One thing I love about this party is that not a single one of us has decent Charisma, (+2 at best) but it kind of doesnāt matter because everyone has their own Ways around it.
Koltonās pragmatic and straightforward - just asks the questions someone probably ought to be asking. He very much gives off the aura of being A Guy Just Like You, But Whoās Seen A Lot Of Shit So You Probably Wonāt Surprise Him With Much. He can be blunt, he can be a little awkward around the emotional side of things but ultimately he doesnāt have to be smooth to be approachable and trustworthy-feeling.
Julian is the closest thing we have to a āparty faceā. Is he highly charismatic? No! Not at all, heās an affable but eccentric academic with very niche interests, who trips on his words with how fast he tries to talk when excited, and who gets put on the back foot easily. Heās earnest, though - heās got Golden Retriever Energy, he listens raptly to what you have to say when heās not the one talking. He extends trust very readily (way too readily!) and how open he is often engenders people to trust him in return.
And Heather! She is so blunt - uncompromisingly so, sometimes abrasively so, rough around the edges because she hasnāt really done socialising with anyone but Julian for a good long while. But she reads how other people are feeling easily - so sheāll just do away with the subtext between-the-lines by making it text. She says it as she sees it, and sometimes what she sees is that you must be really fuckinā lonely. And sheāll just say that to your face, and itās disarming because she clearly gets it.
Ponytail Party's really out here proving that you don't need charisma, just the ability to connect. :3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
In retrospect, yes, it would have been wise to not break from the group whilst traversing the notoriously fickle forests of the Feywild.
The trouble is that wisdom tends to desert Julian at the sight of a rare bloom.
Here, rare blooms abound.
-
In which Julian Montgomery Summerwind, magibotanist, makes poor life choices. Some of them past, some of them present. A drop of nectar, a failed WIS save, and none of that matters any more because Elias Hollyhock is kissing him. Elias, who he might have loved, had Julian not been such a coward and made such a terrible mess of it all.
A character study in Yearning(TM).
-
OKAY FUCK IT LETS GO. Part 1 of 3, currently no spice just Yearnies, hells if I know when I'll be done with the rest but here's me finding gratuitous excuses to chew on my wizard's backstory baggage and capacity for pining, and also to write really, really involved descriptions of feywild flora.
relistening to our campaign to write up the logs and i am cackling at what i entirely forgot was how Heather and Tara finally ended their campaign of Useless Lesbian Behaviour At Sea
so, heather got fully run through by one of the big nasties of the campaign the evening before this interaction. it was dramatic, it was terrifying, but like she was fine, it's fine, he just got away with a mcguffin while she was incapacited by the Big Fucking Glaive Through Her Abdomen.
we recovered from That Ordeal and had to do a lil rescue mission in the morning, and when we got back to the ship Tara just gave Heather the hugest hug and was looking her over for injuries, and
tara says: āyou alright? doinā okay? no, aha, um, no more extra holes?ā
and heather. says. "nah, only the right number of holes". and then follows up with. "i mean, you're welcome t'check later... :}c"
did tara go bright red? YES. did she temporarily forget how to construct a sentence? yes. did she excuse herself to "help ceryul*. i'll, um, blow?" YES
spectacular. cannot believe i forgot that's what the heather/tara confession looked like.
*ceryul is the ship's wizard and aerothurge, who uses wind magic to fill the sails. tara, is, and i cannot stress this enough, Not A Magic User, 'i'm gonna go help ceryul, i'll......blow.' tara oh my god
22, 31, 34, 41 and 61 for the ttrpg character asks! I want to know everything about julian :D
Well, buckle in! EVERYTHING ABOUT JULIAN, coming right up!
(still taking asks for my botany boy, pepper, and nuth!)
22. how would they decorate their living space, if they had a chance?
Julian is truly a case of The Autistic Urge To Be Organised fighting with the ADHD Urge To Accumulate *Stuff* - I've always imagined his chamber back at Silversage to have that kind of...Pleasantly Cluttered look about it.
Of course he's got quite a lot of books - he can never decide on the organisational system he wants to use for them, but does group shelves by subject matter (folklore/faerietales/fiction vs encyclopaedias/nonfiction vs academic/magical) and has a whole array of potted plants, it's hard to find a surface that doesn't have at least one. In terms of preferred colours for upholstery, Julian gravitates to rich mahogany browns, dark leather, cream, gold/yellow/bronze tones, and of course warm greens as an accent.
I'm sort of imagining gold-on-mauve for the wallpaper, though. Something like this?
The big bay window has hanging baskets in with trailing plants, and has those curtain-pulls with the fancy tassels. And a writing-desk is of course a must, ever an 'organised chaos' of loose parchments kept together with clips and whimsical paperweights in the shape of Very Round versions of magical beasts.
I imagine his dormitory at the Nugins Arcane Academy has similar aspects about it, but I'm not sure what novice quarters are like and whether they're shared spaces, so I'd need to chat to the DM about that because how it'd look would depend heavily on if it was shared or solo. (The potted plants are there, though. Where Julian goes, foliage follows.)
The rest under a cut because, as always: This Gets Long.
31. do they respond well to praise? how about criticism?
Julian is a golden retriever of a man, insofar as he is a people-pleaser who loves to hear he's done well. However, he tends to deflect praise a little, he gets bashful. Like, you can tell he's happy, because he's smiling ear to ear, but he's also insisting it was the least he could do, really and (if he was not alone in doing the thing he was praised for) redirecting the spotlight eagerly to someone else who truly does deserve to be commended, I mean, they did an absolutely splendid job.
As for criticism, this varies strongly by who delivers it and what it's about. By default he accepts criticism gracefully, usually apologetically - and then ruminates on it for far too long after the fact, analysing his error and chastising himself for his thoughtlessness. If he truly feels the criticism was unearned, he usually stammers out some attempt at correction, but his protests tend to be quite timid.
Criticism from someone Julian actively does not like brings out his snippy side, though! There's usually a pause, a sigh as he tries to contain his patience, then (in tones either Carefully Measured or in Exasperated Retort) something starting with an emphatic, "Listen-" or, "Well. I'll have you know that-".
The old party Fighter was frequently derisive of Julian's verbosity, inefficiency, lack of ambition, and general lack of the skills he personally associated with the word 'wizard' - say, the ability to cast Mage Hand. This ruffled Julian's feathers terribly and really got under his skin, and I don't think he's so far ever spoken to anyone else quite as sharply as he did when Himo suggested he was short-sighted for not having an interest in farming Maximilian.
āWell, before I could even do such a thing, Himo, firstly I would have to discern how to replicate him. And after that, divine what can be learned from him about magibotanical beings as a whole. Youāre being soā¦ā he sighs, exasperated, ājust so simplistic.ā
41. how do you keep notes for this character, if at all?
I don't have in-character notes specifically for Julian (which is shocking, I know) but I do record our sessions and also have a veritable fucking tome of a campaign chronicle that functions as Julian notes, I suppose! It just also happens to function as a complete narrative recap of everything that's happened. (I keep considering sharing it in instalments on here but it really is So Fucking Long that I doubt anyone would want to read it!)
Our DM got me - well, got Julian a gorgeous personalised leatherbound book for my birthday a few years back. I have often considered using it for jotting down IC notes-to-self, his observations of Maximilian's growth, etc, but I've had terrible New Book Paralysis about it. Here's what it looks like, though. :3
61. is there an in-game moment of theirs you think about and just laugh?
Oh, it's got to be the ridiculous Kolton's Dagger Accidental Innuendo Spiral, I think. Let me explain. It's a long one but it has me grinning whenever I remember it.
Okay, so, as we know, Julian is very easily embarrassed, and once thrown off-kilter in an interaction he struggles terribly to recover his footing.
(As a small example of this: Our Fighter insisted on calling the elven Mayor of Hare Ear Fjord "Cadence" instead of his name (Caidith). To Julian's mortification he then did the same, completely unintentionally. Then, panicking, fumbled his hasty correction into "Caileth" (which would be like someone calling him "Juliet"), and then, by now visibly pink in the face, finally arrived at Caidith's name. This happened twice. (The second time he was quicker to catch himself, so it was more of a "Caden- Cail- *gathers his breath* Caidith. So sorry. Terribly sorry.")
SO WITH THAT FOR CONTEXT.)
So, our newest party member, Kolton, had a dagger that seemed very familiar to the rest of us but none of us could put our finger on why. (Every single INT check was garbage, but it previously belonged to the aforementioned Fighter.) Heather went to ask Julian about it, to see if he had any insight, and when he didn't Julian pondered if Kolton might permit him to Identify it if he asked.
To this, Heather waggles her eyebrows and goes, "Y'gonna ask t' see Kolton's dagger, are you? Steady on, Julian! You've only known him a few hours!" and from here everything spiraled out of control.
So Julian, pink to the tips of his ears, bats her arm with the back of his hand, and to spare his embarrassment declares that on that note he's going to go and check on Maximilian, and Heather - who has seen her chance for mischief because it's way too easy - calls after him, "That what y'call it these days?" She then decides to summon Kolton on his behalf by hollering, at the top of her voice, "EY KOLTON, JULIAN WANTS T'SEE YER DAGGER ;)"
Naturally, this does not set Julian up well. Kolton, to his credit, graciously does not acknowledge any double entendre on Heather's part. A true gentleman. However Julian has been pre-flustered and has succumbed entirely to his chronic case of Foot In Mouth Disease. On receipt of the dagger, he chirps (far too chirpily) that he'll be 'in his corner' and will 'be back in ten minutes' - at this, Heather guffaws.
Ten minutes later he comes back none the wiser to the dagger's origins but educated on its enchantment - it's a Dagger of Returning! :D And perhaps Julian might have recovered at this point, but no. As he explains to Kolton, he decides to explain the attuning process thus:
"You'll have to spend a little time with it first - things like this require you to, ah, 'get to know' the weapon in question."
(And Heather, in her hammock across the way, audibly snorts. He colours.)
"I am so sorry, my phrasing is just atrocious today. That's the long and the short of it, anyway- HEATHER." (At this point she is fully shuddering with a full on fit of the giggles.) "It's a very nice dagger that you have here, that's all I'm trying to say!"
Now, technically that's the end of the Kolton's Dagger Spiral, but it immediately flows into the other Heather-Julian interaction that has me hooting whenever I relisten to it:
At this point Julian flees the conversation abruptly and tries to decompress/compose himself by noodling with his Sending spell. Tucked away in his corner of the crew quarters, Julian finally cracks the code on the last few theorems of it all, and, now that he can, gives his sister a call to finally let her know that he's okay and not to worry. Olivia is aghast to hear he's in a whole other country - CORRAN?! Mother and Father have been putting up missing posters, Julian! They're going to be furious.
Being timeblind as hell and also unconsciously procrastinating on going home (because that would mean ultimately returning to the Academy halls), Julian had not really processed that to his family, he had....simply not come back from his most recent expedition, and was now over a week late. So that hits him, and he immediately flies to Heather's side, grabs her arm, and whispers, with grave urgency,
"Heather, I am in so much trouble."
What Heather has witnessed, for her part, is her good pal Julian get real fuckin' flustered around that big lad with the sword and the shaved sides, then run off to his corner, huddle there muttering to himself awhile, and then run back to her in a flap. Her passive insight makes it clear to her that he's genuinely stressed now, he's not just being a big blushing goofball. This requires seriousness.
"It's o-kay, Julian," she says, slowly like she's settling a spooked animal, clapping a big hand on his shoulder and giving it a reassuring rub. "Yer okay."
"It's not!" he cries, "My parents are going to be furious!"
There's a beat. Heather's eyebrows raise in surprise. "Do they not know?" Said eyebrows descend into a thoughtful frown, she tilts her head. "Have y'not....like, told them?"
-
And the whole table fell apart laughing as Julian scrambled to clarify, and I'm smiling writing it up again even now. What a fucking dork. And what a joy Heather is in every scene.
I think the thing that has me full of the giggles over this exchange specifically is that like....you know when you get to take your hands off the steering wheel of a character and they just do it themselves? This was one of those - he dug this stupid hole himself and I just stood by and watched him do it. He's absolutely useless (affectionate) and it makes me laugh.
laughing at having realised why Iām so fucking bad with always putting nuthās head wound on the wrong side - I keep drawing it on her left when it should be her right because Iām treating her like sheās a mirror! it would be on that side in a reflection, and Iām picturing where it is to *me*, her player. Iām gonna have to look at more of my dnd PC art and see if I keep making them accidentally left-handed???
