#wallflower(s)

(I've finally commissioned someone outside the people I know, lmao.)

This is the fourth-ish iteration of my rabbit; Miss Gardenia Dubosquet!

A lot has happened since the last look I got for her. Long story short; yet another dead game. But the group, aside from the GM, has stayed together since then! We've got a few games running between us now, and another opportunity to have her in a game.

Some time ago a close friend, aeonic_scribble, wanted to run another 5E campaign right after wrapping up a short campaign.

At the time I was way big into Drakenier content, having finished the replicant remaster and automata. I had this idea of wanting to play a character styled after and tonally close to the games, specifically the first Drakenguard. The concept was flexible enough to fit into anything he ran, but I ran it by him first to see if he was comfortable with it.

Gardenia Jonquil Dejardins was initially conceptualized as a Tabaxi Eldritch Knight with an absent older sibling who is the driving force in her story. However, at the time WotC had released a UA for a player lineage called the Harengon, forming an idea in my head. I wanted to instead run her as a Viera from the FF games in aeonic_scribble’s game. Being a huge FF mark, he was all for it.

Nothing was too concrete about her even during game time, with a class change to an Oath Paladin and attempting to find a personality that could stick for her. With no fault to anyone, sessions took long times between games and it made it harder to really nail anything down. Eventually it ended up being put on hiatus due to scheduling and priorities, and stayed that way since. However in-between games I picked up FFXIV, mostly out of guilt of running a Viera but not having played a FF game outside for 7R.

I’ve already written about my experiences with the game in another post but didn’t really talk about my wol too much. If it wasn’t too obvious, I decided to plunk Gardenia right into the game as a stand-in PC. The game's setting informed a ton of details about her backstory, as well as her characterization. wol!Gardenia is probably her most fleshed-out iteration so far and would have stayed that way if I didn’t join any other games.

A month or two ago I joined an online 5E group on Roll20 that was kind of up my alley. I would lovingly describe the setting as “JRPG fantasy” with a slew of home-brew player options, and Gardenia fit right into it with minor changes. This iteration of her now being a Rabbitfolk “Usagi” Hexblade Warlock, with the relationship with her patron being heavily inspired by the Dark Knight quest line from FFXIV.

The game is still pretty fresh, especially after some complications that required a hard reset. My time in the group has been a positive one, with my GM clearly having a great time running the game. And nothing against my friend, but it's also nice to have her in a game that has more regular sessions.

Despite every iteration of her that I have, I've always commissioned aeonic_scribble for art to use in the games that she's in. Mostly due to the fact it's easier to commission a friend, but also due to the fact that he's the only other person who I share a lot of her information with. I do consider Gardenia being a joint character between the both of us, with him having had a good amount of say on the initial iteration of her character.

I hope to have more to eventually share about dnd!Gardenia, but as for now, I'll leave it to being just these loose thoughts and commissions from a friend.

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