#valtish

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Maybe it's just that playing for almost a decade gives you lots of chances for fate to set things up, but MAN Fortune's Favor has some very narratively satisfying situations happen.

Cause like. Look. The party is currently stuck in a demiplane (?) ruled over by the god-being of growth, who created it as a space to protect vulnerable kids who needed a place to hide away. We GOT HERE in large part because Val is very much still wrestling with the aftermath of our monk's rise to master status, which unintentionally involved her standing on the edge of a huge smoldering lake of lava and watching her brother-in-all-but-blood plunge screaming into the center of it, well outside of her ability to save him. Val has always struggled with feelings of helplessness, and the sense that the world is constantly poised to snatch every good thing away from her, but she's been getting better about it as the group has grown in power and resources. This was a very unwelcome reminder that there were still things that she couldn't do anything about, that she was still just as ineffectual as she was when she lost her parents, and her crew, and the only sense of goodness she really felt like she owned.

So NEEDLESS TO SAY, when she accidentally interfaced with the entrance to this god-being's hideaway, and the offer was an outstretched hand and the promise that she would be taken somewhere safe - somewhere where she wouldn't have to lose anyone ever again - she was not in a great state to say no!!! And so she didn't!!!

Fast forward to our current scenario, which is that we've realized that our BBEG has corrupted this god-being and all the kids in Hideaway are in danger, so we've offered to go out with the leader into the dark spooky part of the woods to sniff out the rot and get rid of it. DM calls for a save as we're traversing the woods, and who should roll a fucking NAT 1 but the very same brother-in-arms that Val got everyone into this mess about. Suddenly, he's just gone. We've misplaced both him and the other monk, and we keep hearing their voices calling us off of the path we're on, and it's sus as Fuck but they're GONE, so Val is kind of freaking out, and - !!!

And then our druid spots him in the trees and we go charging after him and he whips around and FIREBALLS THE WHOLE GROUP in a panic because!! BECAUSE!!! the same corruption that has affected the guardian of this place - the corruption that is a facet of our big bad - has gotten into HIM now. He keeps running for the shadows and Val can't keep hold of him, and her hands are covered in black ichor that falls away from him, and she can see MUSCLE underneath, raw flesh and blood, like there's nothing beneath that rot but ruin, and she's just begging him not to go, not to run away, don't go away again, please not again, and I'm just!!! I'm insane!!! I'm insane!! Of COURSE this would happen to him, of all people!! Does this not fulfill the prophecy?? The place offered to her as somewhere safe, where she won't lose anyone anymore, is corrupted so that she instead has to watch the one person she's currently most afraid of losing run away from her on his own, hurt and dying in her eyes, being dragged by the will of the woods into the darkness and away from her forever!!!

IS THIS NOT EXACTLY WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN, NARRATIVELY??? I'M INSANE!!

[gwisincon]

After a long journey and a lot of changes, Gavaar has looked forward to his reunion with his dear friend very much. :’)

Valtish belongs to @frenchy-and-the-sea !

Gavaar is mine!

[jeinu]

A bunch of icon commissions for a DND group from @villnis​!!

From the top: Amon (@dalish-farther-roam​), Ianry (@villnis​), Brenton (@themilokin​), Cavvery (@phoenix-failing), Sarula (@urdnotgrunt​), Taraqris (@kelseyofcake​), Rona (@colonelcupquake​), and Valtish (@frenchy-and-the-sea​) !!! 

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Lil warmup doodles before work... some baby Vals :>

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Given the amount of bullshit Fortune's Favor has done in the past, it is not weird to Val that her party took a brief detour to the elemental plane of fire for the four elements monk to get his master title. It isn't weird that they made friends with a bunch of the caretakers of a temple in the fire plane, or that they convinced a towering elemental with the THICKEST thighs they've ever seen to be a guide to one of their holy places. It isn't even the slightest bit weird to her that two of her party members stared at his ass the entire way and got a flirty little wink back before they parted ways.

But Val puts her godsdamned FOOT DOWN when all of this leads to her adopted brother-in-arms getting dragged into the beating heart of a volcano, only to be spat back out SCREAMING AS HE WAS DROPPED INTO A LAKE OF MAGMA, FORCING THE WHOLE PARTY TO LEAP INTO ACTION TO TRY AND SAVE HIM, ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT HE HAD CONTRACTED FUCKING FIRE IMMUNITY FROM THE AFOREMENTIONED VOLCANO COMMUNION AND WAS NOT SCREAMING, BUT IN FACT LAUGHING.

FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF LMAO.

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

Last night in Fortune's Favor, we helped our shadow monk's grandmaster do initiation rites for a bunch of lvl 6 acolytes by....beating every single one of them in a fight. (Admittedly, a bunch were also taken out by ring-out, but the fact of the matter is that we were five lvl 15 adventurers absolutely tearing through a dozen lvl 6 monks.)

And I think nothing explains Val's personality quite so well as the fact that when she agreed to fight, it was very reluctantly (bc like. she's a fighter. that's what she's here for, supposedly) and she kinda grumbled about the fact that she knew that the others were gonna go way too hard on these newbies. But then SHE was the one who gleefully threw down her shield and borrowed quarterstaff and then football tackled one of the monks over the edge of the arena before winking at them and using her Dimension Door cloak to teleport back to where her gear was before she hit the water.

Like, GIRL. UNFORTUNATELY, all of your moral grandstanding and your reflexive need to hide your eagerness so that people don't think of you only as a weapon does NOT hide the fact that you LIKE TO FIGHT SOMETIMES!! ESPECIALLY when it's for fun and sanctioned and with the consent of everyone involved!! It's LITERALLY fine!!!

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

HELLO WOULD YOU LIKE A DEPRESSED ELF? we just started a new campaign and i am currently playing Lieutenant Nordylva Rook, standard-bearer of the Knights of Ozem and proud child of Lastwall (Lastwall was completely obliterated by a lich three years ago) (nori is coping). she's old as balls, she's tired, she's missing an arm and all of her fucks, and she's still remembering how to socialize outside of a formal military hierarchy—not helped by the fact that she's been living as a hermit since Lastwall fell and all of her friends died. (she's coping.)

also don't ask her what she's been doing as a hermit in the woods because she's terrified to tell anyone the answer (it's wrestling with her own bestial urges after being mauled and turned into a werewolf) (She's Coping)

(From my match their freak ask game)

I ALWAYS LIKE A DEPRESSED ELF!!!

You know who would also probably like a crotchety old soldier type? My sailor-gone-fighter-gone-paladin, Val! She doesn't get put off by gruffness — might even find it comfortable, after the years she spent with various mentors who never smiled and who called her exclusively by her last name — and aside from all of the wandering do-gooding, she's a bit of a hermit herself! She spent her early years living out of a travel wagon with her perpetually nomadic family, so she takes an immediate, unshakable kinship with anyone who has spent some time on the road. She is maybe a bit more easy going than someone like Nori might appreciate, and tends to regard authority as more of a suggestion when there isn’t any immediate danger around, but I feel like they could do the whole 'comfortable, soldierly grousing' thing about their various hardships together.

Like, for example, running away to the wilderness to cope after a disaster killed all of your friends.

See, prior to The Campaign, Val was serving on what was technically a merchant vessel, but whose captain was particularly fond of monster hunting. His proclivities and the skill of his crew were well known, so they were often hired on as security for other ships traveling between continents. On the last such occasion, they were attacked by an aboleth. (This, Val found out later. She has little memory of the actual attack except for fire and blood and pulling bodies out of the water.) They lost the ship and a sizable portion of the crew, and Val — the only tiefling aboard, who believes strongly in her negative effect on the luck of people around her — took it rather badly. The minute she was healed up, she vanished up the trade road from the coast and took to wandering aimlessly from city to city in a fugue of grief and survivor’s guilt. And it was in that state that she came upon a rather backwater city whose prejudices got under her skin enough that she ended up killing a man in a fit of rage after he tried to throw hands with her. SO WHEN I SAY THAT SHE WOULD SYMPATHIZE WITH NORI’S SITUATION. I FEEL LIKE SHE WOULD REALLY SYMPATHIZE. 

Thus, follow-up questions: what does the esteemed Nordylva Rook do to wile away the hours in her solitude? Is there anyone in particular that she regularly interacted with in order to get supplies while away from civilization? And is she the star of any ghost stories from nearby settlements that keep people out of her swamp woods?

[frenchy-and-the-sea]

OHOHOHO I am an undisciplined child and you've left me unsupervised in a candy store 👁👁 So can I get a uhhhh 5 for Nellie, 8 for Val, 12 for Lux 😏, and 14 for Alex please 👀 any number of them would make me twirl my braid and kick my feet no pressure ilu

MAIA YOU'RE THE REALEST ILU <3

Nellie

5. What’s one hill your OC will die on (anything from a guiding moral position to a strong opinion about combining mint and chocolate)?

That there is some fundamental aspect of power that, when given to a person with authority over you, will make them employ it to your detriment. To wit; do not trust people in authority to have your best interest at heart. Nellie will temporarily accept authority from people who are hiring her, or people with whom she must work for, but she makes it a big point not to trust them not to screw her over. She isn't CALLOUS, just aware of the prospect, and will avoid cementing herself any further into debts if she can help it.

And, if she likes you, she will do what she can to help you do the same.

Val

8. What’s something that your OC owns that means the world to them? What’s something they own that they don’t like, but can’t bring themself to part with?

Val isn't much of a Stuff person, but she's really attached to the magical item(s) that she had made for her and for the rest of the party. They are essentially braided cord bracelets all cut from the same cord, which, when activated, will draw you towards the nearest person wearing the same bracelet. It has a distance limit, and it only pulls in the straightest possible line towards the target, but they are an assurance for Val that she can always find her friends if they are close enough to BE found. She won't give that for the world.

Conversely, Fortune's Favor has been carrying a bottled aspect of our BBEG (he was a living shadow for a while, and we have a piece of him stuffed in a bottle in our bag of holding) and Val can't bring herself to get rid of it. It's a shitty thing to know is close at hand, but also something that she can't justify trying to destroy or otherwise release. Although...we haven't checked on it since our BBEG got a body so...maybe that's not a problem anymore. 😬

Lux

12. What does their bed and/or desk look like? Tidy or cluttered - are they both the same, or is one neat and the other messy?

Lux's bed and desk (when he HAD a bed and a desk readily available) were always extremely tidy, but only by mandate. His parents were....let's say demanding, and leave it at that. Given his freedom, I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that his desk would still be very neat, but that his bed would be an absolute disaster of discarded clothes, piles of cushions, half-written letters, etc.

One gets, ah, significantly more use than the other, and is thus harder to keep tidy. ;)

Alex

14. How comfortable are they relying on other people, and what situations would change their comfort level?

HAHAHA god. Uh. Alex doesn't LIKE relying on other people. She recognizes that this is a necessity, however, and so will humbly submit to the process simply because her ideas are way too big for one person, and she's not an idiot. But she is not THRILLED by the notion. Like Nellie, she's in a situation to assume that everyone is trying to get something out of her as well, and while she excels in managing this to her benefit, she doesn't find particular JOY in having to put her trust elsewhere.

There is, however, one notable exception. If she is in a position to have to put TAHIR in charge of something, Alex is as close to 100% confident that it will be handled as she can ever be. She has been privy to some very first-hand accounts of Tahir being stupendously reliable when faced with protecting the interests of people that he cares about, often well past the point that Alex considers reasonable. No one else in her experience has done that, and it makes his introduction into nearly any situation one that she is more willing to engage in.

She still thinks he's a little bit crazy, though.