In honor of 50+ followers I shall humbly introduce my own wip despite all of my braincells telling me, as a barkeep, I should let others have the spotlight (but we haven't had a ton of submissions so if you want a doodle, go on and submit!) Link for celebration event post
Similar to @talesfromaurea I am recounting the story of a 5 year Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Called the Sagas of Stawold, the campaign starts with small fetch quests and soon grows into apocalyptic threats, fights with Gods, and travel throughout the multiverse.
The main reason I wanted to tell the story is because my lovely little Sadie "Blaze" McRimmik is pretty much the center of it all. She's a halfing bard of lore who plays the dulcimer and also dances with fire. Fire becomes an integral part of her character and represents her volatile, spicy personality.
One of the most special things about Sadie is that she was one of the original cast of characters and is the only character who stayed throughout the campaign. All other players either left or switched characters at least once. But Sadie was even too stubborn to die. Following the official conclusion of the tabletop game, I still continued message RP with my DM so up until October 2020 the story was continuing. We are on an extended hiatus currently but I'm making up for it by telling my story here on Tumblr! I'll link a few posts that I think are good at the bottom. I hadn't actually written a story for fun in years so the posts start off not great but get progressively better. Seeing the progression over just a month is really cool for me.
I'm not really good at summarizing such a long story sooo... here is my doodle description of Miss Sadie!
She is technically only 3'1" tall but she's a curvy 50 pounds. In this setting, halflings have the proportions of normal people just miniature. Sadie also does not have big feet and she wears shoes (she's a lightfoot halfling, the stout halflings have large feet). Over all, her appearance is bright and her smile can light up a room. She is almost always finding something to laugh at, her round face and beautiful brown round eyes so expressive. She has a cute little nose that turns up just slightly and lovely full lips. Despite being very cute, she is also beautiful and elegant, just not the "typical" elegant people think (like high cheekbones or thin faces not that there's anything wrong with those I just used this to make me proud of my round face!). Her hair is very bushy and curly kind of like the description of Hermione's. It comes down to about mid back. All in all she is quite the middle-aged beauty and she knows it!
This is Sadie being a child and basically outlines the party dynamics relatively well (post 11)
Here's a link to how Sadie died the first time. There's some graphic descriptions of burns (post 21)
Here's some interesting character interactions post Sadie's death (post 24)
Honestly I think this is my favorite post I have written where they are trying to get Sadie resurrected (post 26)
This is some K'lai'a'la fluff and girl time (post 29)
This is close second for my favorite post (post 30). I did a lot in this post and I'm very proud of it. Especially compared to post 1.
[Image ID: The words Sagas of Stawold written in a stylized font, yellow on a background of deep green scale texture. Beneath the text, bright orange flames arise and reach up toward the text. End ID]
Title: Sagas of Stawold
Status: On Hiatus
Genre: High fantasy, D&D-based
POV: Third (whatever specific type I feel like at the time lol)
Setting: Stawold; germanic-esque town on the border between the civilized Hinterlands and the untamed Wilderlands. Part of the Kingdom of Jurmundy which is a part of the much larger Prendacian Empire. Despite the Emperor being the official ruler, the Imperial Church holds the real power.
Themes: magic, adventure, enemies-to-lovers, found family, dragons, deities, fantasy races, extra-planar travel, religious skepticism, mortality/immortality, extremely grey morality
Synopsis, characters, and post links below the cut
Synopsis: Sadie, K'lai'a'la, and Kireen form a fast bond on a quest to retrieve Ser Taerand Calentavar's stolen emerald from the swampy Wraefen. The adventure goes as wrong as you could imagine but once the emerald is retrieved, the story is only just beginning. Through a political coup, orc siege, and church prosecutions, the story climbs to apocalyptic crescendos and continues until Sadie faces the gods themselves. This story unfolds as played out over 3 years of tabletop game and continues until the current day as a messenger RP. My character, Sadie, has grown from an orphan of Stawold to the matriarch of a rebellion and she won't stop until she rises past the bounds of mortality.
Main characters: Since this is based off a D&D campaign, I keep as true to the story as possible. This means that over the years, players or their characters have come and gone. The cast rotates a bit but Sadie and a few non-player characters will stick around consistently. I’ll list current characters here and give them just a few sentences each. I think I’ll make a character post later.
Sadie: She is my beloved character. Halfling bard of lore.
Kireen: Red dragonborn bright-lord (a less religious paladin basically)
K’lai’a’la: Wood-elf ranger
Brimir: Human fighter
Taerand: High-elf quest-giver, member of the Stawold elite
Find links to all posts below, linked in order and grouped by Chapter (chapter titles were created by the DM and given to us before we started that chapter. Each chapter was 5 sessions long)
This is where things get a little complex. Since this was a D&D campaign that ran at the table for several years, we had a rotating cast of people and PCs. I'm quite proud to say that Sadie is the only original character that stayed from the very first session to the very last. I talked about her a bit in my question 2 post because this is mainly about her so I want to talk a little bit about the other characters we will see. I am going to keep the descriptions short and vibey to keep this from being super long. Please feel free to ask me to elaborate on anyone! (But I will be avoiding big spoilers). Check them out under the cut!
K'lai'a'la (kly-ah-lah): Wood elf. Young. Shy. Hates being indoors. Barely understands how society works. She is the last of her tribe and was asked by Taerand Calentavar to help on the quest for the emerald because she is familiar with the Wraefen. K’lai’a’la and Sadie became really close on the trip into the Wraefen (I don’t think this came across super great in my writing so far but that’s ok).
Kireen (ky-REEN): Red dragonborn. Technically a brightlord class but basically a paladin. Noble background. Came to Stawold to get away from her family and make a name for herself. Bold, determined, honorable, protective, but occasionally hot-headed. Kireen sees Sadie as a cat that needs herding but she doesn’t dislike the role.
Donar (doh-NAR): Black dragonborn. Fairly quiet. Brooding? Kind of in it for himself. I added the question mark because to be honest, he won’t be around long. This player only stayed for the first quest then left the group and so did Donar. Maybe during adoption time people can help me get into these characters that belonged to other people. I need to make them my own so the story goes well. I can’t just keep them as shells to respect the other players as much as I feel weird taking over someone else’s character.
Taerand Calentavar (TAY-rand ka-LEN-tuh-var): High elf. Very rich. Mysteriously fast entry into Stawold high society. Has a very high opinion of himself. Definitely not afraid to punish those beneath him for slights. People in town accepted him but still have no idea where he came from. Sadie has performed at a ball he threw which is how he came to send her the letter for the quest. Taerand will be a recurring character and oh boy I hope you guys like lovable a**holes because that’s him.
Dwinain (dwin-AYN): Dwarf. Owner of the Laughing Stag which is Sadie’s home. Basically the only father figure Sadie has. Kind, caring, has two children of his own, alway there for people who need him. Dwinain is always Sadie’s rock along with his wife Gwenhwyfar aka Gwen.
Lysander (LIE-san-der): Half-elf. Literally the town bicycle and proud of it. Will sleep with anyone for any reason. He lives to make people happy. Refuses to settle down with anyone because he would lose his freedom. A beautiful singer and also a resident of the Laughing Stag and usual performer. Sadie has a big crush on him but he is significantly younger than he is and he is not very interested. As of now they have not slept together.
So I think I will leave it at that for characters but fun fact time! My DM and I have a running google doc of everyone Sadie knows. Currently each person has one single line on a google doc and that doc is 15 pages long and organized by places Sadie visits. Like I said, the PC list was revolving so characters will come and go, unfortunately but I’d be so willing to do AU pieces with characters that people like sticking around! I will tell you guys one thing, get used to Taerand ;) He’s coming up very soon.
There’s one more thing I want to mention. This story has already happened. I’m not creating it as I go right now so there are representations of things or types of people that may not be accurate but that’s just how they happened in the heat of the moment. I apologize if characters don’t accurately represent things. They just grew that way as we went. A lot of the decisions I made as Sadie (the ones I’m most worried about coming across wrong are how she handles her trauma) were made, at the time, as things that made sense and would be fun. I will try to make sure I frame things in the proper ways but I wanted to give that little disclaimer.
I'm not really that much of an OC creator. The only reason I have OCs is from table top roleplaying games and if any of you know me, ya'll know I'm gonna talk about Sadie. I know I've been a little quiet about her lately but I just need to get this semester finished. I have plans to go back to her soon (but I might not share it for a while we'll see how progress goes).
Anyway, I'm super proud of how I created Sadie because I was getting tired of the typical D&D characters: backstory fridges chock-full, buff/lithe, young, in it for revenge/murder. Not that these are bad characters at all, hell I've made plenty of those characters in my time and still will because I love myself an emo lady who learns to love.
But this time I came into it thinking I wanted a happy, thicc/chunky/curvy, round face, middle-aged woman who is ready to adventure. She's also not in it for revenge or murder, she literally just wants to be able to tell great stories. If there's an opportunity to get into trouble so she can tell someone and have them not believe her because the story is too outlandish, she absolutely will do whatever it is. She honestly enjoys it when people don't believe her stories because she knows its true so their disbelief is funny to her. (Unless she's trying to get the church to believe that their goddess herself forgave her then she gets pissed when they don't believe her and want to kill her in the name of that goddess).
She also had a dream to become a mother and fulfilled that dream older than most. Stereotypical adventurers don't have children but Sadie has 3ish (more but complicated) and still is fighting a war. She got married later than most people expect to as well. Overall, she is the epitome of "your life doesn't end when you turn 30" and I think that's a really important message.
I'm just proud that the character I made to break stereotypes is my longest running character and the character I love the most.
Sadie. Beautiful voice, fiery passion, an attitude that barely fits in her 3 foot body, the woman who starts a war. She started off as a bard in the small frontier town of Stawold. Her adventures take her right into the heart of a dragon's lair, to planes and worlds beyond what she could have imagined, through the beginnings and ends of friendships, and so many other milestones I can't wait to share.
She is my D&D character of six years. In this blog I started telling her story from the beginning because I just needed to get this out to someone besides me and my DM so here you go hehe!
Themes: uhhh... so many? I feel like there's romance, found family, fantasy religious tension, potential apocalypse that has to be stopped, discovery, and the biggest thing that I explore with Sadie is a character arc that takes her to her lowest low and she has to climb back up. So much of her story follows the line "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". She tries so hard to save people, making decisions that others condemn her for but she has to do them for their own good. I think that's my favorite part about Sadie. She realized what she did was wrong to a point but she saved people. From there she has to redeem herself while also trying to save her Kingdom from the religious Prendacian Empire. Oh that reminds of an enemies to platonic friends thing that happens. Also enemies to lovers then enemies then lovers her relationship is not the greatest but it irons out in the end. Another thing! She absolutely believes that not everything labelled as evil is evil. She believes that devils and demons can be redeemed if they wish to be and she never judges a creature based on it's "alignment" because she had people do that to her and she hated it.
Oh gosh that was a ramble I hope that made sense but it was the best way I could get her story across. I would like to outline a few things I feel like I'm struggling with on my blog and would love feedback on at some point!
The other characters in the story were made by other people so I'm really having a hard time letting their personalities shine. I need to take inspiration from the other player's characters and make them my own so I'm working on that but everyone feels a little flat to me right now :/
I also would love to hear what people think of the post lengths. I've been doing daily short posts but I'm kind of thinking maybe that's going to get overwhelming even with the queue feature... anyway, let me know what you think I'll answer any questions and take any feedback! And if you want to start from the beginning you can find the first post here or you can search my blog for the tag #sadieblaze I use that to mark all my story posts.
(side note I want to respond to everyone but social meter depletes I shall interact as much as possible but if I don't, know I am reading your posts beautiful ones!)
Ok @drippingmoon did this and I'm doing it too! Using this picrew, make an image of your character(s) before and after the story. Anyone else can join! Here is Sadie before:
And after (after being where the story is paused so it's in the middle of stuff going down):
🍂 What are their opinions on the different seasons? Which one do they hate and which one do they love and why? (Sadie) and 💎 Does your OC collect anything? Is there a reason? When did they start and is it beginning to turn into a little bit of a hoarding issue? What do they do with their collection? (K'lai'a'la), if you want:)
Omg omg omg I love this so much! Sadie's opinions on seasons are something that has become a surprisingly big thing for her. Not super big but like "two nickels but it's weird it happened twice" kind of thing.
Sadie's favorite season is summer. She's always loved fire and the heat of the summer, the sounds of the bugs at night when she's stumbling the streets happily intoxicated on the lovely fruity brandys she so loves. Fun fact! Sadie's favorite drink *ever* is plum brandy and one of these days I will try some. It's hard to find though. Anyway, she loved the heat and the sun so much that she made the summer solstice her birthday. I don't remember if I mentioned but the only people who know their actual birthday are nobles. She doesn't know exactly when she was born but with the hopes of becoming a noble some day she decided she would have an official birthdate to celebrate. Plus, the summer solstice is directly in the middle of Richfest, one of the four week-long holidays throughout the year.
Following this vein, Sadie does in fact dislike winter. The streets are quiet, everyone is sleepy, there's less activity because there's no farming and people hurry inside. There's always lots of sickness and she hears of deaths frequently. It's never a happy time like summer is. She enjoys spring though since winter is ending and she loves the colors of fall. So really it's only the winter vibe she dislikes although she also just hates being cold.
One more fun fact about her birthday! When she's spoken directly to the gods, she could have asked when she was born but she didn't want to. Her chosen birthday means more to her than her whatever day she was actually born on.
Oh lovely little K'lai'a'la. She is a bit of a collector now that I think about it. She would perhaps have a few pretty feathers or a rock or two stashed up in the tree she sleeps in but I would like to imagine she is more interested in collecting random things she finds in the city. If she finds a rusted nail bent into a peculiar shape she would find that interesting. Or perhaps she finds a discarded playing card. Most things people would think wouldn't have value, she finds interesting. I always hesitate to make her sound too simplistic but... she kind of is. Not in an unintelligent way but in a way where she was raised in the forest and has never needed many physical things to be happy. She also sees her friends with all of these trinkets and so she collects her own just to be more like the people she loves.
Hello! Day 21 is another of those questions I love haha: How would either Sadie or K'lai'a'la (I love them now okay) react if the other were turned to stone by a basilisk/gorgon etc? What if the fight took a turn for the worse and it'd mean they'd have to flee and possibly leave the other behind?
The can of words you have just unleashed.... is below the cut (and is fluff not canon at this point)
Content warning: monster, petrification, pain, injury, combat, death
"K'lai'a'la, can you see anything?" Sadie hissed through the darkness. The rough-hewn cloth of K'lai'a'la's tunic and the scent of dank rot were the only things invading her senses.
K'lai'a'la just shushed her and gave Sadie's hand a squeeze to ensure she was holding on tightly. Her eyes could pick up the miniscule amounts of light outlining the craggy path ahead. This network of tunnels was supposed to be safer than the mountain pass, or so they thought. Perhaps they could have bartered with Cryax to let them through. Surely there was something a dragon wanted but Sadie is convincing when she wants to be so they chose the tunnels.
It was clear to the elf very early on that light amongst the darkness would only draw unwanted attention. The tunnels were supposed to only be a few miles long in the westerly direction but K'lai'a'la was used to navigating amongst the trees. Without the sun or the stars to guide her, she had to hope that their path was obvious or perhaps they would stumble into more trouble than they bargained for.
Only K'lai'a'la's highly trained senses detected the slight scuff of moving across stone that did not match up with her or Sadie's footfalls. She threw Sadie behind her and pressed their backs up against the cold wall of the tunnel. As much as she had wanted them to stay quiet, it was almost impossible when Sadie could not see her feet. They had been found.
Smooshed up against the wall, Sadie pushed against K'lai'a'la's thigh so she could free her mouth enough to speak. "What is it? Let me cast some light," she hissed.
"No light," K'lai'a'la breathed, eyes scanning the dim rock formations for any movement but could not see any as of yet.
"Well what did you see then? You have to tell me something otherwise I can't help."
That just got a hand pressed over Sadie's entire face. The small one needed to be silent or she could not sense what approached. Despite the distraction, her eyes still caught a sliver of movement just between two stalagmites followed by quiet clicks and a near silent hiss. This creature had multiple legs, claws, and a tail. From the sound of its tail, K'lai'a'la would have to guess that it was either scaled or skin. Fur would not make that sound on stone.
They had passed a few smaller off-shoots a few dozen yards back. She did not know where they led but it was unlikely they could run a four-legged creature and fighting it, especially if they didn't know what it was, would be a risk K'lai'a'la wanted to avoid. As she opened her mouth to tell Sadie what they were going to do, a growl emanated from beyond them, near where the movement was just a moment ago.
She felt Sadie clutch her shirt tighter at the sound which was all the motivation she needed. One arm around the small halfling, she guided her quickly back the way they came.
"What is going on gods damn it K'lai'a'la let me cast light!" her voice rose just slightly and K'lai'a'la could feel her grip loosen to cast the spell.
"Do. Not." K'lai'a'la demanded in a hushed tone, fear adding more color than she would have liked.
But Sadie picked up on that fear. Her friend knew what was going on and she trusted her friend to keep her safe so she clung to K'lai'a'la even tighter and stumbled next to her.
As they approached the nearest off-shoot, it spanned just about the width her her arms if they were held out to either side. Before the opening was fully in view, K'lai'a'la knocked an arrow and prepared herself before stepping out and scanning the opening.
A mere yard in front of her stood a behemoth of a creature. A mouth full of dagger-like teeth seemed to grin at her just below a pair of hollow shining eyes set in pale rock-like skin. It only took the briefest of moments, one singular glance into those depthless, magic-filled eyes and she felt her body begin to stiffen. Several thoughts raced through her mind, lightning-quick. If she succumbed, Sadie would die. This creature is intelligent, it knew these tunnels connected and it sent them back here. It was waiting. There would be no escape, surely the creature knew the tunnel system and would find them again. But if she could make sure this was the last prey this creature had then perhaps her friend had a chance.
"Do not look," K'lai'a'la's voice was so calm that Sadie's heart leapt into her throat. Then the twang of her bow echoed off the stone. Sadie did not need another command. She wasn't going to be useless. She had spells and she would fight. A quiet word of encouragement to the weave and a few deft finger movements tied the strands into a small ball of light that shone brilliantly out of her wedding ring. Unfortunately the sudden light blinded her and she stumbled back from K'lai'a'la who did not seem to be moving to stop her spell.
Off course the stubborn small one did not listen but the creature whose life was lived in the darkness, also seemed to shrink from the sudden light. This was her chance, she could feel her legs becoming slow to respond, the stone beneath her feet feeling far too familiar for her liking. Her sight was compromised by the light as well but the creature was straight ahead. Exchanging her bow for a shortsword across her hip, K'lai'a'la charged, less than half the speed she could normally. Her sword tip reached out, she saw it sailing directly toward the basilisk's eye but then another wave of the creature's evil magic washed over her, and her sword stopped, mere inches from her target. Then everything went dark.
Sadie's eyes finally adjusted to the light and when she looked down the tunnel, she saw a strange stone formation blocking the way. This formation looked like it had arms and legs and a bow... and long hair... Sadie's gaze moved to the several pairs of scaled gray legs behind her. She would know the legs of a basilisk anywhere.
A shriek of anger burst from her tearing through the wave of pain that threatened to engulf her in that same moment. Her friend was hurt, perhaps even gone permanently and the creature that did it still had the guts to hang around.
The weave snapped and crackled around her "you fucker, I will kill you for hurting her!" Sadie began throwing spell after spell between her friend's statued legs. From her angle, the basilisk's eyes were hidden behind K'lai'a'la's midriff but it wouldn't be that way for long. With too much agility for a creature of that size, it scaled the wall up and over the barrier it created but Sadie was ready. She shut her eyes and thrust her rapier up toward the creature's gaping maw. It sunk into something soft and a shriek came out of it but it barreled down on her anyway.
More spells came from Sadie sinking into its flesh. She only let herself look at the legs all around her, she felt the weight of the creature snap one of her limbs but she was going to make it pay. It would pay in honor of her best friend who was absolutely not dead. There was magic in this world that would bring people back to life, Sadie had experienced it for herself. This was not the end for K'lai'a'la but it would be for this damned basilisk.
She fought valiantly for a halfling, the basilisk burned and scorched across its length but Sadie's resilience wore faster. She couldn't predict where the bit was coming next, only try to stay beneath its feet but it was not long before she slipped up. Jaws locked around her arm and she screamed, punching its face with her other. Her mind was simply full of rage and nothing but the creatures corpse could sate it, or her own.
