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Obviously this trend works both ways, but Izek is way more likely to play along if he's not the one having to be lifted.

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Imrath is a big, softhearted baby. He'll cry on a dime and regularly wants his mama, but he's also a man with the weight of his entire clan and three gods' good names on his shoulders. So he doesn't falter. He's nervous, anxious, and overthinks a lot, but he's not scared. Any fear he might face has to be faced so he won't falter when it matters, so it comes and goes right over him and he doesn't let himself fall to it.

Yeah yeah yeah he's a paladin and all the tropes that come with that but the thing that makes him a paladin instead of a wizard or cleric or something is the strength of will to make an important decision and stick to it, come what may.

And it's not ALWAYS on, per say, since most of the time he's a normal guy just going through normal days doing chores, hanging out with friends, fighting monsters, and adventuring. He's not stubborn as a personality trait, not afraid to be wrong if he needs to be corrected, but when it's something important, the mantle comes down like a gavel and his decision, carefully weighed, is final.

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Continuing this thought. When Imrath smiles, which he does a lot, charming and pretty and boyish, it's leveled at Izek down his nose. Any smug smirks and sly grins are with half-lidded, looking down eyes. When he's rolling his eyes or cocking his head, it's a chin tilted up look from Izek's (and everyone else's) perspective. Imrath leans down to hear him when they need to whisper. The only time he looks UP at Izek is when he's actively underneath the guy. Maybe it's my own fixations shining through but I think it's hot and I hope Izek does too.

Had a thought in the shower the other day that with just about anyone else, Izek is glaring down at them, or at least looking down on them, always looming. But Imrath has a couple inches on him, so for once he's looking up through his lashes, at a man smiling down at him and I just think he deserves it. As a treat for being a better person.

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When we started the game, our DM let us choose a magical item and I chose a Tan Bag of Tricks. Behold, Imrath and his menagerie of companion animals.

Canonically, he got the bag as a gift from his mentor, Vilgaron, as a parting gift when he left home.

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Listen I like the "Lawful Good Paladin snaps and breaks their Oath to save someone" trope as much as they next guy, and I like setting Imrath up those situations over and over but I specifically made him devote himself to a Neutral deity. Because he won't break his Oath, but he will abandon his personal morality and embrace that Oath with both hands when he needs to.

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The longer I write this fic the more I realize our party dynamic, despite how on paper Good v. Evil it is, has a weird relationship with monsters. Especially lycanthropy.

Cause I know it's canonically this curse that doesn't necessarily shift you into something evil, but the consciousness players tend to come in with is that werewolves = evil and lycanthropy = bad but me and my friends like being freaks out loud so I made a lizardman and she made a fox shifter so we waltzed into the plot looking at these wereravens, werewolves, and mongrels like "yeah no this is fine" and the only weres we have beef with ARE the wolves since they were mean first.

And like. CLEARLY the game didn't want us to be this pro-shifter cause the NPCs we love and travel with are 1.) a werewolf hunter and 2.) mauled by werewolves so there is a baked in cognitive dissonance where they hate the werewolves but are somehow fine with our werefox like. Sure. And when we met the Martikovs and they're being all secretive about the ravens our party not only Clocks It immediately but also Doesn't Care.

Muriel is like "I'm not supposed to do this in front of strangers, buut" and we both just sort of nod, like "Cool" and "I knew it!" and move on lol

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Had a thought in the shower the other day that with just about anyone else, Izek is glaring down at them, or at least looking down on them, always looming. But Imrath has a couple inches on him, so for once he's looking up through his lashes, at a man smiling down at him and I just think he deserves it. As a treat for being a better person.

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me when sun characters are terrifying and destructive. me when light is an overwhelming damaging power. me w

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Fight fight fiiiiiiight!!!

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HEY that's MY emotional support morally ambiguous misunderstood full of trauma touch starved yearning for love drenched in blood responsible for numerous atrocities comfort character who is TRYING & u will TREAT them with RESPECT

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oh to trace ur fingers over ur dragon bf’s horns just to feel him shiver against u

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Still thinking about languages and accents. I know we don't have anything like a canonically analog for the various languages but I do think Draconic would have some similarities to Arabic at least in the places in your mouth that you pronounce some of the sounds, yknow? Plus a bunch of reptilian sounds like hisses or sounds made from deeper in the chest.

(Which raises the tangential question about voice box and throat anatomy with the breath weapons but that is not the rabbit hole for toDAY.)

Anyway his MAIN accent is absolutely Draconic. Specifically the Tymantherean dialect, too, but that's largely irrelevant. And then he's grown up hearing and speaking Infernal for most of his life too, which I think is described as 'clashing metal' or 'metal on stone' somewhere??? So whatever that sounds like, he slips into it easily and is perfectly fluent.

After that he learned Celestial in his studies in school and knows it pretty well, but I'm sure his accent bleeds through when he speaks it himself. Largely, he READS it anyway, except for a few people he can speak to at home, but they're also so far removed from the base language that whatever he does get to practice is pretty derived.

And Izek should have a Barovian accent, which should be some kind of modernized evolved-in-isolation version of Common, right? It's fantasy Dracula, so Strahd, for sure, sounds Romanian, but the people of the region should have a derived version that's gotten mixed up with something like a Balkan Roma accent from the Vistani probably. Which would be CLOSE to the normal Barovian accent except that the Vistani come and go and will have been around the Sword Coast accents too, so they've probably changed a bit.

A friend asked the other day what Izek sounded like, and IN GAME because our DM has limited comfortable accents, he's gruff and british but he's definitely meant to have an eastern european accent. And Imrath has my american accent because I am also limited but he SHOULD have some middle eastern type accent I think.

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A friend asked the other day what Izek sounded like, and IN GAME because our DM has limited comfortable accents, he's gruff and british but he's definitely meant to have an eastern european accent. And Imrath has my american accent because I am also limited but he SHOULD have some middle eastern type accent I think.

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Guy who is touch starved but emotionally repressed goading you into punching him for completely normal reasons

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A new Izek ref never huuuurts

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Looks like I might get to include some version of this scene in anywaaaay~!

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smacks my head into the floor

how do you choreograph a FIGHT