

“You’re welcome, love,” you cooed, your fingers ghosting over the back of his neck, making him melt into you even more.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve you,” he spoke, mostly to himself, still finding it hard to believe that he had been lucky enough to survive his injuries and then have you walk into his classroom that one morning.

Pete kissed your cheek once, then again, each press to your soft skin urging him to add another and then more after that, eventually meeting your lips with his until minutes had passed with you lost in the haze created by your slow kisses.

His hands held your back firmly, keeping you close to him and preventing you from falling back as he moved his head away from yours and looked at you in a way that made you want to show him that the love you had for him existed like no other.

“I love you,” he professed, as if he had stolen the words right out of your mouth. Those three words were spoken with a calm surety that held such truth there was no way you could deny or question it, your fingers trembling against his cheek as you trailed them along the crease that flanked his lips.

“I love you, too, Pete.”

The taste of blood transferred onto your tongue again as he crashed into you, kissing you with more ardor than ever before, the relevancy of the cuts on his lips no longer a concern to either of you.

Your hands slipped around the back of his neck, pulling him into you even more to deepen your kiss, your hips rolling against his just enough that you could feel his cock hardening, your bare core grinding on the somewhat rough material of the towel separating you.

Pete moaned into your mouth, and without stopping kissing you, leaned back enough to unwrap the fold of the towel from his waist, letting it fall open under him.

His hands slid under your thighs, guiding you to lift your hips in order to get on top of his cock, breaking your kiss to watch your face as you sank down on his length.

Before you even had the chance to start riding him, Pete ran his battered hands over your hair, his eyes holding as much softness as his voice did.

“Just be still for me, yeah?” he asked, wanting to savour the intimacy of being inside you unmoving.

You nodded, drawing in a deep, shaky breath, closing your eyes as his nose brushed against yours before capturing your lips again, your hand resting on his chest where you could feel his heart beating wildly.

You would have been kidding yourself if you said you weren’t feeling a bit uneasy about going to pick up your car alone, the conversation you had had with the mechanic, Martin, when you dropped it off still fresh in your mind.

Pete was unable to take you, having to coach a practice after work, and your sister was taking Jack to it and staying to watch since she always missed so many, leaving you to take the tube over to Millwall to deal with it on your own.

You assured yourself over and over that it would be fine and that you were probably reading into things too much, but still the way he had mentioned knowing Steve and Pete and claiming to be old mates with them wasn’t sitting right with you. With work being so busy this week, you had completely forgotten to mention it to Pete, and you cursed yourself for failing to bring it up when you had checked with him again that morning if he was sure he couldn’t get someone else to coach for him.

As the stops to Millwall grew closer and closer, you did your best not to dwell, reading the book you brought with you while your leg bounced up and down unconsciously, your eyes scanning over the same paragraph again and again without being able to absorb the words.

“Alright, good job, lads!” Pete shouted after blowing his whistle, signaling the end of their practice.

He held the bag open for them to toss their soiled jerseys in, laughing at all their comments to each other and how supportive they all were of their teammates.

“Eh, Jack, will you help me gather up the pylons?” he asked when your nephew had made it over to him in the queue of rowdy boys.

As Pete knew he would, Jack happily jogged around the pitch and collected the majority of them, saving Pete and his leg the trouble of going to do it all himself.

“Cheers, mate,” Pete thanked him, ruffling his hair as he walked with him over to where his mum stood waiting.

“Great practice, love!” She praised her son, then smiled at Pete as Jack worked at untying his cleats and taking off his shin guards. “Reckon she’ll be back from Millwall soon, then?” she said, glancing at the watch on her wrist.

“Millwall?” Pete asked, his face screwed up at the mention of his rivaled district.

“Yeah, that’s where the mechanic is she took her car to.”

“What’s the garage called?” he questioned, an urgency present in his voice as he reached in the pocket of his jacket for his phone.

“I don’t know, I didn’t look when I had dropped her off and she never mentioned it…is everything okay?”

“Hmm, yeah,” Pete lied, trying to settle the rising panic he felt inside him at the thought of the garage you took your car to for repairs being Tommy fucking Hatcher’s.

He hit the button to dial your number and held it up to his ear, pacing as he listened to ring after ring before the sound of your voice came through, his heart falling when it was only your voicemail picking up.

“Fuck-” he hissed, hanging up before redialling, praying you would pick up and tell him you weren’t alone at Tommy’s garage.

The bell that chimed when the door opened sounded ominous tonight as you stepped through it, the smell of oil and exhaust fumes hitting your nose heavily, the distant sound of the radio and tools clanking against metal filling the otherwise quiet shop.

Your car was parked out front, seemingly ready to drive off in, and you hoped to settle the bill and get your keys quickly so you could make your way back to see Pete, wanting this day and especially this exchange to be over and done with.

Glancing through the window that looked into the garage from where the little waiting area was, you could see Martin bent over the bonnet of a car, and behind him, a small office where who you assumed was the owner sat at his desk.

When neither man noticed your presence, you stepped through into the bay, careful your heels didn’t slip on the greasy floor.

The man in his office finally caught sight of you, grinning with a somewhat villainous smile that split his hardened features, and you thought no matter how friendly he tried to appear, there was something about him that seemed impossible to soften.

“Hello, love,” he greeted, his voice matching his looks.

“Hi, sorry,” you stammered, “I’m just here to get my car.” You hooked your thumb and pointed over your shoulder in the direction of where it sat outside, planting your feet firmly on the cement floor while doing your best to stand tall and confident.

“Yeah, not a problem, I’ve got the paperwork all here for ya,” he explained, standing from his chair and turning to reach for some papers from the filing cabinet behind him.

Martin nodded as you walked past him to enter the office, giving you a curt ‘Evening,’ as you smiled weakly in return.

The man seemed to fill the entire space of his office, his form tall and broad, his personality giving off a powerful air that made you feel somewhat suffocated.

There were empty beer bottles on his desk, and scattered across the walls and cabinets that took up nearly every square inch of the small room were various pieces of Millwall F.C. paraphernalia.

“You a fan?” he asked, catching you looking at the poster of the crest hung on the wall beside him.

“Erm, no, I don’t really pay attention to football all that much,” you lied, the realization that this man was clearly a huge supporter of the club that was Pete’s sworn enemy making you want to avoid the topic altogether.

“No?” he questioned, his head tilting to the side as another vicious smile revealed his teeth. “Not even a fan of the mighty Hammers?”

The way he said it made your blood turn cold, and you swallowed thickly, thinking how Martin must have discussed your affiliation to West Ham United through knowing Pete and Steve, and you wondered if these men were members of Millwall’s infamous firm.

You shook your head and huffed out a false laugh, reaching into your purse for your wallet.

“No,” you repeated, hoping he didn’t press his inquiry any further.

Clearing your throat to ensure your words came out properly, you started filing through the stack of notes you had taken out of the bank that morning, counting out what you had been told the total was going to be for the repairs.

“It was £450, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed, watching as you placed the money on his desk, folding his arms across his chest.

“You sure you aren’t running about and singing along to ‘Forever Blowing fucking Bubbles’ then?”

You scoffed, trying your best to look like you hadn’t heard or even sang that song more times than you could count since meeting Pete.

“Ah, I see,” he said, slowly. “So you’re going to lie right to my face and tell me you’re not Pete Dunham’s missus, are ya?”

You almost choked, words unable to form on your tongue that felt too big for your mouth, the air in your lungs feeling trapped while everything around you started to distort as a dizziness overcame you.

“How…how do you know that?”

He pointed his finger at you, his lips still curled into a smile. “See, I knew you were lying to me, you little slag.”

You stepped back as he walked around his desk, his blue eyes icy with an evil you had never seen before.

“Don’t you think you’re going anywhere anytime soon, love,” he grinned, sitting on the edge of his desk as he nodded behind you. “Martin there hates your little boy toy just as much as I do, so he won’t be letting you run past him too easily either.”

You kept still, taking in as deep a breath as you could, closing your eyes briefly to gain some courage as you thought of which of the many questions racing through your mind to ask next.

“How do you know who I am?” your voice squeaked out, unable to hide your fear.

He shrugged his shoulders and frowned, “I get people to find things out for me.”

“Right, I’d just like to get my keys and leave, I don’t want any trouble-”

“You’re missing the fucking point, here!” he shouted, cutting you off. “Didn’t little Petey warn you about me?”

You shook your head again, confused as to who this man even was to Pete. “No, I-”

“Was he too afraid to come with you, not man enough to protect you?”

He stood from his desk, walking closer to you until you were face to face and your back was pressed against a cabinet, leaving you nowhere to escape.

“Is the taste of death still too fresh for him?” he laughed, clearly amused in seeing you put it all together.

“You’re-”

“Yeah, that’s right, darling,” he cooed, his face so close to yours you could smell the stale beer and smoke on his putrid breath. “I’m Tommy Hatcher. The man who nearly wiped out the Dunham name.”

He seemed so proud of it, like the memory was something he revisited often, and you felt sick knowing you were standing vulnerable at the hands of the man who almost killed the one you couldn’t live without.

“It’s funny, innit? That out of all the garages in London to get your car fixed, you came to mine.”

His finger jabbed into your chest with each word, making you recoil to try to make space between you, only to press yourself harder into the cabinet.

“You’re vile,” you spat, shoving your arm against his chest to push him away from you, only to have him come back stronger and closer than before.

He gripped your chin with his meaty hand, his fingers digging into your skin so hard it made you yelp.

“I’ve been watching you for weeks now. You should really pay more attention to your surroundings, love,” he warned, the pleasure he took in this written all over his grisly face. “How’s that nephew of yours, by the way?”

Bile rose up your throat at the idea of him getting to Jack and causing him harm, the lengths this horrible, soulless man would go to to make anyone he hated suffer having no limit.

“He seems like a good lad,” he whispered, his mouth hovering beside your ear where his hot breath made your skin crawl and you squirm in his grasp. “It’d be a fucking shame if he didn’t make it past his twelfth birthday just like my son didn’t.”

“You wouldn’t!” you cried, trying to move your legs enough to kick him, only to have his body lean harder into yours to stop you.

“See, you’re forgetting what I’m capable of. How easy it was to drive that bottle into Stevie’s neck and how much fucking joy I got breaking Petey’s body until he was lifeless on the ground.”

His grip tightened on your face as his eyes scanned over you, and despite your efforts to not let it happen, tears sprang from your eyes at the description of him trying to kill Pete.

“Don’t think it wouldn’t be hard to do the same thing to you or that little boy.”

With all the strength you had, you pushed against him, hitting him as hard as you could in his stomach while stomping hard on his foot, but Tommy was too strong, slamming you back into the cabinet so the handle drove into your ribs and all the air in your lungs was knocked out of you.

He laughed in your face, locking his forearm across your neck to keep you in place, your struggle to breathe seeming to satisfy him.

“I could do anything I wanted to you right now and no one would know or be able to stop me,” he bragged, growing more aroused with the power he held over you.

He ground himself against you, making you feel his hardness through his trousers, the possibility of you actually being sick between that and the lack of oxygen becoming more and more likely.

“It’s funny, you've got the same look of terror in your eyes as he did right before I smashed his fucking face in!” he pointed out, his laughter ringing through the room like you had just shared a joke together.

Within a split second his demeanor changed again, glaring at you seriously as his voice quieted and turned calm.

“See, I could rape you, ruin you so he’d never want to touch you again...”

You let out a broken sob, your eyes screwing shut when you felt his other hand travel slowly down your waist until he reached your thighs, stopping when he spoke again.

“But it’s lucky for you I’m a changed man.”

Tommy loosened the force of his arm against your neck, backing away from you slightly, and ran a hand over his hair to regain some composure.

“Don’t wanna be stuck in the nick again over someone as pitiful as you and your precious Petey!” he barked, adjusting himself in his pants crudely while you shook against the cold, metal cabinet.

He reached for something on his desk, turning around and quickly throwing your keys at your face where they missed and hit you hard in the chest, making you jump and cry out which only made him howl a maniacal laugh.

“Go on, you shitcunt,” he spat, “go home to Petey and cry all about it to him!”

You stooped and grabbed your keys off the grimy floor with a trembling hand, bolting out the door as fast as your legs would carry you, the sound of his and Martin’s laughter chasing you out of the building where you pressed the button to unlock your car as quickly as possible.

The tears didn’t come until you were out of the lot and onto the road, the lights from passing cars blurry and blinding as you finally let out wracking sobs, unaware of how fast you were going or which roads you were turning down, getting as far away from Tommy Hatcher as you could the only thing on your mind.

---

Part 6

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[raayllum]

Cube Hostage Exchange Theory, for Real This Time

Intro

A few days after Through the Moon came out in September 2020, I made a throwaway theory post about a potential Rayllum reconciliation scenario in which Rayla would be taken captive / threatened by the antagonists, and Callum would hand over the Key of Aaravos in order to save her life.

In the almost four years since then, the theory has blossomed into much more than it started as, largely due to people's amazing art and fic inspired by it, and by the enthusiasm it's been received with, and for those things I will always be eternally, deeply grateful for.

The theory has likewise gone through many metas (some of which will be referenced and linked to here when applicable), 20+ pages alone on my blog, with surprising leaps in popularity and plausibility, and multiple variations, both within the theorizing space and within canon itself (5x08, you will always be famous).

There's also been many moments of doubt.

As much as everything seemed to make sense even as Rayllum's post-TTM reunion went on, there was still so much left that was perpetually speculative. We didn't even know if Aaravos would want his cube back, which was one of the theories' many lynchpins, and TDP loves to be subversive (within reason) and throw curveballs I never saw coming, like Terry's wonderful existence or Sol Regem's swerve to attacking Katolis. I've speculated alternative uses for the Key to high heaven (as Aaravos' missing heart piece, a key to the Star Nexus or realm, the key to his prison, and sometimes all three simultaneously as a power up he needs to free himself and wreck celestial havoc). The closest I got to was it being a literal key and related to something Aaravos would want/need back, and indeed a power up, and that he did need a quasar diamond to get out of his prison and that one was in the staff and not also in the Key. Not bad, but definitely missing some marks.

That is to say that there could still be curve balls or swerves, and a theory isn't set in stone as happening until it happens. After all, I've been fully prepared to pack the theory up and for it to not happen three times now (going into S4, particularly S5, and S6). When the S4 finale did indeed have a hostage exchange involving Rayla and Claudia and a boyfriend, I chuckled and figured we might not repeat a plot beat like that again; when 5x08 did it twice, I was overjoyed at getting the exact irony of "Callum literally frees Rayla while chaining himself further to Aaravos' will" that I'd always wanted. 5x08 was, and is, enough for me; if S7 never takes it further, I'll still be pleased as punch.

However, after four years of hemming and hawing and going into seasons preparing for curveballs... I'm pleased to say I finally don't have any doubt.

And here's why.

Sections:

Background

The Cube and the Game Motif

Neon Lights, Narrative Set Up and Pay Off (6x03, S6)

The Knowledge Motif Thread Detour

Tests of Love (Leola, Chaos, and Love)

Alternatives (no possession, third path, Rayla handing over the cube, etc)

Conclusion

Background

First, a little background. Any relevant information in the metas listed below will be summarized / explained / alluded to accordingly for your benefit, but it is a good luck at 1) how the theory has evolved over time and 2) will be drawing in relevant aspects from said metas when discussing season 6.

Previous proper CHET metas include (in chronological order):

The Original Theory Post / Meta (Oct 2020, post-TTM)

Rayllum and Rayla's Weird Consistency with the Key (March 2022, pre-S4)

Rayla's Duality as Callum's Salvation and Destruction (Aug 2022, pre-S4)

CHET: End of Days (Nov 2022, pre-S4)

Opposing Cube Symbolism in 2x08 (Dec 2022, post-S4)

Here's How It Can Still Win (Dec 2022, post-S4)

Aaravos and Rayla as Callum's Two Paths (May 2023, pre-S5)

Shorter post-S6 meta

Things that are useful to our meta here ultimately, however, with a couple of S6 updates in later sections are

THE GAME MOTIF

This refers to a repeated visual and verbal literal and metaphorical motif running throughout the series. Although not exclusive to him, 90% of the time the Game Motif is in relation to Aaravos. It is most prominent when discussing the Key of Aaravos in arc 1 ("This is the game room. Cube should be in there" / "It's a glow toy" literally / "Are you practicing magic or are you losing to Bait at a game of rolly-cubes?") with one 'throwaway' line from Viren to Aaravos in 2x08: "What game are you playing at?"

This then took on a much more prominent focus in arc 2 thanks to the pawn intros and lines from various characters, such as Zubeia's assessment that "We had to beat Aaravos at his own game," Viren's reservations that "I believe Aaravos may be toying with us," Ezran's "His pawns are working to free him even as we speak."

Much of this has been rather set in stone for a while now (one of the TDP's shorts did, though, excitingly link Aaravos' test of love to the game motif, with the line "They aren’t games. They’re tests") but S6 did add some very exciting overlap with Aaravos' game and dark magic, which is fitting given that the two are deeply intertwined: "Because you're too good for dark magic, now? You had a lifetime to play with your toys, and now you decide to hide them away and destroy them?" (Viren to Kpp'Ar about the staff, 6x06.)

We also see occasional overlap with this motif and the stage motif ("You've played your part well" in 6x08 to Sol Regem / "Aaravos chose as his instruments..." + "You will perform acts of love so unforgivable..." in 4x04) as you can play a game, and play your role in a theatrical performance. Or in Callum's case, as a puppet who is "destined to play right into" Aaravos' hands.

PRIMAL STONE FORESHADOWING

As Callum discusses in 2x02 directly, he broke Claudia's stolen primal stone on purpose (not by accident) because he had "a good reason". The comparison later on in the same season, then, that the whole world is like a giant primal stone, and Callum's tendency towards breaking things (specifically magical objects) we well as the emphasis on "breaking the cycle" therefore felt like setup. It also felt particularly apt given Aaravos' wish expressed in Patience that:

I have not seen the stars in centuries. But when I see them again—when the stars are forced to look upon me, their dark brother—they will know how I have waited. And when everything they have built lies shattered, I will savor their fall from the sky.

S6 also affirmed this by associating the primal magic that Leola 'gave' to humans the "first step in a long spiral towards Callum," and what that might mean for Callum, someone who is uniquely a primal mage and has used dark magic. The fact that Aaravos and his key (remember that game motif) are associated with the book of / primal magic as well as dark magic reinforces this duality further.

Who better to shatter the Cosmic Order and known world for the worst better than the boy who is already shattering it for the best?

LIGHT AND DARKNESS

The cube and Aaravos are associated with both light and dark, not only in design, but in magic systems. Aaravos and dark magic are routinely related to darkness ("because I have followed a dark path" / "the darkness and corruption will overwhelm you" / "and my favourite, the human mage, already tainted by darkness" / "in darkness, gaze upon a fallen star"). This is fairly straightforward, as Rayla represents literal light (which we'll get to in S6 in a moment) that heals Callum's broken spirit and rescinds Aaravos' control over him. Note, for example, the way she's shrouded in light in clear opposition to Aaravos' mirror right next to her, with Callum facing ahead towards both of them.

However, it's not that simple, because light can also be seen as a bad thing, such as the possession eyes, Karim's desire to "return the light/sun" to his people, the cube-moon opal's light on the Bridge of Darkness in 4x07 leading to danger, dark magic turning your hair white, and most notably, the way the pawn becomes a literal glow toy in the 4x04 / 5x08 pawn intro.

The light of the cube — perhaps the light in general — is not going to be exclusive in playing into Aaravos' hands. In the mirror-Rayla screenshot, for example, the path towards Rayla is embodied by the shadow she casts on the floor (similar to how regularly Claudia is portrayed in Viren's shadow in S6).

And, speaking of light...

RAYLA AS CALLUM'S PATH, SINGULAR

As speculated pre-S4, Rayla represents light, truth, and love in Callum's life. This was then canonized in 6x06. Post-S4, it seemed overtly evident that Rayla was being set up further to represent a path in opposition to Aaravos. She would save Callum from being Aaravos' prey, she was the Light and reminder of agency to Aaravos' Darkness and stripping of agency. "What if I'm on a path of darkness?" "Then take another path, dummy." This was, of course, all in line with the previous light-darkness and game motif described above. Rayla couldn't, and won't, kill Callum permanently after all if at all, so she has to save him instead.

However, it was also pretty clear following S4 and especially S5 that the razor's edge between salvation and destruction, as embodied by Rayla being the reason he was in Aaravos' clutches in the first place (getting him the cube, being his motivation behind doing dark magic), would eventually merge. Her love would ultimately save him, but it would destroy him first.

This has, of course, been their pattern throughout the series: Rayla comes into his life, causing him to turn/destroy his relationship with Claudia and put him in danger, but she's also what pushes him to do magic for the first time; he follows her off the Pinnacle at great risk to himself, but his love for her helps centre him enough that he can save them both; she is the reason he does dark magic (twice), but is also what fixes his broken spirit during the star-light trial ritual.

Because she's not just the other path in opposition to Aaravos. She is his path, singular.

If you're interested in more of this, I'd recommend my one about the layers of Rayla being Callum's One Truth in greater detail, as well as general speculation of their arc in S7, some of which will be referenced/summarized here as well.

With all that out of the way, let's get into it

The Cube and the Game Motif

Anyone who knows me knows that the Game Motif is my favourite motif in TDP (which is saying something) and that said motif has been a long standing cornerstone of CHET. This is mostly because, as noted, in arc 1 the Game Motif existed almost exclusively with the cube down to its introduction.

CALLUM: This is the game room. Cube should be in there. (1x04)

CALLUM: Last night you thought the cube was just a worthless toy. But now we know— RAYLA: It's a glow toy. (1x05)

The Game Motif was also associated with Aaravos sparsely in arc 1 ("What game are you playing?" Viren demands in 2x08, and never receives the answer / "Well played. She will be a valuable asset") and magic itself ("Is this a guessing game? Just do it!") although to a lesser degree. There were also nods to the imbalance of power in Xadia, with Harrow noting, "Entire armies have crumbled and fallen like toys before [Avizandum]. How can we hope to kill such a godly creature?"

Then, as noted in arc 2, the game motif went from being associated just with the cube to being associated with Aaravos outright, both verbally through dialogue and literally in the pawn intros. This is what I call a motif expansion, where something moves from subtext to text. It is somewhat similar to a merger, where two previously separate associations are brought into being one in the same. This is initially how the cube operates, since the game motif is ongoing whereas Callum's statement of "You wait here, however long it takes, I'll go find a key" in 1x04 is only made foreshadowing in 2x06 when he learns it's called the Key of Aaravos.

2x07 takes this further, though, with this dialogue exchange:

CALLUM: [Holding the cube] What do you think this thing is, anyway? He said it was a key, but a key to what? RAYLA: Are you practicing magic, or are you losing to Bait at a game of rolly-cubes?

For example, here we see the Key analogue/association and the game motif be linked together. TDP does this a few more times with Aaravos' key becoming associated with light (4x04/5x08), destiny dark magic (2x08, 4x04), secrets/mysteries (2x07, 2x06) and more. A lot of this is, of course, because Aaravos is likewise associated with all these things, and the Key is tethered to him and his plot line / motifs and associations.

The game motif does exist outside of the cube's associations — Ezran's pattern of hide and seek represents his childhood innocence, his tendency to run and hide when things get hard, and him shedding both these patterns as they attempt to find

The most interesting thing that S6 did on this note, then, was make the game motif associated not just with magic, but very specifically with dark magic:

VIREN: Because you're too good for dark magic now? You had a lifetime to play with your toys, and now you decide to hide them all away or destroy them? (6x06)

Why am I screaming about this, you may ask? Well, the Staff of Ziard is about as synonymous with dark magic as a thing can get in TDP. It too belonged originally to Aaravos, and became a cornerstone in his grand plan, at least of getting out of the prison.

HARROW: It belonged to an elven wizard in Xadia, the Archmage Aaravos, a master of all six primal sources. (2x06) IBIS: If you seek to return that staff to its true owner, you pose a greater danger to the world than I can allow. (4x03)

So the Staff is a toy, and dark magic, and belonged to Aaravos, and used in his plans, brought directly to him by Viren (indirectly) and Claudia (directly). And the Key is also referred to as a toy, is also in the possession of another pawn, and has also been hidden and/or 'should' be destroyed. A knowledge of primal magic, at least in terms of how it manifests in creatures/locations, is also required in order to be a successful dark mage.

So not only is Aaravos and the key tied directly to the game motif, but through Viren's exchange with Kpp'Ar, so is dark magic. In many ways, this takes what was subtext — dark magic is what allows Aaravos to puppet and manipulate people such as his pawns, and keep the Cycle (his game) going, even if he's not what directly started it (that was the Cosmic Order/Council) — and makes it text. Aaravos' toys are toys ultimately because of their tethers to magic, typically dark magic as well, and his objects of choice, such as the Staff or the Key or how he puppets his pawns, are not exceptions. (There's potential for primal magic as well, of course, but it's currently not as direct).

We also know, thanks to Arc 2, that the Key and Staff are more similar to one another than we might've thought in terms of their purposes in Aaravos' plan. I'd speculated in the past that the Staff and/or the Key held quasar diamonds that Aaravos needed for some power-up purpose; the Staff had the diamond needed for his body contingency plan, and the Key is needed for his primal book to operate and presumably be found, so that he can be at full power.

Furthermore, we have a pattern of dialogue about the Key / game motif eventually becoming literal. The cube is called a glow toy, and then in the pawn intro is revealed to be a literal glow toy; Callum says "what if it's magic?" in 1x04 and we discover that it opens up a book of all primal magic; it's foreshadowed loosely as a key, and it is a key; Rayla asks if Callum is losing a game, and he's embroiled in Aaravos' game as a pawn. Callum will win eventually, of course, as will everyone else... but he has to lose, really lose, first.

After all, every other line regarding the cube has come to fruition other than three:

"This is the game room. The cube should be in there" and "I'll go find a key" from 1x04 have both come back around. "It's a glow toy" from 1x05 ended up being true as well, with the cube flashing a bright light in Callum's pawn intro (and even the cube being included in the pawn intro). The Key's secrets are things Callum is currently investigating (6x02) and will likely fully discover in S7, possibly leading him to Aaravos' book or something else near Elarion and the thematic culmination of the Mystery of Aaravos. Callum's notice that the key seems to be glowing differently in 1x09 is revealed to be true because of the Moon Nexus. Rayla's line in 2x07 about losing the game to Bait is true in 5x08 as he practices magic (both dark and primal) in order to save her from being literal bait, even if that means taking a step closer to Aaravos and 'losing' the game. I expect Callum's assessment of "No good can come from it" (4x07) will ultimately be untrue if it helps him study primal magic ("What if it's magic? [...] I just have a feeling this cube thing can help me"), and Rayla's decision of "Let's go get your cube" is likely going to be true by the end of S7, with Callum reclaiming ownership completely this time.

So let's talk about the three lines that haven't come to fruition yet, because they paint a pretty apt picture:

So in the biggest notion of currently untapped set up, Rayla after being the first to declaring the damn cube a toy says "I hope it was worth it to you putting everyone's lives in danger." The thing is that this it's not like this line doesn't work in context, it very well does; someone could've gotten hurt and Rayla was nearly killed. This is also a sort spot for her because she'd just done the same thing in 1x01, putting her troupe in danger, so of course she's extra (somewhat fairly, somewhat unfairly) miffed at new mage boy repeating her mistakes as well.

Games (and chess) are all about patience, exchange, and sacrifice. We know now that the cube is something powerful, why it is, what it unlocks, and why Aaravos has the incentive to want it back (which as stated was an assumption before).

But the fact remains that the game motif has been tied to the cube to the start and continues to be. Callum's test of either playing into Aaravos' hands and coming back from it (the option that I lean towards) or outright rejecting it again cannot be fulfilled until the cube pawn intro has come full circle.

So let's talk about

Neon Lights, Narrative Set Up and Pay Off (6x03, S6)

As you can garner from this meta and any of my previous ones that have touched on this theory, there were a lot of assumptions that had to go into it. I had to assume, prior to season six, that Aaravos would even want the cue back. I had to assume, prior to season four, that the Rayla-Aaravos Callum-Viren foils thing was happening on purpose and that Rayla would be put in opposition to Aaravos as the light to his darkness. I had to assume, prior to season five, that S4's emphasis on people doing terrible/misguided things for love through characters like Rayla, Terry, Viren, and Claudia would eventually become a mainstay in Callum's arc 2 character arc.

I had to assume, prior to season six, that the story would eventually be inclined to put Callum in a scenario where he'd have to choose between Rayla and the greater good so directly. After all, while I was confident post-season 2 onwards that, if put in a situation with Rayla and/or Ezran's life on the line, Callum would always do dark magic, that was ultimately a characterization basis. Yeah, I could think that he would go there, but the story was under no condition to go there from a Plot standpoint, ie. assembling the story and plot line so that Callum would be faced with that kind of choice again. They could choose to not explore that aspect of a potential character arc, leaving it technically unknown. My characterization predictions in these scenarios, then, have been routinely consistent, but whether the plot itself would cooperate was entirely up in the air, with some plot evidence existing due to TDP's love of exchanges, trolley problems, and hard choices.

Then 6x03 happened:

To say that I cried/cheered would be an understatement.

This, of course, doesn't necessarily mean that Callum will do what I think he'll do, or that it'll play out in the manner I'm imagining. It does seem blatantly obvious, however, that S7 with the season's synopsis emphasis on sacrifice that both Callum and Rayla will face the choice of whether to sacrifice the other, one after each other: Callum first — as he must do dark magic again in order to be possessed — and then Rayla, tested and finally choosing not to sacrifice something to her, saving him back as a result.

But furthermore, I lost my fucking mind explicitly because it's not just a question of "will you sacrifice me or yourself" (which we know isn't a real question for either of them) but "will you sacrifice me or the world (greater good)" which is exactly what I've wanted for both of them all along. For Callum to put Rayla first the way that he always has, and for Rayla to (subsequently) put Callum first as a sign of growth/character development. (This also ties into Rayla's whole thing in s6 of taking the lessons Callum's taught her about how to love and implementing them with him in turn or with others, but that's a meta for another day.)

Now, there are alternatives that there could be / ways to get around the 'greater good' slice of the pie, which I'll talk about later under the Alternatives subheading.

For now, I just want to assert the narrative set up and potential we have so far in a plainer way:

The Knowledge Detour

We know that Aaravos wants the cube (6x09) and we know he knows that Callum has it (4x04, 5x08).

The game motif and key motif have been directly related to dark magic (2x07, 2x08, 4x04 "play right into my hands," 5x08, 6x06, etc).

The Key itself is also related to secrets (2x06), the secrets of primal magic (2x01), and thereby knowledge / answers to the 'Mystery' of Aaravos.

This is also related to the idea of knowing too much or having too much knowledge being dangerous (which you can read more about here, although it's pre-S6 so it doesn't touch on everything presently that it could have).

After speaking with Rayla, Callum tries and fails to give up the cube to assert his own destiny / that 'destiny is a book you write yourself' (4x07)

Callum, like Rayla, will be forced to make a choice between the greater good and his loved one. He will choose her even if that means sacrificing himself on top of the world, and she will save him (symbolically refusing to sacrifice herself).

[Gestures to the rest of the cube / key foreshadowing]

I also want to talk a little bit more about mystery. I touched on it here in a previous meta (Rayllum's potential S7 arc through the lens of S6), but there's an emphasis in S6 on mysteries versus love, with love winning.

I would tell you that the vast mystery I travelled the world to find was contained in you all along. (6x03)

Those few short years with Leola were the most meaningful. Pondering the deepest mysteries of the universe could not hold a candle. (6x09)

Both of these sentiments are similar and apply to Rayla and Aaravos directly: she wanted the security of knowing Viren was dead only to return home to the one thing she wanted ("the best thing I ever had: you"). Likewise, Aaravos had the best and most meaningful years of his eternally long existence when he was with his daughter, where his study and pursuit of magic / universal mysteries ultimately paled in comparison. While it is ordinary parent behaviour as well, Aaravos being away from Leola because of his key and book upon the moment she's taken has layers, as well as how he torments Sol Regem specifically with a mystery concerning love:

We see 4x01 establish two mysteries for Callum that run throughout the rest of the arc thus far. The first is the mirror ("What secrets are you hiding?") which is a stand-in for Aaravos, and then Rayla, even once she returns ("I don't know how to feel about Rayla, either").

These threads run in parallel throughout S5 and S6 (Rayla specific one only here). In season 5, Rayla kicks off both Callum's desire to discover how to kill Aaravos (5x01-5x05) and his new understanding of himself in the Ocean arcanum through their relationship (5x01, 5x04, 5x08). In many ways, S5 is him realizing that he will always be there for her, no matter what the cost — even if that means taking a step closer and making himself more vulnerable to Aaravos.

In season 6, Callum is grappling over the Starscraper / Nova Blade as well as worries of how Rayla will respond to his dark magic use. He worries that Aaravos will use him: "I don't know how, but I'm afraid he... he's gonna use me." The mystery he does solve within the season, then, is suitably what is his one truth — what does he know, without a shadow of a doubt, beyond and above anything else? If S5 is Callum realizing he will always be there for her regardless of anything that's happened or could happen, then S6 is him realizing that Rayla will always be with him (regardless of whether she's physically there or not) and will come back to him.

The reason I'm tangentially emphasizing this is because Callum is a knowledge seeker, inherently — he wants to learn magic and he wants to use magic, and that has always been one of his greatest strengths and weaknesses (ie. going out into the Storm, being unable to throw the Key away). The Mystery of Aaravos through figuring out the Key's secrets will be just about undeniably important, and while Callum might not get obsessive about solving it, the Key still represents that curiosity and desire to Know—the mystery he's chasing and has continued to chase about the world. Knowledge or love (giving up magic to save Zym and Rayla by proxy), and on occasion ("How did you—?" "Cause I love you, Rayla" / "To love is simply to know this") both at the same time, just as Rayla's arc has routinely centred on the push and pull and occasional reconciliation of love and duty.

Rayla's advice in 4x07 made him nearly throw the Cube away, or give up that Knowledge seeking quest. This doesn't mean that Callum should give it up entirely (I've said this in many places, but I think by the end of S7 Callum will likely have the Key and Book as his own rather than Aaravos', paralleling his reclamation of himself and his identity) but the current framing of 4x07 begs the question of "What would you give it up for?" What would you sacrifice this knowledge or curiosity for? Because we know, typically, curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge isn't enough for Callum; he won't "risk his life for magic" (2x04) and views that as being an idiot, but he'll launch himself off the Pinnacle. He'll do things for love that he won't do for magic; he'll be motivated to find knowledge and walk down those paths because of love. Just curiosity, typically, hasn't been enough.

Speaking of which, let's talk about

Tests of Love (Leola, Chaos, and Love)

The game motif and its connection to other aspects of the series—the stage motif (Aaravos and Callum's bowing / "destined to play right into my hands"), dark magic ("You had a lifetime to play with your toys and now you hide them all away or destroy them" / "I'm afraid Aaravos is toying with us")—and indeed the concept of tests ("We all want peace and we all want love, but violence tests us" / "They aren't games, they're tests") had always felt conducive to Aaravos' character, thanks to his statement in 2x09:

You tried to win over the other humans with loyalty and friendship, but they ignored you. Those who fail tests of love are simple animals. They deserve to be motivated by fear.

Even before S6 aired, this statement already made sense—while Viren was motivated by his quest for power and importance, and that was what Aaravos seemingly preyed on, when at the core of it was Viren's desire to be loved and to matter:

I am having some trouble getting people to listen to me. To hear the importance of what I am saying. [Who are these people?] They are kings and queens, the other leaders of the Pentarchy. (2x09)

[To Harrow] What? No, that's not what I'm saying. Please, listen— (1x03)

It is everything to me, to know that I mean something to you. To know that I matter. It's all I ever wanted. (5x02)

Aaravos was able to give them something they wanted very badly. (4x04) / Search your heart. There is something you want very badly. (2x09)

Aaravos' entire manipulation of Claudia has also been based around love—encouraging Viren to lie to her so she wouldn't break away from him and subsequently preying on her desire to keep her family together, dangling Viren's life like a carrot in front of her for two years, pushing her relentlessly on a 30 day limit, and then telling the tale of his daughter to help her perform a spell (the same spell that Callum is doing miles away) literally out of love by letting her connect it to her father.

We see where this mindset came from, of course, in S6, with Aaravos bargaining for Leola's life on the basis of love/compassion, and then to die in her place, both of which being refused. The Cosmic Council failed his test of love, and now he's out for revenge no matter the cost, as Terry says:

Maybe this started out as a story of love, but along the way, it got twisted. He isn't doing anything out of love. He's doing it for revenge.

We also know that the parallels Rayla already has to Leola are just going to be continued into S6 further.

We also know thanks to S6 that the Cosmic Council considered humans having primal magic to be "the first step in the long, slow spiral to chaos." Callum then having multiple arcanums and presumably one day going to continue to spread primal magic to more humans is definitely something they're going to be apprehensive about. Callum reclaiming the Key and Aaravos' book alongside his own identity/agency would make a lot of sense, but that reclamation is only really possible if those things were stripped away to begin with... and it's likely only one thing could strip away those things from him: the lengths he's willing to go through for love, and how love can also bring him back (much the same way Claudia's love for her family doomed her, and will ultimately likely save her).

Callum, you're the 'Destiny is a book you write yourself' guy. No one can control you or make your choices for you. (4x07)

See? So long as we protect each other, so long as we love each other, you can never control us. (5x08)

To love is simply to know this: the tides are true as the ocean is deep. (5x01, 5x08)

Love can save and destroy us, much like how Rayla is the reason Callum took (and may take again) a path of darkness and also lead him back to light (hopefully with help from Ezran). No matter how corrupted or broken, no matter what you've done before, you can be saved and can fix things and at the very least make amends.

Furthermore, if killing Leola for her mercy was what broke Xadia, saving Rayla (and her mercy) will be thematically what helps fix/save it—and also means she can save Callum afterwards, too, since he's the Hope of Xadia and changing the magical scales.

With this basis in mind, let's look at:

Alternatives

For the sake of posterity, the exact events I'm laying out in the above theory is something that looks a little like this:

Rayla is injured and/or dead / on the verge of death somehow

Aaravos (or Claudia) promises Callum can save her if he hands over the Cube

Callum does so and in turn receives the dark magic knowledge he needs to save her

He does the dark magic, and Rayla is saved

Callum is corrupted / possessed and leaves with Aaravos

This lets Ezran and Rayla come together to get him back and resolve any loose ends from their Big Different Feelings about Runaan from earlier in the season

Although Callum did play into Aaravos' hands, he will break free and live beyond Aaravos' perceived use for him, and help defeat him

Now let's talk about alternatives:

Callum doesn't get possessed

This is the only one I'm gonna rule out directly, as I don't think it's likely given the amount of set up and that S7 is Book 7: Dark. You wouldn't have Callum bring up the promise either in 4x07 or again in 6x03 if you didn't want Rayla to be faced with that choice, so he has to get possessed. That at least means a major risk of playing into Aaravos' hands, even if those plans aren't taken to fruition.

Callum gets possessed but not through dark magic use

I've seen positing that Callum could get tainted by dark magic again if he was exposed to the Lux Aurea corruption from a creature or something. I'll also toss one in, which is that perhaps you could be hit with a spell of dark magic of some kind, and have it seep into you—if not from Claudia then maybe Aaravos. Both of these options would fit to me if Callum was pushing someone (Ezran, Rayla) out of the way as that still provides an active choice. It just being happenstance because the characters were randomly attacked in a dangerous area doesn't sit right with me and the show's emphasis on choices and agency even when it would be possible and easier for characters to be more blameless, so I think there will be something along a choice rather than it just being entirely random / Callum's agency being entirely removed. Otherwise, we'd be back entirely to where we were in S4/S5 where he was tainted and open to possession no matter what through no real fault of his own (prior to 5x08); S6 giving him a clean slate also gives him agency about whether he's corrupted or not, and I think it'd be less effective if that agency wasn't utilized.

Aaravos doesn't get the cube

While nothing but canon itself (as it could pleasantly surprise me, and I'd reassess) could change my mind regarding "if Ez or Rayla were on the line, Callum would give Aaravos the key/whatever he wanted to save them" from a characterization basis, that doesn't necessarily mean the plot is going there. For example, I could see Callum just taking the dark magic deal, and then the race is on for Rayla to try and stop a corrupted Callum from delivering the cube to Aaravos. It'd have high stakes, he'd still have some faith that he could make his choice without dooming everyone because she's there to be his safety net, and it'd bring the "I hope it was worth it to you putting everyone's lives in danger" about the cube back but on Rayla's end, as she was the speaker and Callum is worth it.

Rayla gives Aaravos the Cube

I'll admit a set up scenario for this leaves me scratching my head a bit—would Callum be possessed, but Rayla had the cube for safekeeping, and she hands it over so Aaravos would release him? which isn't too dissimilar from some of the central scenario of what I've proposed—as well as it taking away from 1) Callum's agency in breaking free from possession, ironically, and 2) the Cube being his item, not hers. That said, I do expect Rayla to choose Callum over just about everything this season (including possibly the surefire safety of the world) and for the season to do the legwork to get her there from a character development standpoint, so it's not out of the question. It just currently seems unlikely.

Callum doesn't pick between Rayla or the greater good, and has a third path instead

This one is interesting to me, mostly because I'm not sure how it'd fit into the season pacing wise. As stated, I think Callum has to get possessed in the season, as that plotline has too much buildup to get dropped. I suppose that could mean something like 1) he's corrupted through other means (see bullet point number two), 2) Rayla + Ezran saves him from possession, and 3) afterwards, he's presented with a choice between her and the greater good? That could take us to the finale where he's able to find a way through Aaravos' machinations to avoid making that choice, but it does mean until that moment Callum has had little to no agency (and therefore little to no character development) in our final season of the arc. That could reflect the possession plotline's lack of agency, even if it doesn't feel quite congruent with S6 handing Callum back his full agency, but... shrug emoji?

To me, the clearest third path between not sacrificing Rayla or the greater good would be "Callum sacrifices himself in order to take down Aaravos" which could mean unlocking a super dangerous arcanum he might not come back from (Stars would probably fit best there, but Sun or Moon too?) OR doing dark magic to defeat Aaravos; the latter in particular would be a strong Viren parallel to 6x08. We would get the self sacrifice and corruption slant, but it would be without the actual possession part, even if his corrupted form would be undeniably dangerous. It would mean that Rayla is saving him without risking much else, though, which lessens the impact of her arc. This first arcanum avenue would work for a finale, with the dark magic avenue being reserved for mid season (7x04 to 7x07) as a possibility.

If there any alternative theories or ideas you've seen or have that I haven't addressed here, feel free to send them in or leave them in reblogs/replies (I definitely could've missed one, or misrepresented one)—so long as you're earnestly presenting one, and not just wanting to see it debunked because you think it's stupid and/or that people who like it are silly or foolish.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, CHET as fully and currently posited:

Explains hy the cube is in Callum's pawn intro

Furthers set up with the cube and game motif (+ others) throughout the show

Explains he'll be corrupted and how the possession plotline will come into play

Deepens the series' theme of exchange (i.e. bringing Zym home in return for peace) and transaction (dark magic)

Culminates the setup from 4x07, 5x08, 6x03, and 6x06 in particular

Reaffirms Callum's struggle with losing his sense of self amid dark magic use and Aaravos' hold on him with literally losing himself

Allows Callum to reclaim the cube alongside his own identity once he has broken free

Develops his relationship with Rayla, as well as Rayla and Ezran's dynamic

Culminates Callum's arc in exploring Arc 2 (and the series') main theme of "love can destroy you, yes, but it can also save you" / arc 2's focus on reconciling dualities, as discussed

And I think that's about it!

If you made it through all of this—or indeed have enjoyed this pet theory for any of the 4+ years it's existed—thank you for reading and engaging with it! It was crazy to me after S5 and especially S6 that it was still on the table rather than being decidedly demolished, and I'm excited to see parts / pieces likely come to fruition in S7!

[beomie3]

txt on valentine’s day

bf txt x reader & fluff :)

♡choi yeonjun

this man would seduce the hell out of you from the start...

he was leaning on the hood of his car, a bouquet of red roses in hand.

he dressed up so nicely for you; a chic red sweater with jeans that hugged his legs so nicely and his hair styled in a way that left you frozen where you stood.

he would kiss your hand so sensually and open the car door like the gentleman he is.

when you got in the car you found that he had your name engraved on the passenger mirror because that was your spot and your spot only.

the back seat was arranged with pink gift bags and a sweet arrangement of all of your favorite candies/snacks.

when you leaned in for a kiss, his soft lips tasted of cherry chapstick; the scent of his cologne just driving you crazy. you just couldn't get enough of him.

"just wait for the present i have for you tonight, baby." he would say with a handsome smirk and kiss to your cheek before driving the two of you to a romantic dinner.

♡choi soobin

would treat you like the princess of princesses.

he would take you out to get your nails done and then proceed to melt when you give him head scratches/back scratches with your new nails hehe.

would have the apartment decorated for you top to bottom with sparkly decorations and little rose petals scattered around with candles and chocolates.

he would cook a delicious dinner for you and bake the most delicious pastries that literally had you convinced he was secretly a professional baker.

he would take the two of you out to an arcade later that night where you beat him in pretty much every game but he didn't care, he just loved seeing you so happy.

the one thing he did win was a huge bunny plushie for you!

"that way i will always be with you," he smiled as he handed you the plushie but you hugged him instead.

you took the cutest selfies together at the arcade <3

♡choi beomgyu

you two spent the day inside, just cuddling on the couch when an idea sparks his mind.

"let's make chocolate-covered strawberries!"

the kitchen is already a mess in not even 10 minutes of the two of you being in there.

he is chasing you around the kitchen island with a finger dipped in chocolate just needing to smear some across your nose as payback for doing it to him.

his hands would clasp around your waist when you stood at the sink rinsing off the strawberries.

later that evening he took you out to watch the sunset at the beach where the two of you sat in the sand, head on his shoulder as you stared off into the orange sky, talking about your futures together.

"do we want one or two kids?" he would ask, already knowing you wanted three, since it was his lucky number.

he brought his film camera and would capture the cutest most aesthetic pictures of your silhouette in the sunset, making sure to post it on his instagram <3

♡kang taehyun

this boy would write you a 10-page love letter about how much you mean to him, including little poems, doodles, and polaroids he pasted onto the pages :'(

a sweet picnic at the park on a sunny day under some shady trees was the perfect way to spend valentine's day with your terry.

he made you homemade kimchi fried rice, tteokbokki, and ramyeon in which he all packed in little pots and set out for you to help yourself to and eat until your heart was content <3

after eating you both laid on the blanket and stared at the clouds, you on his chest as he hummed little tunes for you.

the wind swaying through the trees, birds chirping, subtle background noises of cars passing by and people chatting, mixed with this angelic voice had you falling in love with him all over again.

"you're my favorite person on this entire planet, you know that?"

♡huening kai

kai would set up the cutest little movie night date at his apartment for you.

when you arrived, the couch was covered in plushies and fluffy blankets, a plethora of his hoodies draped over the arm of the couch so that you pick one to wear for the night.

being cuddled up in his arms was the ultimate comfort despite all of the comfy things he provided for you <3

your laughs could probably be heard outside as you literally were dying over the funny scenes in the movie, even popcorn flew everywhere as he could not control himself.

after the movie he brought his guitar out and sang an original he wrote just for you :)

he gave you a piggy back ride to his room where you would have pillow fights and late night talks, laughing until you fell asleep.

even though you are dating, you are still the best of friends above all else :,)

a/n: happy valentine’s day everyone!! <33 i hope u all have the best day ever, treat urself to something special today!!! :) love u so much! 💝 + thank you so much for over 700 followers it means the world to me 🥺

-valentine’s day divider credits: @f-loqweres and @gigittamic