#(very peripherally)

Celiss

"You don’t have to do this, Celiss. It doesn’t help her, or me, to take this kind of risk. This was my mistake, and we can make it right without endangering- Celiss? Are you listening to me? You’re not listening, are you.” “You’re the patient one, my friend. I am not. And it is the heart and soul of a beautiful lady at stake, is it not? Of course I must help her.”

The mechanism-builders of the north offered the Patient Advance of Implacable Eternity five warforged, to start with. Five automatons, infused with its power just as its elven bearer was; five fingers on an extra hand for Patience and Celiss to wield. The only price was that they would belong first and foremost to their makers, who wished to study how the magic of the pact interacted with the magic of the automation, and to use them in a war against depraved followers of gods that Celiss shuddered to hear described. It seemed fair to both of them.

Patience didn’t realize until the pacts were formed that its new warlocks had souls. Didn’t understand, or rather hadn’t been told, that despite their souls, the warforged were controlled by rods that their makers’ military kept. Had been entirely innocent of how those warforged were trained, if it could be called that, or what they were expected to do and endure. Celiss was sweet, open-hearted, easy to dismiss and overlook, but that was in part because she was truly an innocent, and it was through her that Patience had formed its understanding.

There were two other hexblades involved in what the makers called a “production run.” On the Plane Material, it was difficult for their kind to speak directly, without the help of their warlocks, but Celiss eventually uncovered the truth about both of them.

The Crushing Grip of the Mother, a morningstar, had joined in with this effort in full knowledge of what the warforged were, and chosen to participate anyway. Their only warlocks were the warforged themselves, and none were permitted to respond when Celiss tried to pass on Patience’s questions, tried to ask them how they could have permitted such a thing. Once, only, did one speak back, in Grip’s voice: “They will be fully ours eventually, with no mortals in the way. A hundred years from now, a thousand, ten thousand--what is time to us? I will wait.”

Summer’s Grace, an elegant rapier, was not here by choice--they had captured her only warlock and used the poor goliath’s soul to bind her to their mechanisms, forcing her to give what Patience had so foolishly volunteered. Insomuch as Patience could sense her at all, she alternately raged and wept. But in time, when Patience had expressed as much of its remorse as it could, she showed them the secrets she had uncovered, how she wormed in tiny ways around the influence and command of the control rods to give her units freedom.

If the only freedom she could imagine for them was a free death, well, at least their souls were free. No such thing could be said of her, for the machine-builders took her, at last, to use her essence for other purposes: to use her connection with the negative energy from which they’d been forged to connect others, to use her connection to the Shadowfell in which the Mother had forged them to bind others to liches and such monstrosities as the Mother would have been horrified to see. A living hell, for a sword like Summer’s Grace.

Celiss, sweet brave Celiss, wracked with guilt and empty of guile, tried to save her. And then her light blinked out in Patience’s mind, and it was left with only the warforged. Five fingers, on a hand that it could only slowly and stealthily begin to make twitch. The sudden ripples of negative energy when Heart-Gear’s Material manifestation was interrupted seemed a blessing, a chance to free them less horribly than its teacher had liberated hers. It gave them all the guidance it could.

And then Heart-Gear went out, not temporarily, but for good. And, one by one, in quick succession, the lights of all five of them blinked out too. Patience, buried in the depths of a lakebed, thought for thousands of years that it had failed all who served it.

Until, one-by-one, they began to wake up.

***

Bastion Unit 56803, “Heavystep”

Hexblade Warlock 5, Pact of the Blade / Champion Fighter 12 / Folk Hero

“I never said you needed me. All I am saying is that I can help you. Reach out to the left, with your fingers crooked--you see?”

“Whoa, this is YOU?”

“No, but I do look something like it.”

"If this is the kind of help you’ve got in your pockets, I’ll take it. Anything else cool this mini-you can do?”

"Let’s see if I can help you remember the smites.”

Heavystep, like most warforged who woke early from dormancy, has only tiny fragments of memory left. She remembers drilling, and she remembers hitting a squishy person in the scaley face, and she remembers a pointy-eared squishy person telling her to hold her hands out, once, and setting a blinking, content psuedodragon into them for her to look at. She likes that memory.

She likes big smashy weapons, and dragons and dragonborn and kobolds, and little squishy people who are brave enough to touch her even though she’s big and strong and could crush them with a single bare hand. And, sure, okay, she likes the voice in her head too, most of the time, even if it sighs at her inability to remember names and places and other unimportant details. If it’s that important, the maul-voice can remember for her, right?

All she really needs to remember is how to be careful with those who are fragile, and kind to those who are in need, and a shelter to those who are hurt. The maul-voice says that she was built to stand strong. That comes with a duty to those who weren’t, she thinks, and the maul-voice doesn’t disagree.

***

Forerunner Unit 4329, “Hive”

Hexblade Warlock 4, Pact of the Chain / Swarmkeeper Ranger 9 / Hermit

“There are others you could join with, you know. Warforged aren’t made to live alone.”

“You could help people.”

“I understand you think there’s blood on your hands, but helping others would wash it clean, wouldn’t it?”

“...I suppose the wasps are better than total isolation.”

Hive’s memory is more complete, but terribly fragmented--much like Hive herself. She remembers thousands of terrible bits and pieces, snatches of sight and sound lasting no more than a minute each, mostly involving horrible amounts of gore. She can put together enough to make out that she was an assassin as well as a scout, creeping past the front lines of the enemy to cut their sentries’ throats.

It’s not a past she likes to dwell on, but she didn’t have much else to think about. It took years, after she woke up, for the psuedodragon to cobble enough of her wood and stone and silver wiring back together for her to actually move in any significant way, and the psuedodragon was... not competent a builder, let’s put it that way. Most of Hive’s current construction, she carved herself, her fingers growing more and more able each time she remade them from fresh wood.

She doesn’t listen to the voice in her head, for every time she does, she thinks of the curse she can lay, without even thinking, upon anyone who threatens her swarm. It’s not that she doesn’t use the magic, because she has to defend her wasps (they may be spirits, but they vanish if she dies, and she has carved herself into her home). But she can’t forgive the voice for giving it to her all the same.

Besides, she doesn’t talk to anyone else, either. Not even the psuedodragon. If the voice hasn’t realized that, it’s not Hive’s problem.

***

Artillery Unit 1912, “Slice”

Hexblade Warlock 4, Pact of the Tome / Swashbuckler Rogue 10 / Charlatan

“How could you do that? They were surrendering!”

“Eh, they had a knife up their sleeve, I could tell.”

“Are you going to actually check and prove it to me, or are you just going to assume you were right?”

“If I don’t check, you gonna take the magic away?”

“I... cannot deny you my power, when I was complicit in your creation.”

“Heh. Thought so. Dunno how you got your haft so far up your own arse when you don’t even have one.”

Slice’s memory is fine, as far as they’re concerned. They remember the challenge of mastering a new spell, and the deep satisfaction of watching it tear a target apart. They remember marching forward into battle, ready to raise a magical shield if anyone dare answer their attacks. They remember the voice in their head telling them to run, and they remember moving towards the center of camp instead, and the intention they had of blasting the Guidance Unit who commanded them to bits. They regret not remembering whether they were able to get off their blast.

The only principle that Slice lives by is that no one will ever control them again. Not a mortal, not another warforged, not even the voice in their head that offers them their powers. They live for themself alone, never another; they won’t go soft enough to risk their own life for another, because that’s just another form of control, in Slice’s estimation. Rambling from one place to another, they take a delight in the wild variety of the open road, and have developed an ability to blend in to any level of society.

They do have a bit of trouble keeping companions, even other warforged, because they’re so determined to be contrary. When they can’t get the entertainment of a theft or a physical fight, a verbal argument will do nicely. As far as they’re concerned, it protects them from inconvenient ‘loyalty.’ There’s only one being who’s never left, who seems to be stuck with them, and Slice will torment their patron until the unlikely day that it gives up on them and their magic dies for good.

***

Slogger Unit 693, “Kal’shee’vass”

Hexblade Warlock 3, Pact of the Chain / Beast Druid 12 / Outlander

“I... I don’t know how you managed to turn that familiar into a lizard. How did you do that? I sent it as a psuedodragon.”

“You sent- ah, the spirit the shamans said shadowed me. Can you help me help my tribe, lizard-spirit?”

“Of course, if that is what you want from me.”

“That is all that I want from any spirit.”

What Kal’shee’vass remembers doesn’t really matter, as far as they’re concerned. That was their old life, the life before they hatched again, into the hands of a lizardfolk tribe that dug them from the depths of the swamp they went dormant in. It all feels like a dream, anyway, rendered into ghostly imagery by something about the shamans’ efforts to revive their comatose form. They remember that they didn’t much like humans.

They still don’t much like humans, it turns out. Not the ones around here, who’ve done what they’ve done to their tribe, and not the others far away who stand aside and let it happen. Frankly, they don’t much like most other warforged, either. Why shouldn’t they have let the shamans reshape them? Kal’shee’vass wants it to be obvious that they belongs to their tribe. They have looked after generations of it now, learning from the shamans and teaching new ones in turn. Their connection to the lizard-spirit that speaks to them in such confusing terms is a blessing, but a duty, too.

Rare as it is for lizardfolk to take in anyone not of their tribe, Kal’shee’vass has such cunning stratagems for their defense, such ferocity in battle, and such a deep connection to the natural world around them that those born into the newer generations can’t imagine a tribe without them. Perhaps literally, for the soldiers of Ratherun press them hard, and it’s Kal’shee’vass who reminds them, always, to bare their teeth in defiance.

***

Vanguard Unit 42006, “Crack”

Hexblade Warlock 3, Pact of the Talisman / Trickery Cleric 5 / Haunted One

“I could help you help people.”

“I don’t need your help. I have Avandra’s.”

“There’s so much more you could do, if-”

“The only thing more I want to do is shut you up!”

Crack remembers everything. Well, not everything; there are some things that all warforged have forgotten, universally, and even the most recently-woken have some gaps. But he remembers what he was made for, and he remembers who, and what, allowed his creation to happen. Someday, he’s going to find that maul, and he is going to figure out how to break a hexblade.

In the meantime, he’s found spiritual succor in the service of Avandra, who reminds him that anyone’s luck can change. He wanders the roads now, offering what help he can to others, moving them forward in their personal journeys as he tries to move forward in his own. She’s the only spiritual presence he speaks to, and he believes that, through a thousand tiny signs each day, she’s always speaking back.

Darshanta is interesting to me because she's only a minor NPC in both Vaz's backstory and the BL campaign, but I have a whole lot of feelings about her regardless. Righteous rage is just a huge character vibe for me I guess?

(no cut cuz I'm on mobile whoops. maybe I'll remember to edit one in tomorrow)

---

Her wings were always black.

Black like her hair, like her eyes; she always thought it was simply so that she'd match. Now she wonders, sometimes, if Luriel tells itself that it was a sign. If the deva has decided she was always evil.

Most of the feathers are gone, these days, when she manifests her wings, only a few swirling around the ghostly bones. Her skin turns stark-white, deathly pale, to match the skeletal pinions. Only her eyes stay the same: deep, dark, fathomless.

Maybe Luriel looks back on them, too, and thinks it should have known she would fall. There's such depths in them to fall into. People have been telling her that since she was a child.

She wants to scream, some days. On others she does. High in the crow's nest, riding out storms, she screams up at the thunderheads. She's still herself! Nothing has changed about her! She was supposed to be a protector, a shield against darkness, and she's doing just that! Is simply choosing which darkness to fight enough to call her fallen? To tear her wings and the sky from her?

The world wouldn't end if she didn't fulfill the plans Kord had for her. Luriel had admitted as much. It had 'great cosmological significance,' the deva had insisted, but Kord was a big boy. He could take care of himself. These people she was helping couldn't.

But Luriel hadn't seen it that way. It had left her, abandoned her, ripped her wings and her light from her and left her with bones and darkness. And a few black feathers, drifting in a ghostly wind.

That's all right. Darshanta will make due with spiritual bones, if she must. She'll lean into the whispers, the rumors, the assumptions of evil. She'll be the death she now looks like, at least to the bastards who fear her.