#dream guardian: use your ilithid potential. dazzle: okay :]

[pinkfey]

lore recap under the cut!!

so dazzle spent much of her childhood performing in a circus with a bunch of other children. singing, juggling, tightrope walking, aerial acrobatics, you name it!! she was the star 🌟 she had a captivating smile and a sharp, intelligent demeanor and the crowd loved her—that's where she got the name!! and she hated them for it.

one year during the troupe's tour, they stopped at a small little village that dazzle thought was weird and creepy because there seemed to be no children?? not even babies??

lo and behold !! weird fey shit had been happening !!

it was a hag 🙄

with the promises of love and acceptance—a family—the hag lured her and stole her away to the feywild. but, shockingly, she didn't eat her. dazzle was part of a deal.

after some time, a man arrived. he said he was her father and that she was to come with him (he was not her father, but dazzle was so scared that she went anyway).

he did not harm her. he offered her everything there was to offer. she called him papa, but she didn't know if she meant it. if this is what love and family feels like. then he introduced her to his circle.

an eclectic and ravenous bunch whose numbers grew every day. the cult of hyrsam they called themselves, claiming their trickery, celebration, and revelry were in reverence of him. hyrsam himself would have seen through their guise in an instant, but had he known the truth, he'd have cursed them for smearing his name with their bullshit.

in actuality, the cult sought to ascend the First Disciple™️ to archfey. he leeched on the minds of their young over centuries, using them to lure and indoctrinate more through their charm and song. they had to love him, they had to be devoted to him, they had to believe in his message wholeheartedly, and to claim the proselytizing of hyrsam's wiles was the perfect fit. it was the only way.

very few know this.

YIKES !!

so 😶 over the course of six hundred years—years that, in the feywild, dazzle experienced as a mere decade—dazzle went mad. much of her own history is lost to her now, as is her mind. she doesn't like clowns. she's afraid of old women. the scent of mulch drives her to tears. she doesn't remember why.

she's trusting now; her fortitude has worn down. she will follow anyone. open wound, bleeding heart, lamb to the slaughter. she'll drive a knife into her own chest and thank you for it.

with the tadpole, however, much of her energy has returned to her. she doesn't feel so........... hazy. it's as if a fog has been lifted, but she's not sure what it concealed in the first place. she'll never recover what was taken from her, and centuries of coerced agreeability have taken their toll, but she has the mental clarity to make her own decisions now—poor as most some may be.

the horrors are never ending, but she stays silly :3

razzle dazzle *:・ﾟ✧