#mirezur merati

[caelumaids]

Oh man. On reflection of my last D&D post, I just realised how young Samara will be when Mirezur dies. High Elves get old as balls, and Mirezur probably won’t live to see seventy. When she dies, Samara will still be considered an adolescent in High Elf society. In this story she’s probably comparable to a fifteen year old human. Oh man. What have I done.

[caelumaids]

Just some stuff I need to get off my chest about Mirezur, because I’m a little upset and need to defend my fictional character’s honour.

So, at D&D last night, I don’t remember the context, but Samara, Mirezur’s daughter, somehow came up, and like - apparently this was a surprise for most of my friends?? Like, not even for their characters, who would definitely not know about her, but the actual real life people? My dudes, I never made a secret of Samara, I talk about her relatively frequently, she’s a large part of Mire’s backstory, she’s mentioned in multiple short stories, and every other picture of Mire I’ve ever drawn has her in it. Like, the very first picture of Mirezur I drew has Samara swaddled in the corner for a size reference. She was not a secret.

And then they were like, “You have a daughter?? What are you doing adventuring! You’re a bad mother!” and I just... guys. Mire’s a player character in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. She literally has to be adventuring. If this was an actual story, she would have turned around and gone home at the first mention of an evil five-headed dragon goddess - in fact, would probably have done so well before that point. This was not her choice. She wants to be at home with her family and not worrying about fucking Tiamat. What was the other option? Bring an (approximately) seventeen year old with her through all of this? And that’s a High Elf seventeen year old by the way, so still nowhere near age of majority (though how does that work, anyway? Is that just a societal thing or are below-hundred-year-old Elves genuinely unable to take care of themselves? Anyway). She’s being the best mother she can be in a fucking terrible situation.

And I guess the insult stung more because I haven’t fully sorted out their stories yet, and I kind of don’t know where Samara is. She’s either with some distant blood-relations, with the Firebird Syndicate (who raised Mire thanks very much, give those criminals a bit of credit, they know what they’re doing), or with the Ilmatari at the monastary, and I just need to buckle down and sort out which option I’m going with, but at the moment I feel bad that one of the people who is crucial to the stories of two of my characters is unnaccounted for, and that my friends called me out on it.

Ugh I feel like this post has gotten off track, if I even knew what the track was in the first place. It boils down to the following points: Mirezur loves Samara with her whole heart and would do anything to protect her and care for her and give her a good future. I cannot emphasise this enough. Also, Mirezur does not want to be here. She’s my only character that I’ve inflicted my total lack of wanderlust on, as I’ve mentioned before. She’s doing what she’s doing out of duty and lies awake every night wishing she was somewhere else. She’s already seen plenty of death and dying, and wants to get back to the Firebirds where at least she can be around her family. In the meantime, she’s done all she can to secure Samara’s safety and happiness. Mire had no idea she’d be gone so long.

Mirezur is, I think, my oldest child - the first Dungeons and Dragons character I ever fully made. (I’m excluding Deeric at this point. Sorry Deeric.) I had no idea what I was doing when I made her and her backstory - which Samara has always been a part of - and didn’t know what playing a full D&D campaign was like. If I had, would I have taken Samara out of her story? I honestly don’t know. But she’s there now, and I’m doing my damnedest to make sure everyone finishes their story with a happy ending.

[caelumaids]

Guess what

D&D stuff

I know, shocking

Regarding my Half-Orc cleric daughter, Mirezur:

I AM SO NERVOUS

This week was fine but the DM has guaranteed that next week, at least one person will die and I do not waaaant

I... hope she’s going to be ok? She’s the third-longest lived in the group now and I reckon I can try and keep that streak, not because I’m a particularly good player but because there are other players less attached to their characters that are willing to throw themselves under the bus (or adult black dragon, in this case), which, while this is a thing that works in my (and also Lauren and Katie’s) favour, i kind of just want everyone to stop dying?? That would be the ideal???

Also, one of the characters that the player himself said was probably going to die is one that I really want to live :( It doesn’t show, because we don’t really do a lot of actual RP in this campaign, but Mire thinks he’s really interesting and kind of hesitantly wanted to get to know him better. She - ok, this is where i need to back up and explain some stuff that’s been on my mind for a while

There’s a difference between being something, and being part of that something’s community. For example, just because you’re gay doesn’t necessarily mean you’re part of the gay community, because that comes from interacting and bonding and making connections - it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it’s a social, cultural thing. We talked about it in NZSL, the difference between being little-d deaf and capital-D Deaf, where the former referred to the auditory condition and the latter referred to the community and the culture, and how there was a difference between being deaf and being culturally Deaf.

Now, to make a huge and probably inappropriate leap from reality to fantasy, while Mire is a Half-Orc, she hasn’t had actual regular contact with any other Half-Orcs since her mother and family were killed when she was young. Her foster parents did their best and raised a happy and healthy child, but she was never really exposed to her heritage outside of some shitty stuff she couldn’t avoid (i.e. the discrimination against Orcs and the Mark of Gruumsh), so while she is racially a Half-Orc, she definitely isn’t culturally Orcish, and - she kind of wants to learn.

So, the thought that the only other Half-Orc of the party is going to die makes me upset, because I know she’ll be upset, even if she doesn’t really have any grounds to be - she and Feng aren’t particularly close, but she’ll be gutted by the loss of what he represents. He’s a real life, adult Half-Orc, seemingly not at odds with his heritage at all, just getting on with his life, and that’s kind of a marvel to her and she wants to know more about it.

Also, the character’s player mentioned tonight that with the age difference between them (Feng is, I think, about sixty, and Mire is in her early thirties) they could have a father-daughter relationship, and now that’s fucking me up even more because if she thinks of him that way she’ll be really hurt when he dies (though the player pointed out it’s good he’s not actually a dad, because he’s a bit of... an oddball, is i guess a way to put it? I think he’s meant to be the personification of War? Not Responsible Dad material. That’s fine though, Mire’s basically a mum, she can handle that end of things).

And another thing that was really enjoyable was that we picked up a blue dragon egg a while ago, and Feng is obsessed with dragons, and Mire loves kids as well as wanting to hang with Feng on the d low, so she’s made a point of helping out with looking after the egg. Oh, which was quite cute, because she could be genuinely helpful there, since it’s a blue dragon egg and she’s a tempest cleric, just pat it with lightning every so often and it counts as babysitting. I don’t know where that thought was going, but the thought I have now is that if he does end up dying, she’s going to get a bit unreasonable about the egg, and the dragonling when it hatches. That... could be dangerous. Ok, now I’m worried, that could get her in proper trouble. Shitfuck.

Anyway, I’ve lost the thread of this, so I should probably wrap up. Sorry, that ended up being a meandering mess. Helped me clear my head a bit, though. I’m sorry that this campaign is so deadly.

[caelumaids]

25 Questions For Your D&D Characters and OCs - Mirezur edition!

1.             What is this character’s alignment?

Chaotic good.

2.             What is a notable quote from this character? Alternatively, what is their favourite quote?

Ok look I know I should have thought of a cool quote, and maybe later I will, but at the moment all I can think of is this exchange that happened ages ago—

Another party member: Right, I look around the tavern for someone to try and get information from.

DM: There’s a barmaid standing next to the bar.

Party member: Oooh, nice, I go over and try to flirt—

DM: She’s a Half-Orc.

The men of the party recoil, that party member flounders for a second

Mirezur: *immediately slides over* Hey gurl, what’s up.

3.             Summarize your character’s backstory with no more than three sentences.

Mire is a first-generation Half-Orc, and was born to an initially politically-married but eventually loving Human man and Orc woman; they married to help solidify the amalgamation of an Orc tribe and a Human clan, which becomes successful and prosperous, and Mirezur’s early years are very happy. But of course, I wrote this, so then shit hits the fan: a fanatical blood-purist organisation targets the settlement and kills all the adults (including Mire’s parents) and kidnap and enslave the mixed-blood children, and Mire and her friends live like this for several years before they are rescued by a Robin-Hood-esque criminal group known as the Firebird Syndicate. Most of the rescued children are eventually re-homed, but Mirezur stays with the Syndicate and earns herself the Criminal background by working with them as a small-time enforcer and healer; lots of stuff goes down in those years, the most notable of which is that she helps raise a High Elf child, and now she’s part of an adventuring group rooting out dragons around Faerun and wondering where her life went wrong.

Yikes that got dangerously close to four sentences!

4.             Describe your character using a song title.

I hope you’ve learned by now that I can’t limit myself to just one song title.

Get Home, Bastille (ok the title isn’t very descriptive, but this song is so the background track to Mire’s life that I had to include it)

Like A Mountain, Timber Timbre

Holding On To Good, Delta Rae

Harmless Monster, CocoRosie

5.             Are there any story arcs you would like this character to explore?

What I really want to do with Mire is hash out the specifics of her life with the Syndicate, bc I have noooo idea about what that was like yet, and it’ll be so much fun to work on!! The reason I keep putting it off is bc it’ll mean I need to create a whole bunch more characters, which is time consuming and also I will want to get perfect, since I want the Syndicate to be really synergistic and I do not… have the best track record with making things synergistic…

6.             What would your character like (or have liked) to do with their life?

To be honest, she was too young to have concrete life plans when her birth family was killed, so in that respect the criminal life is all she’s really known, and I suppose all she ever expected she’d know. I think she probably assumed she’d spend the rest of her life working with the Syndicate (and later, working with the Syndicate and looking after Samara), and while adventuring is not super removed from that, it lacks that home base that she envisioned herself having, and that honestly she still wants.

7.             Who is your character’s best friend?

In the adventuring party, Ikki the Aarakocran monk, without a doubt! She probably has a best friend (or at least close friends) in the Syndicate, but as I confessed earlier I have done no work on those characters (except that there’s at least one Tiefling, and one hijabi woman who may or may not be a Medusa, and someone is named Naro), so I don’t know who they are! Also her adoptive daughter Samara rates a mention here :)

8.             Who is your character’s worst enemy?

There’s probably some corrupt lord asshole in Anstyr who is the Sworn NemesisTM of the Syndicate, and if you asked Mire that’s what she’d say, but I don’t think she has a personal worst enemy.

9.             Who has, for better or worse, had the most impact on your character’s life?

Every time I answer this question it comes back to “the plot device I used to kill off the character’s loved one/s” which is just making me really sad. So, specifically, that’s the leader of the blood-purist group that raided the Orc-Human settlement where Mire was born.

10.         What is the most badass thing this character has done?

I’m like 90% sure that Mire is my oldest living child, and surely someone who’s been around that long has done awesome badass stuff, but I just??? Can’t remember anything?? I’ll ask my party on Monday :/ In the meantime: every single instance of Spiritual Guardians. That shit WRECKS.

UPDATE: A couple weeks ago, one of the other characters (Ikki, Mire’s closest friend) was flying above a giant pool of water and got grabbed and pulled under by some creature I’ve forgotten the name of. We were all panicking and thining they were genuinely going to die, but then I suddenly remembered (sorry Lauren that it took so long) that one of Mire’s domain spells is Control Water! So then the first thing she did in combat was to Moses-and-the-Red-Sea the fuck out of that lake, and then hold it for the entire combat while still taking potshots at the bad guys. That was great!!

11.         What crime is this character most likely to be convicted of?

So much murder!! But also aiding and abetting in multiple crimes, both petty and much larger. I think of all my characters Mire would definitely have the longest rap sheet. Probably rivalled by Nettle, since she also does a lot of killing and stealing and is also way older than Mirezur, but Nettle didn’t actively dedicate her life to crime like Mire did.

12.         What meme would you use to describe the character?

Do dad jokes count as a meme? Because she’s definitely gleeful, self-aware dad jokes.

13.         Does this character swear frequently?

She swears just as much as is needed. So, considering her party is fighting dragons at the moment, a lot.

14.         What is this character’s relationship with religion or the church?

On the one hand she’d relatively devout, since she is a cleric after all, but on the other hand… it’s a bit more complicated. Religion hasn’t ever dictated her life the way it has with Jasher’s, despite how important being a healer is to her – I think she regards it as a means to and end (i.e. looking after her friends), and is kind of wary about gods and religion. They’re too enormous and too old to make sense – they look at the big picture, and she’s very much a little-picture kind of person, so she feels like she can’t understand them, and that makes her distrustful.

But also, she needs Njord, her god, to a certain extent, and not just for healing. With him around, it’s easier to ignore the Mark of Gruumsh, the chaotic evil Orc god of destruction, that gnaws away at the back of her brain. She’s quite certain she wants to evade that part of her heritage, and Njord makes doing so easier. Eventually, as she gets older, she’ll get a bit more comfortable with Njord’s presence in her life, and let herself rely on him and almost regard him as an old friend, and know that he won’t feel slighted if she spends her last days in the monastery of a different god.

15.         Would this character ever make a deal with a devil or dark spirit?

Not of her own will, but if the right leverage was applied, then yes.

16.         Emotion or Logic?

Emotion.

17.         Soup or Salad?

Soup. This is my fourth time doing this meme and I still can’t get over how weirdly specific this question is.

18.         What is the character’s favourite Pokémon? 

As per, I have no actual knowledge of pokemon and as such am just picking at random from this list. Kangaskhan, Sandslash, Venonat/Venomoth, Aggron, Entei, Teddiursa

19.         What Pokémon Go team would they be on?

Mystic… I think.

20.         Is your character currently in love? Is there anyone in love with your character?

Nope and nope. Or, actually, not sure on the second one since I haven’t 10000% nailed down her backstory, but probably not :P

21.         Do you ship your character with any other characters? (This includes characters from other universes and canons)

I ship her with growing old happily and dying at an old age surrounded by her friends and family.

22.         How would this character seduce a lover?

Despite what my answer to question two might suggest, not suavely. In the least. In fact, the process would probably not be called ‘seduction’ at all, being so removed from the destingué that the word suggests. Let that be your answer.

23.         If your character could play any part in a drama, stage production, or musical, what part would they play?

Shit, I’m running out of plays that I’m really familiar with, and also out of characters that would be amenable to being in a play at all. She’s not really the sort to want to be in the middle of attention like that? But for the sake of the question, maybe someone from Much Ado About Nothing or the Merchant of Venice bc I can only think of Shakespeare plays at the moment and those are my favourites :P

24.         What is your character’s favourite album?

Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface, and Delta Rae’s Carry the Fire. Though it’s so funny to think of DnD characters listening to modern music, haha

25.         What does this character mean to you?

Hoo boy, I’m not gonna try and answer this one in its entirety, because that would get long and personal. None of Mire’s pieces quite fit together tidily, which is something I really relate to, and love being able to play. Well, not love, maybe, because it hits a bit close to home, but – it’s valuable, and I love Mirezur, and it’s nice to just be able to love someone, who is, I guess, like me.

So in case people who don’t know Mire are reading this post, she’s a Tempest Cleric of Njord, and I’m sure there’s a way to play that in a devastating and efficient way, but I don’t know what that way is, so Mire ends up being really torn between healing her friends and whaling on their enemy. It all comes down to protecting the people she loves, and can result in her really beating herself up when bad stuff happens because what if she could have prevented it by healing rather than fighting? Or by fighting rather than healing?

And apart from that she has some anxiety issues going down and feels like she doesn’t really belong in the party and wants to go home and be with her friends and family. The adventuring isn’t really the problem, it’s the lack of a solid home base and support system, which was a big thing growing up since it was one of the few things she unquestionably had. I feel like I accidentally make a lot of my characters wanderers, people who only feel at home on the road (for good reason!! this is like the only way i’ve managed to make characters who are really fine and happy to be ever-moving adventurers), and this is the absolute diametric opposite of me, so I may have accidentally taken out those repressed just-let-me-stay-in-on-place-jesus-christ feelings on poor Mire. Actually, she’s the one I take out my repressed feelings on in general, which has just ended up with me being very emotionally invested in this character in a campaign with a slightly sadistic DM who regularly puts us up against stuff that kills party members. Which was a poor idea, really. I did not think that one through.

Anyway! I have a lot of feelings about Mirezur, my daughter of two worlds, my mixed-race, mixed-up sunshine who just wants to be safe.

[caelumaids]

Short story featuring my beloved half-orc daughter under the cut

Suddenly, Mire realised she could no longer see Dawn out of the corner of her eye. This wouldn't usually cause the frisson of alarm that shivered across her shoulders, but the bard had been perched on a table and clearly within view for the whole fight prior to this moment, and there should be no reason for him to move from his superior position. In a moment of reprieve, when her spirit guardians drove her dragonborn attacker back briefly, Mire craned her head to look at the place she had last seen the bard, and felt a visceral horror clench in her gut and drive the breath from her lungs. Dawn was slumped on the table he had been standing on, a leg hanging off the edge and body smouldering in several places. His eyes were blank and unseeing, and there was a dreadful stillness to his body that betrayed his state - he was really, truly dead, and no amount of healing would coax life back into his body, short of a resurrection spell. Which, she thought miserably, only he knew how to cast. Her attention was pulled harshly from the corpse of her tentative friend as the dragonborn surged through the misty clutches of her spirit guardians, sword raised, and she remembered she was in the middle of a fight for her own life. And not only her own life - with Dawn gone, she was the most qualified healer in the party, and it would fall to her to keep them all alive in this fight, and in all the fights after it. Something like terror crowded up her throat and the weight of these people's lives lay heavily and awkwardly on her broad shoulders, and she renewed her attack against the dragonborn before her with a vengeance, helped by the indistinct fey figures of her guardians. She had never been a truly gifted healer or a particularly proficient fighter - she was just enough of both to make do until someone more qualified arrived. She had never thought of this as a serious drawback - her family in the syndicate had loved her as she was and never asked for anything else, and they had enough dedicated fighters and healers that she fitted right in, had her very own niche that was useful and valuable. However, life outside the syndicate was a very different environment, and since she had left them to make her own way she had started to feel like more and more of a liability. Sure, she was consistently getting stronger, able to last longer in fights and cast more spells in a short amount of time, but it wasn't at the rate that her friends were getting stronger, and she distinctly felt like she was getting left behind, that she was getting less and less useful to them. Ikki, she knew, would want her around no matter what, after all they had been through together, but she wasn't as close to the rest of the party, and constantly felt that she needed to prove that she was worth keeping. It was a deeply disquieting way to live, constantly on edge, afraid to let her guard down, feeling like she had to do twice as much to be half as good. When Dawn had joined them, it had been a relief - the necromancer-bard was no cleric, but he was a strong spellcaster and that extended to his healing spells. When her own magic sputtered and died under her fingers, Dawn's would flare easily to life, raising their fallen companions as easily as he raised the dead. It was such an almighty relief, a weight from her heart that she hadn't known was there, knowing that when someone got hurt - as they inevitably did - she could hang back unobtrusively until Dawn noticed and swept in, magic sparking between his fingertips and a broad smile on his face, and healed their complaining friend. But he would never smile again, and the bright magic that had sung in his veins and leapt from his hands was still and quiet forever, and Mire could feel that old unease creeping back in. Really, it had never left, just hidden under her shameful guilt as she palmed off her clerical duties to another. Soon, she would carry the weight of these people's lives alone again, and it couldn't be further from what she wanted. (Deep inside, a more selfish fear squirmed in her heart. She was so far from any branch of the syndicate, an organisation she had thought infinitely vast in her childhood, and she was even further from Langdale, with its peaceful fields and lapping waves and airy, clifftop monastery. Sometimes at night, while another stood watch and the fire crackled at her back, Mire closed her eyes and thought of a tall tiefling and veiled human bantering in a dockside warehouse, or a pale high elf crouched in a serene and orderly garden, and prayed to Njord that she would not die before seeing them all again.)

And now it’s obligatory overshare time! I actually wrote this last week, but hemmed and hawed over posting it, because it felt kind of... personal? I mean, out of my three current characters, on a scale of “Managing Emotionally” Jasher is off in one end with the other incredibly emotionally competent people, and Seren has fallen off the deep end of the other end (which makes her hard to play, honestly - I have zero experience with the level of loss that she’s gone through), and Mirezur is kind of between them somewhere. I guess I relate to her as a person the best, so all of this emotional garbage above feels a lot more metaphorical than any of Jasher or Seren’s stories could be for me.

But anyway! She’s just leveled up and gotten Mass Cure Wounds onto her spell list, so maybe this will all turn around and we’ll look back and laugh.

[caelumaids]

Ramblings about D&D below the cut!

Not, like, ramblings about the mechanics, though that might start happening soon, but about character. This is just something that happened in my session today that I wanted to blurt out.

As per usual, we were in the middle of a tavern brawl, and my half-orc Tempest Cleric, Mirezur, was pretty badly hurt but hanging on in there, and it was looking like I was going to get a chance to cast some of my higher-level spells. I got out Spirit Guardians, which did a bunch of damage and was very exciting, but before I could cast Guardian of Faith I got hit hard and knocked out. At this point, I was kicking myself for not casting Guardian of Faith first since it wasn’t a concentration spell and would hang around for eight hours even if I went down, and Spirit Guardians dissipated once I was unconscious.

Anyway, since I would only need to make death saves for a while, I settled back and pulled out my sketch pad and started drawing my interpretation of a Guardian of Faith, because it’s an awesome spell and I was bummed I hadn’t gotten around to it. Basically, it summons a Large (takes up a 10x10x10 square, one size above Medium, which is the size of most (all?) player characters) spectral guardian, and it hangs out somewhere within 30ft of you and hits things, hard. Physically, it’s “indisctinct, except for a gleaming sword and shield emblazoned with the symbol of your deity”, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

So I started drawing, and realised I was drawing a pretty man-like shape, and thought to myself, why is male the default? and tweaked it a bit to be more feminine. Then I realised I was drawing a human and was like why is human the default? and had a think about what race it could be. Eventually I just started drawing an orc, because I’ve been working on Mire’s backstory and therefore drawing a lot of orcs lately :P

Then I looked down at what I had - a giant vague orc woman with a big fuck-off sword and shield - and realised I had drawn Kotamur, Mire’s mother, and was kind of punched in the heart by the thought of it, and suddenly viscerally remembered a small part of Sabriel, the first book in the Old Kingdom Trilogy by Garth Nix, where Sabriel goes into Death and summons a benevolent spirit to get information. In the inner-monologue-narration, she says her father taught her the spell, and never told her anything about the spirit, but she thought she had figured out who it was anyway: her dead mother, who she had never met in real life but was able to speak to at least a couple of times in Death. The spirit gives her information and it’s never mentioned again for the rest of the trilogy (or in the prequel that was recently released), so it’s not like it’s a big part of the story or the mythology of the world, but that seemed such a sweet and poignant detail to have, so it stuck with me.

And so basically that phenomenon combined with the Guardian of Faith spell in my head and it hurts too much to let go, that the Guardian of Faith summons the spirit of an ancestor, or of someone who loved you, to protect you. I know it’s not canonical, considering that Guardian of Faith is pretty clearly meant to be a manifestation of your character’s chosen god’s power, especially since clerics use divine magic, using gods as intermediaries between them and raw magic. But I love the thought of it anyway and I’m not letting go of it (and I’m definitely not telling my DM, haha!), and I will definitely imagine the spirit of Mire’s mother shaking off death for a few hours and taking up arms to defend the daughter she died to protect.

So, a couple of self-indulgent hours later, I have a sketch of a furious Kotamur crouched over a crumpled Mire. If I manage to get it into photoshop I’ll add some smokey misty stuff to fulfill the ‘indistinct’ qualifier, and maybe put it up here :P

Anyway, self-indulgent ramble over! To bed with me!

[caelumaids]

So! I got in my information systems assignment, and my linguistics disaster may or may not end up working out, but either way I’m in a better mental place right now. :) 

And because of that, I thought I might share a snippet more of Mirezur’s backstory that’s been kicking around my computer, just for fun! It’s not part of anything yet and it’s mostly about her birth parents again, because I’ve gotten emotionally attached to them whoops :P Vaguely schmoopy interracial nonsense below the cut

Their first conversation goes something like this: they have just been told by their respective leaders that they have been chosen to marry someone from the other tribe, and to please please please take one for the team on this, this union is important, they are the link to the common folk that the bonding leaders can’t be, this needs to happen if both groups want to survive. They are shuffled off into a room together to ‘get to know each other, politely for god’s sake, this is important you lunkhead.’ They stand across the room from each other, arms crossed, eyes narrowed – first in instinctual distrust, and then in consideration.

She looks at him and thinks, he is so small and fragile – surely too small to be useful, to be strong. He looks at her and thinks, she is so big and thuggish – how can she possibly be clever, be suitable. They both look at the other and think, but, well, one does not know until one tries.

She doesn’t quite smile, but she has certainly stopped frowning. “Well, hello, beloved husband.”

He definitely smiles, the grin breaking across his face like the sun. “Hello, my revered wife.”

Theoretically, she knew that he was just as capable of defending himself as she was, but when she looked into his dear upturned face, held his tiny pale hands, cradled his porcelain-fragile body, something deep and irrational and terrified welled up in her soul, and she wished she could just pull him inside her body where she could keep him safe forever.

This, she supposed, is what love feels like.

He had magic sparking under his skin and between his bones, crackling and dancing between his fingertips. His mouth was beautiful and dangerous, offering a sly smile as the sizzle-hot ichor of magic dripped from his lips.

One of the few things about her parents that childhood amnesia didn’t rob from Mirezur was their hands. Tristan could wrap his whole hand around his daughter’s and would laugh at her dismay, attracting Kotamur’s attention. She would smile around her tusks and wrap her hand around Tristan’s, engulfing them both, and Mire would collapse in giggles at the exaggerated shock on her father’s face. Both of her parents’ hands were infinitely gentle when they touched her, even when roughhousing, cradling her like something precious. They both had the tough and damaged skin of the warriors they had been their whole lives, though in different ways – Kotamur’s broad hands were hard with calluses across her palms and between her pointer finger and thumb from sword fighting, while Tristan’s fingertips were shiny with scar tissue, built up from so many years of handling the caustic essence of magic. It is something she remembers most clearly while gazing at her own hands, worn from handling weapons and holding spells, a mixture of them both despite how little time she had with them.

Ok, so I’m pretty sure my visualisation of magic is noncanon for D&D, but I’ve always loved the idea that it was vaguely temperamental and somehow both ephermeral and very physical, which is hard to get across haha