Here’s how the story goes: You’re a seamstress in the village. You don’t make a lot of money, but you do well enough. Your name is Elaina, and you are perfectly content.
Here’s how the story goes: You catch the eye of an elvish ambassador. Syldor is charming and handsome and you think you love him.
Here’s how the story goes: Syldor doesn’t love you.
Here’s how the story goes: He leaves you. Nine months later, you find yourself the mother of beautiful twins; Vax’ildan and Vex’ahlia. You think yourself a fool, believing that you loved him. Looking at your children, you now know what real love is.
Here’s how the story goes: Byroden isn’t a rich village, but you always make do. Your children, wild-eyed and mischievous, never go to bed hungry. Your little twin terrors explore the forest and are covered in scrapes from various tumbles, and they make your heart light. Your life isn’t easy, but you wouldn’t change it for the world.
Here’s how the story goes: Your children are ten when an elvish man shows up to retrieve them. Not their father; he couldn’t be bothered to show up on his own, but a servant, as if his children are little more than a menial errand. You don’t know what to do; Syldor’s powerful, and if he wants the twins he can easily take them. So you hug your children tightly, and tell them you love them more than the stars in the sky. You tell them you’ll see them again. They try to cling to your skirts and you fight to keep yourself from sobbing as they are hauled away.
Here’s how the story goes: You never see your children again.
Here’s how the story ends: You die two years later. A dragon’s fire burns your village, your home, you. Nearly fifteen years later, your son will avenge you.
Here’s what the story leaves out: Some part of Syldor cared. Not enough to matter in any of the ways that count, but enough to make his chest tighten when he thinks of you.
Here’s what the story leaves out: Your hands shake the first time you hold your children. You’re so afraid that you’ll do something wrong, that you can’t be enough for them.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You teach your children to sew. Vex’ahlia has no patience for it, and only learns the basics. Vax enjoys it, though, and will often sit with you by the fire while you work. He becomes quite good at embroidery, and you’re so proud your heart swells.
Here’s what the story leaves out: Your favorite part of the day is night time, when you braid the twin’s hair and listen to their stories of everything they did that day. When Vex tells you how high she climbed up into the oak tree, you braid a feather into her hair. Birds need feathers, and you know she’ll keep trying to fly.
Here’s what the story leaves out: Vax brings you crumpled bouquets of dandelions and other weeds, and you declare them the finest flowers you’ve ever seen. You keep every crushed bouquet, pressed between the pages of your favorite book.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You’ve seen a few pieces of fine jewelry in your life, but the bracelet Vex makes you out of scrap fabric and string is the most beautiful by far. You wear it daily, until it burns with you.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You were saving up money to go to Syngorn, to beg Syldor to let you see your children again.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You die on your feet, brandishing a kitchen knife and screaming at the Cinder King. You get a hit in before it all ends, and you die with a feeling of bitter pride burn in your chest.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You were so young.
Here’s what the story leaves out: As the Raven Queen guides you to the next world, she tells you that your children are special. That fate has touched them, that Vax’ildan and Vex’ahlia will change the world.
Here’s what the story leaves out: You already knew that.
Jester Lavorre doesn’t die. She simply doesn’t. When she’s old, she simply ascends to the status of a minor deity, residing over mischief, inappropriately timed Sendings, and if Exandria ever develops an equivalent of phones, texting.
In the year 1385 P.D, there are trickery domain clerics who follow Jester. They can use Channel Divinity to cast Sending. I can’t decide if her holy symbol would be a pair of clasped hands (like her tattoo), or a green dick (because it’s funny).
When they Commune with her, instead of a yes or no they get a 25 word answer, Jester sending style. The last words might be a bit wonky sometimes, like she got carried away and someone is counting her last words for her. As they receive these messages they usually get visions, but instead of the visions being relevant to the question, they’re usually just places she’s been/places she likes. A ship at sea on a sunny day. A strange forest that looks like it doesn’t belong on the material plane (because it doesn’t). The small room of a child, walls covered with drawings. A tastefully decorated, luxurious room that those from Nicodranas would know to recognise as that of the legendary Ruby of the Sea, now practically a shrine of its own. A roof, with a tree covered in sunlight growing from it.
Essek, the only one other than Caduceus still alive to see this change, is very amused. He visits her small temples and shrines, leaving pastries and trinkets and occasionally an elegantly drawn dick in a hidden spot, for old times’ sake. Because it would make her laugh, seeing him participate in this.
On occasion, he gets an echo of her voice in his head, giving him an update from wherever she is, a reminder that she loves him, and sometimes a string of “do do dodo” if she didn’t have enough words without it. He continues to receive those until the day he dies.
By the time they finished everything at the Driftwood Asylum, there were nine kids left who they hadn’t found homes for.
(Of course it was nine; how could it have been any other number, with this group?)
This is the story of the nine orphans the Mighty Nein found, and how they grew to love them.
[post canon, the Mighty Nein and a bunch of orphans they adopt. Each chapter is a different Mighty Nein member with their kid/s]
Caduceus surprised all of his friends by saying he would take the firbolg teenager.
“You know, Caduceus,” Jester said, elongating the middle of his name, the way she always did. “You don’t haveto take the firbolg kid just because you’re a firbolg.”
“I know,” he told her, refusing to elaborate. “I’ll take him anyway.”
In reality, he was taking the boy because he saw that the boy was troubled, and Caduceus–
Well, Caduceus loveda project. And what better project–or sign from the Wildmother–was there than a troubled fifteen year old firbolg, intending to throw his life away the first chance he got?
“Don’t I get a say in this?” The boy asked, his face scrunched up. His name was Ozmandias–a good name, strong and a little bit wild, which Caduceus approved of– and he had darker fur than any of the other Clay family members, who tended to be a bit albinoish as far as firbolgs went. His hair was dyed a wild shade of green, though, which tickled Caduceus to no end. Perhaps he’d show the boy how to dye his hair pink, later.
The week after they leave Aeor is the worst week of Caleb’s life.
Well, that’s not quite true. He’s survived much worse weeks–his life has been nothing if not full of pain–but the week after Aeor is among the worst he’s experienced in a long time.
He’slonely.
The townhouse he’s moved into in Rexxentrum is sparse and empty and yet too crowded at the same time. He can’t go anywhere without knocking a foot into a pile of books or stubbing his toe on a misplaced piece of furniture. At the same time, the silence in his home is deafening–there is no cat to play with his feet, no Frumpkin on which to cuddle, no Fjord or Jester or Veth with which to argue with.
No Essek, period.
No Essek to share breakfast with. No Essek to ask his opinion on. No Essek with which to discuss whatever random arcane theory comes to mind. No Essek to ask what he’d like for dinner this evening, and no Essek to complain to about his aching back.
Beau and Yasha take two boys, a tiefling and a human. The human is harder for Beau to deal with, actually.
They took two boys in the end.
They had intended on only taking one. But they were a package deal, these two, or so Arkus told them. “I don’t go anywhere without Jorah!” the red tiefling boy told them, gesturing towards the dark skinned human boy hiding shyly behind him. There was at least a two year age difference between the two of them, and Beau wondered how the two because such close friends, especially at ages six and four.
Still, they already wanted one kid. What was another one?
“He’s is rather cute,” Yasha whispered, picking the four year old up in her arms. Unlike the six year old tiefling, the human stayed silent, like he didn’t quite know what to say. Or maybe he was just quiet in general; who could say?
“Alright,” Beau put her hands on her hips, staring down at Arkus. “You two wanna come home with us?”
“Yeah!!!” Arkus squealed, pulling on Jorah’s shorts in Yasha’s arms. “You hear that, Jorah? We’re gonna have moms! Two of them! That’s like, double the amount of moms I’ve ever had!”
It had surprised her, at first, that someone hadn’t already adopted Jorah. As a human–even one of Marquisian descent–they didn’t usually struggle to find a home after being orphaned. But it didn’t take long living with the two boys for her to realize that Jorah was…special.
Summary: The rule is this: Essek is required to take lessons in all schools of magic in order to be allowed to specialize on the dunamantic path that he wants to follow.
He finds himself in the Skysibil’s planetarium within the Marble Tomes, learning the art of divination.
Spoilers for Episode 2 of Exandria Unlimited: Calamity
It’s been so long since Zerxus has been touched. Some days, he aches with the loss.
The fiend in front of him has hands that are warm, and skin that is soft beneath Zerxus’s own as he cures his wounds, as he stares into that heartbreakingly familiar face. Evandrin was indeed the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, and it has been so long since he’s laid eyes on those cheekbones, that hair. He knows he’s on borrowed time, here in this place between worlds, but he also never wants to leave.
He is a man who has no space for the gods in his life. There is no loyalty to any pantheon, no true distinction between betrayers and the ones betrayed. If the gods had cared, truly cared, Evandrin should not have perished. Elias would still have a father and Zerxus would still have a husband. The universe is a cruel place, and Zerxus feels intensely aware that that cruelty extends to those with cosmic power as he stands before the figure on the bed, holding his bandaged wrist and feeling alive for the first time in years.
As he emerges back into Exandria, he’s aware of a difference in himself, a heaviness to his limbs, a twinge in his heart that had not existed before that single moment. His muscles ache from spasming and he feels the beginning of a headache in his temple. Something in Zerxus changed, in that space between worlds, in that time immaterial. He has emerged something more than himself, the magic at his fingertips stronger than ever, the feeling of being buoyed by something greater than himself intoxicating, like a drink of the sweetest ambrosia.
Asmodeus’s story makes sense to Zerxus, that’s the simplest part. Of course the betrayer gods are not truly evil, just as the prime deities are not truly good. They are simply creations of the world, the same as anyone else, the same as Zerxus himself. Zerxus knows he has potential for good in himself, and equal potential for incredible evil. It is the way of things; why would the deities truly be any different, betrayers or not?
Any choice in war is going to seem like a betrayal, from a certain point of view.
If you prefer your Halloween to be spooky, here are some ~eerie~ prompts for all your Shadowgast needs! Pick just one prompt to focus on each week, pick a handful of favorites, or ambitiously tackle them all. There are no rules other than to be inspired and have fun!
