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Ancient ruins, eroding back into the jungle (Fred Fields box art for AD&D 2e Al-Qadim campaign supplement Ruined Kingdoms by Steven Kurtz, including a campaign setting booklet and an anthology of adventures set primarily in the eastern wilderness of Zakhara, TSR, 1994)
Azulamaeraszantha, the Blue Princess of Paradise, with her beloved birbs.
Another beautiful commission from @akira-raikou over on Bluesky! 🦋
HELLO MY FELLOW D&D Dungeon Masters & Players ,
This is my New Blog for D&D and other TTRPG Content
Feel Free To Chat With Me Regarding
Monsters , Species / Subspecies , Species Variants , Classes / Subclasses , Campaign Settings , etc.
day XXX of wishing Dnd would release official 5e content of the questionable non-european continents they created like thirty years ago and have never acknowledged since. Zakhara, Kara-tur, Maztica, you could've been great and I think of you often.
Zufayr study
Zakhara party outfit swaps! (the wizard wearing the barbarian's outfit and the barbarian wearing the druid's outfit)
Ruqayya belongs to @yongharu21 :3c
Not her canon romance, I know, but Aranea/Mephistopheles, if you're willing to indulge me by talking about Hell's hottest DILF.
II.1, II.7, II.10, II.12, II.14
Hello hello and welcome into my asks!! :D Sorry for the delay, I was rather occupied in the previous day with IRL stuff, but omg I couldn't stop thinking about these questions (because while Aranea/Mephisto are technically not the canonical endgame, they were canonically a couple for around a century or so, so OMG I CANNOT WAIT TO ANSWER THESE). So, without further ado, LET'S GO!
1. Who initiated the relationship, and how did they go about it?
Aranea initiated their Warlock/Patron relationship, when she first started to find a way to summon a demon to gain the power she needed, but Mephistopheles was the one that initiated their tryst, determined to get past her wall of icy contempt and hatred for the world and the people around her and seducing her with murmurs of pure comfort for her damaged soul , alongside the promises of every power she could ever just imagine to possess. Aranea tried to resist for some time, but the more time she spent besides Mephisto, the more her hunger for him and his raw power - the only thing that seemed to quell the unconsolable pain that Halim’s death left behind - grew uncontrollable. It was at that moment that she decided to have her own heart frozen and removed, de facto allowing darkness to fill her entirely, as she lost herself in Mephistopheles and his burning desire.
7. What is their relationship with each other's families like?
PECULIAR, TO SAY THE LEAST. Aranea’s family of origin knows *nothing* of what she has done to become a warlock. Heck, they don’t even know that she is a Warlock, to begin with. So they are not aware that Aranea has spent a good part of a century in Cania, consorting with an Archdevil. On Mephisto’s side, instead, things are a tad different.
Raphael is very much aware of the tryst between his father and his favourite “pet”, so to speak, and because of this, he never misses the chance of trying to cajole her or trick her into pursuing all kinds of debauchery, if anything to get back to Daddy Dearest, since he knows her loyalty to her father is unwavering and corrupting her would just be a way for him to kick Mephisto in the shins, metaphorically speaking. However, in the past century, Aranea has learned to play the game from the Master himself, so she goes along with whatever Raphael is planning on doing just to put a spoke in his wheels for the sake of making things more “intriguing”, so to speak. (Mephisto and Aranea do like to see him squirm whenever he plans to just be a little shithead for the sake of it, especially after learning that he is after Karsus’s Crown). On his end, Raphael gets a kick from calling Aranea his “Step-Mom”, knowing that it miffs her to no end. Aranea does have a good relationship with Azriel, whom she actually considers like a daughter, the constant target of Raphael’s unwanted amorous attention and pursuit (I mean, Raphael resembles Daddy Dearest more than he likes to admit), and she does what she can to keep the Cambion away from her and give the poor Tiefling a bit of respite. She enjoys listening to her spontaneous joyous outburst and all her adventures around Faerun, sometimes even following her outside the Nine Hells and accompanying her around, something she would do even more often even more so after Zaynab, her own daughter, joined the family.
As for Mephisto’s own relationship with Azriel, he acts very much the same way Raphael acts with Aranea, if anything to get back to his son and just teach him a lesson not to be a little shithead. He doesn’t care much for her but looks at her as some sort of “fun experiment” to take care of in order to get under his son’s skin. It has happened more than once that Aranea had to intervene to save the poor tiefling by convincing the Archdevil to show mercy to her because Raphael is already torturing her enough.
10.What are their parallels, whether in their personalities or their histories? I think that, for a start, the main difference between Mephistopheles and Aranea lies in the extent to which their cruelty and callousness reach: Aranea, while deciding to deprive herself of her own heart and swearing to do whatever it takes to conquer the power needed to exact her revenge, still maintain certain moral boundaries that she is not willing to cross (albeit not as many), while Mephistopheles, in virtue of being an Archdevil, doesn’t share the same piety nor he feels compelled to discern which souls to spare or which to take based on ethic and morality.
That being said, in the century she spent at Mephisto’s side, Aranea has grown more and more disillusioned with humanity (could also be caused by the fact that she spent longer in Baator than in the Mortal Realm) to the point that her own moral boundaries have started to shift and become less rigid compared to when she first created the pact with Mephisto.
In terms of parallels between the two of them, both are creatures of intense temper, despite their calm and collected appearance, both are extremely prone to intense bursts of emotions, albeit Aranea’s are not nearly as frequent nor as intense as the ones of the mercurial Lord of Hellfire, and both can become cruel if pushed. But what truly connects them in an absolute understanding and motivates Mephisto to keep Aranea at his side, is the obsession they have for their goals: Mephisto in his constant pursuit of knowledge and Aranea with her quest for power to fuel her own vendetta against the people in Huzuz that had weaved the plan to destroy her late husband’s reputation and life. It was that glint of obsession in Aranea’s soul, her willingness to go to extreme lengths to obtain what she needed that had brought her to Mephisto’s attention, and the main reason why he was the one to answer her call when she performed the ritual to become a Warlock.
12.Do they hide anything from each other, big or small? Not as much as they’d like to. While they do not share everything that they plan/think about, Mephisto does trust Aranea, if anything because she has never given him a reason not to (and of course, because of their deal). But, while Mephisto does trust Aranea to do his bidding and bring him the souls he needs he is still very much intrigued with her for the length she would go, and trusts her even to let her counsel him on his plan of overthrowing Asmodeus, he still doesn’t see her as an equal, considering that she is still very much a mortal who has exchanged her soul for power and he an Archdevil. On the other hand, Aranea did never truly care about hiding anything from him, because in one way or another, he would find a way to know what he needs to know. However, that started to change the moment she fell for Gale, and she forced herself to be more secretive, if anything for Gale’s sake.
