Those Were Bad Ideas And You Should All Feel Bad

Julien in the Overture: Occtis your family sucks, you're not leaving my sight because I don't trust you and hope to lure out your family to kill them

The Dice: eat shit Light Brite

Azune: Hey, is there any way I can convince the head of House Einfasen to start plotting towards aiding our Royce allies while also scheming to hammer Tachonis to death right now, this second?

What are you doing here?

Like, the difference between the Thaisha of the ritual, the gentle shepherdess guiding lost souls through grief and joy to freedom, and then this Thaisha Lloy, stone cold, stone faced, just flatly daring anyone to touch what is hers. No explanations, no nothing. Just flat, this is the way it is because I say so. Do we have a problem?

I am getting Delenn of the Minbari flashbacks, because Thaisha Lloy just made a whole combat just go away. Tail between their legs.

There's all these Magpies in the background with their crossbows, Vaelus, Azune, Hal, Murray, half of damned Dol Makjar ready to have a fucking go, and none of it is needed.

Just Thaisha. Just a Lloy. Casually ready to stand her ground.

me:

Primus Tachonis is an all-purpose personal tragedy creator sure to spur your character to adventure specifically so they can get his ass. Whether you need an old money asshole muscling in on an institution beloved to your PC or an evil sorcerer to slaughter their entire family Primus Tachonis has the magic and the social station to create whatever tragedy is required to serve your backstory.

Primus Tachonis is so versatile as a backstory tool he has professional D&D players raving:

Primus Tachonis killed my character's best friend and now she has to figure out who she is without him! -Laura Bailey I wrote a light backstory because I was still feeling out the setting and my dungeon master used Primus Tachonis to turn my brother into a statue! -Travis Willingham Primus Tachonis is trying to take over my character's magic school and endangering her students, and she will not have that! -Marisha Rey I had intended my character to have a tense but ultimately repairable relationship with his father, but then my DM used Primus Tachonis to rip his skull from his head. Now my character is on a quest to kill every member of Primus' noble house! -Matthew Mercer My character was a happy and established local playwright until Primus Tachonis had his little brother executed. Now he's taken up the sword again in his brother's stead! -Liam O'Brian I needed someone to murder my character's wife and daughter and my dungeon master suggested Primus Tachonis, and I couldn't be happier with the result! -Robbie Daymond Even works on members of his own family! -Alexander Ward

I would be reluctant to use fridging in this exact context, because this isn't some imaginary scenario to generate manpain for a white hero, this is a much more common experience of Native American and First Nation people, having their wives and daughters and sisters (in particular, but not exclusively) go missing. And never getting answers, never learning what happened, and not being believed that there's a problem in the first place.

This is like how being rescued from a tower by a prince is not particularly empowering or affirming to cis physically able straight thin perisex white women and girls, but can be for basically anybody else. Particularly black girls and women, who do not get a lot of cultural messages that treat them as people who are so valuable and precious, who may not have the strength to save themselves, or may wish that they didn't fucking have to save themselves (and everyone else) all the time.

White men have this story so often happen that we have a trope name specific to one specific and particularly egregious version of this, but you don't often see men who look like Robbie dealing with this type of story in fictional settings, even though it happens for men like Robbie in real life with horrifying frequency.

god that thumbnail is killing me. it's like that three dragons meme

How are we keeping eyes on the Aurora? Just through your serpent?

If anyone's got a better idea.