#ohestra

[image description copied from alt text: A digital painting in rough brushstrokes of Emperor Ohestra Linell, she/her, an NPC from my d&d game. Ohestra is a thin bald woman with dark brown skin. Her face is depicted in simple shapes with no visible eyes. She is wearing a gold satin off-the-shoulder gown and a golden crown in the shape of a sun framing her head. "Ohestra, the sun-blooded" is written beside her in cursive. The background is dark blue.]

[ID copied from alt text: A half body digital drawing of Ohestra (she/her) and Suri (she/her), NPCs in the Reforged Campaign, set against a dark blue night sky with twelve small yellow stars and one large white-yellow star above them. The piece is in a limited palette with Ohestra drawn in gold, dark navy blue, dark cool blue, gray-blue and pale gray blue, with Suri drawn in the inverted version of that palette, in cool blue, white-yellow, pale yellow, brown-yellow and cool dark brown. Ohestra, on the left, is a young, thin human with a shaved head. She is wearing a long flowy shirt. Suri, on the right, is a young, thin human with medium length curly hair. She is wearing a t-shirt and shorts. The sisters sit back to back, both looking up at the sky. Both have a hand out at their side, out of their own view, with Ohestra putting her hand on top of Suri's. End description.]

[image description: a digital portrait of Ohestra Linell, a black human woman in her 30s with a shaved head. She’s drawn from the neck up in profile, facing to the left. She has her eyes closed and her head slightly tilted downwards. Ohestra is wearing royal blue lipstick, a gold crown inlaid with sapphires, and three gold earrings: a cuff on her cartilage, a small stud, and a dangling eight-pointed star. Part of her shoulder is visible at the bottom of the frame, and she’s wearing a royal blue robe with a thick gold trim. She’s lit by a soft blue light coming from the top left. end id]

nothing but respect for my imperialist figurehead!

z'rael: how close are you to the emperor?

kempa: not very. we just saved her life one time, it's a long story.

z'rael: let me phrase it this way. are you ever within striking distance of the emperor?

hell yeah! A few quick background notes: the party is friends with the emperor's sister, Suri. A few in-game months ago, the emperor, Ohestra, and her daughter were kidnapped. Suri asked the party to help track them down, which of course they agreed to do. After a successful rescue mission, the emperor honored the party with a gratitude ceremony, where she invoked the Law of the Unexpected.

This was a concept I had introduced to the players a loooong time ago, and full disclosure, it's something I totally stole from The Witcher (which borrowed it from slavic folklore) and repurposed it to fit into my campaign. (It's called the Law of Surprise in The Witcher.)

Basically, when a person's life is saved, they can invoke this law to repay their savior according to what Fate decides the payment should be. This can be done a few ways, but in Ohestra's case, she worded it: "I will give you that which I have but do not yet know I have." See? Leaving it up to fate.

I had explained that this payment could be anything: a crop that hasn't been harvested yet, an investment that pays off, or, in some cases, a baby from a pregnancy that wasn't known about at the time. In my world, it's kind of an archaic practice that followers of Eyhemet (the god of fate and harmony) occasionally undergo, to show reverence to Fate itself and gratitude for the person who saved them. Ohestra is a big follower of Eyhemet, so it made total sense for her to do this.

It's funny, because even though I've explained this and used a baby specifically as an example multiple times, the players were not expecting a baby, i think partly because I've used this example multiple times lol. But yeah, turns out Ohestra was pregnant at the time of the kidnapping but didn't know, and so in a few in-game months, the party will get a baby.