The Harbinger

Really fast sketch as an example, but while Vaard is a paladin by title, it doesn’t mean he’s adept or talented in wielding Light. His fading connection has all but left him with only a few good bursts of use. He’s a paladin by the barest minimum.

Here’s W.I.P. update for Stella’s reference sheet. Now with added druid forms.

Catrienne Sevin

Bold for the main responses, italics for conditional/complicated

PLACE IN SOCIETY

✖ FINANCIAL – wealthy  / moderate / poor / in poverty

✖ MEDICAL – fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / deceased

✖ CLASS OR CASTE – upper / lower / middle / working / unsure

✖ EDUCATION – qualified / unqualified / studying

FAMILY

✖ MARITAL STATUS – married, happily / married, unhappily / engaged  / partnered / divorced / widow or widower / separated / single / it’s complicated

✖ CHILDREN – has children / no children / wants children / adopted children

✖ FAMILY – close with siblings / not close with siblings / has no siblings / siblings are deceased / it’s complicated

✖ AFFILIATION – orphaned / adopted / disowned / raised by both parents / other

TRAITS & TENDENCIES

✖ disorganized / organized / in between

✖ close-minded / open-minded / in between

✖ cautious / reckless / in between

✖ patient / impatient / in between

✖ outspoken / reserved / in between

✖ leader / follower / in between

✖ sympathetic / unsympathetic / in between

✖ optimistic / pessimistic / in between

✖ hardworking / lazy / in between

✖ cultured / uncultured / in between

✖ loyal / disloyal / in between

✖ faithful / unfaithful / in between

SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION

✖ SEXUALITY – heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual / omnisexual / demisexual

✖ SEX – sex repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable

✖ ROMANCE – romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable

✖ SEXUALLY – sexually adventurous / sex experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious / uninterested

ABILITIES

✖ COMBAT SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✖ LITERACY SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✖ ARTISTIC SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✖ TECHNICAL SKILLS – excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

Tagged by: @an-honest-waltz​

As we were out a-hunting, one morning in the spring Both hounds and horses, running well, made the hills and the valleys ring But to our great misfortune, no fox there could be found Our huntsmen cursed and swore but still no fox moved over the ground

And up spoke our master huntsman, the master of the chase “If only the Devil himself come by, we’d run him such a race!” And up there sprung like lightning a fox from out of his hole His fur was the colour of a starless night, and his eyes like burning coals

The back room of the bar in Freehold vibrates from the crowd outside. It’s almost all pirates and criminals, of course - but, then, she’s hardly the most law-abiding either, the woman who killed four of the Silver Covenant (and who had, once, used her Argent tabard to justify being part of vigilante justice). And it’s hardly as if she’s here to be a criminal.

Well, perhaps if dubiously legal brawling made one a criminal.

She stares at her reflection in the salt-stained mirror, weaving her hair into a tight braid before pinning it up, and pulls on her hood. The blue glow through it is an enchantment - she certainly has not focused any effort on training up any arcane practice; for all that she is a high elf, all she can do is still minor cantrips - but it signals what she is as well as having her ears out would, without putting her ears in danger of damage.

Mierette flashes the reflection a dangerous grin - she ignores the echo of Shanda pointing out that she grinned like her cousin’s adoptive mother - and makes her way out to the ring at a military clip, vaulting herself over the haphazard fence full of rusty nails that surrounds it and squaring herself in front of her opponent as the pirate that narrates these matches announces her arrival with a resounding “Ladies, gentlemen, and amorphous beings, the Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaack Fox!”.

Fiend is a self-described freak; half-kaldorei, half-vrykul, ancient outcast and pariah, and all muscle if short for both her heritages. Mierette likes her, when they’re not fighting; her real name is Maren Vold and she reminds her of Aunt Merinne, a tall woman who fights well, takes absolutely no shit, and can match her drink for drink until they are both under the table.

When they’re fighting, the Black Fox would consider her an iron-clad bitch even in light leather. But she had never gotten better and farther by fighting in her own weight class.

As the pirate calls the fight to start, she hurtles herself towards the Fiend with full force, shoulder first, knowing full well that, unlike the more sanctioned fights she has been in elsewhere under this title, these fights are to first to call for mercy, not to first blood.

And it is she who draws first blood.

And they chased him over the valley, and they chased him over the fields; They chased him down to the river bank, but never would he yield And he’s jumped into the water, and he’s swum to the other side And he’s laughed so loud that the green woods shook Then he’s turned to the huntsmen and he’s cried:

“Ride on, my gallant huntsmen! When must I come again? For you should never want for a fox to chase all over the glen And when your need is greatest, just call upon my name And I will come, and you shall have the best of sport and game!”

It is a good fight. It is a close fight. She is tenacious, where the Fiend is powerful, and she knows, from the din around the sidelines, that they are putting on an outright spectacle. A cheering fan slaps her shoulder encouragingly when she is thrown bodily into the fence, shaking it dangerously, sends her back into the ring to break the Fiend’s jaw. In more sanctioned fights, that would be the end of it.

It is not. In fact, it is not until she has also broken multiple of her friend’s ribs and managed to slam her into the ground a few time, and sustained a good bit of rib damage herself, a freshly broken nose pouring blood down her face, and a few broken fingers from a poorly made fist that the Fiend calls for mercy, the Black Fox still straddling her rib cage, her unbroken hand pulled back and ready for another hit.

She rises off of Maren, hands rising to pull her hood off and stare around the cheering crowd, unable to contain the grin even as the blood courses over her teeth. As the healers rush in to haul Maren off the ground, she raises her arms in the air, makes her way around the edge, accepting congratulatory slaps with her good hand until the healers drag her away as well.

As she is forced onto a bench outside the ring, Mierette’s gaze slides to the side, seeing her cousins’ adoptive parents, and she looks away as swiftly as she had looked. She’s not ready for having new parents, even if Shanda would say it is entirely too late. 

Instead, she locks eyes with the opponent she will have on the morrow, grinning that dangerous grin again and watching them give a wavering one right back. They, too, outclass her in size - a robust Kul Tiran with strong Drust blood, this one one who isn’t too fond of her - but she keeps winning.

The Black Fox may be small, but the Black Fox is strong.

And the men looked up in wonder and the hounds run back to hide For the fox, it changed to the Devil himself where he stood on the other side And the men, the hounds, the horses went flying back to town And hard on their heels come a little black fox, laughing as he ran

tried my hand at that model editing thing goin around on twitter

We had a campaign in D&D where we assembled a steampunk-ish time machine. After many sessions travelling through time, uncovering mysteries and learning harsh lessons about changing history, we had to stop a time-travelling cult from destroying the gods, and therefore the world. We failed.

Our machine crashed, we were stranded earlier than we had ever been able to travel. We found the Gods, but only a few of them were present - it was as if some had never existed. Then we realised - we had to become those Gods. Our party was entirely divine (Cleric, Paladin, Avenger, Invoker), and each of us was a worshipper of a god who had been unmade - and we were the only people in existence with enough knowledge of the forgotten deities to assume their roles.

But two of the players were worshippers of Io (in his twin forms of Tiamat and Bahamut, who would of course form later after Io’s ‘death’), and only one could become Io. The other would have to be the un-created Asmodeus.

So the most just, honourable and dedicated Lawful Good paladin I’ve ever seen roleplayed became the god of tyranny and evil. If he hadn’t, the gods would never have defeated the primordials, and the world would never have been completed.

In our setting, Asmodeus is every bit the epitome of evil you would expect him to be. Nobody but the gods who abide his presence know him as otherwise. He adheres to his role because he knows he has to - and that in doing so, the world can exist. He can never tell anyone his duty, and no-one who knows can ever discuss it.

In the farthest recesses of the Nine Hells, in a chamber sealed tighter than any other in existence is a pocketwatch of finest gnome craft with a photo of his family in it - his wife, son, and little baby girl.

Imagine that time has passed almost back to where they had begun. Asmodeus knows the date—of course he does—and watches as an orc army destroys all the loves of his life. Again.

He cannot, of course, go and comfort his former self. That would be the temporal-mechanics equivalent of sticking a fork in a toaster and would probably set the universe on fire.

But what becomes of the souls of the dead here? Most particularly, that of his wife, who, one presumes, loves her husband, and for whom a good afterlife would of course include the promise of him being restored to her?

I can think of two possibilities. One, that she is brought to the Paradise of Io, and asks after her husband’s fate, and watches as he becomes an adventurer, travels through time, and meets the fate he must shoulder to right the universe—at which point she would, trembling with some sort of hope mixed with fear, depart from the halls of Io to go and confront Asmodeus, whom she now knows to be her husband.

The other is that Asmodeus claims the three of them (or the one of them? perhaps she bargains for the release of her children to Io’s halls), and gives them comfortable quarters in his palace and shows up for dinner every night, and she is frightened and angry and grieving but unharmed, and she asks him why she is here, why is she in his power, why is she comfortable and not tortured, et cetera. And he answers things like “this is as it must be,” and when she presses further he asks if she will hear a story.

It may be some time before she agrees, but he will not tell it before then.

He tells her about a man, a follower of Io, who became an adventurer after the deaths of his family by a follower of Asmodeus. He tells her about that man’s adventures, about time travel, about a threat to the world and how that man and his companions met it and failed. And he tells her of the burden demanded of them, and the most terrible fate which one of them, the bravest of them, the best of them, shouldered: to become him.

The understanding that he is talking about her husband grows slowly in her, and the understanding that he who stands before her is her husband dawns more slowly than that, and the understanding that even though he is her husband, the man she knew and loved for his kindness and goodness, he is also everything Asmodeus is and can never again not be, comes upon her great and terrible like the advance of a glacier, and he stands up, not to approach her, but to unbar the door.

This path leads to the halls of Io, he tells her. She is more than deserving of paradise, he tells her. He will never bar or hinder her; she may go where she will. (This is a tweaking of the Rules, perhaps, permissible only because Io holds a claim on her for her own faith. Or perhaps, because his orders have killed her, it is his prerogative to do what he wants.)

She looks to the door, and she looks back to him. It is as heavy a choice, in its way, as his at the dawn of the universe, but with no press of duty in a singular direction to ease the making if not the consequences. He waits.

They say, afterwards, that Asmodeus the Lord of Evil has a wife. Nobody knows how, nor why, for she is kind and sweet, yet she is no captive, and she loves him. They call her the Lady of Mercy, or sometimes the Lady of Hope, and alone of all the universe he is said to raise no hand against her. They say he has a son, and a daughter, but these have yet to make themselves known. Sages and philosophers make much over the argument of whether Evil can love, but it is pointed out that Good can hate, and anyway, the other gods do not destroy Asmodeus when surely they must outpower him, but suffer his existence.