Hi everyone, since we can’t stream tonight like we normally would according to our schedule, I’ve decided to post some of the joke drawings we’ve made behind the scenes for fun.
The following are a mix of drawings by Tar, Eira, and myself:
We’ll probably have a more serious post next week, but for now, enjoy some of the many nonsensical things we make for our own entertainment.
One last thing, on a more serious note, we will likely be back to streaming around late January to early February, so keep an eye out for future posts regarding our schedule.
If you haven’t seen the first two sessions of the campaign, you can find them both here:
Happy Friday everyone! This week we decided we would give the spotlight to a character who… well… isn’t technically in the campaign. The campaign wouldn’t be the same without them though, and a lot about them has been figured out, so here we are.
Like usual this will be a long post so the rest will be under the cut.
Development
We can’t really talk about the development of Jay Fletcher without talking about the development of Wren Fletcher. After all, their character only came to be cause of Wren. We knew relatively early on that he had a dead spouse, but it wasn’t until later that I really sat down and tried to make a character out of them.
I wanted to avoid an archetypal dead wife character, as a lot of tropes surrounding that such as fridging are deeply rooted in misogynistic perspectives. So the first step of avoiding any of these common pitfalls was figuring out their personality, and how they might reflect the world and greater narrative outside of just their role in Wren’s life.
I obviously wanted them to be likable, it would kind of defeat the point otherwise, and I eventually settled on making them the somewhat cynical comic they are now.
The Notebook
The notebook first came about around when Tar and I had decided to run something via messages to work out how Jay and Wren had first met. We knew Wren had learned sign because of Jay, so we needed to establish how they talked for the first time and writing was an easy solution. This scene also allowed me to flesh out Jay’s character more for my own future reference, and crucially it made it easier for my poor player to get attached to them as a character.
The decision that Jay was deaf was made much, much earlier, as I had asked the players to tell me if they think their characters would know sign (for Marthan). We agreed Wren did, and eventually decided the reason for that would be that his spouse was deaf. This shaped their character somewhat as they interacted with the world differently from pretty much all of the other characters in the campaign thus far, but the world didn’t always care to accommodate for them. As I was working on their character, I thought that would likely have to be an important angle to put a degree of emphasis on for the themes of the campaign.
Similar thoughts motivated me to make the illness that had killed them a respiratory one caused by improper ventilation in the factory they worked at. That way it didn’t just matter that they were dead, but how they died mattered too, and their story carried more weight for it.
Origins
A fair bit was figured out from before Jay ever met Wren too though. My notes aren’t too in-depth on their past, but I did note that their home life wasn’t great growing up, and they ended up getting kicked out of the house when they came out as genderfluid. They struggled for a while but were eventually able to get themself a stable enough job to keep a roof over their head for the time being, and then eventually they ended up with their job at a factory for the Commission of Science and Arcana.
The decision to have it so they’ve met Marthan — or Alice to be more accurate — was actually made after the campaign had started, during the first hiatus. I was able to quickly work it in cause the idea had interested me a great deal, and now here we are with the results of that having been revealed in-campaign now.
This decision was motivated as much by the fact that it would simply be interesting as it was by the fact that it would make Jay more connected to the world. By having this connection to Marthan, they had a more widespread influence on the world than just their impact on Wren.
Conclusion
Jay’s character was interesting to figure out, and I’m happy that I did put so much work into them. Not every character can be fleshed out entirely, characters are ultimately just tools to facilitate the story… but I do think the story of the campaign is better off for the fact that theirs was.
Not only was their loss felt more by the players for it, but they offer a lot of interesting commentary on several of the themes tackled by the campaign as a whole.
Hello everyone! This week I decided to post some of the doodles from my notebook pertaining to Through Clouds Below. I use that notebook to keep track of combat stats during sessions, and end up drawing things on the pages post-session or on other unused pages… so here’s a couple of those sketches.
We appreciate everyone’s patience right now, we’re working on things in the background, planning for next session, and we hope we’ll be able to go back to streaming later this month.
In case you’re behind, now’s a great chance to catch up on the first two sessions! You can find them here:
