#dnd2e

Dear Jacques, 

      My dear friend, my Oidhche…

      I murdered you. 

      I took your life out of cowardice for I feared you and your secrets. I wish I had been stronger than my instincts. Now you’re no longer here and I unjustly remain. I still see your blood on my hands and how I have dishonored your trust. I dishonored you.

      You’ve known my fear of the unknown and immorality since the moment you took my hand in the market that day. You tried so very hard to teach me all that I didn’t know and show me how to grow. I was so afraid I didn’t want to learn. I was afraid that if I trusted in you, this world, that I would only find other ways to be hurt. 

      I let your secrets be my reason, those things you shared only with the night. I should’ve understood you. You had every right to have them just as I had the right to mine. 

      The six years we traveled together should’ve made it easier to understand but I have only ever seen time from the perspective of elves. Six years, a meager pittance to me but to you a significant portion of life. How many stolen looks had I missed? How many gentle words did you waste on me? So much of your life was spent on me and I realized far too late what we were. So willingly blind to it I was that it had to be explained to me by those who weren’t even there.

      I suppose that’s why I even wrote this to begin with. Knowing that we’re tied together, even in death. Dying and becoming you it’s… painful. Being ripped from my own skin into the suffocating darkness where my mind no longer wonders. Is it the same for you? Each time I am brought back I could swear I feel your presence passing me by to take the place where I was. I’m… thankful each time I return but that makes me feel no more worthy to stay. Why do I constantly believe you would be better holding the reins before me?

      My group of friends know of you. They know what I have done to you and what I have been tasked with. They understand that I loved you and that I fear you. They’ve seen the coward that took your life. They don’t know how much I need you. They don’t know just how weak I am without you. Killing you has cost me… everything. I cannot even bear the touch of others without being reminded of you laying in the coffin.

      I hope you hate me and I am afraid that you already do. I will live several lifetimes longer than even you, should I succeed in bringing you back. I will never be able to forget what I have done to you. I won’t, and cannot, run from this. I won’t pretend any longer that there is a clean slate to be had but I won’t give in to paranoia ever again.

      Jaques, I am so very sorry that I got you in this situation. I don’t ask for your pity, I never have. I don’t even ask for your forgiveness. All I ask of you, though I have no right, is your trust that I won’t give up. I will see this through to the end no matter the cost. You should know that, even though I was too stubborn or blind to say it, I loved you too. I still do.

      Most Determined,

When my sister wanted to play a wizard, my dad suggested that she take a proficiency with crossbows since you didn’t want to be useless in a fight after you got off your 2 spells a day which may not have even been combat spells. It was literally just this image completely seriously.

The story of how there is a domain where Strahd had done a kingdom hearts and separated his humanity from his body and he finds out his humanity is a fully formed human man living a beautiful pastural life w/ a partner and little farm.

More inktober! Fiend Folio days 25&26 combined - Yellow Musk Creeper, and  Zombie (yellow musk). The final and ONLY ‘Z’ entry in the FF seemed like a bit of a copout, but the concept is cool. The YMC is a large climbing plant with orchid-like flowers that puff dust to entrance and ensnare a victim. It germinates a seed in the victim’s head, who steadily loses intelligence, until fully controlled by the plant. There’s usually one YMC zombie for every two flowers, and the zombie can be running about for up to two months.