Hey how about we completely disregard the fact I fell off the face of the Earth for about 6 months -

Hey how about we completely disregard the fact I fell off the face of the Earth for about 6 months - in fact how about we pretend the last 6 months never happened, and we all just distract ourselves by watching me post long rambles about my recent DnD character and look at art drawn by the lovely lilithblack_comics? Okay? Okay, sounds great.

Anyway, as mentioned in this post, this is my character from our recently finished Curse of Strahd campaign, Ramiel the As-Of-Yet-Untitled (seeing as how she got taken by the Mists just before ever officially taking her oaths and becoming a knight, which is of course a thing that troubles her in various ways and on various levels, especially when it ends up seemingly offering more freedom and choices, hmmm). She is a Protector Aasimar, hence the general glowing and healing and the once-a-day radiant wing manifestation and whatnot. Originally from fabulous Aundair in Eberron, with her planetouched origins tying her to the Irian plane, and the Refuge layer specifically. Having ties to what I only half-jokingly call the Spa Plane means she will take a bath in any given body of water if given the opportunity.

She is an Oath of Devotion Paladin, formally trained by the Silver Flame. Very much focused on oathkeeping, honour, and protection (and healing, if that fails, but Sanctuary spell is best spell), and only then meting out justice - though she can be provoked into blazing self-righteous anger. Especially by, for instance, Count Strahd von Zarovich. In fact, increasingly losing or misjudging her, ahem, “protec vs attac” balance has been a running theme for her during the entire misadventure, and might be turning into an ongoing struggle. We sadly lost our important prophesised ally, the famed vampire hunter and scholar Dr. Rudolph van Richten, near the very end of the final boss fight against Strahd, becausesomeone blew her last spell slots on smiting the evil vampire instead of keeping some on hand for healing and/or a quick rez if all else failed. The guilt is immense. It is also certainly not lessened by the fact that a little while before that someonehad to go and make a very solemn knightly promise, in a shared quiet, personal, vulnerable moment with a certain Ezmerelda d’Avenir, that both her and her old mentor she came to find and essentially save were going to make it out of the cursed land alive. Well.

Ramiel is an extreme frontliner who somehow gets wrecked in 99% of fights she gets in, even ones she wins, but keeps getting up and is very used to patching herself up. Almost entirely fuelled by Determination. Stubborn and rather painfully earnest and obvious most of the time, pretty awkward sometimes (her noble knightly oath she strives to uphold includes not lying, but honestly I think she couldn’t even if she tried). Aggressively Here To Help (to an annoying degree, possibly) with a slight tendency towards holier-than-thou. Absolutely incapable of doing things in half-measures.

She is a dexterous, elegant rapier duelist, when I manage to roll above a single digit number on a d20 (I was the party’s designated Cursed Low Roller the whole Strahd campaign, alas). She takes pride and joy in it, and in hard-earned skill in general. Originally in her youth she trained to be a blacksmith - but making strength my dump stat means she is very good at things like fine detailing and filigree, not so much at any bigger work. It’s fine, though, silversmithing is a great thing to be capable of in Barovia. It also comes in handy when you want to make a nice gift real quick and impress a cool dashing swashbucklery monster hunter girl who shoots magical lightning bolts. Ilu Ez, someone over at Wizards plucked you out of my own brain while I was sleeping or something.

When paladins hit that sweet, sweet level 5 and get the Find Steed spell they all inevitably become horse girls. It is the law. In any case, that’s Honour up there in the upper left corner, who is the best horse. I am so so so sorry for repeatedly summoning you into a hell prison demiplane buddy ilu.

Near the end of the campaign we got our hands on the Sunsword, which very quickly became another one of my absolute favourite things. Ilu sentient lightsaber, you’re a true pal.

I feel like pondering duty vs choice and being marked by birth to be a tool/weapon in some grand scale struggle of good vs evil, potentially at great personal expense and even to an extent of losing out on actual personhood, is a fairly traditional aasimar character theme, and it kind of ended up gradually materialising for me here even though I didn’t really plan for it initially or necessarily introduce it purposefully. But it’s interesting when you are really uniquely well-suited to fighting against, say, the undead, and you end up trapped as a sort of plaything/brief diversion of an evil vampire overlord in his prison realm, who happens to embody everything you stand against and perhaps even hate. And then you die and get brought back to life several times, among other horrifying things, and you grow into your (increasingly considerable) power outside of any formal structure or organisation and you have to determine the meaning of your oaths all by yourself and figure out what it even means to be a knight and cling to that as best as you can in this crucible, and along the way you make fast friends and develop meaningful interpersonal relationships under very trying circumstances, and you also fall in love, and it ends up being reciprocated.

And then you don’t go back home after the tyrant is defeated and the misty prison walls lifted, but go off to be monster hunting girlfriends roaming the Domains of Dread with Ezmerelda d’Avenir. Because you are so very well suited to the task and there is just so, so much evil to be fought back against here - an important, worthwhile, good fight, no matter the seemingly overwhelming scale and odds - you were clearly Meant To Come Here and were perhaps quite literally Born For This. And besides, you feel you owe it to both her and her fallen mentor (whose death you feel responsible for, natch) to help finish some of his unfinished business and lay him to rest. But really, how much of that is just excuses and justifications drummed up to deal with the guilt of, at least for now, not going back to duties at home, another sort of abandonment, and letting your original companions go deal with whatever chaos is going on there by themselves? Who knows? Certainly not me, and I play this disaster.