#dnd note

[Later from this post] - Only a thousand? I wouldn't accept anything less than INFINITE!!!! The updated last kisses just swept me away like a tsunami to the depths of affection ocean...THEY ARE SO GOOD!!!! Especially the pull to kiss one!!!! I couldn't stop squeaking 🌊🫠🫠 I didn't expect that because I didn't even know there were updated last kisses, and I was like asdjghlrthgvnlkcxnvla GALEEEE??????? AM I DREAMING??????? Cause I thought I would only see this aggression in my brain???

I think they are bugged in the Upper City. I can only trigger last kisses in the Morphic Pool now (Hotfix #24)

[Note] It seems Ed used to gave elves a setting that when they kiss on the lips it works like mind meld. They get to take a tour at each other's mind, and even fight there. From 'Elminster In Myth Drannor (1997)'

She glided to a stop in front of him. He kissed her eyelids, and then her chin—but at her lips he found his way barred by two raised fingers. "Leave my mouth for last," she said from behind them. "For elves, that's particularly special." ... Their lips met, and then their tongues. And El faced the attack he'd been expecting. The bright sparks of a spell seemed to streak through his mind, with her will racing right behind them. Symrustar was seeking to control him, body and mind, to be her puppet, while she raked through his memories to learn all she could...especially human magic.

Also elves's erogenous zone seems to include palms and ear tips.

Sal Tercers: A young paladin water genasi, a descendant of a Silver Dragon. He's lawful good, very kind and sweet. He's got dragon hoarding tendancys, and his current hoard was inherited for his 7th great grand mother. He's got pale blue skin, but vitiligo that's silver in nature, as well as tiny dragon scales around his wrist. He's learning sorcerery, and his favourite colour is purple

Sorra Liliac: A young fighter girl that's also a water genasi. She's lawful good, but often seen as rude to the players. She's a brute, and works directly with the king of her town. She's very close with Sal, that she knows the exact location of his hoard. She's got long, dark blue hair she keeps tied up, as well as light blueish purple skin. Secretly, she wants to be a bard but also she can not turn away from serving her king.

Peter Tercers: Little is known about his past, besides what Puck has figured out. However my players follow my blog so it'd spoil the fun if I told it now. This water genasi is 18 years old physically, but was trapped in the astral plane for a hundred years, making him 118. He's a rogue, and a Haunted One, who's chaotic neutral but just wants himself some peace. His hair is bright Purple, which blends in very well with the Waters of Trivyn. His skin, also, is pale blue with silver patches of vitiligo, and silver dragon scales on his wrist. He saves our players from potential and sudden death in the astral plane, before later "dying" in the House of Haunting, a building containing homebrew monsters in the Plane of Thought. However, it is revealed that he did Not die, but rather "reborn" by Thoth. He received a gift, a blue velvet robe, and also accidentally kissed puck (not that he's complaining). The little pieces of childhood he's shared was that he wasn't a good kid, that he had an elf aunt, and that he had 1 brother 2 sisters.

The Robed Figure: Little is known about the robed figure. He is linked to the presence of the Orbs used to guide and teleport our players to and through the planes of reality. He is extremely powerful, though to what extent we do not know. Puck is the only one who's been able to see him since he first met them, since Puck has truesight. His robe is made with blue velvet material, and he's non corporal.

Kalamari: a darkmantle who was dragged into this mess by a really good Deception check, mostly useless except for being cute and adorable. I have nothing for this rock squid, except for the fact it died once but not really. Still lovable.

Pine Daeran: the first monster of the campaign, who was seduced and then adopted by Ena Daeran. He tags along with the players as they went on adventures pre-campaign, and later received a huge amount of hitpoint to his max by the Robed Figure (literally gained 54 hit points to his 2 max.) Pine later on gains Warlock-like powers from an unknown source, and gets himself into a lot of trouble. He cast True Seeing on Puck, which accidentally became Permanent. He's also cast Foresight on Puck and Fen, but it was a very strong spell. Puck gt a vision of Peter dying, whereas Fen got a vision of a rose path lined with a white picket fence and a strong urge to win. Puck is also the last one to make it through the House of Haunting, and also the Only One, in which he was killed by the god Is'is and reborn in the blue circle. He is literally 15 months old.

Illana: Outside of Ena's flashback, little is known about Illana. She met Ena when she was 19 and Ena was 100, so they were roughly within the same maturity level. They were roommates at Cleric school, and she was very happy, sweet, excitable, and pretty. Ena had a crush on her, however 8 years after meeting Illana it was discovered that her home was Burned and she dies there. They buried an empty casket. Illana has pale green hair, green eyes, pale blue skin that was dotted with silver vitiligo. She also had silver dragon scales on her wrist. Through math, Illana was 26 to 27 when she died. Ena has not shared any information to her companions about Illana

Other notable NPCs:

Hunger, aka Harold the Tiefling, friend of Sorra

Man Bowl/Katy Perry Man

Nephthys

Anunbis

Is'is

Hathor

Thoth

Gnome Priest from Sal's temple

Thotham

Ripped Dwarven Woman

Ane

Giant Lizard

Storyteller

Hello everyone, I wanted to talk about Mystra👋🔮

As much of a crazy lover as I am for my fictional wizard, the more lore research I do, the more I feel like Mystra deserves some love too. This goddess lives a cursed life. I know I know she asked Gale to kill himself, but bear with me; here are my arguments:

A bit history of Mystra

There’re 3 Mystra: Mystryl -> Mystra (Elminster’s Mystra) -> Mystra (Midnight)

In short, Mystryl is the fourth deity in the universe, composed of Shar & Selûne’s essence. She is one of the primal existences while the universe is still new and trying to settle down, a significant component of the universe itself. While Mystryl’s spirit was born naturally, Mystra and Midnight were both once mortal and raised by AO to inherit Mystryl’s power.

Is Mystra bad?

Midnight, “Mystra 3rd ” is who we met in BG3. She was a human magic user born in 1332 DR. Midnight was aiding Mystra 2nd at the time of troubles. She’s a kind-hearted and humble woman who ascended in 1358 DR. She didn’t want godhood at all; she only did it to counter Cyric, the bad guy.

From comic book Avatar (1991)

For decades, she even tried to allow only the good use of magic, later learning her duty and place as the guardian of balance and impartial arbiter of the Weave; no matter how Midnight feels or hopes things could have been. She was only 26 when she had to wave goodbye to everyone she knew, shouldering the 24/7 goddess duty. It’s true that she will inherit other Mystra’s memory, but personality-wise she is only 160 years old; even Halsin is older than her. (Not to mention she spent 94 years in dormant)

Note[1]: Later on all the Mystra mentioned I will be talking about Midnight

Note[2]: Dec17/2023 I will come back and edit this section; it's misleading according to Ed Greenwood's tweet. The current Mystra is likely a blend of all three Mystras with an unspecified proportion. I will provide details on the stories and deeds of the other Mystras.

Being Mystra sucks. Truly.

Imagine your body is just a thing lying on the street; anyone can command you to dance for them so long as they know the right spell. While you CAN reject it, you are NOT ALLOWED to.

What’s worse is that too many mortals and too many gods want the Weave, but it’s not something that she can “give”. Like no one can give away their body to someone else. She IS the Weave; I think of it as the Weave being the cells that compose her. Whoever wants to take it away will have to separate her mind and “body” by:

killing her and inherit the Weave, where all the attempters failed step 2, then only resulted in a broken/Weaveless crisis

or completely manipulating her mind, which is the option no one ever considers; they all go straight to killing her

Whenever DnD wants to change the rules, they kill Mystra.

Shar wants the Weave, Bane wants it, countless mortals want it too. According to the conversation between Gale and Lorroakan, it’s almost a common conversation trying to dethrone the goddess and take the power for themselves.

And no one is there to protect Mystra; she fights alone. Although she has a good relationship with gods like Selûne or Azuth, nobody lent a hand when she was murdered. She relies on her chosens and her own power.

On top of defending herself, aka protecting the Weave, another important duty is to maintain the Weave. Whenever a spell is cast, it damages the Weave, and she is the one to patch the holes. The more powerful the spell is, the bigger damage it will cause. That’s why her dogma includes “Use the Art deftly and efficiently, not carelessly and recklessly.” She also needs to keep an eye out for possible upcoming threats. A tough and tedious job, and no holidays for the goddess.

It might sound a bit twisted, but she is taking care of the world by taking care of herself. Anything happening to her means catastrophe for the world. (e.g., Spellplague, where magic caused mutations to the users, see wiki here)

But she asked Gale to explode himself!

Yes, and she also promised Elysium once he’s dead. There is actually a thorough afterlife setting in the Forgotten Realms DnD setting. In short, a spirit doesn’t perish when a mortal dies; it would be drawn to the Fugue Plane and wait for the god they prayed to in life to send a servant to take them to their heaven.

It’s a terrible fate for the faithless or false spirits, those who either defy their gods or never choose one. They are forever punished in this grim plane and even become part of the Wall of the Faithless.

Fugue Plane and Wall of the Faithless: those are spirits piling up into a wall

In Mystra’s case, her heaven is Elysium, judging by the name, you can already tell it’s likely a heavenly place. Significantly better than the Fugue Plane, that’s for sure.

It’s a fixed truth that all will die someday, and Gale’s afterlife options are:

Defy Mystra: When he dies, he will be forever punished as a false in the Fugue Plane. Not to mention Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead, is also Midnight Mystra’s former(?) lover, and he detests cowardice.

Defy Mystra and try to gain favor from another god: I think this will mean changing class and profession for him, as a wizard he is tied to Mystra after all.

Serve Mystra and be taken to Elysium: And who knows, since he is chosen of Mystra, she might even revive him someday. Mystra 2nd did that for her other chosen before. Note: Interesting reading about how her chosen become weaveghost after death, see wiki here.

Obtain godhood: When the god Gale dies, he will go through a completely different process.

An interesting thought here is whether Gale knows about all these. It will largely define what his true colors are. It wouldn’t make sense if he is completely ignorant of afterlife logic, though. His background is an experienced wizard (probably studied some necromancy), goddess ex, and apparently visited heavens before.

Is Mystra power-thirsty?

I wouldn’t say so. She is already OP, and AO asked her to nerf herself by sharing and storing power in her chosens. Even if she were to gain more power, she is not allowed to keep it.

She wants the Shadow Weave

She sees Shar’s secret creation, the Shadow Weave, as a threat and aims to eventually subsume it into her portfolio, even if that means sacrificing her last remaining goodness and humanity.

From the DnD book “Faith & Pantheons”

We see how Shar is using her Shadow Weave in the cursed land, and it's safe to say it's not an ideal living environment for most beings. Shar has been very keen to kill Mystra and take over her power; I don’t think the world would be a better place in her hands than in Mystra’s.

She wants the Karsite Weave

The same logic could apply to the Karsite Weave. While we can argue whether Gale has a good heart and can be trusted with godlike power, he did show some concerning traits, did he not? Maybe in the future, when he is wiser and calmer, that's how I read Mystra’s line when she tells him to be patient.

Why doesn’t she just cure him since she can?

This is 100% headcanon. I think Mystra as a goddess is able to foresee some future. In Elminster’s story series, Mystra 2nd often asked him to do things that seemed irrelevant but were actually needed in the future. In Gale’s case, could it be that’s what Midnight meant to do? To mentor and humble him? Even prepare him to go through this journey? (Hardly imagine the prime archmage Gale joining our little merry band, and Elminster did say, “Mystra was anything but idle- she chose you as her champion.” What could that means?)

Gale has a curve where he goes from being “irked by untalented apprentices” to “enjoying teaching a lot” if not using the crown. He could have been relying on magic too much, and his ego or pursuit of power had led him astray from his good nature. If you look from this perspective, offering to use the orb before the final battle could be him still having doubts about the team's ability and having more faith in magic aka his own power (mixed with his deep love for everyone that he'd rather die than see their lives wasted, of course).

She is a terrible lover, and she doesn't care about Gale at all

According to patch 5, how time feels in the outer plane is very different from the material plane. God Gale came back in 6 months, and he seems not aware that it has been months. With this logic and putting myself in Mystra's shoes, she got mad because Gale recklessly activated a magical nuclear bomb and ignored him for a couple of weeks.(~1 year in the mortal world) When they meet again, this grumpy jumpy bean is thinking of the possibility of killing her for her powers already. Excuse me???

I will say there could be more considerate ways to handle this subject other than asking him to bomb himself. This long-distance cross-race romance was very problematic, but I will reserve my opinion on how much love she holds for Gale. Probably not seeing him as an equal partner, of course, but drawing the conclusion that she doesn't care a tad about his well-being might be too hasty, in my opinion.

A screenshot of Mystra telling Gale that she wasn't the one who took his gifts away from him. That's not an expression of 0 sympathy to me. I've never seen her make this face except for this line.

*UPDATE on Dec 11/2023* Add a tweet from Ed Greenwood, the creator of the Forgotten Realms. Ref: X

*UPDATE on Jan 11/2024* • Add a screenshots during Gale's meeting with her • Add a note on DnD weaveghost setting *UPDATE on Apr 15/2024* • An great analysis of Gale & Mystra's relationship and Mystra's behavior logic

Ehem, so, a brief of where this madness started. I was forming a story for my Tav giving a bath to her dearest wizard after the final battle and of course this lovely corner in Elfsong Tavern was a good spot for this plot. But then the big question struck me:

WAIT how does the plumbing works in DnD......??????