I play 21 year old tiefling wizard Whitney Tremors. During our group’s first campaign, Whitney and the party (also composed of her best friend Kimber) went down to Below (our campaign’s version of the Underdark) and went to the city of Skyprint, which was about to have an election for a new archon. Because of events too complicated and irrelevant to explain here, Whitney and the party ended up having to deliver a box to the front steps of the current archon that, when he opened it, would cast feeblemind on him. This was done so that one of the potential archon successors, Siegfried, a might makes right fascist, could accuse the other potential archon successor Abel of being behind the plan and then seize power. The last time we saw Skyprint in campaign one, Siegfried had already started an intense military command of the city.
So with that in mind, now it’s time for campaign 2 and our current arc, Finale: Genesis.
In the years since, Skyprint has only gotten worse and worse. And Whitney has been receiving a large amount of the blame. The leader of the Skyprint rebel movement, Pyre, found out that Whitney was involved with leaving the feeblemind box and blames Whitney for whats going on, starting a years long campaign to frame Whitney for several murders in order to bring Whitney's involvement to light and catch the attention of Whitney and Pyre's shared former mentor Lagann, who has been god knows where since leaving town in campaign one (long story, involves routine memory erasure). Pyre's plan culminates in them stabbing Whitney's wife in bed and placing a magical druid disease on her that I can't remember the name of right now. Because of this, Whitney hunts Pyre down and kills them by burning them to ash with a fireball, an action that causes a little prompt to appear that says Everyone Disliked That.
Well, some other stuff happens including multiversal travel and Whitney going to the afterlife and meeting Pyre and Whitney being betrayed there by someone who died in Skyprint. Long and short of it is that a lot of stuff happens to make Whitney feels personally responsible and guilty for everything that has happened in Skyprint. So after forcibly guilt tripping her best friend Kimber into coming back to life, Whitney, her wife Beaus and Kimber decide to head down to Skyprint to finally help the rebellion take down Siegfried.
Now, Skyprint has changed a lot since we were last there. For starters, it's almost entirely full blooded drow now. Next is that there is now a giant lattice made from some special form of psychic crystal. And most importantly, in the lattice is the Psionic Pstrike Psquad, the town's superhero/police psquad all appointed by Siegfried and all with their own specialty psychic powers. There are five members of the Psquad but for right now the main one we need to focus on is a woman named Grand Prix.
Now as part of our approach to dealing with the Skyprint situation, we enter the town presenting ourselves as foreign diplomats representing our hometown of Finale and hoping to strike some sort of mutually beneficial deal with Skyprint’s government. They believe this and start to work with us, and as part of this, Siegfried assigns Whitney to help out Grand Prix with a mysterious murder investigation.
Now Grand Prix is a drow who dresses in an outfit resembling a combination of a knight and a princess. She was supposed to be in an arranged marriage to people she didn’t like before Siegfried saved her and she’s been his protege ever since. Prix’s introduction is getting on one knee and kissing Whitney’s hand. And I should also mention, Prix is very tall. Like very tall. Over six feet.
As the day goes on, Prix is assigned to introduce us to the town and see us around everywhere, and it becomes more and more clear that she’s attracted to both Whitney and her wife. Now, Whitney is a huge wife guy, and at first is unsure about this, with both her and Beaus agreeing that Prix being part of this empire is kind of a huge turn off. They turn down the opportunity to hook up with Prix that night.
But then… it turns out we need to do a prison break to get a bunch of the rebels as well as potential helpers of the cause out of prison. And part of that will involve getting intel, having alibis, and creating a distraction. Which Whitney quickly realizes means she’ll have to seduce Prix.
Doing this, through a homo erotic sword fight, Whitney is able to place doubt in Prix’s mind of her other psquadmates as well as figure out the logistics for how to get in and out of The Spike, the prison where everyone is kept. And Whitney does this by playing up the whole angle of a small town girl in a big city. But then something happens… Whitney seems to actually start to like her? And Prix seems to genuinely like Whitney and wants her and Beaus.
The prison break goes off relatively successfully (long story) and the current psquad wizard now looks guilty after Whitney has managed to frame her. And now… Prix seems to want Whitney as the new psquad replacement? And at first she seems to deny the opportunity, but then in a private meeting Siegfried offers her the job as well. As well as says that Prix wants to spend dinner that night with her and Beaus.
So Whitney does and goes through with it. She sits down with Prix and her wife and has dinner. And when Prix starts to panic after Whitney tells her that they’re investigating the current psquad wizard as part of the jailbreak, Whitney reassures her. “Well, actually. I’m not investigating your coworker. I’m investigating our coworker.”
Beaus is stunned. Whitney never told her she was offered the job
Beaus, thinking about how this commitment complicates things and places Whitney in danger, begins to drink and drink, and after Prix refers to Beaus as “just a guard” compared to Whitney, Beaus decides to show her what “just a guard” can do and makes out with Prix on her lap. The three end up going to bed together.
The next morning Whitney is formally offered the psquad position. She’s talked it over with Kimber, who thinks it’s a good idea as it means Whitney will have more power to manipulate and get intel on the inside. She goes up to meet her new psquad mates and Prix insists on instigating the process called Awakening, which gives someone their psychic powers. It involves letting someone else into your mind and forming a special bond between you and the other person. Prix insists that her, Whitney and Beaus be the only one in the room.
The Awakening begins and it feels so nice. It involves going into parts of Whitney’s mind that she’s not told Prix about before - her history with her mentor, her dropping off the feeblemind box, and her killing Pyre. Through this, Prix is able to comfort her, assure her, give her closure, provide reassurance to Whitney throughout all these stages of her life. Whitney wakes up feeling refreshed, feeling revigorated, the way one does after a great session of therapy, a mental baptism.
As part of the awakening, Whitney can now speak telepathically with other people, a feat she can’t really control yet. Additionally, she has the ability to psychically command others five times per long rest. But there’s also another significant part of it: her and Prix are now mentally linked, which means that mechanically, Whitney is charmed by Prix. So
This also means that the relationship between Prix and Whitney feels real now. They liked each other before. They were attracted to each other. But now Whitney is enamored. This is someone she’s deeply passionate about. After all, she helped her. She knows her on a deep mental level, an emotional level no one else has ever reached.
But Prix still supports Siegfried. And Prix is still the enemy. And when a disguised Kimber attacks Prix during a rebel mission, Whitney gets enraged. She has to insist that Kimber can hurt any other psquad member, but not Prix.
Except during this rebel mission, Whitney “fucked up.” See, this was the day that Siegfried was expected to receive a big shipment of these crystals (made up of the remains of earth genasi) which would allow him to build a psychic network amongst everyone in the city, a huge surveillance issue and something we clearly couldn’t let him have. So on her debut psquad mission, Whitney “accidentally” misaims a fireball and destroys half the shipment.
She is in deep shit for this. The town thinks she’s a joke. The Psquad is angry. Siegfried is pissed. And Prix is initially frustrated than apologetic - it’s her fault for insisting Whitney go without much training. But then the charming comes into play and she catches Whitney in a lie when Whitney describes what happens. And she suspects Whitney. Whitney says she’s here to help the people of Skyprint. Prix says she’s not sure what side of the people Whitney considers helping.
Oh, also Whitney’s wife Beaus is in prison for questioning after she was found working against the psquad.
So that’s where we left off. Whitney and Prix having this deep emotional connection where both are infatuated with each other, Beaus is in jail and assumed guilty, Prix assumes Whitney is a traitor, Whitney wants to see if she can get Prix on her side, and a giant gala tonight open to the public that Whitney and Prix need to make their grand debut as a couple in.
Shit is sooooooo messy right now.