#Basil D’Pothecary

[couchtaro]

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from the OC introduction ask! (Sorry followers this is long but its worth it i prommy there are even pictures)

This is my little dötter Basil, a D&D PC of mine! She only saw 3 sessions of play 3 years ago but she is getting a second chance at life because @eaudecrow picked her up from the shelter and gave her a lovely yard to run around in.

Basil is a little tiefling girl whose large family runs an apothecary and surgery in a tiny little backwater town called Tarnygee. Basil’s brilliant mother developed a strain of magical herb that when processed can cast (without spell slots or prior magical ability) Lesser Restoration, thereby curing any disease instantly.

While traveling to heal a local noble, Basil’s mother disappeared and a bigshot inventor came forward claiming her panacea as his own. When Basil’s oldest brother tried to confront him and wound up dead, it became clear there was nothing they could do to get justice on their own. So, fueled by grief and rage, Basil took a job as a part-time warlock at Seelie Corp., a fey megacorporation with mysterious motives. In return for her working as their errand girl, Basil gets to be distinctly less killable and more tricky as she tries to find the inventor and extort him for the good of her destitute family.

Things aren’t working as well as she would like though: due to being basically a middle schooler, she’s got to keep her work under 40 hours a week and gets limited pact benefits. Her supervisor (a weasely pseudodragon named Keith) is dismissive and unhelpful, and her small town upbringing has kept her deeply unprepared for taking on the wild world of men and magic on her own.

Luckily, she’s found some unexpected help! While submitting her weekly report through the postal system of Fey portals, Basil’s paperwork went awry and found its way to another world: specifically a bunker in a war torn parallel version of the material plane. This bunker is the home and prison of Crow’s Aaren D’Cannith.

As a youth, Aaren invented a mechanical race called warforged, but seeing their potential for war and servitude, his family seized his blueprints (AND HIS ROBOT DAUGHTER) and disowned him as soon as he came of age. Aaren spent a few years as a vigilante trying to free his creations, but was trapped in his secret library when a magical-chemical fallout steeped his homeland in a volatile and toxic arcane gas. There he stayed, trapped and utterly alone, for three years.

Until Basil.

The two are corresponding via letters that we actually write each other, and it’s SUCH a fun and interesting method of storytelling to me aah. Despite being little more than strangers separated by a barely permeable divide, and despite Aaren struggling to believe Basil was even real at first, the two have formed a very sweet bond that makes me so unwell, you would not believe.

Both are grieved by how much of their own misfortune they see in the other. Through Basil’s letters, Aaren can tell that she is young, inexperienced, lacking support, and actively in danger as she allows herself to be used in exchange for power. He sees her situation with the eyes of someone who has been there and thus liberally (almost desperately) shares what little he can: his own arcane study materials, what he’s learned about survival and avoiding arrest, and, not the least, assurance that despite her perceptions, Basil is clever and kind and she matters.

Basil in turn is Aaren’s one connection to other people, and to a world that, while imperfect, is not ravaged and desolate like his own. After years of incarceration and tedium, he now has the exhilarating privilege of small talk and an audience for the terrible, terrible jokes he’s cooked up in isolation. He has a way to not only talk to someone outside of himself, but to help. He has something productive to do, and a reason to do it, not to mention the interesting puzzles of how their letters are finding each other and what else might be going on with Basil’s work. Basil is truly grateful to him, and returns his kindness in what little ways she can—most recently by interdimensionally mailing him his first real food in years.

Currently, Aaren and Basil are working to craft a pair of sending stones for daily artificer/botany jokes and (real reason) so that Basil can have some sort of emergency contact if she needs urgent advice. 25 words once per day is frightfully little if she ever runs into real trouble, and the limitations of their contact are never more haunting than when one considers how little Aaren could truly do in an emergency. I’m sure this frustration is only worsened by the unfortunate atrophy of his knowledge and skill caused by fog exposure. But he’s a clever man, and Crow had some ideas that seized my brain for weeks. Goodness.

Anyway in conclusion

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk