#my quest

//sent by @draw-a-circle--thats-alternia

(Thread 1 for newcomers here)

The Paper Menagerie Inspired by listening to The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu on the LeVar Burton Reads podcast. Seriously read or listen to that before reading my half baked quest concept based mostly on listening to half of it and some tweaks afterwards. Tamiyo's Story Scroll One Shots - These are one shots I will be littering my Innistrad campaign with, echoing the story scrolls Tamiyo carries, set on different planes. Unknown Plane, possibly Tarkir Lonely old wizard from another land creates their own kingdom of paper complete with creatures and people to fill the void of loneliness left by her lost family, surrounded by a great corrugated forest to keep them in and the world out. Her husband resented her magic and foreign traditions, despite her efforts to share her joy of the Art and her culture with her family, while her son resented how different she was and how that made him different too. She created little folded paper pets and companions for her son and shared wondrous tales of her travels with her husband, but he nurtured the deed of his jealousy and frustration so that it bloomed into bitter resentment. One night he abandoned her, taking their son and leaving no explanation or note. For a while she lives a quiet life with her paper kingdom, but the the her anger and sadness infused her creations, and eventually paper people and creatures became bitter and frustrated. They started fighting one another in wars of a thousand cuts, until a powerful leader united them. They locked their creator away in a great paper spire and set out to vent the hatred that had grown within them like a cancer on the people like those that had hurt their creator so. With her created army setting out with brim purpose, she wove her tears into a spell and called down a great rainstorm that decimated the majority of her paper children, breaking her heart again. Those that survived still dwell in the origami forest and attack anyone who enters their cardboard wood. Time passed and everyone forgot about the old wizard, except in the stories to scare the kids away from the Zhezhi  forest and the wicked spirits that dwell there, viciously cutting those who come close. Their handed down stories cast the wizard as a wicked witch who created her paper monstrosities to terrorise the good people of the nearby villages. Some even said that she killed her husband and son, using her black magic to bind their souls to her foul creations. *** Many years have passed and the remaining paper creations have discovered a way to bring down parts of the forest to reinforce themselves and build greater warriors to finally bring their long sought war to bare. This is where the party come in, the few survivors of an attack on the nearest village to the wood, enlist the heroes to take back their village from the paper monsters, destroy the Zhezhi forest and put an end to the evil witch and her machinations. Once they reach the tower and vanquish the mighty paper dragon guardian, they are set to put an end to this evil once and for all, but what they find is a desperately sad old woman lying on a paper cot, watching the ragged and faded toys she made her son do their best to dance and play on the floor. She is desiccated and dry as paper without any magic, having cried it all away many years ago. She reveals to the heroes that she was once a Planeswalker and danced across the blind eternities, visiting countless planes, before falling in love, starting and family and letting her spark go out, so she could settle down. This is her last tale of her adventures and she passes away with the comfort of other people for the first time in millennia. A spark of the Wizard spirit infuses into the paper toys on the floor and they look and move renewed for a moment, before climbing into a lavish envelope on the desk. Inside is a letter written to her long lost son: Son we haven't talked in a long time... (I'll rework a shorter version of the one from the story for the quest) The envelope and folded creatures are a magic item. A unique folded paper Bag of Tricks with a bright red and green tiger in it as well as other unique folded paper creatures, including a water buffalo and a tinfoil shark. I cannot recommend reading or listening to The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu more strongly. It is heartbreaking and breathtakingly beautiful and made me cry so much. O don't think I would have come up with this idea of I hadn't been so inspired half way through because I was such an emotional wreck by the end. Tiger - Front Cover of The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu Paper Drake by butterfrog butterfrog.deviantart.com