#i can and will still part with some of it but god it's not Enough!!!!!!!!!! 😤😤😤😭

[libraryogre]

I wrote something similar to this... less aboyt unfucking specific ancestries, and more about the philosophies behind racism in RPGs.

So, recently, I've started saying "More Pratchett than Tolkien" to describe my approach to D&D (and other RPGs, but it seems to be more an issue with those who prefer older versions of D&D). But what do I see that as meaning? I've got a few points on this; mostly what I perceive as being the core parts of a "Tolkien" mindset of game worlds, versus a "Pratchett" mindset. Note that I am not ascribing these opinions specifically to JRR Tolkien, but rather than Lord of the Rings is frequently invoked as defense of them. After this, I'll avoid referring to this as "Tolkien" or words derived from that; my statement is pithy, better for a signature than discussion.

1) Racism as a necessary component

One of the primary objections to playing a "humanoid" character is that the character will face insurmountable racism; the 1e DMG says "So unless the player desires a character which will lurk alone somewhere and be hunted by adventurers", before going on to explain that one might want to play a gold dragon, because it can look human, but that no gold dragon would want to do this. The games will often include something like a "Basic Acceptability of Racial Types" table; 1e has one in the PH to cover humans and demi-humans, and the DMG has one to cover most types of humanoids in their interactions with each other; Hackmaster includes it in the PH. With this, it is argued, the game wouldn't be "realistic".

Leaving aside the conception of a world which must, necessarily, include often violent racism, it also shows a lack of imagination, or consideration of the nature of the world presented in D&D and similar games... while many different species live in the world, Good and Evil are real and quantifiable things, and there are gods who can communicate relatively freely with their worshipers on the Prime Material (if they don't live there themselves). A view where violent, unexamined racism can leave one still aligned as "Good" is one that is alien to any understanding of the word "Good" that I have, much less the definition of "Good" as laid out in the 1e DMG. "Basically stated, the tenets of good are human rights, or in the case of AD&D, creature rights. Each creature is entitled to life, relative freedom, and the prospect of happiness. Cruelty and suffering are undesirable." (p 23) How is this compatible with the idea that Good people can freely kill non-combatants of "evil" races?

A particularly evident argument of this is seen in half-orcs (and, in Hackmaster, half-hobgoblins). The 1e PH states that "some one-tenth of orc-human mongrels ore sufficiently non-orcish to pass for human." (p 17). Hackmaster has "Note that even where hobgoblins are acceptable, half-hobgoblins are mistreated and disliked by the locals. Half-hobgoblins share a special bond with half-orcs,alongside whom they are often persecuted as beastly monsters." (HM PH, 31) Despite both being specifically being called out as being non-sterile hybrids, the only consideration is that all half-humanoids will "will always have an human mother and have been born and raised in human lands" and be "The offspring of questionable parentage and violent couplings" (HM PH, 31); none will be, for example, the offspring of a mommy sil-karg and a daddy sil-karg who love each other very much. Hackmaster mentions that "The city of Prompeldia has developed a sizable sil-karg quarter that is threatening to become large enough to count as its own culture." (HM PH, 31). But all will be "The offspring of questionable parentage and violent couplings."

A Pratchett-style view of the game does not pretend that racism does not exist, but rather disputes the idea that it is insurmountable. The dwarves and trolls of Ankh-Morpork do begin with hatred, but they reach an uneasy peace when forced into proximity by the city. Sam Vimes, like many in the city, is riddled with prejudices about non-humans and the undead, but he overcomes them as he deals with them as people. Some of this is inspired by Carrot, the human raised by dwarves, who still considers himself a dwarf in many respects... but also respects all people, learning their names and treating them as citizens, not as trolls or gargoyles.

2) Race as unbending identity

"Humans with pointy ears" is frequently invoked when you have a non-human character who is perceived to act unlike their stereotype, or one of the acceptable range of stereotypes. Are your dwarves "not dwarven enough?" Does he like wine instead of ale? Does he shave his beard? Is he a dagger wielding tunnel rat, instead of a chain-mail clad warrior with an axe? You're playing a short human, not a REAL dwarf.

This also tends to get invoked when dealing with traditionally hostile non-humans. An elf or dwarf might violate their racial alignment, but a good orc? Unheard of. It's argued that it is impossible for any of the "humanoids" to be other than their Monster Manual entries, despite that never really being written anywhere, and several counter-examples, especially from 2nd edition (such as the Monster Mythology deity who prizes his good bugbear converts). Gary Gygax, revered by many old school gamers, even stated "The old addage [sic] about nits making lice applies", referring to noted proponent of genocide John Chivington's statements about Native Americans. As I have argued before, Dungeons and Dragons owes a lot to Westerns, and the attitude towards humanoids in a game tends to mirror the attitude towards Native Americans in contemporary Westerns; in Chato's Land (1973), you have a half-Indian protagonist, while Dances with Wolves (1990) presents the Native Americans as the sympathetic characters.

One objection to having the possibility of non-evil humanoids is the idea that a DM may use these as "gotchas"... "You killed all of these orcs but they were secretly good so now you're all evil!". But this argument fails, in my opinion, as one could also use that as an argument against DMs... "We found a vorpal sword in a crypt guarded by a skeleton with no legs!" It is always possible for a bad DM to make a bad game.

A more Pratchett-style game recognizes that the stereotypes exist, and may be the norm, but they are not the only way characters of that race can be played. Pratchett's dwarves are uniformly male-presenting, with beards and axes and iron boots, with one's actual sex being so concealed that the beginning of a dwarven courtship is "find out if the person is the correct gender." In Feet of Clay, however, we're introduced to Cheri Littlebottom, a dwarf woman who doesn't want that. She wants dresses and jewelry, lipstick and high heels welded to her iron boots. It is noted to be unusual. Other dwarves react with disgust... but it also doesn't make her impossible to exist as a character. Other examples include trolls who join the watch, vampires in the Überwald League of Temperance who abstain from intelligent blood, and golems who buy their freedom to become their own selves.

3) Only certain races are proper.

Some of this ties into the distinctions drawn between humans, demi-humans (elves, dwarves, gnomes, and halflings), semi-humans (half-elves, half-orcs, half-hobgoblins), and humanoids (orcs, goblins, gnolls, etc.). In the older game mindset, players should only be humans, demi-humans, and semi-humans; anything else is too weird or outlandish. For this, I will set aside the humanoids; I feel the objections to them are largely addressed above. This is addressed to what are often seen as the more exotic races... dragonborn, warforged, tabaxi, and the like.

The older mindset tends to describe these are unnecessary. I've even had someone describe the non-evil drow, minotaurs, and other uncommon races described as "played out", as if the dwarves with beards and axes griping at the elves of the forests isn't itself cliche at this point. The small stable of relatively human races is seen as a bonus... provided they don't go outside "appropriate" for their species, that they're human-like is enough. Orcs and humanoids are rejected as above, but there's also examples like Lizardfolk (who have always been Neutral, if cannibals) who are part of the world, but considered too out there for PCs.

The Pratchett-inspired game eschews this; while golems are unusual in Ankh-Morpork, and certainly powerful (more powerful than you might want in a low-level game), Warforged are a similar idea, but rendered playable. Tabaxi represent a different kind of character than "short and resistant to magic in some way". Dragonborn evoke the namesake of the game, again providing a different sort of character to play. That these exist don't invalidate the options to play elves, dwarves, and halflings. A Pratchett-inspired game will have a more cosmopolitan approach to races, both in terms of racism (as above), and in terms of options.

Unfucking Dungeons & Dragons

The concept of some humanoid or near-humanoid species being naturally inclined to evil is a racist one, and, unfortunately, a prevalent one in Dungeons & Dragons, exacerbated by the fact that these “evil species” are frequently the “ugly” ones. Drow are a particularly glaring example - “made black because of their ‘evil’”?! Fuck you - but the duergar - “the slaves … learned only to enslave, really makes you think don’t it” - and the orcs - “they feel the CALL to evil in their Gruumshy HEARTS” - are also super not good. (There’s also a fair degree of ableism, with “insane” monsters - in such cases, I honestly think “unaligned” would be a better description for “too far gone to understand morality”. Evil implies a choice.) Honestly, I wouldn’t mind so much if these weren’t supposed to be naturally-occurring species - always evil demons or fey are fine, because they’re made of magic and stories, although care should of course be taken not to make them look like naturally-occurring species - but elves are really just fragile pointy-eared monkeys, and they have excuses. However, these evil humanoids are also genre staples and often quite aesthetically good. To that end, I offer the Unfucking D&D Guide, which provides what I think are solutions to this problem. (It should be noted that I am whiter than plain yogurt, so my ideas should be taken with a grain of salt and definitely not take precedence over the ideas of non-white folks. If I’ve said something fucked-up in this, please let me know and I’ll fix it.)

Duergar. Keep the “enslaved by illithids, made grim & psionic” bit, toss the “learnt evil from them” part. The duergar are joyless, or can appear so - you can play them either as gloomy and fatalistic or as eccentric and unreasonably concerned with “corruption” - but despite whatever mood they possess, make sure that they are thoroughly dedicated to making sure the horrors of the Underdark stay in the Underdark, and are as righteous and honorable as their hill and mountain cousins.

Derro. The derro are an “insane” species; I bring them up only because I saw them confused with duergar in one post about racism in D&D. Their lore has not been constant - the current lore is “dwarves enslaved by illithids, tortured into madness, and now they’re eeeeeeeevil”, which is ableist, not racist - but their metatextual origin is among the detrimental robots, or Deros, of pulp author Richard Sharpe Shaver’s stories (or possibly delusions). “Born from the dreams of a mad author” would actually be good lore if you can make that author a tragic sufferer of schizophrenia in a time before it was understood rather than an ~*~eViL mAdMaN~*~, but in any event, change their type to construct, fey, or fiend, and, most importantly, don’t take them seriously. The derro are pulp villains, and their evil is grandiose and nonsensical. They ought not to be seen as realistic; they ought to be seen as Snidely Whiplash, Commander Claw, or Heinz Doofenshmirtz. “Reasons” are for other genres.

Drow. Return drow to their mythical roots as trow, nocturnal hunters, tricksters, and magical artisans dwelling in the hollow hills. There’s high and wood elves; dark elves can find a niche. Lolthite culture is good villain fodder, but make sure that you can handle an “evil religion”, and make sure that all types of elves participate.

Goblinoids and trolls. Make them fey, and abandon Tolkien for Rossetti and folktale. Goblins make cruel bargains; hobgoblins attend faerie courts; bugbears hide in closets and create electricity from feed on children’s screams; trolls lurk under bridges and love riddles. As fey, they’re not evil, simply alien and lacking in empathy towards mortals.

Gnolls. If you use the Volo’s lore, change their type to fiend and be done with it. If you want to have them be natural humanoids, go read Ursula Vernon’s Digger for the best-written hyaena-furries in literature and base gnolls off that once you’re done crying.

Kobolds. Kobolds are already draconic cleaner wrasses in lore; there’s no reason that metallic dragons can’t enjoy them as well and influence some populations to good.

Illithids. The mind flayers certainly have great potential as villains. However, there is nothing about their psychology that impels them thither. Their biological requirements could easily be met by feeding on those close to death, whom I might imagine would willingly donate their brains as food or tadpole incubators in exchange for a painless death and the surety that their memories would live on in the illithid. Also, create food and water spells exist.

Ogres. Ogres are wilderness-dwellers who prefer to maintain their personal territories through fear instead of actual force of arms; the idea of the monstrous, anthropophagous ogre is a deliberate sham. They are actually capable of great heroism, even if they aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed and okay to be honest I started out trying to build up to a Shrek joke but I think I’d take this over canon lore.

Orcs. Orcs are an easy fix; all you need to do is remove Gruumsh from the equation and they don’t have a bullshit “call to evil”; in Eberron, without objective gods, the people of the Shadow Marches believe that half-orcs are the proof that orcs and humans are one people, so there’s even in-game precedent for orcs as members of society.

Yuan-ti. There are two ways to do this. One is to dump all the lore and just have sexy snake cults, although don’t dress them like Asian or Aztec stereotypes like a lot of the art does. (The 3.5 Monster Manual yuan-ti pureblood looks like she’s constantly accompanied by an inappropriate bamboo flute riff, I swear to Istus.) A sexy snake cult (and I am including malisons, abominations, and anathemas in the term “sexy”, not just purebloods) should be fun for everyone.

The other way is to keep their personalities and dump everything else, because if you keep that, you get truly excellent villains. I mean, these fuckers. How dare they drag something as pure as snakes into their Ayn Rand bullshit. Villain yuan-ti should be something transformed from willing or deluded humanoids (histachii raise the sacred snakes and the children of the yuan-ti, who possess their parents’ original race at birth). Couple that with the fact that since snakes very definitely have emotions, yuan-ti logically should as well, which means that they only think they’re above emotions. Now you have Objectivists roped into a magical pyramid scheme, which should offend no-one who doesn’t deserve it. You can mourn for the beings they once were, or just laugh in their dumb faces. Also, the sexy ones all look like Ayn Rand.

[carolperkinsexgirlfriend]

can you see the stars in your dreams (and do they have a lot to say about me) - Part 20

Or: a secret Admirer AU

PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || PART 6 || PART 7 || PART 8 || PART 9 || PART 10 || PART 11 || PART 1 || PART 13 || PART 14 || PART 15 || PART 16 || PART 17 || PART 18 || PART 19

Chrissy is willing to admit that when Steve doesn’t call her after his date, she panics. If her mom wasn’t such a light sleeper, she would’ve snuck out to check up on him. But instead, she wallows, dozing on the couch, not even able to call Jeff to bitch because what if Steve chooses that moment to call?

So, she can admit, when he finally calls a few minutes after seven in the morning, she’s a little short with him.

“Finally, Steven,” she hisses into the phone, keeping her voice quiet so as not to alert her mother to their conversation. “I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere!”

“Sorry, sorry!” he rushes out, sounding contrite. “We sort of fell asleep.”

Chrissy gasps, a smile slowly spreading on her face as the implications set in. “You guys slept together?” she demands gleefully.

“We didn’t have sex!” he shouts, and she’s glad, for the first time, that his parents are so absent from his everyday life. “We just fell asleep!”

She’s still smiling, twirling the phone cord round and round her fingers. “Does that mean it went well?” she wheedles.

She doesn’t think that Eddie would suddenly realize he’s straight and renege on the date, not really, but Steve had, and she can’t get the terrified tone of his voice out of her head.

“Well—” he drawls, leaving her on tenterhooks for a few seconds more. “He took me to see some shitty horror movie.”

“Oh my god,” she whispers, full-on grinning now. “What a stereotypical move.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he replies so wryly that she can almost see the way his eyes must be rolling. “Except he barely talked to me the whole time and didn’t even try to hold my hand.”

“No!”

“And then he took me into the woods like some sort of serial killer, and then tried to kiss me so abruptly that my lip split a little.”

“No!” she shrieks with laughter before catching herself and slapping a palm over her own mouth as Steve’s own amused chuckle filters through the phone line. “And you still spent the night?”

“He was nervous!” Steve defended. “And besides, the second kiss was much better.”

“Your boy’s a fast learner, huh?”

Steve hums, and she wishes he was here with her, so she could see the dopey grin that must be on his face as he says, “yeah,” with a dreamy sigh. “He took me stargazing.”

Chrissy coos, can’t help it, not when this whole thing’s been building for so long now. Not when there’s been an edge of fear to everything Steve’s said for months. He deserves something nice for once.

“And you’re going out again?”

“Oh, definitely,” he replies, and a knot of fear she’s had tucked beneath her sternum loosens.

He sounds excited, happy, hopeful. If Eddie does anything to jeopardize this, Chrissy will be digging a very deep hole and tossing him into it. She’s got a shovel, and the muscle strength built up from years of cheer—she’ll manage just fine.

So, when Eddie walks up to her in the cafeteria in some sort of fucked up parallel to that first time and bends at the waist in a showy bow, hand outstretched as he asks, “a word, madam?” she’s ready to kill him.

But, when she glances at Steve at her side, his ears are red, and he’s smiling up at Eddie from beneath his lashes. And when she looks back toward Eddie she catches the tail-end of a wink that has Steve sputtering.

Even Jason doesn’t protest from the other side of the table where he’s quietly seething.

So, she takes his hand and follows him out of the cafeteria.

Eddie doesn’t seem to know where he’s going, as he walks through the halls, peering into nooks and crannies until he finds a corner he deems suitably vacant enough. He flops down, legs outstretched in front of him, uncaring of the dirt caking the floor.

He pats the spot next to him, smiling up at her, so she slides down the wall and crouches beside him, unwilling to let her bare legs touch the floor.

Eddie leans away from the wall and wrestles his jacket off before placing it on the floor in front of Chrissy. Gratefully, she sits atop it, crossing her legs to keep them safe. She turns her body so she’s facing Eddie dead on, and he follows her lead.

When he doesn’t say anything, she breaks the silence with a quiet, “I hope you know that if you hurt my friend, I’ll kill you.”

“I have no doubt, Lady Cunningham,” Eddie replies, drawing an X across his heart with his finger. “But, I’m not here to talk about Steve.”

“Then—what?”

He’s grimacing now, no longer meeting her eyes as he fiddles with his rings, one of his fingers bizarrely missing its usual adornment. “We’re friends, right?” he asks hesitantly, like he’s choosing each word with deliberate care.

“Of course,” she replies, eyes trained on the little furrow between his brows. He’s picking at a hole in the knee of his jeans, further fraying the edges. “Why would you ask that?”

He sighs, slumping into himself in a way that makes him look small. “I’m glad I’m here, okay?” he asks, not waiting for her to answer before he continues. “Steve’s great, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. But, you still lied to me—"

"We never lied to you," she cuts in, and he waves his hand in assent.

"Yeah, yeah, but you all like, conspired behind my back, and that feels…”

“Shitty,” she continues for him when he seems to lose his words.

“Yeah! Shitty, it feels shitty that you were all talking about me behind my back all so you could keep this from me."

Chrissy sighs. She’d known they’d have to talk about it eventually–clear all this stale air so they could move on–but it doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable. But, he’s right; no matter their intentions, they’d all made a mess of things. She’d known that even as she’d been in the thick of it.

So, she starts where these things should always start, and looks him dead in the eye as she says, “I’m sorry.”

He finally looks up, seeming almost surprised. “Just like that?”

“Yes, Eddie, just like that,” she replies, maintaining eye contact even as her gut squirms. “We were just trying to protect each other, but that doesn’t mean it was the right choice.”

His eyes are wide, still shocked, and she wonders, something uncomfortably close to pity bubbling up within her, if he’s not used to receiving apologies at all.

“Both of you?” he asks.

Chrissy averts her gaze, mouth twisting up. “You know how Steve said Jason has been kind of stalkery?” she asks, watching Eddie nod out of the corner of her eye before she continues. “Well, it was worse before. He kept coming to my house and cornering me at school, and I just wanted to move on.”

It was more than that, though. She still remembers the way fear crept down her spine as cold sweat when she’d opened her door to Jason smiling at her like they’d never broken up, the way her throat had closed up when he’d scooted far too close to her side at the lunch table.

The way he kept cornering her in the hallway when no one was around to witness it. 

“So, when I found Steve trying to write that first letter, I struck a deal,” she continues. She feels bad about that, even now, even still. “He’d be my boyfriend, and I’d help him with the letters.”

She finally turns back to Eddie, braced for, what? Condemnation? But he’s squinting at her like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to crack as he says, “you totally would have helped him anyway,” with so much conviction that it warms her. 

“Oh, definitely.”

He’s still looking at her, but he’s smiling at her, eyes warmer than she’s ever seen them. 

“Alright, I forgive you,” Eddie says, like it’s easy.

It’s too easy. 

“Just because we had reasons doesn’t mean it was fair to you,” she replies, steel in her voice as she squares her shoulders and looks at him dead on. “It doesn’t mean you weren’t hurt,” she finishes, reaching out to pat his knee.

He doesn’t jerk away, just looks at her hand on his knee with a peculiar smile on his face. “You know there was a time when you touching me like that would’ve sent me into a tizzy,” he says, still looking down at her hand.

“And now?”

“Nothing,” he replies, shrugging. “It was never you, Chrissy Cunnigham.”

“You either, Eddie Munson,” she replies, matching his smile as she smacks his hand once before withdrawing. “Now is that it, or was there something else you needed?”

He looks away, cheeks darkening to a blotchy red, she’s almost worried he’ll faint. “I, uh, well, the jacket?”

She thinks of Eddie’s jacket beneath her first, but that’s not where he’s looking. His eyes are planted firmly on the sleeve of Steve’s letterman with a sort of longing that’s almost funny in its intensity.

She doesn’t ask any follow up questions—if he wants the jacket, he can have the jacket. After all, it’s Steve’s no matter how attached to it she’s become, and Steve had looked up at him with the sappiest look she’s ever seen on his face.

She’d do more than give up his letterman to keep him happy.

Still, it feels strange when she pulls it off her back. A shiver runs through her–she feels almost naked without its familiar weight. 

Since that first day in the library, it’s been her shield against Jason’s pushy advances, and her reminder that, no matter what happens, she’d still have Steve. 

But, Jason’s backed off, and everywhere she turns, she sees her people: Steve, yes, but Jeff, and Eddie, and the Hellfire boys–even Robin. Her life’s full to bursting in a way that it’s never been before. 

Chrissy will miss it, but she doesn’t need it anymore. Besides, she knows where Steve keeps his spare key, and she’s not above stealing something else from his closet. 

“Jeff’s going to be sad,” she says, patting the bundled fabric in her arms like it’s a favored family pet, feeling strangely choked up. “He really liked it.”

Eddie grimaces down at it and asks, “do I need to get this thing dry cleaned?”

Chrissy throws her head back and laughs. “No, but if you would’ve waited a few more days, you might have.”

He makes a gagging noise, but when she holds it out for him, he readily takes it, even if he doesn’t put it on. She wonders if it’s fear of homophobes or the thought of her and Jeff’s bodily fluids that stops him. She’s polite enough not to ask, even as Eddie says, “Wait, is it you wearing it or him that Jeff likes?”

She opens her mouth to reply, ready to offer up a vague “both,” but Eddie holds up his hand and cuts her off, talking quickly like he’s afraid of what she might say. “Wait, don’t tell me. I really, really don’t need to know.”

Chrissy springs to her feet and picks Eddie’s own leather jacket up off the floor and sliding it on. It’s even baggier than Steve’s was on her, clearly designed for layering. “I’m borrowing this,” she says, turning her back on him and making her way toward her next class just as the warning bell rings. “It’s cold today.”

“Don’t do any weird sex things with it!” Eddie calls.

She laughs again, making a point to neither confirm nor deny her intentions no matter what he yells after her retreating back.

When Jeff slides into her passenger seat after school, he quirks a brow at her new look, and asks, “that Eddie’s?” as he buckles his seatbelt.

“He wanted Steve’s,” she says, reaching out to pat his knee consolingly.

“I’m going to miss that jacket,” Jeff sighs, looking genuinely forlorn for a second before he gets a particular gleam in his eye that Chrissy’s becoming increasingly familiar with. “You know—”

“Eddie requested that we don’t ‘do any weird sex things’ with his jacket,” she cuts in, putting her car in reverse and slowly backing out of the spot.

Jeff groans like he’d been shot, and throws his head back into the headrest. She reaches out to dig her fingernails into his knee, just this side of too-hard so his groan shifts into a hiss.

“I know, baby,” she says, smiling sweetly at him as they pull away from the school. “But, I’ll get your mind off it in no time.”

Jeff gulps, and doesn’t utter another complaint for the rest of the night.

***

Robin watches Chrissy follow Eddie out of the cafeteria. Even after the door closes behind them, she keeps staring, wanting desperately to know what they’re talking about. This might have all started because of her crush on Chrissy, but Robin’s nosy at heart, so even as the flames of her crush burn down to embers, she wants to know.

Steve had called her on Saturday, spilling all the details of what sounded like a truly horrible date as if it was some sort of fairy tale while Robin cackled in his ear. But he’d sounded buoyant with exhilaration, and all Robin had been able to think about was that he’s like her and he’s happy.

Maybe there’s hope for her, too.

Robin’s broken out of her reverie by a shoulder bumping into hers. “Should we help him?” Vickie whispers, and it takes Robin a minute to snap her eyes away from her vibrant green eyes to follow her gaze over to Steve.

All the losers he’s still pretending to be friends are jeering at him, Tommy H. going so far as to slip into Chrissy’s vacant seat so he can jostle Steve around with a decidedly unfriendly look on his face while Steve picks halfheartedly at his lunch.

Robin’s out of her seat before she can even think about it, palms slapping noisily on the table as she calls. “Harrington!” Steve perks up, metaphorical tail wagging as he meets her eyes from across the room. “Come help me win a bet!”

He’s up and out of his seat in a matter of seconds, leaving the remains of his lunch abandoned on his table as he trots over, slipping into the empty seat across from her while all the other band kids look at him like he’s got the plague.

“What’s the bet?” he asks, looking far more relaxed already than he had while surrounded by his supposed friends.

Robin kicks him under the table as she replies, “the bet was whether you’d come when you’re called.”

“Oh, hardy har har,” he mocks, kicking her right back until she links both her feet around his ankle and yanks him so he damn near falls off his seat.

“Poor little puppy,” she coos, reaching across the table to pat his head while he bats her hand away.

Vickie’s laughing from beside her; it rings through Robin’s ears like church bells. She gets stuck, staring at the pink of her cheeks, the red of her hair, the mirth in her emerald green eyes, hand still outstretched toward Steve’s hair.

He kicks her again, and she snatches her hand back, grateful for the intervention until she catches sight of the knowing look Steve’s shooting her. In retaliation, she grabs one of her carrot sticks and tries to shove it down his throat.

“Not a word, Harrington, or we’re through,” she hisses, finally succeeding in shoving the carrot into his mouth.

“You guys are so funny,” Vickie says, still laughing.

Steve smiles, carrot sticking out of his mouth like it’s a cigar until he bites into it with a snap, seeming oddly satisfied.

Chrissy and Eddie don’t come back, and by the time lunch is over, the rest of the band kids have finally stopped sitting there like scared lemmings, waiting for King Steve Harrington to attack. She’s sure they’ll soon learn what Robin already knows: the king is dead, long live the king.

She loves him so much, it’s almost stupid.

“So, Steve Harrington, huh?” Vickie asks, inexplicably walking out of the cafeteria with her even though Robin knows for a fact her class is on the opposite side of the school.

“I mean, yeah?” Robin replies, feeling her face heat from the inside out. “He’s just like, not what I was thinking at all, and maybe the best friend I’ve ever had, which is crazy—it’s crazy, because it’s Steve Harrington, right?” Her hands, she realizes with horror, are miming an explosion above her head while her mouth makes a weird, crackling explosion sound. “Who would’ve guessed?”

When she finally gets her mouth flapping under control, Vickie’s smiling at her, walking close enough that the sleeve of her sweater brushes against Robin’s bare arm.

“I don’t know, I always thought he seemed nice.”

Robin’s nodding along like one of those bobble head hula girls that boys are always putting in their cars, even though Steve Harrington isn’t nice. He’s an unmitigated bitch with a sacrificial streak a mile wide, but he’s not nice.

“He’s like a stray that I let into my house one time, and then my mom fed him, so now he keeps following me home,” her mouth says.

Vickie’s mouth laughs in return, so maybe it’s not all that bad.

Robin’s mind replays the angelic sound as she walks into her class, waving goodbye to Vickie as the other girl rushes away in a mad dash to make it on time to her next class.

God, Steve’s going to be such a bitch about this.

 ***

After Eddie’s talk with Chrissy, things shift.

Steve doesn’t sit with the jocks at all anymore. He and Chrissy, still joined at the hip like they really are dating, shift back and forth between the band geeks and the hellfire tables at lunch on Tuesday, prompting hushed whispers to filter through the entire cafeteria.

For his part, all Gareth says is, “does this mean you two’s weird feud over Chrissy is finally over?”

Jeff snorts chocolate milk out of his nose while Eddie laughs so hard he nearly falls off the bench entirely, only staying upright because Steve props him up.

“What?” Gareth demands, tearing into his chicken strips with a viciousness that betrays his ire.

“They’ll tell you when you’re older,” Doug replies despite having no idea himself.

Eddie loves his friends so fucking much.

By Wednesday, a clearly fed up Robin frog-marches the pair of them to the Hellfire table and plops down beside them.

“Munson, I can’t do this split custody thing anymore,” she says, making the red-head that’d followed her over giggle. “They’re too much of a handful.”

“Or maybe even two handfuls,” Steve replies, across the table at her like he’s not playing the most overt game of footsie right below it.

“Don’t be gross, dingus,” she scoffs, and Eddie’s mind goes galloping off with thoughts he shouldn’t be having in a room full of teenagers just waiting to push someone a few more rungs down the ladder.

“Are you guys coming back to Hellfire?” Gareth asks, clearly unable to stand not knowing what’s going on a second longer.

Steve looks at Eddie, brown eyes devastating beneath his lashes. “I’d like to.”

Eddie opens his mouth, ready to grovel at Steve’s feet to get him to come, to get him to keep looking at him like that, but then Robin cuts in with a sly, “you know this means you’ll have to come to Steve’s basketball games,” and he slams his mouth shut.

Steve grins, all seduction dropping off his face as he reaches across the table to give Robin a high five like they’re already on the fucking court. She slaps his palm hard enough that the sound of skin on skin damn-near shatters the sound barrier.

“We can sit together,” Jeff says, but he’s not even looking at Eddie, eyes trained on Chrissy’s blushing face. “It’ll be fun.”

Eddie groans and lets gravity overtake him, dropping his head to the table so suddenly that it would have hurt if Steve hadn’t put his palm over the spot just in time. Eddie turns his face so he can glare up at the other boy, but Steve looks so hopeful and excited that he has to look away again, burying his face into Steve’s palm.

“Fine, I’ll go,” he drawls, lips brushing against Steve’s hand with each word.

“What the hell is happening?” Gareth demands.

Much to his dismay, no one replies.

Things slide back to normal after that—Chrissy and Steve showing up to band practice and hellfire and lunch like nothing had ever come between them. But, it’s better now because Steve knocks their feet together beneath tables, and lets his hands settle on knees and stares just a little too long at Eddie’s lips.

It’s driving him crazy; he wants to reach out and touch, reach out and take.

But that’s not something that’s allowed. Boys are born in their own, invisible bubbles to keep them from touching other boys. Eddie doesn’t know how he never noticed it before, but he wants to shatter it like glass, let it cut up his feet if it means he can brush his lips against Steve’s.

There are all these rules left unwritten, but flung at their feet like slurs: don’t stand too close, don’t look too long, don’t dare to touch.

He wants to, though, thinks maybe in the confines of Gareth’s garage and behind the closed doors of the drama room he could, and it would be safe.

But they live in Hawkins, Indiana, and he’d like to live long enough to get the hell out of here.

So he lets their feet tangle beneath tables and doesn’t lean across them to have a taste, no matter how often Steve licks his lips.

Friday can’t come soon enough.

***

Robin’s been twitchy for days by the time she pulls Steve into their bathroom stall. He follows her dutifully, only laughing a little as she pulls a towel out of her backpack and lays it down before sitting on the floor.

“You plan this, Birdie?” he asks, settling across from her, the towel beneath them insulating him from the cold that’s seeping up from the floor.

Robin’s face turns a blotchy red like a blood vessel burst and dispersed beneath her skin. “Boobies,” she blurts, staring at him with beseeching eyes before she slaps her hand over her mouth, eyes wide.

Steve nods, his attempt at sage wisdom undercut by the way he has to bite his lip to stop from laughing at her. “Boobies, yes,” he chokes out. “I’ve, uh, heard of them.”

That’s all it takes for Robin to kick out at him. When her foot gets dangerously close to his crotch, Steve grabs her ankle and cradles her foot in his lap, rubbing the bone.

“Don’t make fun of me!” she whines, still trying to kick him.

“Okay, okay!” he cries out, chuckling as he holds onto her leg for dear life. “Sorry, just—what’s this about boobies?”

“Stop saying boobies!”

Steve uses his free hand to lock up his mouth and toss the invisible key into the toilet, smiling as the blush on Robin’s cheeks creeps up her nose and onto her forehead until she resembles an especially square tomato.

“Vickie—”

And Steve can’t help it, he really, really can’t. “Has nice boobies?” he cuts in, already grabbing at both her legs to stop her jackrabbiting feet from finally landing a blow to his balls.

“I hate you!” Robin shrieks, but even she’s laughing now as she writhes atop the towel, scrunching it as she earth-worm-inches closer to him so she can slap at his ribs while he’s defenseless. “Steve Harrington, you’re the worst thing that ever happened to me!”

She tries to say it with conviction, but Steve’s hands have crept beneath her crew socks, and his fingers are tickling against the inside arch of her foot, so her words come out more as shaky exhalations of laughter. He wiggles his fingers as she squirms away, kicking out with such reckless abandon that one of her feet breaks free and kicks him far too high on his inner thigh for comfort.

“Get your boy cooties off me!” she demands, and he does, pulling his hands out of her socks as she backs away until she’s leaning against the opposite side of the wall again, pouting at him. “You’re the worst.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies, feeling lighter than air. “Now tell me about Vickie’s girl cooties.”

Robin smiles bashfully, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging them. “Vickie doesn’t have cooties,” Robin replies, gaze distant. She looks wistful, enamored, hopeful. “She walked me to class the other day, even though I know it made her late.”

“Yeah?” Steve prompts, helpless to do anything but to smile back.

“Yeah,” she replies. “And maybe it’ll be like Chrissy again, you know? But you and Eddie…” Robin kicks out at him again, nudging her foot into his and then leaving it there, their soles pressed together. “Maybe there’s more of us out there than I thought.”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, absolutely in love with brave, hopeful, honest Robin, here in this stall, in this moment. “Maybe there are.”

They smile at each other, two queer kids in the bathroom together, seeing themselves in each other, again, and again, and again. Steve hopes they’ll always be like this, here, on the bathroom floor, finding hope in each other’s smiles. He has Chrissy, and Jeff, and Eddie now, too. But, Robin will always be the first person who looked at him and made him feel seen.

“We should get married,” he says, not thinking about it before it comes out of his mouth and hangs in the air between them, making Robin’s eyes bug out of her skull. “Just think about it! Eddie and I can’t get married, and neither can you and Vickie—”

“You’ve literally gone out with the guy once, and we don’t even know if Vickie likes girls yet—”

“—but we could totally just marry each other instead!”

The silence of the bathroom rings once Steve’s declaration is out there. Robin swallows, throat bobbing, eyes wide enough that Steve can see the little red veins near the back. Suddenly, Steve wonders if he’s stepped over some line he didn’t even know was there.

Before he can spiral too far, Robin launches herself across the space between them, knees bracketing Steve’s hips as she leans over and bites his shoulder, hard.

“Ow, Robin!”

“You’re insane, Dingus, you know that?” she asks, moving away from his shoulder to plant a kind of wet kiss against his forehead. “I’m sixteen, and you’re proposing in the boy’s bathroom.”

She rubs her hand against his head, likely fucking his hair up beyond repair, but he doesn’t even care because she kisses him again, this time on the top of his head.

“I meant like, later?” Steve says shyly.

He’s always fallen hard and fast, knows that about himself. It’s a fundamental law of the universe: gravity makes things fall down, the earth’s always spinning on an axis, and Steve Harrington puts his whole heart into people who don’t always give it back.

But Robin’s on his lap, kissing his head, and leaking what’s either snot or tears into his hair. “Alright,” she warbles, sounding embarrassingly soggy. “When I get a girlfriend, we can just be permanent beards for each other.”

Steve puts his arms around her and hugs her tight, mashing his face awkwardly into her neck as she laughs. “Grow old in separate bedrooms,” he replies.

“Gotta keep our cooties separate,” she says, like she’s not currently dripping on him on the floor of the boy’s grimy bathroom.

He just squeezes her tighter and gives her a little shake, like a dog with its favorite toy. “Tell me about Vickie,” he demands, but it sounds a whole lot like I love you when it comes from his mouth.

“Okay,” she replies, and it sounds a lot like I love you, too.

PART 21

[shysuccubusstuff]

Yandere! Mr. Scarletella:

Content: violence + stalking + voyerism + picture taking + masturbation + stealing + break of privacy + neutral reader + tampering with your food + noncon content + Stockholm syndrome. + mindbreak.

Summary: Human! Scarletella just wasn't able to stop himself from stalking falling in love with such an amazing person, God, he just loves stealing borrowing your stuff!

Note: So, I just had to write something about this amazing game, feel free to check it out and support the creator!!

SFW:

Yandere! Scarletella who fell in love since the first time he saw you around university, always being around those other guys... But he knew he just had to wait, yeah, wait for the right moment to approach you.

Yandere! Scarlatella who keeps randomly appearing on your classes from time to time. Oh, he isn't even in your course, but taking a few extra classes or even skipping some of his is no issue for him.

Yandere! Scarlatella who makes sure to get close enough so he can steal a few things from you while in class, sometimes it's your old pencil, other times he just takes whatever has touched your hand that class. That includes waiting until the university is closing to take your thrown away coffe cup (it still has your salive, so he has definitely kissed you, right?).

Yandere! Scarlatella who keeps on appearing on your daily life, you try to act as if the constant encounters are just mere coincidences, not like he even tried to strike up a conversation with you, so there must be no danger, right?

Yandere! Scarlatella who sometimes follows you back to your doorm. He always makes sure to walk quite far away from you trying to avoid freaking you out as he knows it would affect your daily routine.

Yandere! Scarlatella who climbs up the tree just to be able to catch a glimpse of your face while you're sleeping. You look so beautiful with your lips sligthly parted! ♡ You don't know it, but he has found a way of opening your window while you're sleeping. When he feels extra bold, he lets himself run his fingers through your soft lips feeling your warm breath is just enough to get him hot and bothered ♡.

Yandere! Scarlatella who begins to be feared by all your friends. They keep warning you about him, but it's not like you have any proof of what he's doing, such a shame :(( jk. He made sure to state his point, beating your poor friends to a pulp if he saw them getting a bit too close to you, he made sure to leave no visible marks, he doesn't want you worrying your pretty little head.

Yandere! Scarlatella who loses it after seeing that creepy long-haired guy far too close to you, if you wanted him to kidnap take you with him already you could've just said so dummy! Of course he wastes no time taking you from those filthy guys. You will be safe with him ♡.

Yandere! Scarlatella who breaks your poor mind after being trapped several months. Maybe being taken care of isn't so bad, right?

NSFW:

Yandere! Scarlatella who masturbates to your sleeping face, his tip being dangerously close to your lips. He can't stop imagining them surrounding his lenght...♡ He knows he has to keep patient but each day it becomes harder to act neutral.

Yandere! Scarlatella who takes photos of your clothed cunt for his collection. This collection includes many versions, from more tame ones (you smiling) to less... ethical ones (your sleeping face).

Yandere! Scarlatella who robs your underwear while you sleep. He just needs some... extra motivation. So he uses them, wrapping them around his cock as he keeps moving his hand up and down, making sure to stain your poor underwear with his sperm. He makes sure to clean them throughly before giving them back to you, although he sometimes wishes he could just cum inside the underwear you're currently using.

Yandere! Scarlatella who keeps on putting his own fluids on the stuff he feeds you. Most days he keeps it tame, deciding to introduce a bit of his salive on your food/drink, but when you behave extremely bad, he uses his cum, mixing it with your food together with some aphrodisiac, just enough to make you lose a bit of your sanity from not being able to masturbate.

Yandere! Scarlatella who keeps cameras all around his house so he can see you from different angles (all make you look like an angel ♡). He may or may not use those videos to masturbate, just maybe.

Yandere! Scarlatella who begins to use your mouth to release himself as a reward. You were just so eager to be touched! He just knew you were in love with him! It has definitely nothing to do with him being the only human contact for over six months! You let him use your mouth as he wants, forcing his cock into your throat, those sinful sounds filling his room as you try not to puke from his tip hitting the back of your throat.

Yandere! Scarlatella who slowly begins to mark your whole body as his. He started by marking your face with his cum, moving on to your mouth and then to your beautiful chest, the next step was of course cumming all over your low abdomen.

Yandere! Scarlatella who refuses to cum inside of you. He keeps controlling himself by saying that he wants to make sure both of you truly love each other... that's... well. Let's just say that he is just another level of delusion, but don't worry, he would never give up on his sweet and precious darling ♡ !

[endereies]

A TOUCH I CAN TRUST - MS

No Nut November - Day 24

NNN Masterlist...

-➤ A painting brings some old memories to light when you and Matt visit the museum (sexual assault mentions - tw)

You couldn’t take your eyes off it, like it was staring back at you. You knew why.

It was so perfectly manicured, each brushstroke airbrushed to perfection. A gorgeous woman stood slightly of centre, staring at the viewer. Long brown hair that flowed past her chest and down to her hips was neatly pushed behind her ears. Even so, it left a small gap where her collarbone showed through, the highlight evident with pure titanium white. Her dress was one similar to one in your own closet, a sweet ivory. A few plaid lines just below the sewed in corset. The only difference was that this was longer, stretching to her ankles. She didn’t feel beautiful, anyone could see that on her face. The vibrant white stood against the muted colours once more, presenting a single tear. Why cry when one is so beautiful, so modest.

The man made that clear. He was centred in the frame, stood proud and confident. He was meant to be there. His hair was less neat than hers, a few curls tossed around his face. Positioned behind her, his hands grip her hips, bunches of clothing bundled around his hands. He was a man of power, the sprays of purple in his suit showing it. Proudness shone over his expressions, a mindset that was common.

That’s when you saw it, the red tints over the wrong parts of them. It wasn’t obvious unless you looked close enough, the slight pink in her clothing. Like a poorly covered mistake. Mistake? It covered her neck too, thought to be poorly interpreted lighting. Maybe it was a poorly interpreted ‘no’. his hands were covered in it, too vibrant to be a shadow.

The closer you looked at her solemn face, the more it all morphed. Her features changed. A soft button nose turning sharp, the eye colour mixing with swatches, becoming muddy. He changed too. His hair wasn’t curly anymore which now illustrated all his features, all the wrong ones. It was too familiar to ignore. How could you ignore anything about the twin etched in oils?

Your own skin grew red as you kept scratching at it, the same areas he did, begging you to ‘sit still’. Swallows grew dry in your throat, making you almost gag on the dry feeling. You just couldn’t look away. The background was blank, but the painting moved so it couldn’t be avoided. Moving your hands away from your body didn’t help, they only went to your lips, a silent barrier between your imagination. The woman twitched through your glossed eyes. God, you hated calling her that. She had a name, she is a person, real or not. She may have been a creation, but don’t creations get given titles of meaning, of value? Why was she different? Why did her name have to be connected with her past?

You didn’t dare blink. If you did, not only would you cry but without a witness, she could get hurt. Don’t be ridiculous, she wasn’t real. You were. Who was watching you? Who was watching you, except him? He stared at you again, straight forward, taunting you.

Nothing helped you feel any better, not when he was there. You were too emersed in it to notice to hot tears that flushed your face. You understood the red, it tainted your own skin. Was it comforting that someone else felt the same as you?

“Sweetheart…?” Honey seeped into your ears, soothing the tremors like a sore throat. One look at the painting and he understood, he’d seen this piece before. It was a main headline on the museum’s website when he booked tickets here. He knew the meaning and it’s all too familiar comparisons. It was easy to piece from there.

Matt didn’t want to startle you with his touch, he learnt that quickly. He needed you to ease into it,  but it was hard if you didn’t know it was there to begin with. On a whim, he lightly feathered your arm, a place he didn’t know to be a trigger. Yet you still reacted.

Your body was jolted out of thought, the clench of your eyes making another tear fall. It didn’t matter that it was in public, it mattered that it was happening. Every part of you wanted to soften your body but it was just so stiff.

“Hey, breath, it’s just me, okay? Do you want to hold my hand.” Through the anxiety you sprung to grip his hand, your longer nails almost forcing into Matt’s skin. The curls of his hair returned, there was safety in Matt. He was a little shorter too. He wasn’t the same.

“Here, I just want you to relax” He didn’t dare touch you anymore than what you allowed, so he shifted his body so not only weren’t you no longer looking at the painting, but people also couldn’t look at you. “You’re safe, no one is going to hurt you.”

His comments just drew you closer to him, away from everything else. It was too much to try and focus on anything else. Why did you have to react so pathetically?

“I- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to...” You scrapped any coherent syllables together.

“I know sweetheart, it’s not your fault.” You moved a hand to wipe your face, freeing your sight.

“I thought I was better, thought I moved on…” your body shrunk into itself, a shell of what you were fifteen minutes prior.

Matt’s soul crushed itself at your words, they stung so deep knowing that was how you thought of yourself. “You are better, this whole process isn’t linear, I’d be surprised if it was. You’ve come so far, kid, and I’ve seen it first-hand. You’re so amazing and you’re so strong. But you don’t have to carry this weight alone. Why don’t be grab something to eat so you can relax?”  

“Yes please, thank you…” Matt replied with a squeeze of your hand, a silent sign of his devotion to you, a touch you could trust.

@melliflws @yuhayeee @st7rnioioss @sturn-bugz @bueckers @worldlxvlys @raysmayhem-72 @patscorner @y0urm4m @bernardsbendystraws @junnniiieee07 @luverboychris @jnkvivi @rac00ns-are-c00l4 @shorthairchris @colorthecosmos444 @anabethinking @zay-sturns @anyaa2s @emilyfaith2003 @zariyamitchell-blog @imjusthereforthesturniolosmut @sturniolosiphone @slutf4rmatt @flouvela @lovesturni0l0s @2prcntmilkluvr @ribread03

© ENDEREIES 2024

[yanderedrabbles]

Misery - Part Three

Based on Misery by Stephen King

Stuck in the mountains, you foolishly decide to drive through a blizzard. The man that drags you from your wrecked car brings you to his cabin and patches you up. But as the snow piles up outside, you start to suspect that your rescuer's intentions may be far from pure.

Previous Chapter

After Andy left, you managed to change out of your clothes. The flannel shirt he gave you was worn down just enough to feel cozy and the smell of his cologne still lingered 'round the collar.

You settled against the headboard and almost dozed off before he came back. He'd taken off his jacket and carried a pile of firewood in his arms. He dumped the logs in the fireplace and stood up, revealing a wife beater and arms thick with muscle. You were right about his strength - his body was just further proof of it.

"Sorry 'bout that. I should have brought some in last night but well..."

He turned to you, dusting his hands. "I got a good look at the situation outside. You might not wanna hear it but we're totally snowed in. Phone lines are down too."

"Oh. I didn't realise it was that bad."

You felt a dull sort of trepidation. Andy had been nothing but kind to you, but being stuck out in the mountains frightened you.

"Any idea when things will open up again?"

He sat down in the chair beside your bed and stretched out. For a second, the only thought in your head was how dangerous and lean he looked. His dog tags caught the light and winked at you.

"Hard to tell. We're far off the beaten path. Only folks nearby are the Roydmans and they're a good few miles off. 'Sides, snows too deep to drive through so even if they clear off the main road, we ain't getting there anytime soon."

You felt your heart sink. "Do you think I need to go to the hospital?"

He raised a brow and skimmed his eyes across your body. "It ain't looking pretty, but I reckon you can handle it."

"Hurts like hell though."

"Sorry princess, but it'll take a while for this sort of hurt to heal. Best I can do is give you something strong for the pain."

Your ankle still throbbed mercilessly and hearing him say that made you all the more aware of it. You searched desperately around the room for a distraction.

The room was much larger than you realised, with a panelled wood ceiling and big bay windows. From your position, all you could see was the sky.

It was comfortable and starkly clean. Oh God, was this his room or a guest room?

"I haven't kicked you out of your room, have I?" you asked, suddenly unsure of yourself.

He grinned and rubbed his jaw. "I reckoned you needed a nice bed far more than I did."

"Shit, I'm so sorry!" Your hands fluttered to your lips. You felt terribly guilty. "I can't imagine how much I've put you out."

He waved you away. "It gets awful quiet up here. You have no idea how nice it is to have company."

His eyes dropped to the shirt you were wearing. "Real nice."

He reached up to play around with his dog tags and you finally noticed the tattoo across his forearm.

"Semper Fidelis?"

"Always loyal."

He reached forward and let you inspect his arm. You took hold of his wrist and traced the tattoo with your fingertips. The words themselves were small and neat, but the rest of it was an intricate pattern of barbed wire that wound round his forearm.

"Did it hurt?"

"Tell you the truth? It stung like a bitch."

He was watching your face and when you looked up at him, your eyes met. Those eyes on the other end of a gun would have sent you running for the hills. You pitied the soldiers that faced off against him.

You let go of his arm and swallowed.

"When did you get it?"

He let his forearm rest next to your thigh.

"When I was deployed for the first time."

He was close enough that you caught the scent of his cologne and the sweet smell of pine from the wood he chopped.

"How did you end up in the Marines anyway?"

"I've got you curious, do I?"

You felt yourself blush. "Maybe a little."

"Hmm." He rubbed at his jaw, like he was trying to rub away a smile.

"Maybe I'll tell you about it someday. For now though, you need to take some tablets and get some sleep."

"But what about you? I've kind of colonised your bed."

"First thing you learn in basic is to sleep standing up. I'll be fine sleeping on the couch. 'Sides, I ain't the one who went crashing off the road less than a day ago."

He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a blister pack of tablets.

"These are Novril. They pack a hell of a punch, so I expect you to sleep through the rest of the day. Best thing you can do right now is rest, got it?"

"Yes sir."

He dropped two shiny white pills into your open palm.

"Good girl. Now drink up."

He passed you a glass of water from the nightstand. The tablets left a slightly bitter taste behind, but you hurt too much to mind it.

Outside, the snow started up again.

You smiled at him. "How am I ever supposed to repay you?"

He studied you for a second.

The shirt you borrowed was missing a few buttons near the top and gaped open just a little at your tits, but you were too drowsy to notice.

He grinned that slow, lazy smile of his. "I'm sure you'll think of something, princess."

You hadn't fully realised just how intimate this all was. You were wearing his clothes. Sleeping in his bed. Entirely reliant on him to take care of you.

He stood up and shook his head.  "You must be hungry. Any requests?"

"Nope. I'll take anything at this point."

His eyes flickered to your chest and then quickly away. "I can make you regret that real fast, y'know."

"Come on, you can't be that bad of a chef."

He huffed and shook his head. "You just sit pretty and I'll be back."

He returned with a bowl of oats sprinkled with brown sugar. His fingers brushed yours when he handed it to you and he lingered for a second longer than needed.

"I'm afraid it's all hospital chow until you're stronger. It's too bad - I make a mean flapjack."

You played around with your spoon and then gave in. Plain oats or not, you needed your strength.

Andy was quiet while you ate, watching the snow swirl across the window.

He tugged at his dog tags again and spoke up, "Does anyone know you're out here? A boyfriend, a sibling, anyone that knows where you were headed?"

You carefully put your empty bowl down on the nightstand. With the tablets, the pain was mercifully retreating. Not gone, never entirely gone, but a tiny bit more manageable.

"No. I wanted to surprise a friend but they don't know I'm coming."

You felt unnaturally drowsy for this early in the day. He must have noticed it because he stood up and gently pressed at your shoulders.

"Lie down and I promise you'll be out like a light soon enough."

You listened to him and found your eyes drifting shut as soon as you hit the pillow.

"Y'know." Your voice was muffled by your pillow. "You're a really great guy."

"Thanks, but save that until after you're better, yeah?"

He pulled the duvet higher and carefully tucked it around your shoulders.

"Not a soul knows you're out here?"

You hummed in agreement. You were almost entirely asleep and barely felt the hand that drifted across your forehead, gently pushing the hair off your face.

"Just you and me, princess."

You didn't hear it, but there was a strange note to his voice. Fear, maybe. Or longing. Hard to tell, with how similar they can be.

Next Chapter [coming soon]

Masterlist

Taglist

@pleorexicz @lem-hhn @mybelovedjupiter

[earthnashes]

SOOOOOOOO. Arcane season 2, huh? Now that a couple of days have passed for me to marinate I think I'm ready to share my thoughts on the season. This WILL contain spoilers though so if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching for yourself first!

So! Overall, as a standalone season I feel like there are things Arcane excelled at and things that have lost its way a bit. For starters and easily the best part of the show: it's visuals. I've heard some complaints about how much the show cost but like. Brother. When I think of super expensive shows, THIS is what I think it should look like. At no point did I question the budget because it's made abundantly clear every penny is used to best use it could possibly get. And it resulted in what I've been calling a modern greek statue: a marvel, an incredible tapestry of just about every art medium you can think of woven into something so beyond anything I've seen in animation I have a hard time finding the appropriate words to express exactly how much I'm taken by it. This is a clear example of what art IS man and jesus christ. It's mindblowing. I can't praise the show enough for that, like it's literally the best looking thing I've ever seen in media.

Same with the sound design and music, particularly in the battle scenes. Something about the energy behind the sounds, like the clacking of Vi's gloves as shes revving up for a punch, or the reverb of metal clashing, the sound of how blows connect. Even the little things, like the distinct difference between footsteps, or the glitch-like sound that spiders in the backround before shimmer or the arcane is utilized? Like CHEF'S KISS BRO. God almighty it tickles a part in my head.

Just the visuals and sound design is fuckin tasty bro. A solid 1000000000/10

So now Characters. Season 2 managed to take the existing characters and really built off of what was already there. In my opinion the characters, particularly the main players, received additional depth and evolution in a way that made sense in the long run, and the conclusions they reached in their arcs felt like a correct conclusion. However, it's how they got there and how fast they get there being one of my complaints.

For starters: the love triangle between Jinx, Vi, and Caitlyn. I didn't appreciate how, for the most part, it felt like it took a backseat in this season when it was one of the driving forces of season 1. It's not JUST them though: the relationships of every character kinda fell away to the wayside for the sake of getting through as much of the plot as possible, but we're on these three right now so:

-I feel like a PROPER recouncil between Vi and Jinx was sorely needed. There were hints to it, particularly in Act 2, but we were kinda left guessing and having to fill the majority of the gaps ourselves. One of Vi's driving factors as a character is her relationship with Jinx/Powder; her unable to accept that she's changed in her absence. Act 2 opened the door in allowing Vi to learn about Jinx as she is and come to terms that, even if she's changed, she's still her sister and there's a chance to bridge that gap. Vice versa to Jinx, particularly because of Isha's presence; I have to assume by becoming an older sister herself, she begins to get an understanding of Vi she previously lacked and that really could've been a stronger catalyst in her recounciling with her. Had the sisters actually got more on-screen time together and really let the hope between them breath, I feel like the ending would've had a much stronger impact.

-Cait/Vi, as much as I enjoy the pairing, felt a little too disjointed. Act 1 was the strongest showcase of their relationship; a sudden escalation driven by mutual grief and attraction and genuine care only to be torn apart immediately after because of Cait's blind rage. Cinema. Beautiful. But immediately after, we don't really see either character work off that much in my opinion. Vi does have a spiral that was very well shown, though I do wish we saw more of Pit Vi and her descent.

As far as Cait goes I would've preferred seeing her spiraling in her own way; with how the third episode of Act 1 ended, I felt like the show was gearing up to showcase how much she allows her hunt for vengeance cloud her mind and take over her life, to do things her mother would have not approved of. Like bro she was so SURE she wouldn't miss (immediately after missing every shot she took up to that point) that she was willing to potentially kill a child for it. Ain't no way she wasn't constantly frothing at the mouth for some time, wallowing in Vi's apparent "betrayal" and in the grief of her mother's death. I DO like how she is seen questioning her actions but it just feels like a tiny snapshot. Had they continued with showing her questioning what, exactly, the hell she's doing (while continuing to go on with her reign), then seeing not just Vi but also how her actions has widened the rift between Piltover and Zaun, her finally being able to break herself off would've felt more weighty.

"What are you shooting for, young Kiramman?" Grayson once asked. I can't help but feel like that line could have had some very strong carry-through into this season; not only giving a proper callback to Grayson as Cait's mentor(?) but also cement Cait's inner turmoil between blinded by revenge, but growing to dislike what she's turned into to get it.

And the sex scene. Particularly WHERE the sex scene occurred, immediately after Jinx heavily implied offing herself to "break the cycle". Vi isn't stupid. I felt like it was extremely clear what Jinx was alluding to, and it seemed like Vi understood that with how she asked "What are you gonna do?" She sounded terrified and desperate. She has SEEN Jinx be suicidal in this season first hand, was all but directly asked by Jinx to put her out of her misery herself. You're telling me she immediately bones the shit outta Cait right after Jinx scampers off and seems to forget it?? I dunno man. :/ I wouldn't remove the fuckfest, but in my opinion there were better places to put it.

And overall in terms of the characters as a whole, there was just too many gaps and too little time. Vander felt like he was underutilized, particularly his clear fight in trying to get a hold of his humanity; could've really used him to push the running theme of people can change, but they're still the same person at their very core.

Heimerdinger got shafted I feel like. He had such a strong impact in S1, only for his death to be... well. Forgotten.

Mel's storyline was way too fucking short. Love the powers she got but they ultimately felt unearned; I feel like we could've spent way more time on her learning to control it to some extent. Her whole shtick in being cunning and one step ahead of everyone (much like her mother) could've played a stronger part here too, particularly because I don't remember the Black Rose being explained much, so it would've been nice to see Mel put her strengths into play to find out for herself and give her a more active role in her ability to fight back.

Ambessa was anticlimactic and I didn't appreciate how she ultimately perished. I wanted her to die, don't get me wrong, but the war in general felt waaaaay too short and her death too easy. I appreciate they didn't go full evil with her, and made her an embodiment of Singe's quote of "doing horrendous things in the name of love", but it kinda felt like her initial plot of using hextech to fight the Black Rose (I could be wrong here but that is what it felt like she ultimately wanted) kinda got... forgotten?

Victor's progression is the only one that felt mostly natural in it's pacing. But again, with how unstoppable his robot pawns were, I felt like they really robbed the final battle of any significant weight to it; Zaun and Piltover, fighting as one against a common enemy. One of the biggest payoffs in the show... felt underwheming and, again, unearned.

And the new characters didn't really get much chance to do much of anything. Loris felt like an important parallel to Vander given how many times he was shown to look and sorta act like him. I felt like he had a bigger role to fill but just ended up bodied. Maddie, at least, had somethin interesting goin on but I feel like she could've been made more impactful in her betrayal.

Overall, a mid 5/10. It wasn't terrible, but it definitely needed more time to really flesh everything out.

And finally, the plot. I personally really enjoyed the overall plot and it's opposing themes to season 1. Whereas s1 felt like "love is undoing" and veered into tragedy, s2 felt like "love is healing" and veered into hope; the sisters learning to accept one another, Vi and Cait mending the rift between each other, Victor and Jayce finding their way back to one another. Isha giving Jinx purpose and a new perspective on life, Vander returning and, even if briefly, managing to regain his humanity for his daughters, the list goes on. It's such a beautiful contrast to season 1, but that is part of why I strongly feel like Arcane NEEDED one more season.

Season 2 was too focused on getting as much story out as possible that it didn't allow the characters themselves to push it forward, and it was weakened for it. Had there been three seasons, Act 1 and Act 2 could have been the entirety of season 2, and Act 3 could have been the whole of a season 3, where we get to see the total climax of everything that occurred. Given the rumors of there being a strong interest for an animated movie (and I have a theory that it might be to continue the story of Arcane in some way), that might help with some of the contingencies if it's true, but that's only if the movie actually comes to fruition.

As it currently stands, my biggest critique of Season 2 was switching focus on making the plot drive the story, when instead it really should've continued the trend from Season 1 in letting the characters drives the story forward.

_______

My meds is beginning to kick in and I'm getting drowsy from it so I'll leave it here for now! TLDR: Arcane Season 2 was mostly good. I have my fair bit of complaints and thoughts on how I'd personally structure everything, but a a whole, pretty good! It's one of those shows where I would personally recommend everyone watch from start to finish to at least experience it in its entirety yourself.

Season 2 Rating: 7.5/10

[rookinthecrownest]

Bedtime Stories For a Demon: The Day The World Disappeared, Part I (Lucanis x Rook Fanfic)

Rook is trapped in the Fade. Lucanis & Crew are determined to get her out.

Word Count: ~4500

Lucanis Dellamorte is a man with an excellent memory.

He can remember every part of his favourite childhood story, ‘The Joyful Wyvern’, with striking clarity. Reciting it in his head kept him sane in the Ossuary on some difficult nights.

He can remember the most minute details of a pages-long dossier for every job he has ever taken. It served him well to know every entrance, exit, chokepoint and weak point in case his plans went awry. Like that time he walked in on an orgy during a job in Minrathous, but remembered a note about a hidden servant’s entrance on the far side of the room he could sneak out of. Fail to prepare, and you prepare to fail, he would tell himself.

He can remember the meal preferences of every member of the Veilguard. It makes everyone’s life easier at dinner, even if it means he’s preparing up to three separate meals at times.

Yes, Lucanis Dellamorte has an excellent memory. And for much of his life, that memory was a gift.

Until the day Madeleina Mercar is sucked into the Fade, and he’s left with nothing but the image of her terrified face seconds before a Fade Rift swallows her whole, ripping her from the waking world with terrifying speed.

And he can’t forget.

He replays the moment in his mind on an endless loop.

Her green eyes – they only had a moment to widen before they’re gone from his sight. Her soft lips parted in confusion, then panic. No time to let out a cry for help. The ripples of raw magic as the Fade Rift collapsed in on itself sent everyone flying back, everyone but him. Spite’s wings unfurled and steadied them against the force. He braced himself, and walked forward, arm outstretched.

Only to pass through empty air.

First, came disbelief.

No, no, she’s not gone. She’ll pop back into existence in just a moment. She’s Rook, she always finds a way. But when the moments stretched on in deafening silence and Madeleina still hadn’t returned, white hot rage, fuelled by Spite’s power, quickly took the place of disbelief. The demon, who had become fond of Rook, barrelled forward and took over in a way he hadn’t done since Illario killed Zara in front of them.

NO. SMELL OF. LAVENDER AND ROSEWATER. NO THUNDERSTORMS OR SMOKE.

WHERE.! IS.! ROOK.! WANT.! ROOK.!

There is not much recollection beyond that. He thinks it took no small effort on Davrin and Bellara’s part to calm them down before they destroyed everything in sight. Zipping around the body of Ghilan’nain on purple-and-black wings as if he could whip the fallen God back to life and demand she bring Madeleina back. The Warden may have had to physically restrain them at some point – he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care, either.

Now, back in the Lighthouse, the void she left behind is palpable in every corner of this place.

He sees her reading on the couch in the library, long brown hair spilling over her shoulder, and brows drawn together in quiet contemplation. He sees her sneaking an extra dessert from the dining hall, one he made just for her because he knows she’ll want more. Chatting the hours away with Neve in her office, getting caught up on the latest comings and goings of Docktown – or, what’s left of it after the Venatori took over Minrathous. Excitedly debating magical theory with Emmrich and Bellara at dinner, or in the Professor’s study. She trips over herself when the topic shifts to something she has an interest in – her lips forming words faster than her brain can form them properly.

Then, the one that hurts the most.

Sitting across from him by the fireplace, telling a story. Face awash in soft blue light. Light green eyes sparkling with joy, crinkling because of her wide, warm smile. Her illusions dancing in the space between them. In his memories, she’s close enough to touch, instead of a world away. Close enough to kiss, if he had just leaned in closer. Lucanis tries not to remember the one time he did and pulled away at the last moment, crippled by his own fear and hesitation. The thought that he may never get to try again sinks his heart into his stomach, so he quickly turns to other memories.

And perhaps that’s why Lucanis has all but barricaded himself in her room for the past week. To surround himself with these reminders of her and take comfort in that because if he doesn’t, he’ll lose what little tether to sanity he has left.

He’s holding her gilded, silver hairbrush in his hand. It looks like the one from The Girl and the Glass Slipper. Something of hers to touch.

He lights the lavender-scented candles on the credenza. Something of hers to smell.

Casts his gaze over her room, eyeing her wardrobe – where a few pieces of clothing lie hanging on the open door. Then, to her magical contraption from her Circle days whirring and clicking autonomously on the round table by the window. Things of hers to see and hear.

Something, anything, to tie him to the remnants of Madeleina in this world. Proof that she was here, she was real. That he didn’t dream a saviour and a soulmate. Didn’t dream a love like the one in the romance novels he’s taken to reading with Bellara and Emmrich and Neve. A love like the ones in her fairy tales.

Lucanis can’t say how long he’s been holding onto her hair brush. Even at the best of times, telling the passage of the hours was tricky in the Lighthouse. Now, the days pass in a monotonous cycle, and there are no stories by the fire to measure the nights by. He grips the hairbrush’s handle tighter and exhales.

She’s here. Lost in the Fade, but not here. Not this part of the Fade.

Spite’s wrath crackles under his skin, begs and urges him to move. To fly off the edge of the Lighthouse and soar into the deepest recesses in the Fade to find her. The demon would take them to the edge of eternity to bring her back, and Lucanis would go to the edge of eternity for her. While he and the demon have struck an accord, in this moment in time, they are only unified by a singular thought:

We need to get her back.

Yet, where Spite demands action, Lucanis’ body doesn’t move. He has lain roots so deep in her chamber that even the strongest gale-force winds couldn’t dig them out. Lucanis feels the weight of her absence so deeply, it’s become an oppressive weight on his shoulders. It is a paralyzing loss – and inaction is something fundamentally contradictory to Spite’s nature. It doesn’t make for a quiet mind.

Lucanis Dellamorte is a man who has become entirely too accustomed to losing those he cares about.

His parents and aunts and uncles and cousins. For a time, his grandmother. His brother. Although Illario lives and walks free among the Crows (with every dagger at his back, albeit), he is lost to Lucanis until he is willing to face the uncomfortable concept of forgiving him. And that’s not something he knows he can even do, considering the magnitude of his betrayal.

Yes, he has lost much. Too much.

There is one thing that is not lost to him, however. It is the one thing of hers that he doesn’t yet have the strength to even look at.

Her father’s journal lays unopened, untouched on the table in front of the couch. Its faded leather is illuminated with flickering candlelight. Lucanis leans forward and steeples his fingers together. He stares at journal and releases a breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

This journal was everything to her. He watched on so many nights as she handled it with the care one might use with a newborn babe. She held it so gently. Treated each page as if it were made of glass.   

Lucanis takes the journal in his hands. He’s afraid to open it, like some terrible thing will leap from its pages if he does. Some secret he shouldn’t know. His thumb passes over the rough cover, and lets it linger.

Smells like. Rain in Spring. And mothballs. Like her. Sometimes. But Sharper. Older.

Gently, he pries the journal open to the first page. On the back of the cover, there is an inscription, written in an elegant hand.

Bedtime Stories for My Little Love.

Orpheus Arcturion.

He takes a deep breath and begins to flip through its contents. Most of the pages have been blotted out with bloodstains. They’ve dried a dark maroon, almost black. As if someone spilled a bottle of ink on the journal. In a kinder world, that is how the story of her family would have gone, but he knows better.

As he goes, he sees scrawled notes for stories – some familiar, some not. All as dear to him as the person who spent her nights bringing them to life so he wouldn’t be alone.

The Toy Solider. The Sleeping Princess. The Girl & The Glass Slipper. Swan Lake. Le Petite Sirène. Mother Gothel & The Rampion Babe…

Every title is like a mortar to his chest. His breathing comes deeper and quicker, as he is nearing the end of the journal, making out what he can.

Lucanis comes nears the end of the journal, he stops in his tracks when a few sentences scribbled in Madeleina’s familiar handwriting catch his eye. His breath hitches in his throat as he reads on.

The Charming Rogue & The Hapless Hero.

I know how to tell a good story but go figure I have no idea how to write one.

Bellara’s tried to help, but I don’t know if I can incorporate all of her suggestions (seriously, where are we going to find an inn with only one bed in a story like this?).

It starts with a Charming Rogue being held captive by a terrible, evil bitch Witch in an underwater prison. The Hapless Hero needs his help to slay two terrible monsters plaguing the land – I don’t know, is that too vague?

Ugh. I can’t do this. This is stupid. I’m stupid. Writing fairytales is harder than I thought.

I don’t know how to put the words – how to phrase it properly -.

Maybe I could try winging it with an illusion instead? The silly little fairy tale ending I want so desperately?

I’d make figures of us standing in front of a small cottage on a hill, somewhere in the country side. It has a tiled roof. I’ve painted the walls some obscenely bright colours – I’m thinking pinks, yellows, greens. There’s flowers of every kind in the window box. It has huge windows, to let the sun in from every direction. A nice spot on the windowsill for a cat to lounge on. I’d steal one of the strays from the Treviso market (I like the orange tabby who hangs by the lady who sells flowers). Dried herbs hanging from the ceiling for Lucanis (he will obviously be doing all the cooking). A small library for me so I can read all the books I’ve been meaning to, lost in their pages, but never lost alone.

A home. A little corner of the world just for the two of us, when this is all over.

Perhaps my magic will tell him what my lips cannot. That I love him. I have loved him for some time now.

 I need to ask for Bellara’s help after all.

I don’t know what I’m doing. This would be so much easier if the world wasn’t ending. It would… right?

Maybe, just maybe he wants to share that dream together.

He is my happily ever after.

I hope I can be his.

M. Mercar

14 Ferventis, 9:52 Dragon

Lucanis grips the edge of the journal tight enough that the pages crinkle under his thumbs. He can feel tears welling up in his eyes, and bites down on his tongue to keep them from falling. He doesn’t want to ruin the pages, but he can’t help it.

A small part of him knew how she felt. He felt it too. That thing they were dancing around since that first outing at Café Pietra. The thing that neither of them had a name for until it was too late.

She loved him.

Loves him.

He loves her too, of course – hopes with every fiber of his being that she knows it wherever she is in the Fade but curses himself for never saying it aloud. If – when, he finds her again, he swears he’ll say it a thousand times over, until the words are burned into her very being, incapable of being forgotten.

Spite doesn’t understand love. But like any petulant child, he understands the sting of having something taken away from him that he holds dear, in his own strange Spite-like way. The demon bristles behind his eyes, stirring his thoughts again.

Smells like salt and coffee. Spite bellows, Time to Find! Lavender and Sweet Things Again! Find Rook.!!

“Lucanis?”

He snaps to attention at hearing his name. Lucanis hadn’t even realized someone had come in. Once again, he proves himself a poor assassin.

Bellara’s gentle and hesitant footsteps grow louder as she gradually makes her way towards the couch. She’s holding her hands together and looks like she’s almost afraid to approach him. A pang of guilt reverberates in his chest at seeing her like that.

“Bellara” He says, rubbing the backs of his eyes, pretending it’s sleep instead of tears he’s wiping away.

“Hey…” she whispers, coming around the couch to stand in front of him. She rubs her hands together and looks to the ground. “I’m … I’m sorry to bother you but – “

“Please, Bellara” Lucanis runs a hand down his face, “Don’t apologize. It’s no bother” He hates that he’s made her feel the need to apologize for coming to see him.

“I …” She starts but looks unsure of how she wants to proceed. Bellara takes a deep breath and steadies herself. “Emmrich and I think we may have a way to find Rook”

Lucanis’ eyes widen. He reflexively clutches the journal tightly in his hands. “Really?”

Bellara is quick to add, “We don’t know that it’ll work but … but we think it’s worth a shot”

Lucanis’ heart beats so quickly in his chest he thinks it’ll leap out and run away at a moment’s notice. He blinks away a few errant tears and sets the journal aside.

His Elven friend rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet nervously, “We’ll umm… we’ll be in the library when you’re ready. Make sure you bring the journal”

“The journal?” He repeats, tilting his head.

Bellara nods quickly. “It … it’ll make sense, I promise. Just come see us soon”

And with that, she’s practically jogging out the door, leaving him alone with his thoughts, and the key to Rook’s salvation beside him.

~*~

He finds the Veilguard gathered in the library, in the main building of the Lighthouse. Emmrich and Bellara are engaged in heated discussion. Manfred watches curiously. Taash is sitting on the couch, sharpening one of their axes. Davrin whittles a small figure of a griffon, and Assan lounges by his feet.

The room quiets when he enters, and you could hear a pin drop. They all turn to look at him as he slowly makes his way to the group.

Davrin clears his throat to break the tension, “Lucanis… you’re here”

He nods to Davrin but remains quiet as he stands beside Emmrich.

“Bellara tells me you may have a way to find Rook” He says. “Let’s hear it, Professor”

Manfred tilts his head at the mention of her name. “Rook” He hisses.

Assan perks up at her name and scans the room upon hearing it, one ear flopping wildly as he looks for her. Whines softly when he realizes she isn’t coming. Davrin gives the young griffon lying at his feet a soft, reassuring pat on the head.

“It’s alright boy, we’ll find her” The Warden smiles, and the Griffon settles again.

Emmrich’s expression softens at Manfred, before turning back to Lucanis.

“It’s… an idea.” He says, hesitantly. As if trying to measure his expectations, “We have no clue if it will actually work. And making it work will be exceedingly difficult”

“’Exceedingly difficult’ is becoming a specialty of ours” Davrin murmurs, as he blows some wood shavings onto the floor.

Bellara cuts in next, “We think we can temporarily weaken the Veil enough to pull her out” She pauses and runs behind the couch where Davrin and Taash are sitting. With some effort, she pulls out an Elven-looking contraption, with golden concentric rings and a blue crystal orb in the center. Bellara heaves it on the table in the middle of the room with a soft clank.

She wipes her forehead and lets out a breath, “This is a Resonance amplifier. We use them to stabilize weakened areas of the Veil in Arlathan forest”

Emmrich steps forward and points a finger, “Theoretically speaking, if Bellara can reverse the polarity of Resonance Amplifier’s magical effects, we can use it to weaken the Veil rather than strengthen it. We have a few of them, on loan courtesy of Strife and Irelin. Mages from the Veil Jumpers are on standby to help, but …”

Of course there’s a but.

“But?” Lucanis asks, folding his arms over his chest.

“She’s in the Fade. She could be anywhere” Taash frowns, pausing their work with the whetstone.

Emmrich nods, “Astutely observed, Taash. We can’t just go around weakening the Veil all over Northern Thedas. We could be searching for an eternity”

“How does the journal play into this?” Lucanis finally decides to ask the question that’s been burning in the back of his mind since he walked into the library.

At said question, both Bellara and Emmrich exchange nervous glances. It is Bellara who decides to speak next, after a tense moment of silence.

“We need something of hers that she has a strong connection with” Bellara explains, “The hope is that it would act as a beacon for her in the Fade and guide her home”

“Theoretically, of course” Emmrich adds quickly.

“Theory is better than nothing, Professor. If you think you can pull this off” Lucanis holds the journal out to Emmrich, “Do what you need to”

To his surprise, Emmrich gently pushes the journal back into his hands, “My dear Lucanis, it won’t be quite that easy”

Lucanis clutches the journal tightly to his chest and his brows draw together, “What do you mean?”

Emmrich hesitates for a moment and sighs.

“We are fortunate indeed to have a companion who hosts a being that can freely traverse the raw Fade”

Spite.

The demon feels like a bird fluffing its feathers in the back of his mind. Spite shakes his plumage loose, ready to take flight.

Find! ROOK! Me! YES!

Spite once pulled Rook into the Fade to help them. It’s only fitting he should pull her back out.

“That being said” Emmrich continues, his voice sombre. “It would require us to effectively destroy the journal in this world, that Spite might absorb its essence in the raw Fade and use it to find her. I know that journal means a great deal to her. I can only imagine the weight of its loss”

The pregnant pause after his explanation suggests he wants to add something else but thought better of it. The words left unsaid form in his thoughts.

I know it means a great deal to you as well.

He considers Emmrich’s words. Lucanis looks down at the journal. It was the only thing left tying her to her family. An entire lifetime before she was Madeleina Mercar. Before she was Rook. He grips the journal tightly and clicks his tongue.

“And you’re sure nothing else will do?” He asks quietly, but he already knows the answer.

Emmrich shakes his head. “It has to be something she has a deep, personal connection to. Something that…” He waves a ringed hand, and the soft clinking of his golden bangles fills the air, “Something that effectively embodies who Rook is – past and present. To find her in an endless, ever-changing landscape like the Fade, it has to be tied to her in a way no other object in her possession is”

Bellara’s voice is gentle, careful, as she adds, “Spirits … demons, are attracted to powerful emotions. For Spite to become an effective anchor and beacon, he needs to merge with something she’s going to react strongly to. If Spite has an attachment to the object too, we… well, we think it’ll work even better”

Lucanis runs his palm over the tattered, faded leather. This journal saw him and Madeleina through so many nights together. Memories come flooding of her as she flipped through its worn pages, bathed in the warm light of the fireplace. How her eyes lit up with mirth when she landed on the story of the night. The scent of lavender and rosewater. The warmth that settled in his chest. The comfort that she brought him. How he came to crave her company on the nights they couldn’t be together.

This journal was her story. Their story. To lose it forever…

Lucanis sighs.

If this journal is the key to bringing her home, to giving him another chance to say the words left unsaid – he has to try. He would take her anger and her tears at the loss of the journal. At least she would be around to be upset over it.

He looks back up at Emmrich, barely holding back tears.

“How do we do it?” He asks, voice hitching.

Emmrich puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and gives him a warm smile. “All you have to do my friend, is go to sleep. Bellara and I will handle the rest. When you wake, Spite should have her location”

“This better work, Emmrich” Taash rises to their feet, axe in hand. “We lost too much already.” They didn’t have to elaborate. Taash had not taken losing Harding well. The team was afraid they might burn down the Lighthouse at one point. Eventually, they retreated to their room to work out, almost compulsively, as if they could punch the grief away. The fire-breathing Qunari made for the stairs to their room and was gone moments later.

“It’s a sound plan” Davrin added thoughtfully, nodding his head. “Let’s hope it pans out”

Assan gave an assenting squawk, before hopping up on all fours and bounding for the door.

“Hey!” Davrin calls after him, rising from his seat. Knife and wooden figurine in hand, he starts jogging after the Griffon trying to escape the Lighthouse. Manfred decides to give chase as well, because why not.

“Get back here, boy! It’s not dinner time yet!” Davrin cries, as the doors close behind him.

After Davrin and Taash make their unceremonious exits, the three of them left in the library start planning the ritual.

~*~

Spite Dellamorte has not been a demon for very long, and there are many things that are new to him. Chief among them, is his fascination with the young woman named Rook.

He has heard others call him Determination. He supposes he understands that well enough. One can be quite determined to be spiteful, after all. And he’s seen Rook possess determination in spades. The way she barrels through every obstacle in her path and relentlessly keeps going is something the demon thinks he could watch forever. Something he wants to watch forever.

Spite isn’t sure if living among the mortals of this world has changed him, but he is certain absorbing Rook’s journal did.

When he merged with her journal, he was bombarded with a flood of emotions and memories that were entirely foreign to him – because they were not him. They were hope, joy, love, compassion, sadness and so many more. But not Spite.

It was confusing and overwhelming. If he had a mortal body, he would have felt what Lucanis called ‘a massive headache’.

Spite Dellamorte stands in the Fade and begins his search for their Rook.

What he has heard the others refer to as The Black City hovers, much like the Archon’s floating palace, off in the distance. An imposing maw of sharp, jagged angles cutting the eerie green dreamscape of the Fade. No matter where he moves, he never gets closer or farther away.

He doesn’t linger on it, and instead, places a hand over his chest and feels for the piece of the journal resonating within his being. A faint blue light, mixing with his own purple glow, erupts outwards. Waves of resonating magical energy ripple out into some unknowable distance, and all Spite can do is wait until one of them comes back.

He stands in his lonely corner of the Fade. Emotions and memories that are not his own tumble back and forth in his thoughts, swimming around each other until they form new, unknown things he cannot understand.

Spite doesn’t know how long he’s been standing in his corner of the Fade, when he finally feels something pulling him in a certain direction. A ripple of that same magical energy, harmonizing with his own, drags his feet towards it. The demon does not have the patience to wait.

His wings unfurl and he flies, as fast as he can, towards that pull. He follows it through hordes of demons and spirits, with a fierce determination to find Rook. Spite is certain he’s never flown this fast in his short existence.

Time does not exist in the Fade, so he is unaware for exactly how long he has been flying. He follows the pull of the magical energy until he comes to a new landscape within the Fade. The Black City hovers in the distance as it always does.

There is a black void of nothingness vibrating in the middle of the landscape. That is where he feels the pull most strongly. He surmises that is where Solas has trapped Rook. Spite takes in his surroundings.

Tall, peaked mountains to one side. Bordered by a forest of high sycamore trees. Ruins of destroyed buildings. A lone house on the hill, decimated by demons. He’s seen this before. Lucanis has seen this before.

In one of her stories.

Arvanitum.

She’s back home.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Big thank you to @thewardenisonthecase and @teawithshakespeare for helping me with this chapter. Writing out the mechanics of how the team would actually find Rook in the Fade was tricky. Originally I wanted to write this all as one fic, but then I realized it would be like 20k words. Hopefully I'll get to the next part soon.

This is meant to be a bit of a standalone story within the larger 'Bedtime Stories for a Demon' series. I've intentionally left a lot of things vague because I technically haven't gotten to this part yet in the main fic. I might have to rework a few things depending on how things go.

As always, thank you for reading! I love seeing your comments, reblogs and tags <3 I appreciate every single one of you who has taken the time to do so!

[hayatoseyepatch]

What are the windbreaker boys' doing for no nut november lol

OOO HOW MUCH FUN IS THIS???

Also anon I am so so sorry how long this took me to get to, with my hiatus and the big sad I’m getting through everything now thank you for your patience MWAH.

No nut November for the windbreaker boys, I think can be broken up into a few categories (I hope it’s okay I did this kind of format I just wanted to include ALL the ones I could). SMUT under the cut.

Failed (lasted a week or less):

This man started it to join in on the challenge. He was absolutely so confident so absolutely CONVINCED that he could make it the whole month without finishing. However, when you walk into your shared living room in nothing but one of his shirts and a pair of panties he can swear that he could hear his heart racing in his ears. He swore you never looked more beautiful than you had in that moment. He felt faint, felt like he hadn’t had your taste on his lips in months (it had been three days). He craved you. It was then and there that he realized he made a grave mistake, he knew there was no way he was going to make it out of this month alive.

He tries, he tries to rush off to the bathroom, flushing his body with cold water or thinking of the most un-sexy things that he could, but he felt like it was putting a bandaid on a bullet hole. His cock ached, he craved you far too much. As he stood under the cold water of the shower, he wondered what he was doing this for. Some bragging rights? Yeah. Fuck. That. He is leaving that shower and walking right up to where you stood, not caring that his skin was cold and damp. His lips attaching to the skin of your neck in frenzied kisses.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you doing your challenge?”

Your words fell on deaf ears, any further ones would be silenced as his mouth claimed your own. Tongue invading your mouth before you had a chance to even string a coherent thought. Large hands hoisted you up on the counter, slotting himself between you parted thighs to deepen the kiss. One hand steadying you with a grip on your hip, the other still placed on your thigh to pull you as close as possible to his body.

“Fuck that dumb ass challenge, cant go another moment without having you, baby.”

(HAJIME UMEMIYA, Akihiko Nirei, Choji Tomiyama, Taiga Tsugeura, Teruomi Inugami, Minoru Kanuma & Kanon Banjo)

Failed (almost made it to the end of the month):

He was confident, too, had already lasted over half the month. Maybe even into the third week of the month. He could see, though, how it was affecting you. The way he had seen you rubbing your thighs together, the way you had curled around him in your sleep, you were being deprived of pleasure. That because of a challenge he decided to participate in, he inadvertently has force you to participate in as well. So he made the decision, confident enough in the control he had to at least pleasure you, without finishing himself.

So here he was, settled between your thighs. His tongue lapping at your clit, with two fingers buried deep within the gummy walls of your cunt. Gods, how had he gone without you this long? His mind was hazy, lost in the euphoria of tasting you on his tongue for the first time in weeks. Missing the delicious squelch that your wetness made when he pulled his fingers inside your pussy. So lost in the way you tasted on his tongue. The way your walls hugged his digits. The way your thighs wrapped around his head. He was so lost in you that he hadn’t noticed the way in which his hips began to rub against the plush mattress beneath him.

“Fuck baby, taste so fucking delicious.”

His words came out muffled into your cunt. Mouth greedily devouring your cunt as if he needed you like the air in his lungs. He craved this, craved you. His ministrations were making his own head fuzzy, so pussy drunk he couldn’t feel the coil tightening in his stomach. Couldn’t realize that the way he was rutting his clothed cock into the mattress below was bringing him to release. He was so sensitive after weeks of having not even a touch to himself. Before he realized what was happening he was spilling into his boxers at the same time you were riding out your own orgasm on his tongue. After you both come down from your high  and he realizes what he’s done, all he can think is “well I already lost, might as well make it worth it”.

(Haruka Sakura (only participated because he heard 'challenge' and that was it),  Jo Togame, Hiragi Toma, Tasaku Tsubaki, Shuhei Suzuri, Yukinari Arima, Yuto Kusumi, Uryu & Seiryu Sakaki)

Succeeded:

These men are extremely strong-willed, able to make it to the end of the month. Though not without some challenges, the was you had tried to make him crack throughout the course of the month did not go unnoticed. The short skirts, wearing his clothes around, foregoing the use of panties with making him aware of such, and overall just sauntering around in any state of undress within the walls of your apartment. He’s been using all those moments, committing them to memory for when the month was over. So when December 1st is here you better hide. Because the moment the clock hits midnight on December 1st he is on you before you can so much as think to try and escape him.

“You thought you were so cute this past month, didn’t you baby? What was that, hm? I can’t hear you.”

You were unsure how he expected you to be able to utter a single syllable. Not with the way his cock was bullying your insides. Not with the way your knees were pressed to your chest, they had at one point been over his shoulders, but with the way he took to devouring your mouth with his own they were placed as they are now. He didn’t know how he could have even succeeded in this, not with the delicious way you felt suffocating his cock with your cunt. He most certainly would never be doing this again. Never depriving you both of the pleasure of losing yourselves in each other’s bodies. Especially not with the way you called his name, looking up at him with half-lidded eyes so full lust like he was the only person to exist.

Yeah, no, he was never doing this again.

(HAYATO SUO, Ren Kaji, Mitsuki Kiryu, Saku Mizuki, Kota Sako, Akihiko Miyoshi & Kanji Nakamura)

Did not try at ALL:

There was nothing that he could think of that was stupider than this challenge. Couldn’t think of why on earth he would deprive not only himself, but you, of physical pleasure. He could not fathom why he would miss out on the way your gummy walls felt when they clung to his cock with a vice grip. Watching the way your eyes rolled into the back of your head as he fucked into your tight cunt. Or the way your mouth felt wrapped around his cock, the tears coating your lashes as he fucked that cute little throat. So, yeah, he thought it was stupid. He relished in he tortured looks of his friends as they struggled through the month, all while knowing he was going to be going home and spilling inside you the moment he could.

He shook his head, wondering if any of these guys even so much as asked their partner if they wanted partake in this dumb ass challenge. If they were okay with the decision to deny their pleasure from their partner for an entire month. All he knew was that wasn’t something he would every do to his partner. Instead when he got home, he trailed kisses up your spine, before settling in the crook of your neck. Being sure to leave a mark in his wake that would let anyone who saw it know that he both of you couldn’t care less about the challenge. His hands gripping firmly on your hips, rocking you back on him, eyes glued to the way his cock disappears within your depths.

“Fuck baby just like that, doing so fucking good for me.”

He emphasized each word of his sentence with a snap of his hips angling to hit deeper with every thrust. Head thrown back as he lost himself in the way you felt. Hips continuing their steady pace, chewing on his bottom lip as he fucked into you. Hips slapping against yours the wetness of your skin causing it to echo against the tile walls of your shared bathroom. He lets his fingers finally curl around your throat squeezing just enough to make gaining air flow a bit difficult as the other's thumb begins rubbing slow dragging circles against your puffy clit. The way your walls began to spasm around his cock made him all the more satisfied in his choice, because there was no way he’d be missing out on this for a whole month.

(YAMATO ‘why the fuck would I go an entire month without touching my partner’ ENDO, Haruka Sakura, Takiishi Chika (thinks it is stupid and does what he wants when he wants), & Kotaro Sugishita.)

[anghraine]

I'm trying to redirect my political thoughts from my fandom escape blog again, but I found something interesting enough that I thought I'd talk a little about it.

Occasionally I choose suffering (looking at the more granular 2024 exit poll breakdowns rather than the summaries that I mostly don't trust much at this point). Anyway, I did find something intriguing, if not particularly surprising, in the CNN exit polls, which were done in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin with a sample size of 22,914 voters.

(I mention the specific states forming the sample because this pretty notably excludes any blue states while including some reliably Republican ones.)

Anyway, most exit polls including CNN's let respondents identify their place on the US political spectrum: conservative, moderate, or liberal (reminder that "liberal" in US usage can be a pejorative for "less leftist than me" but also a shorthand for "radical leftist" but also for "anyone who doesn't seek a cishet white Christian ethnostate", but also can be a more neutral synonym for progressives and/or leftists and is often used that way, as here). So you can look at the election results for each of these ideological factions and what share of the overall sample size they represent.

The interesting thing: this "liberal" category accounted for very similar proportions to 2020 of the overall vote in the sample (24% in 2020, 23% in 2024—a difference well within the margin of error of exit polling). There is no need to explain liberals/leftists staying home in 2024: at least in terms of proportions of the overall electorate, they didn't. Just under 1/4 of voters in 2024 were liberals or leftists, just as in 2020.

Okay, if the most leftwards faction of the US political spectrum actually formed a similar proportion of the electorate, then who did they vote for?

Harris. In CNN's own exit polls from 2020, 89% of this faction voted for Biden, and (surprisingly!) a full 10% voted for Trump. God knows what motivated that 10% Trump share after four years of his hellscape of an administration at the height of COVID, but in any case, that support cratered in 2024. 91% of this group voted for Harris and only 4% for Trump. It's an estimate, but it looks like these very peculiar Trump voters had enough of him in 2024 and around half either voted third party this time or for Harris.

So which faction is Trump's victory coming from? Further consolidation of the far right?

In part, yes! 90% of conservatives voted for Trump in 2024, vs 85% in 2020—likely, some conservatives who voted third party or even for Biden in 2020 came "home" this year. However, conservative turnout was actually a little down in 2024, proportionally speaking: conservatives dropped from 38% of the sample in 2020 to 34% in 2024.

But there's one more major faction in all this: "moderates" or centrists. To be clear, we're talking about the US version of centrism, given that this is a US organization polling US voters about US politicians, not "Bernie would be center-right in Denmark" or whatever. This moderate faction jumped from 38% of the overall sample in 2020 to 42% in 2024, and they swung hard towards Trump, though Harris still won a plurality of them. In 2020, 64% of moderates voted for Biden vs 34% for Trump. In 2024, 57% of them voted for Harris vs 40% for Trump—that is, the Democratic lead among centrists dropped precipitously from +30 to +17.

Tl;dr—ideologically speaking, this data suggests that Trump owes his victory to gains among both right-wing and centrist voters rather than some faction of would-be leftists or progressives apathetically staying home or voting third-party or otherwise deserting Democrats (because they're insufficiently radical or for any other reason).

Oh, and if you're curious as to how this compares to CNN's 2016 exit polls, I also checked those! Harris's 84-point lead among the most leftwards faction is a significant improvement from HRC's 74-point lead in 2016. Trump also got 10% of that group in 2016, as in 2020, so it's this campaign—not Hillary's or Biden's—that managed to eat into whatever the hell is going on with that group.

Harris's +17 with moderates is actually a slight improvement on Hillary's +12 in 2016. Biden's jump to a +30 lead among centrists in 2020 represented either a backlash against Trump from centrists, or Biden's own rapport with that group, or some mysterious issue some of those voters had with both HRC and Harris (I wonder what it could be!!), or some combination thereof. Regardless, there are a lot of actual ideologically centrist voters in the USA and not just would-be leftists who haven't heard the good news of Marx yet. And Trump has an iron grip on the right wing at this point: he beat Hillary with conservatives by +65 in 2016, then beat Biden with an even larger margin of +71, then leapt to a 81-point lead over Harris with right-wing voters this year.

[dnickels]

I don't think Gibson gets enough credit for how skillfully he extricated himself from the sodomy allegations. Long post to follow ->

The evangelical mindset is "we are constantly under siege from both invisible powers and our fellow man (and even one's own thoughts), every waking moment is nonstop spiritual battle" so Gibson framing himself as too weak to refuse advances (without spiritual backing, naturally) is a brilliant play for Irving's own anxieties while also putting him in the position to be the shepherd rescuing one of his flock. A direct appeal to the Victorian bourgeois savior narrative, expertly played. He's given Irving a script so familiar and one he's so eager to act out he doesn't for a second question its veracity.

And now we depart to the realm of pure speculation (oh boy my favorite) but I always wonder what exactly Gibson told him, and how much it actually corresponds to what we hear Irving scold Hickey for. I wonder if something got lost in translation (Irving heard what he wanted to hear which is not quite the same as what's actually being said). I think Gibson is perfectly capable of shopping Hickey to save his own skin no question, but that scenario doesn't quite jive with how surprised/concerned he is that Hickey and Irving apparently had a chat about the situation. Surely Gibson didn't think he could say "I was coerced" without some kind of follow-up? It could be a feint, he's just acting to try and keep Hickey from holding a grudge (I think Gibson knows with brutal clarity that you do not want to be on Hickey's shitlist) but his reaction reads to me like he's seeing his fib start to spiral out of control. Of course, one of the grand themes in Terror is people not being as smart as they think they are (or, more charitably, that even well-conceived plans often shipwreck on the shoals of human unpredictability) so it could just be an example of a reasonable plan blowing up on contact with an unreasonable person, as individuals are a universe unto themselves and truly unknowable to each other. Or maybe he really didn't think Irving would do anything, because he asked him to keep it quiet? Maybe that's how it usually goes, everyone agrees to keep it quiet-- sobering thought.

Still, it intrigues me to think about Irving as the wildcard in Gibson's plan, not Hickey-- bringing baggage to it that Gibson didn't include in his calculations. I wonder if Gibson heard the lecture, how many of his own words would he recognize? I can see the shape of a communications breakdown, where a tactful "the temptation was overwhelming, I couldn't resist him" becomes "he used overpowering force" or "I didn't come forward because I was afraid" becomes "he threatened me into silence". Not unreasonable assumptions for Irving to make, honestly, I just think its interesting to play with the idea that they are assumptions and not part of Gibson's ass-saving explanation. Just no accounting for what happens in the pressure-cooker of the evangelical brain!

Obviously the darker read here is that Irving can't understand a messy gay situationship despite spending years at sea is because he is homophobic (while desperately refusing/denying/fighting his own desires) or was himself party to coercion, either towards himself or someone else.

I just think its interesting to think of how it might have played out if Gibson and Hickey been surprised by say, Hodgson instead-- who might have given them a stern "I don't want to catch you two not at work again" but otherwise let the matter slide, or Little, who I can see loading them down with donkeywork but refraining from escalating because doing so means talking to Crozier and Oh God, Please No.

I keep coming back to the question of whether or not Gibson was ready/intending to burn Hickey as badly as his lie makes it seem. While I think he's perfectly capable of it, but it seems like such a risky move when his confession (owning what Irving has no real proof of, I'm more familiar with the early 19th century legal situation on land but the standard of proof for sodomy specifically was actually pretty high) could just as easily backfire on him rather than exonerating them both. We only have Gibson's word that he acted for their mutual benefit, and even if he's telling the truth it seems like stepping on a landmine: no one seems to think Hickey would hang on his accusation, so he's going to still be around after a potential flogging and presumably pissed off. Obviously its a bad situation all around but I am so curious about his own risk/reward accounting. For me, I really enjoy imaging him trying to play master manipulator to Jirv who is absolutley not a player and mostly lets Jesus call the shots. Very funny to me to be so ambitious and skillful and willing to play the Great Game but it all comes to nothing due to human folly. Thesis moment.

[qm-vox]

Man Who Talk To God Have Difficult Life - Playing Clerics In D&D

(St. Nokta Kinslayer, whom you'll meet further down in the article. Art by the esteemed @druid-for-hire who quite frankly cannot be thanked enough!)

Guess who's back motherfuckers. When they ask how I died, tell them, still angry. After the paladin article I asked around about classes to cover "next" and got a lot of requests; rogue, warlock, sorcerer, so of course I have elected to be a good friend by losing my will to live for months on end and then doing none of those. Let's talk Clerics, shall we? I'll not lie to you, this is going to be an angrier article than the paladin one, in no small part because it's inevitably going to go into contentious ideas like alignment, fantasy religion, and others that the player base has been knife fighting about since mammoths still walked the Earth. There are going to be moments when I look y'all in the eyes and say with my metaphorical human mouth that the problem is you Doing It Wrong, and I can only ask that you hear me out. Not to assign you homework about my fuckin' cleric article or anything, but the one I previously did about The Many may be helpful here as well. There's going to be a bit of a focus on D&D 5e here, and I'll be frank about that: most people are playing 5e these days, and as I'll be arguing further down, Pathfinder's take on Clerics and more broadly on faith are a worthless poison that actively worsens the world.

This article's title is drawn from Small Gods by the esteemed Sir Professor Terry Pratchett. As always, credit goes to Afroakuma for teaching me a great deal of the examples I'm going to give, though citing specific sources are going to be difficult as many of the books in question have been out of print for decades and I am neither an academic nor a machine.

Now for the obligatory Content Warnings. We're looking at discussion of fantasy religion & comparisons to real-world religion, violence, discussions of atrocities such as torture, desecration of the dead, and destruction of culture, as well as traumatic deaths/backstories for the sample clerics at the end. As mentioned above, there is also going to be some alignment discourse. You have been warned; do as thou wilt.

Without further ado, let us begin with...

O Mighty Smiter - Clerics Through D&D's History

We begin the obligatory text wall.

Clerics have been here since the beginning. They were around back when "Elf" was a class, and while their history is complex it has, eternally, been colored by the bit where Cleric has an inherent identity problem. In many ways it is, as a class, too broad, so wide-open that getting something coherent out of it is an exercise in frustration or even futility. It'll be easier to talk about what Clerics aren't than what they are, and oh boy, will I. A brief note here: while Druid is going to come up in the context of 1e and 2e, and again a bit later when I start talking about priests (yeah, that's a separate conversation, we're gonna get there), this article is not otherwise dedicated to Druid. I'm gonna need a significant amount of whiskey for both me and my priestess before we god damn go there.

AD&D 1e and 2e: Deus Vult - Do the world a favor if you ever pass near Gary Gygax's grave: piss on it. Ol' Gary G rooted Cleric in his classic blend of obsession with medieval ideas and piss-poor research, invoking many myths about priests of the Crusades and applying them as a one-size-fits-all vision of war-clergy of Every God. He would personally run into problems with this in his own writing before he got out of the game, and rather quickly at that, as he tried to write faiths whose imagery and ideals did not fit the Crusader Priest ideal, but since he was, and I cannot stress this enough, a hack with all the morals and emotional intelligence of mustard gas, he never quite solved those problems for himself. I'll hop off my screed now, I just want this said up front, especially since it's the fundamental evil that chases Cleric to this day.

The O.G. Cleric was described as a melee combatant that took a close second-place to Fighter in that arena, with proficiency in heavy armor and a variety of useful weapons, though they were forbidden from using "edged weapons that spill blood" (there's those Crusader myths). Random fun fact, the very first incarnation of Cleric only had spells up to 7th level, but the level tables for their class went up to level 29 or so, and man, ain't that just wild. As your Cleric gained levels they also became more highly placed in the church of their god, eventually hitting High Priest and just kinda sitting there as they leveled up. Interesting note here: Clerics couldn't be Neutral (that is, not Lawful, Chaotic, Good, or Evil) back in the day, and instead anyone wanting to run a Neutral Cleric had to take a subclass you might have heard of by the name of Druid, which in turn eventually had to face other Druids in SINGLE COMBAT in order to level up past a certain point. Why? I don't know. Summon Gygax's ghost and ask him between rounds of spiritual torture. This original version of Cleric had Turn Undead, a feature that's been attached to almost all Clerics by some name or another in all of their incarnations, and boy, Turn Undead used to be fucking wild. Roll a dice, consult a table based on your result and your level, and end up Turning or Destroying a number of very specific kinds of undead. AD&D 2e would put "undead gods" on this list starting at 13th level or so, and let me tell you: this came up in published material more often than you might think. Last but not least, like most characters back in 1e and 2e, Clerics eventually got to run a building full of people. At first the Cleric attracted about 20-200 "fanatics" who would work for free and help them build a shrine (no word on how TF you feed and water these fanatics) but eventually was given the right to build a proper castle-temple and produce 1 silver per month per resident via "trade, taxes, tariffs". Ladies and gentlemen, D&D.

Aside from the aforementioned alterations to Turn Undead, AD&D 2e introduced a concept known as Spheres to Cleric casting. Now, stop me if you've heard this before: each god gave access to 1 or more Spheres, which were specific lists of spells that their Clerics had access to (fun fact, Paladin casting was "as Cleric of 9 levels lower", but only with access to specific Spheres). So if you worshiped, say, Lathander, you had access to Healing, Sun, Divination, and IIRC a couple of others, and that's it, that's the whole ticket. Now, you may remember Kits from the Paladin article, and Clerics did have some of that action, but more than that they had "specialty priests", a sort of even-more-hardcore version of this whole proto-Domain deal; a Specialty Priest had different class features in comparison to normal Cleric, and access to different or more Spheres, both of which were determined by their god. Each Specialty Priest was, in its way, its own separate subclass of Cleric and if you published a god back in the day you had to get one of these installed. Were they all good? No. Fuck no. God no. Are you kidding me? But they were often very distinctive.

This doesn't get talked about a lot, at least not until we hit Pathfinder, but Clerics have had codes of conduct like Paladins for as long as they've existed, sort of atomized across their various gods. The rules around these have always been vague, and rarely culturally enforced in the player communities, but they did and do exist. A cleric of Kelemvor raising a zombie has done a bit of a blasphemy; raising a ghoul or vampire probably entails divine retribution, a reduction in character level, or even the loss of their powers. Oh, and other gods are probably trying to court you since clearly you're looking for new management and a trained cleric is a resourced that's hard to pass up.

No version of Cleric has ever particularly had a strong identity, but this original version may have been the closest to having one...because it's bad. To the credit of 1e and 2e, the eventual installation of Nonweapon Proficiencies, later to become the Skills system, did let them be competent as actual like, priests? Cleric got access to the stuff needed to actually minister as a spiritual leader with some extra socked away to practice sacred arts related to their god (ex. bookbinding for a cleric of Denier) and maybe even some god damn hobbies too. But outside of the ever-more-niche & esoteric arena of specialty priests, themselves presented as particular fanatics, agents, or chosen ones, every cleric was a Crusader, and every god's clergy were war-priests. And that's weird, right? And so now we must move on to the demon that never dies.

D&D 3.5: The Word Of My God Is 'Begone' - Quick question, have you ever wanted to roleplay someone perceptive but otherwise deeply stupid and utterly incompetent to move unsupervised through human society, who is, nonetheless, OMNIPOTENT? Welcome to the 3.5 Cleric, one of THE casters of all time in the absolute Caster Supremacy Edition. I hope you came ready to hear casual mentions of mechanics that would make a Victorian occultist cry. If you go looking at the class page for Cleric you might notice there's both jack and shit there, and for my readers who got into D&D at 5e the following might be a bit of a shock: Cleric was one of the strongest classes in 3.5.

In terms of the actual mechanics related to Cleric in 3.5, Turn or Rebuke Undead and spontaneous casting were some of the big ones. Well, "big" ones; Turn Undead qua Turn Undead was actually kind of shit and would often just not actually like...turn...the undead, but the charges of Turn Undead a Cleric kept around could be used for many other options that permitted alternate spending, notably here to include Divine Metamagic. These alternate spends were better than using Turn Undead for its actual intended purpose more or less always, and Divine Metamagic (DMM) in particular was an unholy monstrosity that underlied a lot of Cleric's power later in 3.5's run, letting them customize their prepared spells on the fly without having to use up higher-level spell slots. Now, I really cannot stress this enough: Cleric was one of the most powerful classes in core alone, without adding any supplements. DMM and similar options made Cleric even stronger but they were very much gilding the lily, to be frank. "Hey Vox why are you saying this," you would not believe the number of ignorant pricks who made a literal moral crusade out of going to "core only" in 3.5 claiming it made for a better balanced game. The good version of 3.5 has never existed, destroy anyone who claims otherwise.

Where was I - spontaneous casting, yes. Now, Clerics were still prepared casters, they had X spell slots every day at very specific levels and had to pick specific spells to fill them. That is, if you want to cast create water more than once in a given day, you need to memorize create water more than once that day. However, Clerics could convert a spell of any level to either cure wounds or inflict wounds of the same level, depending on the alignment of the Cleric (Good Clerics Turn Undead and cure wounds, Evil Clerics Rebuke Undead and inflict wounds, and Neutral Clerics not otherwise restricted by their god get to pick one for their entire career). This gave 3.5 Cleric a lot of flexibility, very valuable flexibility in a game environment where casting a heal mid-combat was basically always the wrong move, but out-of-combat healing was still an invaluable resource. RIP to Evil Clerics though, inflict sucked ass.

Lastly, we have domains. Now, if you check through the domain list on the SRD you may notice that they are rather less defining than the 5e Domains, granting a single power apiece and a list of spells you get access to. Most gods in 3.5 granted access to 3+ Domains, and their Clerics got to pick 2; together, these are the "kind" of Cleric you are, the aspects of your god that you kinda embody which then shape your power. Clerics got special extra spell slots solely for Domain spells in addition to their usual progression, and could memorize these Domain spells in normal slots as well. 3.5's list of Domains was deep and wide to the point of self-parody, and the power that gave a player to customize their Cleric's aesthetic and mechanics could be immense. Sure, many Domains were much weaker than others (Magic Domain is bonkers and that asshole is in core) but ultimately every Domain is stapled to Cleric, and since Clerics don't learn spells, only memorize them, there's a floor as to how weak you can possibly be.

So, what are your restrictions on Cleric? Not many. Non-War Domain Clerics had a sort of mid list of weapon options, sure, but if you're not casting you're playing wrong already so who gives a shit. Heavy armor and full access to shields meant a lot of build flexibility as far as that goes, so no problems here. The biggest thing is that a Cleric needed to be, and remain, within one alignment "step" of their god, plus or minus any other specific restrictions. That is, a Cleric of Liira, who is Chaotic Good, must be Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, or Chaotic Neutral; becoming Lawful Good, True Neutral, Chaotic Evil, etc would result in losing all Cleric powers and being unable to take Cleric levels until they fixed their shit or found a new god. Strictly speaking, these Clerics could/would still Fall a la paladins if they sufficiently blasphemed against or angered their god, but in practice this sort of thing was just...not common.

This is the section where I would talk about other divine classes in 3.X but honestly they were all so god damn weird and specific that no comparison really could be made. Shugenja, for instance, just isn't cognate to Cleric. The closest thing is the Healer class, no points for guessing what their deal is, but the thing with Healer is they have more in common with paladin, so like. Cleric or bust baby, welcome to fucktown.

Which brings us back to what Cleric was like narratively, the answer to which is: confused. The thing is...Clerics have always, likely will always, want high Wisdom, which makes them perceptive, good at detecting lies, weirdly talented at handling animals, competent to navigate the wilderness, and also I just described a Disney Princess. The trouble is, nearly everything else is strictly secondary. Every caster wants and needs Constitution in 3.X so they can make those Concentration checks and also, you know, not die, so okay, you're perceptive and you can hold your liquor, but after that nothing else matters. On the one hand, this makes for a great deal of versatility in terms of your ability scores, but on the other hand Cleric had 2+Int skill points per level on the most dog shit skill list in the game so being a very smart Cleric rarely bought you anything. Higher Charisma could be cool, but hey, see that skill list? It's still shit, and if you aren't also buying Intelligence you quite literally can't afford to keep up the social skill tax. A true war-priest wants Dexterity so they can act before their enemies and command the battlefield but that's more or less all you buy out of Dexterity on Cleric so congratulations, you're an almighty quickdraw and also illiterate. "What about Strength," what about it.

I really cannot overstate the paralyzing nature of that skill list, because priests - which 3.5 wanted Clerics to be, which it thinks they are - need more of them than most people think. A proper spiritual leader needs to buy up Insight, Knowledge (Religion), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Nobility), and Persuasion at a minimum, and they sure do also want Intimidate and Perception. You get two of those. Two. Just two. If you buy up Intelligence after you eat your vegetables like a good player, you maybe get to buy four of those. And that's it, that's all you fucking get. Clerics are not competent to be priests, which is going to be true of them going forward from this edition on. Now, I'm painting with a relatively broad brush here, and there's definitely religions on Earth these days which did, or still do, separate out roles that might reasonably be called a priest & Cleric vs. those roles that are community leaders and interpreters of doctrine and law, but there's a shocking amount of "here's my vision of what priests are and do" that Cleric wants to be, and isn't, because of this whole fucking deal.

But while 3.5 was extremely blind to the bit where Clerics just were not what it thinks priests are any more, it was very much not blind to the terror and power of their spellcasting. A high-level cleric, in the narrative of any given setting, is a terrifying force - an army unto themselves, a one-woman political bloc whose existence is an implicit threat of violence on a civilizational scale. I didn't spill all that ink about the power and mechanics of Cleric up there for nothing; 3.5 was very interested in how those mechanics could manifest within the narrative, how they are inextricably bound to said narrative. Hell, in Expedition to Undermountain alone the backstory of the dungeon includes one non-relevant sect of Clerics who was, in-universe, trying to game the spell slot system, alongside another unrelated sect that the PCs trip over by accident and fight inside their half-constructed fortress of partially undead bone which they control via Rebuke Undead.

Lemme say that again just for emphasis: there's an adventure where an accidental encounter is a long siege through a half-animated evil fortress that can be controlled through pure divinity, which was invented because its builders, in-universe, were trying to optimize their power and create an advantage they could control but their enemies couldn't. And this is just my favorite example, it's hardly the only one. Even the fucking novels got in on this sort of thing. We all joke about how wizards have no rights, because they don't, but watch a Cleric hit level 7 or so and you'll realize quickly that they are becoming something to which mortal laws are more like polite suggestions. Nor is this necessarily solely the sign of greater favor and thus potentially restriction from their god; indeed, a Cleric has to bring things to the table themself, narratively speaking! Divine spellcasting is a real skillset that you get better at with practice and experience, and part of the reason higher level Clerics get so much attention from other gods - aside from the obvious "this person can solo an army and still go home in a mood to have sex with their wife" angle - is that a skilled Cleric is a rare resource worth stealing.

Overall, 3.5's vision of Cleric is perhaps the one that suffers most from Cleric's identity-draining lack of specificity. Its Clerics were powerful, but they were also largely all the same; they could change their spells every day, but that only really meant that your list of spells doesn't really matter beyond personal preference. Domains offered some customization, but they didn't go far enough, and indeed if they were to go far enough the all-consuming might of Cleric would only be even more flagrant. So let's return to the most honest edition of D&D, shall we?

D&D 4e: Healer Calls The Shots - There are a lot of reasons that D&D 4e was born dead, and a big one is that classes with healing abilities were labeled 'leaders'. This seems absurd these days, especially if you're into esports at all; the support player being the team leader has become accepted strategy in a variety of games, in no small part because one simply cannot win without them, and yet at the time the D&D fanbase - still in an awkward transitional period of nerd masculinity that I don't have the time or the PhD to write about - rebelled against this concept with fountaining violence. The "girlfriend classes", leaders? Absurd. Preposterous. Clearly Sir Dipshit the Fighter with no mental stats or applicable skills is the leader.

I'm not fucking bitter, you are.

So what was Cleric's deal, exactly? Cleric qua Cleric was a Leader, as mentioned before, that could primarily be built either as a scrappy melee type or a more hard-support implement caster. "What's an implement caster?" glad you asked; back in 4e you had to hold a casting implement to cast your spells, something like a rod, staff, wand, holy symbol, your mother's haunted skull, whatever, and these had specific mechanical effects that altered your abilities. Some classes, like Cleric, could also or instead use a weapon as their implement, but in practical terms the strict wealth-by-level guidelines meant you got one or the other and would build your stats accordingly. Keep this in your back pocket for later, it's going to come up again. Also for your back pocket for later: these implements were, well, implemented as part of 4e's item progression, and the expectation was that you would spend your available resources (in this case, gold/phantom gold, collectively Wealth By Level) on better implements that would make your abilities work more work-y. Limited wealth meant that while in theory you could have both a magic weapon and a magical implement, in practical terms you get one or the other 'cause there's other shit you gotta buy.

What Clerics did with these implements was sell healing and healing accessories. While 4e introduced the concept of Radiant damage (used there as especially good against fiends, undead, and other forces of evil) and Clerics did indeed have access to some of that as well as buff abilities, their main thing was being the ranged healer par excellence, able to heal or cause healing far in excess of their peers in the role such as Warlord. Here, then, we return to the throughline of the divine healer which stretches all the way back to fucking BECMI, and which modern audiences may recognize more readily as the JRPG archetype of the White Mage - itself rooted in BECMI again! This hobby is an ouroboros, I say, with love.

Joining Cleric here are a selection of other classes with divine powers who take on a similar conceptual space. I talked a bit about Invoker during the Paladin article so I'm not gonna go over them again (this shit is long enough as it is), so we're gonna talk about Warpriest and Runepriest.

Introduced in the Essentials line, Warpriest was - like most Essentials classes - a simplified take on Cleric meant to be more accessible to new players. It shifted just about everything towards Wisdom in terms of writing one's character. Warpriests were these tanky all-around characters who gave up some of Cleric's team support for better attacks, and notably did not select powers on level-up, but rather got a progression based on their Domain. Readers familiar with D&D 5e might see some similarities here.

Runepriest, on the other hand, was a weird freak of a Defender whose thing was projecting offensive or defensive Auras that they could amplify with their support abilities and swap out every time they attacked. Their primary stat was Strength, drawing on a similar idea to the later revised 5e Barbarian or, perhaps more familiar to y'all, Beast incantations in Elden Ring. Very much not simplified, Runepriest offered some initial build diversity but didn't get a lot of support as the gameline continued, ironically ending up as very limited despite seeming intentions of breadth.

Narratively, these classes were somewhere in the range of 'village preacher with a hidden badass streak' to 'war missionary' to 'literal thug for the literal god of literal fascism'. 4e here stands out for being the first edition to acknowledge that a Cleric is not really a priest as such, and is much more like...a chosen one, a conception that very much fit well into 4e's idea that adventurers are inherently freaks who do things no sane person would ever consider. If you're thinking, "gee that sounds odd, why wouldn't there be like Clerics just existing inside cities", I point you at works like Dungeon Meshi who advance this same idea. Fundamentally, the skills one uses to break into ancient tombs full of undead are not skills you develop while working as a spiritual leader or a bureaucrat or even as a military officer. Adventuring is not a career you get into because your life is going well.

Of course, as mentioned, D&D 4e was born dead, so now we need to talk about the demon that ate its corpse and was, for a time, the unquestioned king of the TTRPG space by dint of its treachery and malice.

Pathfinder: Deus Vult Part II: World Holy War - Keep Pathfinder in your back pocket next to casting implements, they're gonna star in the religion section later as I express a fundamental anger that borders on inhuman rage. You have no earthly idea just how much I'm cutting out of this section alone considering that like many, I was there for Pathfinder during the beta and thus got in on the ground floor of a great deal of incompetence, malice, cruelty, outright betrayal, unexamined double-think, and egotistical bullshit.

That said, let's actually talk about Cleric.

In terms of Cleric qua Cleric, you may be noticing that the table there looks a lot like 3.5's Cleric, and indeed in many ways they're pretty similar. The biggest immediate difference is the addition of Channel Energy, which lets a Cleric become a healing bomb (or harm undead bomb, or vice versa) a certain number of times per day linked to their Charisma modifier. This is in addition to spontaneous casting, so it's a strict addition; further, it being a 30-foot burst means a channeled heal might actually be worth your Standard Action at some point in your career. It won't be, but it might. Additionally, Pathfinder Clerics are proficient in the Favored Weapon of their god by default (more on this later), which - by contrast - was often much harder to access in 3.5.

Like D&D 3.5, Pathfinder has a dizzying array of Domains to go with a default setting packed full of gods (more on this in the religion section later), ranging from things as broad as 'all magic ever' to things as embarrassingly specific as 'ambushes as laid by kobolds specifically'. Seriously, look at this list, it's absurd. And while by sheer numbers and specificity it's roughly equivalent with 3.5, I'm not about to claim 3.5 has the high road here, Clerics in Pathfinder get more abilities from their Domains and thus your choice of Domain and/or Subdomain is far more important to your Cleric than it ever was in PF's parent game.

Indeed, option paralysis is going to be the name of the game here. Clerics in Pathfinder, in addition to Domain and Subdomain and their choice of god, also get to pick out variants on the Channeling ability that I talked about and, like all Pathfinder classes, have access to a dizzying array of Archetypes. These Archetypes in turn range in scope and concept from variations on how one has trained as a Cleric (such as Crusader, keep that name in mind for later) to like, race essentialism as class features such as Fiendish Vessel. Sit on that statement for a bit. Really internalize it.

Now, while the rules for Pathfinder give provisions for older versions of Clerics such as Clerics of ideals, Planar Clerics, etc, in practice Pathfinder is very much married to its one-and-only setting, Golarion, and to its particular vision of Clerics as the dedicated priests of a single god. This is a difficult vision to accomplish, as they still aren't competent to be priests, but it's also one that adds another layer of information a player has to juggle, as Golarion makes a much bigger and yet somehow much smaller deal about Clerics falling and losing their powers; each of its gods has a published code of conduct, Obediences you can perform for mechanical benefits, and sometimes even exclusive spells. I said I was gonna cut my beefs with Paizo out of this section but I really cannot resist just one: this is from the creators who made their first bones by arguing that mechanical bloat was the cardinal sin of 3.5 and advertised a return to the purity of Core. It would be funny if it weren't so fucking infuriating. If you can't hack it as a Cleric of your god, you lose your powers until you either start hacking it, or find a new god that agrees better with your current behavior, and those gods are very much in the market to hire.

In addition to Clerics as the hypothetical main priests (both as PCs and NPCs), Pathfinder introduces Inquisitors, Oracles, and Warpriests and we're gonna have to talk about all of them so I hope you weren't doing anything else with your day. Let's start with Inquisitors. Meant to be to Cleric what Ranger is to druid, Inquisitor is a wildly revealing take on how Paizo thinks about religion and ethics. To wit:

"Grim and determined, the inquisitor roots out enemies of the faith, using trickery and guile when righteousness and purity is not enough. Although inquisitors are dedicated to a deity, they are above many of the normal rules and conventions of the church. They answer to their deity and their own sense of justice alone, and are willing to take extreme measures to meet their goals. Role: Inquisitors tend to move from place to place, chasing down enemies and researching emerging threats. As a result, they often travel with others, if for no other reason than to mask their presence. Inquisitors work with members of their faith whenever possible, but even such allies are not above suspicion."

James Jacobs would like to tell you, with a straight face, that this is a normal and expected way to engage with religion, to think about religion, and that Inquisitors as presented here can be of any alignment and serve any god, all of whom will keep them around on purpose. In a related story, James Jacobs is a sniveling wretch. In another related story, the aesthetics and proficiencies of Inquisitor are very much like, the Hugh Jackman Van Helsing. I do not say this as an insult to either Inquisitor or to Mister Van Helsing, his aesthetics slap, but do keep that in mind for what I'm gonna say later.

Mechanically, Inquisitor drops a lot of control and damage, gleefully sacrificing most of the support a Cleric offers in favor of singling out particular targets and persecuting them to death. They also get a surprising amount of out-of-combat utility, adding their Wisdom modifier to Knowledge checks to identify "monsters" ("hey what's a monster" good FUCKING question), gaining bonuses to tracking like a Ranger, and adding a FAT bonus to Sense Motive (this becomes Insight in 5e) & Intimidate checks. Their combat style is a mix of hard control spells and self-buffs to damage so they can sandpaper their enemies to death; very functional, but also very much a particular vision of a holy warrior. And lest we leave this unsaid, Inquisitor spells were very much concerned with rooting out "heresy", heterodoxy, and punishing "sinners" within their own faiths, which is a wild-ass statement when you remember, again, that they can follow any god. You wanna tell me the god of revolutions runs secret police whose job it is to murder heretics? You wanna tell me that, James Jacobs? That's what you're telling me? Fucksake. Adding to this is that while Inquisitors can take Domains, they more commonly take bespoke Inquisitions that, well, make them better at being the secret police. You know how the god of the harvest runs the Grain Gestapo and they're the good guys somehow? Like that.

This, however, is where I drop the other shoe. Look at Inquisitor's skill list. Look at their skills per level. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? They're competent to serve as spiritual leaders, indeed, infinitely more competent to do so than either Cleric or Warpriest are or ever will be. The rest of their abilities make that idea just a little bit absurd, but if you don't mind every local village priest being an apprentice serial killer on their off hours Inquisitor is the only divine class that can do the job. The only one. There are no others. The next-closest candidates are fucking Bard and Rogue.

Which brings us to Warpriest, I think. I will not mince words here: Warpriest fucking sucks. Pitched as one of the many so-called "hybrid classes", Warpriest's parent classes are Fighter and Cleric, and it really got the worst end of both. Cleric is cracked enough that even with 6th level casting Warpriest evens out to doing fine, but my fucking god. Warpriests get some minor buffs to their weapons and armor, allowing them to customize those items and granting a phantom buff to the budget they can assign to them, as well as access to Blessings, their particular spin on Domains. These are good ways to extend their spellcasting but are, essentially, equivalent to a secondary pool of spells and buffs; likewise, their Fervor ability is a pool of healing/harming in theory, but in practice you burn Fervor to self-buff as a Swift action (Bonus Action for you 5e folks) or you're doing it wrong. The problem here is that Warpriest is just...worse Cleric. The phantom buffs to their weapons and armor, as well as their pool of bonus Combat feats, do not make up for the bit where they swing less accurately, less often, than an equal level Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, etc. You're casting or you're failing, and if you're already a hard caster, you're a Cleric - and Clerics, y'know, are already war-priests.

Oracle is the weird one out of this list. A spontaneous and Charisma-based divine caster, Oracle stands out for having a more limited list of spells that they get to use more often, and for having flexibility with their use of Metamagic feats the way a Sorcerer does. "What if I don't want to use Metamagic feats," I'm afraid you'll need to go fuck yourself, this is what you're doing. Oracle was an instant smash-hit with the player base of Pathfinder for its strong aesthetics and customization; where most Clerics are essentially the same with minor differences, every Oracle is, in some way, different. In particular, each Oracle has a Curse which makes them like, literally & textually disabled in some way but also grants them power, ranging from "you're just deaf, that's it that's the curse" to "you've been infested by an alien hive-mind from literal space, good luck fucker", and also pursues a Mystery that gives them themed abilities and further customizes their spell list. Unfortunately this is still a Paizo class; in terms of the actual mechanics, most Curses are essentially meaningless, with a rare few either being so bad that they're unpickable or so good that you kinda have to justify why you didn't take them (Deafened is the latter, incidentally) and most just being nothingburgers that matter not at all.

Now, notable here before I talk about Mysteries is that Oracle, like Cleric, is living that 3/4th base attack bonus life and can natively wear up to medium armor. Unlike Cleric they are not natively proficient with their god's Favored Weapon but otherwise they're fronting as a gish (spellblade for you youngbloods, a character that mixes magic and melee). The thing is, while that 3/4 attack bonus is great for spells that make attack rolls - here Oracle is handily beating contenders like Wizard or Sorcerer in terms of accuracy - they are, you know, ninth-level casters. The correct move for your turn is "I cast a spell". There are not exceptions to this. In an extremely related story, most Mysteries are full of not-spell things to do with the actions you would normally use to cast spells, and while some of them - such as the endless parade of ways to boost your Armor Class - replace certain spells, essentially saving you a slot, many of them are just kinda...weak blasts or control abilities that don't meaningfully compete with, again, "I cast a spell". And like, the flip side of your choice of Mystery often not mattering is that you're free to pick something that seems thematic to you, but riddle me this: if you never use the abilities you pick up, does it matter that you have them?

There's some obvious winners in Mysteries, as there always is. Lore and Time are cracked as hell, and you can get away with something like Metal that has mostly passive abilities, but here we need to talk a bit about the theme and flavor of Oracle. Paizo sold the class on the idea of mysterious connections to the divine, a sort of divine mirror to their Witch class whose associations with the otherworldly are potentially unknown to them and move them without their consent. They then immediately abandoned this faster than my father abandoned me; every published Oracle is the Oracle of one god in particular, Mysteries are associated with gods the way Domains are, and this means that in all ways Oracle is a Cleric who can get laid. I am, perhaps, disproportionately angry about this, both on a professional level (lying to your readers is a bit of a dick move) and on a personal one (I wanted the Oracle they sold and did not receive it). And that's...a bit of a let-down, right? Paladins are already god-locked in Pathfinder too, so at this point Oracle, while having strong imagery, is not meaningfully different from its peers in a way that you can really latch onto. I dunno. It's a waste, y'know?

Overall, Paizo's vision of its divine classes is not able to be separated from its vision of religion as a zero-sum holy war in which everyone is desperate for converts, no one trusts anyone else, and rooting out one's own flock for heretics and heterodoxy is considered normal and morally acceptable behavior. Paizo deadass thinks the Spanish Inquisition are the good guys, if not literally, then in spirit, and that is, not to put too fine a point on it, disgusting. Mechanical innovations are present here, but to be frank the signal-to-noise ratio is awful, and it's very much not worth the effort to pillage their work for the few good ideas that have managed to survive.

Which brings us, at long last, to:

D&D 5e: The Power of God And Anime On My Side - I apologize for nothing and I will do this again.

So, right here up front, before I talk about anything else, anything else at all, Fifth Edition Clerics are, for the first time, both not priests and not trying to be priests. To quote Pages 56-57 of the 2014 Player's Handbook: "Not every acolyte or officiant at a temple or shrine is a cleric. Some priests are called to a simple life of temple service, carrying out their gods' will through prayer and sacrifice, not by magic and strength of arms. In some cities, preisthood amounts to a political office, viewed as a stepping stone to higher positions of authority and involving no communion with a god at all. True clerics are rare in most hierarchies.

When a cleric takes up an adventuring life, it is usually because his or her god demands it. Pursuing the goals of the gods often involves braving dangers beyond the walls of civilization, smiting evil or seeking holy relics in ancient tombs. Many clerics are also expected to protect their deities' worshippers, which can mean fighting rampaging orcs, negotiating peace between warring nations, or sealing a portal that would allow a demon prince to enter the world.

Most adventuring clerics maintain some connection to established temples and orders of their faiths. A temple might ask for a cleric's aid, or a high priest might be in a position to demand it."

Merciful fucking Illmater, we made it y'all. Not that the player base, by and large, has noticed; many people continue to play clerics as priests, to think of all clerics as priests and spiritual leaders, and to expect them to be such. And they are not priests. As I've argued already they've never been priests, but 5e does have a firm vision of Clerics - they're shonen protagonists. The chosen many, as it were, and that vision is clearer and more thematic than Cleric has been since mammoths still walked the Earth. Y'all are doing this wrong. Please stop.

Anyway, mechanics! The more things change, the more they stay the same; Cleric still has a dog shit skill list, they're still a mid-armored all-rounder with anti-undead features, they're still pretty good at resisting mind control. The Optimal Cleric(tm) is rocking high Wis and Dex so they can act first and get off their powerful control spells, which in turn implies light armor in an unusual first for D&D, but I'll be real with you: Cleric has one of the best spell lists in the game, as long as your Wisdom is high you can do whatever you want and never be punished for it. Notable here in comparison to previous editions are the flexibility of the Cleric's spell slots in 5e - you can cast any spell you have prepared out of your slots rather than locking 1 spell to 1 slot - and Ritual Casting, a feature most people associate with Wizards but which is very, very much available to Cleric and gives them similar out-of-combat utility. Turn Undead and Destroy Undead return, both more functional than they've been in decades, and are now linked to rests of any kind and also used to charge Domain features. "What about Divine Intervention -" what the fuck about it.

Which brings us to Domains. And the thing about Domains is there's still a lot of them in the context of 5e; the Player's Handbook alone published seven of them, and just about every player-oriented book after that had 1-2 more, sometimes as many as three. Cleric is feasting, and while most of the food is decidedly mid it still doesn't matter because it is, again, stapled to Cleric. Like I could wax poetic, at some considerable length, about why Domains like War, Trickery, or Grave are bad options, but y'know, the thing is, they're still fucking Clerics, they'd be doing fine with no Domain at all. I'm not gonna go into a massive breakdown of the pros and cons of any given Domain, but in general you'll have the most harmonious time with Domains that don't expect you to be spending your actions doing things that aren't casting spells. War, for instance, is gonna be a let-down because it really wants you to be making weapon attacks and you do not have the tools to make that remotely worth it; conversely, Grave also sucks, but it mostly fills in actions that your spells can't or won't, so you'll have a much smoother time playing Grave. For those wondering, the hands-down winners of the Domain list are Knowledge, Life, Light, and Tempest, though an extremely dishonorable shout-out goes to Order as a control & utility pick that is completely unaware of its own existence as a cosmic fucking horror story. See the sample Clerics below for that shit.

Now, remember when I told you to keep implements in your back pocket? 5e also has them, but they're introduced a bit...unevenly. Magical items do exist that do what magic implements used to do, namely, boost your spell DCs and spell attack modifiers - the caster equivalent of a magical weapon - but not many were ever published, and the ones that were are mainly for arcane casters. Fans of Critical Role may be recognizing items like the Spire of Conflux or the Hand Cone of Clarity as taking this role (and indeed quite a bit of Mercer's world and mechanics draws influence from D&D 4e), while players of Baldur's Gate 3 are pointing at the screen and naming some of their favorite caster-focused shields, gloves, and helmets right now. Any of these are a pretty neat way to engage on this idea as long as you keep things under control (you don't wanna exceed a total of like, +3/+3 here), but you as the DM, or you and your DM if you're a player, can and will be making this shit up yourself for your Cleric.

So, what's 5e's vision of Clerics, narratively? Well...see, the thing is, the text I quoted above is mainly it. D&D 5e is remarkably lore-light on the player-facing end, instead investing a lot of its lore writing in wild reworks of various cultures such as drow or gnolls, which I will not comment on because I do need to end this article at some point and I'm still in the fucking context section. There's a soft sympathy towards the position that 5e's Clerics, as they level, are holier Clerics, rather than more skilled Clerics (again, see above), but even that is a very tepidly held position, one which in novel writing and related media is far from consistent or primary. That said, I couldn't walk out of this section with a straight face if I didn't talk about the WILD fucking Domain assignments 5e makes for its gods, which in some cases is an artifact of many more specific Domains no longer existing, but in other cases appears to be the product of some of the most ignorant Protestant bullshit you can possibly imagine when thinking of the gods in question. Again, see the existence and flavor of the Order Domain as an example here, but like, in what fucking universe is Helm associated with the Light Domain? Since when was Wee Jas a Grave Domain kinda goddess? Not to hype this up twice in two paragraphs, but you will notice when we get there that I have chosen to ignore this whole affair for many of the upcoming sample Clerics and when I do there'll be some discussion about it. I do these things to myself and I really wish I didn't but this is who I am as a person now.

Going to the Land Of Context is like going to the Underworld, it takes you three days no matter how fast you travel. But at long last we have arrived, and we can conduct the actual fucking article. May Oghma pity me, for I myself will not.

Gotta Go, The People In The Important Pajamas Are Mad - Clerics At Your Table

Before I say anything else, that headline is not my original line but I cannot for the LIFE of me remember what early aughts webcomic it's from. I am likely misquoting it but if anyone on this hellsite recognizes it and can point me back to it for a proper credit I will be quite grateful & also get the citation in.

The following section is meant to help you in fleshing out a Cleric concept to play or even to use as an NPC. While some of this advice is edition-agnostic and indeed when we get to the religion section we're gonna return to some Takes Through The Editions and I will be very sad and also angry, a great deal of it will be slanted towards 5e because, let's face it, that's what people are playing. Make of this what you will. Also covered here will be same-paging (again), Clerics & alignment, and common pitfalls of playing Clerics (and suggestions of how to avoid them). So, without further ado:

Same Paging - In Which I Blow The Meta Joke About This Being In Any Class Article I Do Early Like A Damn Fool

Same-paging is the practice of talking to your group in a way that helps set mutual expectations, and it’s something every RPG group should strive to do regardless of the system they’re playing in. You’ve probably done this to an extent before, as part of being pitched a game (”We’re going to do a dungeon crawl through the deadly halls of Undermountain”), during character creation, and the like. If this opener to the section sounds familiar, it's because I copy-pasted it from my last class article and there's nothing you can do to stop me. In the specific case of Cleric, the elephant in the room you need to explicitly talk about and not just assume shit about is the sort of relationship you're looking to develop between your character and their god(s) and, y'know, any themes or ideas about spirituality that you explicitly would like to see included or, conversely, very much need to not see included. We're gonna get into it more in the religion section later but man it truly does fucking blow chunks if you're looking to have, say, a serious exploration of your character's faith and its relationship to society, but the rest of your group is on some Reddit Atheist shit, right? Hell, it's not even pleasant if you unexpectedly end up doing the inverse. In addition to this, if you're looking to explore ethical or doctrinal dilemmas (i.e. if you're really into the idea of playing a Cleric of Eldath as a dedicated pacifist, or dig into the conflicts that might arise between the Orders of Denier who preserve knowledge vs. some kinda magical infohazard), this is the time to say it and chew it over with your group. And again, as long as everyone's having fun and not hurting someone else any way you play it is fine - a kick-in-the-door style campaign is a perfectly fun campaign to have. The point is to set expectations up front, not to like, ensure that the group is playing in the one ordained way to play. Which is bold words considering how many times in this article up to this point I've deadass accused people of playing wrong, but I do mean it. I contain multitudes.

One Day, A Tortoise Will Learn To Fly - Making Your Cleric

The Pratchett quotes will continue until morale improves.

Once you and your group have communicated your expectations to each other, it’s finally time to start sketching out your concept! There are many ways to do this, though the two primary schools are mechanics-first and narrative-first. That is to say, opening up with something like "Using the Knowledge Domain to pick up proficiencies on the fly sounds fun to me," works out great, as does opening up with something like, "My Cleric learned her ex-wife was literally a goddess about three weeks ago and is having a wild one about it." However, this article is about to be long enough already without me trying to write a mechanical guide to 5e Cleric, let alone any other Cleric, so we're gonna focus on the narrative approach. If you need a mechanical guide, I promise you that the player base of whatever edition you're into has made several and that the author of each one has some kind of passionate beef with the authors of all of the others. Consider the following questions for your Cleric:

Why Did You Become A Cleric? To be a Cleric is to be of the chosen many; inherently, you're gonna be a bit weird. That weirdness may be because of the conflict between your perceived social station vs. who you are as a person (to wit, people might expect a Cleric of Oghma in the Forgotten Realms to be a stuffy scholar and be surprised when he shows up to strongman competitions or turns out to be one of the Sword Coast's most prolific authors of erotica), but in all honesty odds are much higher that you're a freak. Incredible divine power doesn't erase the bit where adventuring is not a career one takes up because one's life is going well. That said, just because you're a chosen one doesn't mean you didn't also get to choose. Did your Cleric pursue Clerichood for some reason, and if so, why seek that power? If they didn't seek it out on purpose, how do they feel about this change in their relationship to divinity and the burgeoning power within them? This is where you can get both characterization and plot hooks; a Cleric forged when she swore herself to the Red Knight in a desperate attempt to defend her farm from bandits is a very different beast from one who sought power and station from Bahamut so they could enact reforms in their society. Look for connections to the game world and reasons to care about it.

How Did You Learn? There's some obvious things to answer here - your Cleric learned how to wear up to Medium armor, the proper use of shields, and basic combat techniques - but the more interesting question to dig into is your spells. D&D has actually had many different schools of thought here, some of them co-existing or competing with each other. D&D 5e, as mentioned above, breaks on the idea that a higher-level Cleric is a holier Cleric, and that their casting is an almost intuitive process of seeking intercession or requesting miracles in advance in case they need them. Many people play their Clerics this way, but here I will once again climb atop my mountain of old-ass lore and offer an alternative: divine spellcasting as a skill you actually have to learn and practice. In this school of thought, a higher level Cleric is a more practiced and powerful Cleric, and is intrinsically attractive to "rival" deities not simply because they are a great champion of their own but because they are a potent resource. For those in the audience wondering how this makes any fucking sense, I will point out, gently, that this idea is actually still prevalent in Japanese media and its White Mage archetypes, as well as in popular videogames like Elden Ring. These Clerics learn spells from somewhere, and the "somewhere" has a broad variety of answers; they unlock the secrets of their rites through cryptotheology, they experience divine revelation, their god teaches them personally, they're mentored by more experienced Clerics. Indeed, Ms. Jester Lavorre of Critical Role fame engages on her divine casting in this mode, often expressing that the Traveler has been telling her about new spells or teaching them to her personally, and while this is set up as something suspicious about the Traveler in her story it's actually a quite storied idea of Being A Cleric with deep roots in many D&D settings. Regardless of your choice here, though, consider this next question:

How Do You Relate To Your Power? This is another arena with a lot of unquestioned ideas that do not necessarily like, relate to how Clerics have been historically or even what they could be if we took only 5e as gospel. In most cases, people take a very Protestant slant to their Cleric; their spells and powers are divine gifts which can and should be revoked at the whim of their god, who is in turn a being of higher morality who intrinsically knows better. And like, I'ma get into this in the religion section here in a bit, but this is a wild idea when you actually look at the gods in question, let alone when you remember that to be a Cleric is to build a relationship with one's deity. Pious service as thought of by Christians is a way to relate to your deity, sure, and there's even some hanging around that are into it (Torm, f'rinstance), but like, Waukeen would find such a relationship distasteful, would say to such a cleric, "Girl, you're selling yourself short." So put some real thought into this, and you may come to surprising answers for your Cleric. Do they see their divine power as bringing forth the holiness intrinsic to the world? As an outflowing of their own passions and obsessions? Could your Cleric read as a grim cynic to others because they view their spells as not fundamentally different from arcane magic, and caution sternly that power is power regardless of source? Are they gifts from the world of wonder and horror, which anyone could use if they knew the right way of seeing? Your Cleric's abilities are not like a second layer on top of their personality, they're part and parcel of who they are as a person; give it consideration.

What Are Your Values? Hear me out; this seems like an obvious question, something every character should ask, but here I'm going to introduce an argument that I'll elaborate on later - gods in D&D are, essentially, worldviews. And while the worldview embodied by your Cleric's god(s) is obviously the one most important to them - they did become a wholeass Cleric about it - D&D has some specific-ass gods. A Cleric of like, Azuth (god of spells, patron of wizards) is not getting a party line about a whole lot of basic ethics and kinda has to figure that shit out for himself. So ask yourself not just who your Cleric believes in, but what, and how this might relate to their faith or grow from who they are as a person. A Cleric who is the fourth child of a noble house (kicked out to a life of adventure because they ain't inheriting shit) may well have opinions about noblesse oblige, politics, and power that have absolutely nothing to do with their chosen god; likewise, D&D has a rich tradition of Clerics of fairly evil gods such as Auril, Loviatar, or Umberlee who are out here selling the wonders those dark powers have on offer because they genuinely believe in helping people or, you know, have Standards, the thing professionals are supposed to have. A frontier Cleric may well have opinions, for better or worse (traditionally worse, D&D has a long history of being friendly to empire) about the colonial project they're a part of, or a Cleric up from the Underdark might be spending her free time in academic knife fights defending the beauty and splendor of her home's ecology. Your Cleric is a real person in a real reality, not an extension of her god; that's the kind of thing that gives a person some fucking opinions, no?

What's Your Relationship To Your God(s) Like? And in a related story, this point! Unless something really odd is going on, your Cleric is not a divine being free from mortal needs or the burdens of history; it therefore follows that she is not about to be a perfect incarnation of her god(s) ideals. That's, y'know, the neat bonus you get for having an afterlife. Let's leave alone for a moment that there is a pretty strong possibility that your Cleric is so uneducated and/or fucking stupid that they don't know the textual dogma of their own faith (though please, do not forget this, it's one of the funniest things about Cleric); the ideals of that faith, and of their god in particular, are something they are probably growing into. This really should not be a controversial take, not after Critical Role blew the fuck up with the likes of Caduceus Clay and his spiritual journey in the name of the Wildmother, but you might be surprised. It is, genuinely, okay if your Cleric is kinda bad at following their god(s) in some ways! Maybe even many ways! A dwarf Cleric who's out adventuring instead of at home using their magic to help their clan is already failing at least one major ideal of the dwarven pantheon, for instance. Clerics and even priests of Sune Firehair (goddess of art and beauty, a chaotic and capricious foe of evil whose mantle is the splendor of the living world) have a partly-deserved reputation as shallow hedonists who reify existing beauty standards; the entire faith of Lathander has a serial inquisition problem that they haven't stopped having an ongoing civil war about since the fucking Dawn Cataclysm. So how does your Cleric see the divine ideals to which they are meant to aspire? Is their deity their teacher and guide? A stern master to be obeyed? A distant and dazzling figure almost disconnected from matters of dogma in the Cleric's mind? Their literal actual lover? There can be many answers here, and while I don't want to downplay the delicious angst of a well-done "I'm a bad worshipper of my god and I'm guilty about it" arc...well, the signal-to-noise ratio there is real bad, let's say. More on this in a later section.

Hobbies? Pick some. I really should not have to be saying this and honestly it's a dependent consideration with the whole 'what are your values' thing but if I see one more Cleric whose entire life and job is religious service with no interests outside of it I'm going to drop the moon on Europe and whatever happens will happen. Fucksake, this isn't even a 'many D&D players are culturally Christian' thing, this is just lazy writing and historical illiteracy. Did you think all those monasteries and temples in like, Redwall and such making beer or growing crops was just the authors having a fuckin' laugh? Come on.

Playing With The Big Boys Now - Cleric Aesthetics

You may be remembering this section as where the Paladin article talked a bit about refluffing. This is...sort of like that. As one of D&D's full casters, Cleric is deep in its particular idiosyncrasies, and using the Cleric kit to make a non-Cleric thing, while possible, is still going to have a...a particular shape, let's call it. If, for instance, your setting doesn't have any separation of arcane and divine magic & "clerics" are just a different school of magical study, you're probably fine. If you're trying to do a fully technological setting where "spells" are high-tech gadgets, you're gonna run into a bigger set of problems much faster. All of that said, though, there's still quite a bit to talk about in terms of bringing out unique flavor for your Cleric, some of which are habits that the 5e player base has already rushed ahead to hold up as good practice and others which are rarely thought explicitly about. I do hope you came ready to learn about obscure TTRPG audience drama that has never wholly died out. Let's start with the easy one first, shall we?

Spell Aesthetics - I'll not lie to you, I should probably be angrier about this topic but the convoluted history of the player base's relationship to "what do your spells look like?" is too fascinating for me to really build up the fury it deserves. There has been, indeed, in some senses still is a shockingly vitriolic argument within D&D circles about whether or not all spells of the same name look the same, and while I am vastly simplifying the two perspectives generally break down into "they need to look the same so that they are identifiable for balance reasons" vs. "having your own personal brand is sick as hell". The latter has traditionally won by default in terms of the overall body of D&D's work, especially in the spaces defined by the novel-writing, though the influence of CRPGs like Neverwinter Nights who break on the side of spells looking the same for everyone (for obvious reasons) shouldn't be downplayed. D&D 3.5 had a Feat for this that makes your spells a little harder for people to recognize via the Spellcraft skill but mostly just gives you absolute reign to customize the look of your casting; Pathfinder, by contrast, doesn't want you customizing jack shit (and indeed late in its run also edited Silent Spell and Still Spell so that your casting of spells is still detectable to the naked eye, cowards that they are). That said, and to the surprise of absolutely fucking nobody, I break very strongly on the side of "having your own personal brand is sick as hell", as do many of the major works of modern 5e, here to very much include Critical Role but also many other actual plays such as Dice Shame or Planet Arcana.

So, what goes into deciding what your spells are like? First things first, the mechanics; an aesthetic that doesn't do what the spell does, or have the components the spell uses, is right out. It's one thing if your group handwaves certain ideas for ease of play or because they don't interest y'all (see here the common practice of replacing expensive material components with just subtracting the gold from your sheet when you cast), but like, your guiding bolt fires Something that requires an attack roll, it deals Radiant damage, and it causes some kind of light that clings to an opponent. Verbal components, mechanically, must be spoken in a clear voice. Somatic components...exist. To be perfectly honest no one has had a clear idea of what Somatic components are ever aside from a vague idea that they require your hands (this is mechanically explicit in 4e & 5e) and even then there's exceptions, dishonorable shout-out to the scene in War of the Spider Queen where a wizard casts with his fucking feet. Notable here is that casters in 3.5 through 5e can replace non-expensive material components with a focus/implement/character feat, such as a staff, orb, wand, crystal, or in the case of Clerics, their holy symbol; these implements are touched, invoked, involved in the somatic components, or otherwise pretty obvious. The next bit of this is gonna be all about selecting your own aesthetics but I do want to reiterate first something I have said before and will continue saying over and over and over and over and over and over and over again: in any conflict between the narrative and the mechanics, the mechanics win by default. This is because they are the tools with which you actually engage with the game world. When your Cleric of Umberlee casts flame strike, there is some manner of dealing Fire damage involved. Maybe it's boiling sea water, maybe you hit a motherfucker with an underwater volcano, maybe you just go "the classic burning column of fire is fine", but you can't bitch slap people with that spell and then say it's actually the cold ocean depths. Alright? Alright.

So when you're looking at "what do my spells look like" there's three places I like to interrogate. The first and most obvious is, what's the deal with my god? This can be a pretty broad thing to look at; gods are worldviews, and those can be interpreted very differently. Not to return to a super famous example here or anything, but when your friend and mine Caduceus Clay (Critical Role) has spiritual guardians that look like swarms of beetles and manifests his damage spells as aspects of decay, another Cleric of the Wildmother may well lean into vines and trees, or their guiding bolt might appear as hurling a whole-ass rhino at your face that then explodes into light. Here, then, we roll into the second question: what domain is your Cleric? This is the aspect of your god or your faith that you're the closest to, which is dearest to your heart, and will therefore manifest in the act of spellcasting - which in turn is derived from your relationship with the divine. A War Domain Cleric of say, Eilistraee, may well emphasize the martial prowess of that goddess in their spells, manifesting spiritual armor, blades of moonlight, mighty shields, numinous warriors, while a Twilight Domain Cleric of the same goddess is gonna be all in on the moon and stars, the sky at night, crescents, and the like.

Lastly there's the physical action of spellcasting to consider, and here I would like to hasten to point something out. While it is common practice to simply use one's holy symbol as a divine focus, it is not required. Many faiths on Earth have holy symbols or something cognate to them, but there are also many that do not, and for those looking to explore a faith in a D&D god which doesn't practice that sorta thing Clerics are, like all casters, perfectly empowered to use a Component Pouch and cast spells in a more formal, ritualistic fashion than the typical image of calling out to one's god and seemingly producing a miracle without actually casting a spell (but more on this in a bit). Is your Cleric a student of divine magic, going through carefully-practiced forms? Are they intuiting their way through spellcasting, a razor's width away from being something like a Sorcerer? An almost saintly figure, whose spells appear for all the world as miracles (and if they are how do you square that with the dumb plans the average adventuring party engages with)? Do they speak their spells in a booming voice, announcing the presence of the divine? Are the rites they chant almost business-like, a concession to the needs of the casting but perhaps not seen as properly holy or reverent? What language are you casting in? Give it some thought.

Turn Undead & Other Features - Surprise bitches, there's old-ass lore about this too. While all Clerics can Turn Undead no matter how little sense it makes (look my in my lich eyes: what the fuck does Azuth care about undead?) and this is for Doylist reasons of legacy design, how they've gone about doing so and why have multiple interpretations. Way back in AD&D 2e this was something you were encouraged to think about and design for your cleric (see: The Complete Cleric's Handbook & The Complete Paladin's Handbook), both in terms of the physical action and what the power looks like. The classic wave-of-radiating-force look, displayed in Baldur's Gate 3 and used extensively in Critical Role, is indeed an old one with a lot of pedigree, associated with Clerics of sun deities such as Pelor or Lathander, but also with militant deities like the Red Knight, Bahamut, or even Wee Jas (it might seem weird that the goddess of necromancy is out here sponsoring Turn Undead but for the Ruby Lady specifically it's less 'begone, unnatural horrors' and more 'behold, my eviction notice'). Going with this has traditionally been some kind of plainly-spoken invocation or prayer; 'disperse and dispel', 'back to dust', 'return to sleep', that sorta thing.

However, this is far from the only possible look or interpretation. Indeed, popular these days is simply lifting one's holy symbol and calling upon one's god, which I have some objections to - it's not appropriate for every god, and it's also just kinda unoriginal - but is perfectly serviceable. Turn Undead as a sort of spell, with obscure incantations or formal rites for gods like Azuth (here making one's Turn Undead similar to dispel magic rather than any intrinsic divine abhorrence) could fit your Cleric, as could Turn Undead as a power move where you assert your god's greater authority over the undying (excellent for many non-nature Evil-aligned gods, and hilarious for gods like Loviatar). Likewise, Turning or destroying the undead can and should be flavored by your god and Domain; a Cleric of Chauntea that Turns Undead may well terrify them with the reminder of the grave, the bounty of the earth that will grow from their stolen bones, while a Cleric of Mystra simply unbinds the magic that holds them together (and, again, the eternally hilarious Clerics of Loviatar manifest the power of their goddess to beat the shit out of the undead). One move might even be to say your Cleric of a god who doesn't give a shit about the undead is actually drawing on another god from their pantheon who does; the aforementioned Cleric of Azuth is actually invoking his vassal, Velsharoon, who has authority over necromancy.

When it comes to one's Domain powers, you kinda live and die by your brand here. Every Tempest Cleric in 5e is gonna have the exact same fucking power list, so if you're not making your Tempest Cleric of Umberlee different from a Tempest Cleric of Gruumsh what the fuck are you even doing. While the way your god interprets these themes is obviously important - your character chose to follow them for a reason, after all - perhaps more important is the way your Cleric relates to them. A Chaotic Neutral Cleric of Umberlee who has a love of the terrible beauty of the sea conjures storms of sublime awe, like something out of a Gothic novel, while a more traditional Chaotic Evil one may well lean on storms as instruments of vengeance and punishment, sharing in her goddess's petty malice. When your War Domain Cleric takes that attack as a bonus action, is he seizing a moment, or drawing on berserk rage? What kind of Light or Life do you have? The opportunities are here y'all, seize 'em.

Radiant and Necrotic Damage - These are relatively young as far as D&D goes, and while they have bones in with earlier kinds of damage they're actually a bit thematically confused. Just to give you an idea here, Radiant damage is dealt by guiding bolt, the Light Domain power, ACTUAL FUCKING LASER RIFLES, and also flame strike. It has replaced instances of "this damage derives from pure divine power and cannot be resisted", Positive Energy damage, and also just fire damage for some fuckass reason. So when your Cleric is dealing Radiant damage, something all Clerics do, what is it? Nearly any of the above is a potential option, though I'll admit that I'm a sucker for the Positive Energy damage where you give living beings super-cancer that devours them in moments and/or unbind and dispel undead. Complicating this is that in the 5e paradigm, Radiant and Necrotic damage are both associated heavily with divine classes, and have nearly equal claim to holy power.

Which brings us to Necrotic damage, which is dealt by inflict wounds, as well as spells like blight, and also associated with Evil Clerics via spiritual guardians and similar spells. This one is derived from Negative Energy damage historically - that is, pure entropic power, not just death but "stop", "cease", "still", "silence" - but this is not always the case, and it very definitely has been used in 5e to represent things like blood drain, soul drain, pure unholy power, and also flaying someone alive. Similar considerations to Radiant damage apply, but they apply especially when you're out here casting Necrotic blasts when you, say, worship a nature or life god. What exactly are you doing? Why is it you're doing it that way? How is this, too, a miracle?

I May Have Started Worshiping Umberlee Because The Priestesses Are Hot - Clerics & Alignment

So here's the thing. As I mentioned above in the 69 page long context section, Clerics have had Falling mechanics for awhile, even if they have been consistently downplayed or ignored in comparison to Paladin. There's also been a very long time in which Clerics were required to be close to their god(s) in alignment, and there's something to be said there; how can one build up a deep and intimate relationship with a divinity that you have nothing in common with? But there are many groups that don't want to fuck with alignment (I'm gonna do that alignment article one of these days and on that day I will die), settings where alignment and worship are less connected (see: Eberron), and of course in 5e these ideas are no longer formally connected in that fashion, with alignment requirements being removed. Hell, books like Xanathar's Guide to Everything and Tasha's Cauldron of Everything introduce some wild-ass ideas on the random fucking tables like "your Cleric has an ongoing relationship with an imp she doesn't fuckin' like". That seems pretty functional, so, why am I talking about it? Glad you asked: I'm an ancient-ass lich and a bit of an alignment apologist, and also this is my article and I'll infodump about alignment bullshit if I want to.

Now to make a proper run at this I'd really need to actually do that alignment article, so I'm gonna ask you instead to journey with me to an imaginary land where everyone is engaging on alignment in good faith and understands two foundational principles that the modern zeitgeist has kinda left behind; the first being that alignments are broad categories that describe beliefs which have things in common, and the second being that any given one of the nine alignments has room for many, many variations on those beliefs. Not to put like too fine a point on it but just as one f'rinstance there are no less than three different Outer Planes you can point to and say "this is Lawful Good" and each and every one of those three separate dimensions of Lawful Goodness contains its own internal array of differing beliefs and expressions of what it means to be Lawful Good. And in that sense, your Cleric's god is going to be a worldview that is included in their alignment, but is not necessarily, often, or even ever a generative force for that alignment. Evenhanded Tyr is not a fount of Lawful Goodness from which mortal beings drink to become more holy; he has a worldview, beliefs, and dogmas which one can describe as being Lawful Good, and he/his church seeks to teach them. Likewise Umberlee, the famous Bitch Queen, is not Chaotic Evil in the sense of 'overthrow all governments' but in the sense that the sea recognizes no master, is sovereign in itself, and will not be denied; that she is friendlier to Chaotic worshipers comes down to a sort of mutual comfort and expectation. A Chaotic person might not like that her goddess is a divinely infamous bitch, but she like, gets it, y'know?

So when it comes to your Cleric and alignment, there's an easy ask: what is it about their faith that attracted them to it, and in what ways are they aligned with that faith & in what ways are they lacking, opposed, or still have things to learn? The gods of D&D are stranger and wilder things than people give them credit for, to be sure, but the thing is that being a perfect embodiment of your god(s)'s worldview is one of those neat bonuses you get for being a dead person, not something people generally pull off while yet living. And, not to leave this bit on the table, not all or even most of those conflicts are necessarily what one might call a dealbreaker. It can be something as simple and doesn't-need-to-be-solved as like, a follower of Azuth spending time running for political office (a Lawful/Lawful disconnect; Azuth doesn't really give much of a shit about mortal law), something profoundly wrong but understandable (a follower of Oghma who passionately hates certain kinds of literature or poetry; Oghma is the god of all language and written art), or even really major which can form the core of an arc where either the character or god has to give (Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3 goes through this, but for the one person on Earth who hasn't played yet a different example might be a worshiper of Bahamut who ended up joining the colonial invasion of Chult, directly angering his god because he has failed to understand some fundamental fucking lessons here).

All of this is a lot of words to re-argue a previous point; your Cleric is not a sovereign being, capable of acting without reference to the real reality or by pure ideal alone. They have baggage, they have community, they have or had a family, they have beliefs shaped by being a real thing in a real reality. Look at the ways these aligned beliefs both touch and conflict with their church, their god, or both, and you will find a bounty of characterization and plot hooks. Keep in mind as well that the gods of D&D are fallible beings; they are students of their own ideals as much as they are teachers of such, and there are, indeed, perfectly usable hooks to be found there as well. Your Cleric is not a saint or a savior, usually; they are a student and teacher of divinity who seeks to understand it, and going on that journey together with one's god is something that has been lost in the current paradigm of the D&D audience being friendly to fucking Reddit atheism.

Call It A Girlfriend Class One More Time Motherfucker - Common Cleric Pitfalls

I'm not bitter, you're bitter.

D&D is a snake devouring itself, and like many such ongoing communities and fandoms it therefore has a lot of cultural baggage which is, how do you say, completely disconnected from objective fucking reality. This section covers some common pitfalls people walk into when making and playing Clerics. If some of these end up sounding like personal callouts...dunno what to tell you. Examine your shit.

Healbot.exe - Yeah we're starting off with the big one. Look me in my eyes. Look me directly in my fucking lich eyes. Clerics are not healers. No one in D&D is a primary healer. There have been exactly two effective primary healers in all of D&D history; the first is the Vitalist, a Psionic class published by Dreamscarred Press as part of a third-party supplement for Pathfinder 1e, and the second is Life Domain Cleric in 5e. That's it. End of list in all of history. "But what about -" no. I promise you, whatever you're thinking of is not a primary healer in the fashion you think it is. This is an ancient misconception, rooting all the way back to when only divine-type classes could heal (Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger), but even back in that day healing was valued more highly than its actual effectiveness; the archetype of a videogame healer, someone like Mercy in Overwatch who can turn the tide by keeping vital people alive long enough to make big plays, that has never been part of D&D - at least not before players have access to the spell heal, which radically flips the math by itself. Much like the question of alignment, I do not have the page space or the fucking game theory degree to give this topic the attention it truly deserves, but the very short version is that PC hit points are very low, damage is quite high, and healing doesn't solve either of those problems. When you burn your action, Bahamut fucking forbid your one spell per round, on a heal what you have done is a few things: failed to advance the combat towards a conclusion, failed to meaningfully mitigate damage, burned a spell slot that could have done one of those first two, and quite possibly put yourself out of tactical position. There are cases where a heal is the right call - the spell heal as mentioned already, or in 5e getting someone to stop making Death Saves - but in general if your options are healing or doing literally anything else, pick literally anything else. Am I coming at this very strongly? Yes, but the thing is that the perception of Clerics as being "healbots", expected to memorize primarily healing spells and cast the same, has been an equally ancient and infamous perceived drawback to playing Clerics; indeed, there was a time when tables would offer incentives to someone for playing the Cleric because "someone has to be the healer" and nobody wanted to be. Does that sound like a fun experience to you? Is that the future you want to keep having? No? Good, STOP FUCKING HEALING.

Now, I said I don't have the game theory degree to unpack this, and I don't, but that was aggro as hell so I do owe a bit of an explanation. Healing being bad in D&D comes down to a few incentives, some of which I just mentioned above, but there's another big one - the only hit point that matters is your last one. Your PC, and indeed NPCs/monsters, are just as effective at 1 hit point as they are at 100 as they are at one thousand as they are at one million. Meanwhile, especially in 5e towards which this article has a significant bias, average NPC/monster damage is more than double that of an on-level heal until, again, heal; therefore, a cure wounds or healing word for someone who isn't unconscious has, at best, bought them half a turn of being alive, and given that the real swing is much larger than actual average damage the odds that you get that half a turn - pathetic in and of itself - are not in your favor. Your party does not need to be healthy, only alive; this, then, is why you only start healing once they stop being alive. Area-of-effect heals like mass cure wounds change this math a bit especially in response to area-of-effect damage which is typically lower than single-target damage, but here I will finally hold to my repeated statements that I lack the education to unpack this; if a mathematician wants to compare a devil's fireball to mass cure wounds in the notes here, please, be my guest, genuinely.

Zealotry - Welcome to the Cleric version of "stop making your paladin a cop", which readers may remember from the Paladin article. Here I need to cut a fine line; the average D&D player likely has a pretty strong idea of a particular kind of person when I say "zealot", and that kind of person is the scum of the Earth. And, indeed, while masterful roleplaying and acting might make running a fanatical missionary interesting for your play group, this is a common failure mode and I do not fucking encourage it unless you're really sure that you are, in fact, the god-king of Big Dick Mountain. However, this mode of like, the Baptist preacher is a very narrow and specific kind of zealotry and passionate belief, and I am here to make the argument that a good Cleric is, indeed, a zealot on some level, at least in part because odds are good that you, person reading this article, are yourself a zealot on some topic or other! The esteemed Kendrick Lamar, for instance, is a zealot of hip-hop. I am a zealot of old D&D lore. Ed Greenwood, praise fucking be, is a zealot of anthropological worldbuilding. To be a Cleric, one of the chosen many, is to have a deep and passionate connection to the ideals of your god; it is to care about those ideals, and to learn them further, to be a student and teacher of them, to be a disciple and practitioner of them, and that indeed is a kind of zealotry that has nothing to do with trying to convert people or oppress them (usually). Kill the part of you/your Cleric that cringes; if you're running a Cleric of like, Sune Firehair, right, pour in your passionate opinions about art and beauty and love. Go on rants about proper trade and taxes when you're running a Cleric of Waukeen. Get fuckin' homoerotic about the ocean with your Cleric of Umberlee. When your Cleric is moved to share their wisdom with others, look for ways in which these lessons are relevant to their lives, and commit to the fuckin' bit. These are the things which are, definitionally, most important to your Cleric, closest to their heart. By all means, act like it, yeah?

Slapfights And Other Bad Ideas - Way back in 1e, D&D described Cleric as a secondary weapon-user, competent to fight in melee but lesser than Warrior-group classes. This is a lie. This has always been a lie. 5e furthers this lie with the Divine Strike class feature, but the thing is that while you are not technically doing nothing by making a weapon attack you really are not doing much and should be looking into doing literally anything else; if you're not casting, you're doing it wrong. There are going to be levels in which Divine Strike edges out a Cantrip, but ultimately you are not a weapon user and should not be acting like one. Going further here, the sanctioned action for Cleric is to bump your Wisdom as fast and hard as you can, because it controls all the Cleric things you do. Here I again return to my statement that in any fight between mechanics and narrative, the mechanics win by default because they are how you engage with the game world. Once you eat your vegetables, then you can go off doing wild shit like taking strange Feats. If you need to see this in action, look no further than the oft-cited Ms. Jester Lavorre of Critical Role fame (Campaign 2, The Mighty Nein).

St. Dipshit the Illiterate - Man I hope you're ready for a third version of this joke when the inevitable Druid article happens. Like with the Paladin article, this isn't so much a pitfall as it is a for-your-consideration; Intelligence has long been a real easy dump for Clerics, and that's gonna shape how they move through the world. While D&D 5.5 (the 2024 releases) went some distance here by giving Clerics the ability to add Wisdom to their information-style checks, for every other Cleric you have someone who is very attuned and attentive to the living world (high Perception, Insight, and Survival), but very bad at formal learning, academic study, and the like. Does your Cleric compensate for this by seeking aid when they need that kind of intellectual rigor? Taking more time (that is, making more rolls) so they can correct for their own shortcomings? Do they embrace the intuitive knowledge they can gain via their Wisdom-based skills rather than attempting to record or examine? Of course, I should not leave this on the table either; as of 5e, Charisma is also an extremely easy an attractive dump stat, and since CLERICS ARE NOT PRIESTS exploring a low-Charisma Cleric who can only really show her troth through works rather than words could be quite interesting, should you be inclined.

The People In The Important Pajamas - "Cleric" NPCs

Again, if anyone can track that webcomic down my life is yours.

You may remember this section from the paladin article and be wondering what the scare quotes are about. Following through with my argument that Clerics aren't priests, some of the potential NPC roles I'm about to outline aren't Clerics, strictly speaking, but would have been Clerics back in 2e (when they could be priests) or 3.PF (when everyone was in fucking denial). Our first entry is going to cover a concept that you could pillage for worldbuilding purposes, and then the rest are potential Cleric roles. Ready set GO!

Adepts (Revenge Of The Old Lore) - Introduced by this name back in D&D 3.0 and rarely used by Dungeon Masters or, if we're being honest, the game writers, Adepts were an NPC-only class back when PCs and NPCs were built using similar rules. Sorta like a Cleric, and sorta like a Druid, and sorta like a Wizard, but absolutely dog shit at all three of them, an Adept is the spellcaster who is worse than other spellcasters at everything; that is, they're meant to suck shit, but can be competent to, say, buy a remove curse from, to manufacture magical potions, to help enchant divine-type magical items, and the like. Notably, being an Adept means you're not part of the chosen many - this was the class associated with people who put in the work to learn divine magic the hard way, or who for one reason or another could not commune with their god in a manner that might be more associated with a Cleric. As little use as it saw, this is a concept that could use some bringing forward - many, many D&D settings, here to include Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, and Eberron, blithely assume that these services are on offer, and indeed that in a big enough city you might even be able to buy raise dead or stronger magic. You know who sells that but isn't qualified to be the kind of freak an adventurer is? Adepts!

Retiree - Of course, sometimes Clerics do survive being adventurers, often "intact" for a given value of that (having regeneration in-house saves you a fortune on prosthetic limbs). This kind of Cleric-as-NPC are going to be famous figures, perhaps thrust into positions of spiritual or communal responsibility they might not be equal to; after all, Clerics aren't priests. Make an NPC a lot like a Cleric, turn them middle-aged or old, call it a day. Someone like this may have taught a PC Cleric, especially if they caught said PC early on and intervened to try and ensure this youngblood doesn't die screaming between learning the difference between "my god is with me" and "I'm invulnerable."

Rival - As a PC Cleric gets more powerful and starts, you know, slaying fucking dragons and shit, the strength of their legend may well give their word weight on dogma, doctrine, and ethics. Someone more happy with the status quo of their faith, or someone with a differing vision, these can be great Cleric NPCs, rife with potential for social conflict and always able to be tapped for an epic caster-on-caster showdown. Your goal here is to make someone who could be a player character, they just aren't; bring in passionate ideals, think through their reasons for supporting the vision of faith they do, and, oh yeah, don't forget the weird pile of magic items endemic to all adventurers.

Cackling Villain - Did you know Clerics have been either the best or second-best necromancers in D&D for nearly every edition? They're third-place in 5e, behind Necromancer Wizards and Oathbreaker Paladins, a first-time event for them, but quite literally every Cleric of 5th level or higher can wake up in the morning, decide to raise an army of the dead, and then do that. They can just do that! Even outside of strict necromancy Clerics have that combination of zeal, competence, perceptiveness, and, let us not forget, terrifying magic that can make them excellent setpiece villains or even non-villainous antagonists. Your party thinks a wizard is behind this bullshit? They're gonna wish it was a wizard.

Religion In D&D Part 1 - Context Part II: Revenge Of The Context

Do I need to break this up into two headlines? Strictly, no. However, this thing is already a fucking doorstopper, I might as well give a place where people can pause.

So remember, eighty years ago, way back at the top of the article, when I said this was going to be an angrier article than the last one? Despite writing that warning myself I have, during the course of this, been shocked at how salty and aggressive I've gotten about things thus far, and this is coming from someone who knows he has anger issues in the first place. I genuinely did not realize the depths of passionate opinions I have on offer about Cleric. However, that warning was for these next two sections, as I'm very, acutely aware of my beef here, my deep well of bitterness, and my years of confused rage that have become a kind of formless hate for the way the discussion on fantasy religion across the genre, but especially in D&D, has been discussed. Y'all got a lifelong atheist out here about to tell you that you're being harsh and reductive about religion as like, a concept, and to make matters worse the behavior of the D&D audience in general has been such that I am now in a position where I need to do apologetics for known genocide enthusiast Gary fucking Gygax. Do you have the slightest idea how little that pleases me?

So let's start this off right. A lot of folks operate on incomplete, incorrect, or just plain nonexistent ideas of what faith has, historically, looked like in various D&D settings, so I'ma play the hits here and then we're gonna get into the next section where I make some suggestions. Alright? Alright.

Greyhawk: Weirdly Coherent - Commonly and incorrectly hailed as the first D&D setting (rest in peace Blackmoor & Dave Arneson), Greyhawk (known in-universe as Oerth) was written primarily by Gary Gygax, though shaped heavily by his home games and the players thereof. Now, I'm not gonna veer into a hit piece on Gygax (and even if I wanted to better ones already exist), but notable in the context of his writing on fantasy religion is that Gary Gygax was a fanboy for the Crusades, but also a massive (and half-educated, poorly researched) fanboy for ancient Celtic legend. Some of the oddities for this strange mix have already been mentioned, such as how the original Cleric is based on Crusader priests and the modern Cleric is still feeling that influence, but this - alongside growing up very culturally Christian in, you know, the United States of America - was also very much influential on how Gygax would come to write his fantasy faiths and also run up on his own limits with the same.

Faith in Greyhawk is polytheism as brought to you by someone who almost sort of understands the idea of polytheism. Genuinely, Gygax made a good run at this and kinda tripped over his own shoelaces at the end...well, his own shoelaces and his unrelenting race essentialism, thanks for the racial pantheons buddy. Greyhawk is home to many faiths, which worship and/or fear and/or oppose multiple gods (for example, Erythnul is associated with the so-called New Faith of the Flaeness but is more of a demonic figure of evil than a god you are, socially, expected to 'worship'). For your average person, the buck stops here. While an individual god may have greater prominence in a given region for political, social, or mythological reasons (for example, the relative prominence of Boccob the Uncaring in the Free City of Greyhawk in no small part due to the influence of the legendary Cleric known as Riggby) and therefore have a grand temple or dedicated cults in their name, this isn't the norm everywhere. When the Church of St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel installs a building in your frontier village they're here on a mission, it's weird, and you should be worried. On a normal day, your average lay member performs acts of worship as part of their day-to-day life, calling upon the god(s) who are relevant to their endeavors to give thanks, to ask for blessings, to honor them, or to plead mercy. Clerics, in turn, while socially conflated with the more specific cults are often pantheistic Clerics, drawing upon many gods as representatives of the overall faith. Dogmas are typically a little light on details when it comes to the afterlife, in part because the idea of an unearthly reward for one's faith is often seen as a little distasteful, and in part because going to the afterlife of a particular god is actually pretty rare on Greyhawk. Your average person is drawn to the Outer Plane that most aligns with their worldview, and goes on their spiritual journey in the hereafter without reference to a particular god.

Which is where we get to the weird shoelace tripping, because you only get an afterlife related to your faith if you've developed an intimate and intense relationship with one god in particular. When this relationship has become a defining, perhaps the defining part of your life (whether or not you're a divine caster), then you go to that god's afterlife when you die. The typical case here is someone with a deep passion for work that falls under the purview of a god, such as a master thief ending up with Olidammara, or a mountain man passing into the dominion of Elhonna. Clerics, though rarer, are prime candidates for this sort of afterlife, but also like...the fuck were you on, Gygax? Admittedly not all faiths in the real world particularly concern themselves with the hereafter or claim to have answers about what it might be like or what it entails, and in that sense Gygax's Planar afterlives as soft mysteries and a sort of default state aren't entirely out there - it's the strange dash of monotheism at the end that gets me. And, not to leave this unsaid, Gygax is not a particularly good fantasy anthropologist, so sometimes he just. Wrote shit. That he perhaps should not have written if he wanted to retain the chunk of his dignity that he lost by publishing it. I'd say to do a shot every time he writes something weird about women as gods or women in faith but you'd get through one book and be dead already.

Forgotten Realms: The Original Sin - Ed Greenwood you are this hobby's cool grandpa and also mine and I'm so sorry that I need to put you on fucking blast here. I can only hope that you've heard all this already; it's been being bitched about for twenty years, after all.

Statistically the first D&D setting that you personally have encountered, the Forgotten Realms (the continent of Faerun on the planet Toril, in-universe) was originally written by Ed Greenwood and has been contributed to by a list of other authors entirely too long for me to cite without dying of starvation at this keyboard. Most commonly known for its gonzo locations, intricate worldbuilding, and being absolutely riddled with famous high-level NPCs engaged in high-level bullshit with one another and the world at large (a status encouraged by the staggering array of novels and videogames set in it), the Forgotten Realms is also infamous in the audience for requiring that people worship a god that is their closest and most favored god and to be true to that god or face punishment in the afterlife. Those who are False to their faith face an eternity of civil service in the City of the Dead, while the Faithless end up mortared into the Wall of the Faithless to suffer until eventually becoming one with the Fugue Plane. It's very easy to point the finger at Ed Greenwood's Catholic faith when it comes to these worldbuilding elements, and while I'm certain that has something to do with the state of affairs I need you to take a walk with me.

The Forgotten Realms is a land of miracles and wonders. It is lousy with gods; indeed, if you ever go look up a full list (do NOT fucking use the FR Wiki) you may well spit your drink at the screen. Faerun is home to gods native to the world, interlopers from other Primes, gods from human cultures that ended up here when their faithful were kidnapped across the Planes (here to include gods from Ireland, Egypt, and Finland, raise your hand if this sentence is how you learned that there are gods native to Finland), alien horrors from beyond the stars, Planar luminaries, ascended mortals, and more. These gods gather into pantheons, though to be frank that relationship is often quite uh, feudal, or familial. Trying to claim the gods of someone else's pantheon don't exist or are lesser than your own god on Faerun is a real fast ticket to getting your ass beat by said gods while your own gently asks what you've learned from this experience. Among other things, though, this means that "converting" within your own faith basically isn't conversion; if you grew up in a family of Chauntea worshipers and you get real into Mielikki this event, socially, is fucking nothing, it's a non-event. It might be a different story if you turned around and started worshiping Mystra, but even then that question is very much mediated by one's culture and geography; converting even far outside one's current or native faith is a non-event in, say, Waterdeep, but it might be a little more surprising in Neverwinter.

Here's the thing: the Forgotten Realms does not experience a separation of "religious life" from "normal life". This is gonna be a hard idea for my American readers in particular to grasp, but while Jane Average Realmswoman has a single patron deity and she is trying to emulate that god's example as much as possible, it is perfectly normal for her to pray to other gods, ask for their favor, and interact with their worshipers, and this is in no small part because they are inescapably bound with Jane's everyday life. The local cults of Azuth and/or Mystra bankroll the parchment makers who print the novels Jane reads (because parchment is required for scrolls, and both churches are also in heavy on magical industries), the fishermen who catch the food she buys offer fearful worship to Umberlee who is both their provider and their destroyer, the faithful of Sylvanus, Chauntea, or Eldath maintain the city parks and fight tooth and nail to keep them wild. When she feels lost in her life and needs guidance, the temples of Selune are open at all hours of the day and night and are the closest thing the Realm has seen to A. therapists and B. benevolent therapists. The weird BDSM club she goes to every now and again opens every party with a hymn to Loviatar. The Temple of Illmater doesn't run a fucking bake sale once a month vaguely for poor people in general, they go forth amongst the downtrodden and help them every god damn day, offering food and potable water, healing, healing again, healing a third time it's a bit of a theme, a listening ear, and campaigning for their interests in the political arena. Jane herself is a worshiper of, oh, let's say Deneir, she runs a bookstore and dedicates herself to the Goddess of Libraries; she goes to the temple of Deneir for copies of their holy texts to give away to those who ask, to verify rare tomes or donate them for the public good, and for those rites which are held in the temple, but when she went and got married a few years back she and her wife were joined in the temple of Sune Firehair, goddess of love. These gods and the organizations they run have been part of Jane's community since that community was founded, and each advances something in the living world that they see as holy and worth having; they are entwined, active, earnest. You've gotta be chill about people worshiping another god or being part of another faith entirely or your social life is going to just fucking explode.

This, then, is the full and glorious flower of Ed Greenwood's zealous dedication to anthropological worldbuilding, and unfortunately it has been sorta softly hidden and scraped under by years of corporate writing. Back in AD&D 2e, the books Faiths & Avatars and Powers & Pantheons went in deep on this subject, digging on all levels into how these religions practice and their role in everyday life, but from 3.0 onward this theme has seen less importance alongside a plethora of other writers who did not understand the vision, not that I'm looking at any RA SALVATORE YOU FUCKING HACK in particular. The end result is that the average player for 20+ years has been introduced to the part of faith in the Forgotten Realms that is deeply weird monolatry, and has reacted to that vision, but been denied the full view of a strange but very functional polytheism whose bones are still in the setting. That vision of strange monolatry is also one that other settings have been copying for a dog's age, here to include our next subject, Pathfinder. Strap in, I am going to say a lot of things and none of them are kind.

Golarion: World Holy War - Originally written by James Jacobs and contributed to by a plethora of freelancers and internal staff members at Paizo, Golarion is a shallow theme park of a setting characterized by incuriosity, disinterest in the human condition, incompetent homages to other, better settings, and thoughtless, distinctly American sympathy for empire. Like with many things James Jacobs claims to love but refuses to understand, Golarion's model of divinity is very much based on what people think the Forgotten Realms model is, and even in the context of that already-corrupt shadow, Golarion's is much worse. Much of the worldbuilding around divinity and cosmology is utilitarian; for instance, Mr. Jacobs is on record stating that gods on Golarion empower Clerics and other champions because direct miraculous intervention would set off a chain of mutually assured destruction that would leave no mortal life behind. Other bits are clearly more personal; as a key for-instance here, gods on Golarion are generative forces for alignment. That is, a god defines what it is to be, say, Lawful Good or Chaotic Neutral, and to defy a god is to have your alignment changed (see: Wrath of the Righteous). It is for this reason that the churches of Golarion concern themselves to an extreme extent with orthodoxy ("right thought", contrast orthopraxy, "right action"). Sharp-eyed readers may be recalling that I talked about paladins in Golarion being expected to root out heresy; this situation is also why every god on Golarion supposedly maintains Inquisitors, as seen prior in this article. Further, these literal thought police deploy spells like castigate which punish and humiliate victims, primarily those of one's own faith, into confessing their "sins", which, while we're right here, how did the literal god damn Catholic remember that not every faith has sins or engages with the idea of sin and James Jacobs fucking couldn't pull that shit off?

Churches on Golarion do not have broad faiths that include multiple gods. Any given god may have divine friends, allies, or slaves, but ultimately the churches they run all have missionary work & attempted conversion in common. There was a good chunk of time in which Sarenrae, goddess of redemption, was running a fucking slave empire into swordpoint conversions, and only as of Pathfinder 2e has that been being fixed at all, in no small part because, again, James Jacobs does not understand the things he claims to love and dug his heels in when readers told him to his fucking face that this was a bad look. Likewise, these churches are separated from "normal" life quite a bit, being a place where one walks to in order to get one's worship on before returning to the rest of one's life, a particularly Protestant model of worship reproduced so thoughtlessly that I'm shocked Mr. Jacobs didn't achieve a state of no-mind and escape Samsara. Sometimes they sponsor religious organizations such as knightly orders or wizard colleges but these are exceptions, not the rule, and even then "oh hey the Hellknights are coming to town" isn't exactly a day to day kind of fuckin' event, is it? Mechanics like Obediences attempt to walk this back, but the thing about requiring you to spend resources to get mechanical benefits from worshiping your god is that you've turned around and made this a strange thing. Praying and honoring, say, Shelyn every day is no longer something you just do, it's something weird freaks do and they get divine power from doing it. There is no escaping the blade of the ludonarrative; mechanics win all conflicts because they influence the actual game world.

Now, while I sincerely hope my complete contempt for James Jacobs has come across here, I do have an obligation to be evenhanded. Pathfinder 2e has walked some of this back, but the root problems remain. The second edition of Golarion has, for example, removed Alignment entirely, which certainly solves one problem, but it also replaced castigate with crisis of faith, a Cleric spell designed to kill other Clerics by making them doubt their gods. Likewise, Pathfinder 2e has been mum on certain cosmological revelations from late in Pathfinder 1e, one of which being the idea that only one god will survive the end of the universe and they get to be the supreme god of the next one, which is given as the motivation for them being so far up on the nuts of getting converts. This idea is, to me, completely repulsive, but it's also just such a revealing take on what Paizo thinks gods are and what they think of faith. And unfortunately, the broad zeitgeist of the current D&D audience is very sympathetic to that idea, which brings us to:

Religion In D&D Part 2 - I Cannot Believe I Of All Fucking People Have To Tell You To Stop Being Such A Cynic

Man the little icon on the scroll bar is gettin' real fuckin' small at this point. This will be the last major set of arguments for the article; following this section will be one sample Cleric for every Domain published in 5.0 (5.5, released in 2024, is a bit young for me to bother just yet), so just stay with me here y'all. It's been a long, angry, bitter journey, and yet there is this final hill to die on.

So, what's this broad zeitgeist I was just talking about? To be frank, it's a combination of thoughtless American Protestantism and some r/atheism bullshit. As the audience for D&D has gotten more left-leaning and queer, in no small part due to the wild successes of shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 (and WotC's weak, half-done, and yet unambiguously open support for including queer players, players of color, and others traditionally gated out of D&D), there has been a...conflation, shall we call it, of the fictional religions in various D&D settings with, not to put too fine a point on it, real-world Evangelicals and others who perpetuate harm in the name of faith. And, y'know, I get it. I'm a whole-ass bi dude from the edge of the Bible Belt, I used to get fuckin' jumped every other day or so, I lived in Kansas for six mother fucking years, I get it. But uh, remember when I said I'm a bit of a zealot for the old lore? Remember my consistent theme in articles of not liking it when things with great potential are left on the table because there is an Approved Way to view them? Yeah. So. Let's talk. We're gonna lay out some arguments and some suggestions.

Everything Old Is New Again - "But Vox," the strawman who teleported into this sentence is saying, "you yourself have said that the stuff you're into is old! Surely there needs to be an accounting for the changes in play culture, let alone real-world culture?" And like yeah, sure, but here's the thing: edgy-ass immature atheism (I say, as an edgy atheist) is also old as hell in D&D. Like, old-old. Late-game AD&D 1e old. Older-than-me old. Now, D&D's first serious and nuanced internal conversation about the nature of divinity and its role in mortal lives was part of Planescape, whose bones remain in all modern settings to this day (even Exandria, primarily written by Matthew "I Am In Every Videogame, Yes, Even That One" Mercer), but like a lot of settings it was very...inconsistently brought forward during 3.X, leading to the loss of a lot of its strangeness, its philosophy, and even its earnest willingness to simply be cringe but free. Though this was by no means confined to Planescape, as many writers of D&D novels were extremely willing to question the utility, motives, or even divinity of the gods - here to include Paul Kidd (author of the novelizations for White Plume Mountain, Descent Into The Depths Of The Earth, and Queen of the Demonweb Pits), who I usually claim as my gold standard for D&D novelizations but whose attitude here is, quite frankly, embarrassing in its confident thoughtlessness and cynicism. The ideas that gods are super-predators, that they are a class of abusers, that they are false idols, that they cannot claim divinity because they are limited/can be killed, these ideas are, statistically, likely to be older than you are. Better writers than you have been fumbling this since before you learned how to read.

Jesus Christ Is An Outlier And Should Not Be Counted - So here's the thing. The idea that a god needs to be a transcendent being, with attributes that render them sovereign from the living world, removed from time and supreme in all senses? That's just Christianity. If you go talk to like, a rabbi, an imam, if you can have a frank conversation with a Hellenic pagan or a Zoroastrian or a follower of Voudoun, they'll offer quite different perspectives, often a number of different ones from within their own faiths. There are more conceptions of what it is to be divine, to be a god and to worship gods, than there are cultures that have believed in gods, and to be frank the best advice I have for you here is to go outside and touch grass. Then, take some of the grass with you and have some fascinating & frank conversations with anyone who is not Christian. Even Gary Gygax, fanboy of the literal fucking Crusades, tried to handle his shit here and got more than nowhere in terms of success. When you insist that the gods of D&D need to be like the god of Christianity, you are both limiting yourself creatively and engaging on a great deal of art in bad faith, bringing with you your own baggage which you are failing to question. These conversations are gonna be difficult! You're going to feel ignorant; you may try the patience of the people you're seeking to learn from. But to learn is an unalloyed good, and here I am speaking of far more than the hypothetical benefit it's going to bring to your Cleric in your happy elfgame time.

The Lord Is God Of Both Good And Evil - Surprise bitches it's a second alignment section. First tings first, I want to repeat again that gods in D&D are not generative forces of virtue; rather, they are worldviews. This changes if you're playing Pathfinder, but if you are playing Pathfinder, stop immediately. And this argument can seem like I'm splitting hairs, but it changes the game quite a bit; a lot of players and readers wonder why, say, Liira isn't out here trying to solve all of the world's problems, but that is not Liira's fucking job, y'know? Her job is to be the goddess of joy, the pure light and laughter of seeing the world of wonder, to be god of delights and surprises, and it's not exactly fair to ask her to be something else. If your character is a Liiran and you have some concerns about, I dunno, the homelessness problem in Waterdeep, that's on you to work towards.

Broadly, though, there is a problem in the fanbase that was laid out excellently in The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, written by the esteemed Ursula K. Le Guin; people find it very easy to assume that if something is described as good, as benevolent, as truly kind and compassionate and full of wonder, there has to be some kind of catch. There is a hidden evil, there is a dark cost, there is an ulterior motive. And like, look, the gods of D&D are fallible beings, they make mistakes, but the thing is that when D&D tells you a god is Good, it like...means it. Does the writing always bear this up? No. The writing is often friendly to things that are in fact bad. But even figures like Bahamut or Tyr, infamous for their associations with fantasy cops, they're trying to be the gods of like, Sam Vimes, not the gods of police brutality. Likewise gods are not the primary drivers of the battle between good and evil - they are prosecuting their worldviews, and those worldviews relate to a Prime Material Plane that is of both wonder and horror, that is full of the creations of many gods and even many mortals. It is the law of the living world that wasps lay their eggs in living things, but so too is it the law that the land is bountiful, that a shocking number of alien beings would love you to pet them, that the sunrise after a storm is uncommonly beautiful and glorious.

As far as evil gods go, let me link my article there again so I can expand on it. Broadly, evil gods in D&D can be thought of as part of two camps; Greenwoodian evil, and Dickensonian evil (shout-out to my close friend and priestess - don't question it - the Celt for this framework). Greenwoodian evils are parts of nature, unrelentingly bound to the living world, who are gods over things that are terrible but necessary. Talona (goddess of plagues), Umberlee (goddess of the sea), Auril (goddess of winter), Loviatar (goddess of suffering), these are Greenwoodian evils, and if you're noticing that most of these are women, well, Ed Greenwood seems constitutionally incapable of writing a woman who is not, at worst, both glorious and terrible, and this is a compliment. Now, Greenwood has gods that don't fit this conception - look no further than Bane, god of tyranny - but the great joke at the expense of these gods is that they are not, contrary to their own belief, sovereign from the living world, they are not above it, removed from it. They are, instead, bent, defeated, broken, and beaten down until they service the natural order, and each time they attempt to shatter the cage the world of wonder has woven around them they lose some part of themselves in the process.

Now, Dickensonian evil is named for the works of Seth Dickenson, which concerns itself with the Sword Logic, the logic of empire. The argument it makes is that reliance on others makes you vulnerable, and only through becoming a sovereign being can you be safe and complete; the ideal being, in the conception of Dickensonian evil, interacts with others not at all, or, if it must, interacts with them only to consume them for resources. Bane is a Dickensonian evil, as are Bhaal, Myrkul, Gruumsh, Hextor, and the like, and the thing about the Sword Logic is that it is persuasive, powerful, and wrong. However, while it is ultimately self-defeating, the harm done to real people in the meantime is an incalculable tragedy, and thus it needs to be opposed at all times. As edgy bastards say constantly: you can't let God do all the work. This style of evil appeals to people who are, themselves, cruel, ruthless, and inclined towards consumption, but it also appeals to people who are hurt, who have been betrayed, whom the world has let down, and in that sense there is quite a lot to explore here. The ordinary person does not give in to the logic of empire without cause.

For gods of both good and of evil, the question at the root of it all is this: why do people willingly worship them? What worldview is on offer, and why are you sympathetic to that worldview? What would it mean to change, adopt, or oppose that worldview? If you take nothing else from this section, take that and ponder it.

Death Is For The Dead - Going with the above, holy fucking hell y'all the cosmology is not as important as you think it is. There is a vast emphasis placed by the player base upon the afterlife, one which sometimes bleed into the writing (in Starfinder, published by Paizo, "choosing your own afterlife" is seen as the ultimate expression of religious freedom) but you know what most people know about the afterlife? Nothing useful! Jane Average Realmswoman knows that she will in some way be with her goddess when she's dead and that it'll probably be pretty cool and that's about it, and as far as these things go Jane is correct. People tend to react with shock and horror when they learn for the first time that the usual spiritual journey someone goes on in the afterlife will end with them becoming one with the Plane and/or god they're associated with, and to an extent I have some sympathy for this. Lifelong atheist, remember, the idea of "losing myself" to become part of something greater sounds terrifying...but is that what's fucking happening? If one is to experience an afterlife, that is, a form of life, one must be able to change. There is no escape from eventually changing so much that you would be unrecognizable as the living person you once were, and for those who want to try we have undeath on offer (except we don't, undead also experience those sorts of changes and as a result there is truly no escape from being a real thing in the real reality). And in this cynicism for the afterlife people miss the forest for the trees. When you end up, say, in the divine realm of Oghma and are filing books in his infinite library, Oghma isn't using your soul for slave labor here. You're a newly dead person who needs time to acclimate to not having the needs of the living, and moreover you're a newly dead person whose greatest, most ardent passion was language, poetry, prose, nonfiction, the glory of writing in all its flower, and now you have unlimited access to such, an endless opportunity to truly understand and grow closer to this thing that was so important to you. I'm not saying not to involve cosmological themes or to not take adventures to divine realms, don't mistake me, but...maybe try to open your mind to the idea that this thing which is supposed to be good and natural is, in fact, good and natural.

Gods & You - This is more or less re-stating some arguments from above, but put some thought into the churches and faiths your character has a relationship with. Are they part of a broader faith? Is such a faith big where they live, and what does that mean for them? What sorts of interactions and opinions, right or wrong, do they have with the local religions and why? It doesn't have to be anything huge, but the faithful are, again, inescapable. People's lives in these settings are religious, and that faith infuses their day-to-day; so too does it infuse your character's. And while I'm right here, having beef with those faiths and/or the gods behind them? Legit. Not just legit, but on the table to be consummated; there is a long and strong tradition in D&D of killing gods with your own two hands, and while gods can be hard to keep dead (look at Bane), killing them always means something. Maybe you can take their place and try your hand at being a better god than they were. Maybe you're just trying to stop their evil schemes. Maybe they slept with your mom and you take some exception to this. Whatever it is, these sorts of conflicts both have bones in with real-world religion and a storied history in D&D itself, and they shouldn't be considered outside the scope of your ambition if you really wanna go for it.

Y'all, it's been a journey. If you've made it this far thank you for reading, and as always I remain open to feedback and criticism. Please don't let the incredible length of this piece or my unrelenting, undying fucking rage intimidate you; I wouldn't be making articles like this if I wasn't trying to have a legitimate dialogue with my audience, y'know? Now, I have one last bit for you. In an effort to be helpful, to fucking flex with my writing, and as a little treat, the following section will present some example Clerics. All but one (Matthias Winters) are from the Forgotten Realms. If you make the egregious mistake of looking up the Forgotten Realms wiki, it will tell you that Matthias's god is an aspect of Velsharoon; this is incorrect, and the first person to try to tell me otherwise will be turned into a bowl of spaghetti and served up at a high school dance. This is the one thing I will be entertaining no arguments about. That said, please feel free to take these characters as inspiration, mine them for ideas, or even just to play them yourself if you're inclined to indulge my staggering arrogance in such a fashion.

One last note; you will notice that I have often disregarded the Domains associated with various gods in the books. This is in no small part because WotC did those assignments with incredible, mind-blowing fucking incompetence, and also because a great deal of their former Domains or Spheres no longer have adequate representation. I have chosen to ignore them on purpose and with malice aforethought.

Now, without further ado, may I present:

The Chosen Many - Sample Clerics

Our sample Clerics will be formatted as follows:

[NAME]

Species Domain Cleric [Background]

General pitch of their concept & plot hooks

Personality Traits: [HERE] / Ideals: [HERE] / Bonds: [HERE] / Flaws: [HERE]

Matthias Winters

Human Death Cleric [Guild Artisan]

Mattie was only an apprentice when the monsters came to his village, ravening things set loose by an unwise summoner. People he knew died, until the Shrouded Lady came and destroyed the beasts with a dark and divine grace he had never before encountered. This Lady did not ask for money, and she did not ask for favors, but of the proud and simple people of the village she did ask two things: to let others know that they had a friend in the lich-god Mellifleur, Friend of Heroes, and for Matthias's services as her apprentice. Both were granted, with many tearful goodbyes and promises to write, which have been, it must be said, kept. It's a strange life, working as a Cleric to the Lord of the Last Shroud. Matthias isn't terribly educated, no, but he's no fool: he knows his god is evil, far more vile and underhanded than Matthias himself would ever want to be. And yet, "Friend of Heroes" seems to be no empty title. Matthias is sent on odd errands all across the land, all of them ominous and to some nebulous good. Go here, says the Shrouded Lady, and warn the town that a drow raid is coming; go there, and deliver these potions to the Moonstone Four, who will have need of them. Matthias has guarded caravans, healed the sick, slain the wicked, and placed far more magical items into chests within crumbling ruins than he ever thought plausible. During less pressing times, his work as a smith still sees use, crafting items of unusual make and odd, threatening beauty for more powerful spellcasters to enchant. One day, the Shrouded Lady has promised, his training will be advanced enough to create his own.

Mellifleur is evil. Matthias knows this. But does it matter so much, if Matthias is still helping? Does the promise of lichdom for himself really matter, if he can do more right by the world with all that time? He thinks about this, between hammer strokes, and he has no answer yet.

Personality Traits: "I tend to work when I need to think." & "I ask people what they think of death." & "I eat big and hearty; quality is a distant consideration." / Ideals: "If you've helped others, the method shouldn't matter [Neutral]." & "Professionals have standards [Lawful]." / Bonds: "I might uh, be in love with the Shrouded Lady." & "I seek a lost artifact of Mellifleur that can divine the plots of other evil gods." / Flaws: "When I don't know what to do, I take the first order I'm given that sounds right." & "There is no kill like overkill."

Elrissa Morrowmoon

Drow War Cleric [Soldier]

Born on the surface as the first generation of her family to be so born, Elrissa was raised in a community devoted to Eilistraee, actively involved in shepherding escapees from Lolth's dominions. She grew up idolizing the warrior-priests of her goddess, their grace and confidence, their surety, but never felt that for herself; big for a drow, hell, big even in comparison to a human, she despaired at ever achieving her dreams of becoming one of Eilistraee's paladins, even as she trained every day with gritted teeth and tearful eyes. When her community was found and raided in an attempt to capture the escapees as sacrifices to Lolth, Elrissa lost her father, and the very next night she stormed into the sacred grove and screamed her demand for vengeance up to her goddess.

She was answered.

In a sick way, Elrissa feels sometimes it might have been better if she wasn't. Now she's a holy warrior, now she knows she has the favor of her goddess and none can deny it, but she's still the plodding, clonking, clanging thing she was before, hunting the faithful of Lolth in her plate armor like an army of pots and pans. She lacks subtlety; she lacks grace. But while Elrissa is still in some ways the little girl who was never good enough in her own eyes, watch her change when the innocent are threatened, or when the priests of the Spider Queen are within striking distance. She does not leave survivors. She will not heed surrenders. She is coming, in a tide of moonlight and hateful sorrow, until no brick stands atop another.

Personality Traits: "I am very earnest and forthright." & "I get easily distracted by nature." & "I maintain my own equipment; no one else gets to." / Ideals: "People get better when they're offered love and support [Good]." & "For drow to have a future, Lolth must die [Neutral]." / Bonds: "I will find the ones who killed my father and repay them in kind." & "Sacred groves, even those of other gods, are worthy of my protection." / Flaws: "My hatred of Lolth can blind me to practical realities." & "Alcohol isn't a problem, it's a solution."

Gemma Rivergard

Half-Elf Forge Cleric [Noble]

Gemma acquired her vocation the way she gets most things: she bought it. As the fourth child of the noble Rivergards, who make their money in trade, her life was always a bit of a loose end. On a dare, she walked into a temple of Waukeen, laid out a spread of gems and gold and art pieces from the family vault, and announced her intention to purchase the exalted station of Cleric. She was as surprised as everyone else when the Goddess of Coins agreed.

Gemma is still a bit of a loose end. Waukeen blessed her with the power to make the goods her family merely trades, and much more besides, but lacking a specific holy mission she's taken to traveling, and it's broadened her horizons. One walk down a poorly maintained road might lead to a quest to cull the monsters threatening it, or politics with a greedy lord who has forgotten the value of commerce. She's set predatory contracts to rights, fought to the death against slaver rings, and purchased a truly concerning amount of amateur art from various goblins. And yet while she's happy with her growth as a person, Gemma still feels like she's lacking a purpose. Surely she can't purchase that.

…Surely not?

Personality Traits: "Is this some kind of peasant joke I'm too rich to understand?" & "You not understanding if I'm joking kinda is the joke." & "That really updated my journal." / Ideals: "To broaden one's horizons is to improve oneself [Good]." & "Every man has his price. That's not always a bad thing [Neutral]." / Bonds: "I haven't left my family! I'm still looking out for them." & "I still keep up with the goblin artists I've bought paintings from. I'm kinda their patron." / Flaws: "You bet I can't? Hold my beer." & "I forget sometimes that my experiences aren't universal."

Neela Wagonborn

Halfling Trickery Cleric [Haunted One]

So, here's the thing. This isn't Neela. Neela is not here at the moment, and you can't leave a message. Neela, you see, was captured by a Thayan looking to build a better Mirror of Opposition, and the wizard's experiment spit out Aleen, the Lawful Evil reflection of the original Neela, who had spent her life to date as a Cleric of Liira, Goddess of Joy. The mirror's enchantment, normally used to compel the summoned copy to kill the original, did not do this to Aleen, who was swiftly captured herself, brutally experimented upon, and then turned loose with the promise that her "creator" would be watching.

She's been hiding for all her life is worth, posing as Neela and playing a nerve-shredding game of balancing distance from Neela's loved ones with staying close enough to not arouse suspicion. Who knows if she'd survive getting killed in this Faerun, which is so unlike the one she knows? Praise be to the gods both above and below, though, Aleen here has an excuse: she's been receiving revelations from Liira, which are guiding her on a quest whose objective is unclear to her, but which has enabled her to become more powerful as a Cleric. If she's tricked the Lady of Illusions…well, that speaks well of her odds, right?

Liira has not been tricked. This journey of self-discovery into the world of beauty and wonder is about to be the funniest prank the Lady of Mists has pulled in fucking centuries.

Personality Traits: "The road calls! Immediately!" & "I remember those who wrong me." & "I have a weakness for musicians." / Ideals: "A deal is a deal [Lawful]." & "Everyone else is looking out for themselves first. Why should I be better? [Evil]." / Bonds: "That Thayan needs to die. Screaming." & "No one can find out who I am. No one." / Flaws: "I'm a good liar, but not as good as I think I am." & "My cruel streak can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

Fila Firetouched

High Elf Tempest Cleric [Entertainer]

Descended from a long line of Waterdhavian elves, Fila broke with family tradition by converting to the worship of Sune Firehair, goddess of beauty and patron of the arts. During their more youthful years they lived down to the stereotypes of the many lay members, producing a frankly embarrassing catalogue of love poetry, ex-lovers, and amateur paintings, but after the loss of their sibling to a sea storm their art took a rather more gloomy and Gothic direction. Storms and landscapes featured heavily, and with their newfound focus Fila was praised as an artist to watch, with a keen eye for the sublime. Their parents and community did their best to support Fila, but they were determined to process their grief in their own way, seeking to capture the "true heart of the storm", which they feared, hated, and also loved.

It was atop a hill in the Dessarin Valley, during a savage spring storm, that Fila was struck by lightning while trying to paint. They died in an instant of eternal agony, but it was not to be their end. Rather than claim Fila's soul, Sune Firehair offered them the chance to return, to continue their art and seek out others whose beauty was hidden by the cruelties of the world. Fila accepted, and returned to a body branded by the storm and crackling with divine power.

The plate armor is still taking some getting used to, as are the odd glances and awkward greetings from the church, but the storm, oh, the storm…

It feels like an old friend now, beautiful and terrible. It's all too happy to help with Fila's work.

Personality Traits: "Hold a moment, I need to sketch this for later." & "There is a party person in me that comes out sometimes." & "The amateur poetry will continue until morale improves." / Ideals: "The world is good, the world is beautiful, the world is worth fighting for [Good]." & "If you don't challenge norms and expectations, people will never examine them [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "I don't always get on with my family, but I'd still do anything for them." & "I haven't forgotten any of my ex-lovers; they can ask a lot more of me than I care to admit." / Flaws: "My resurrection was a miracle, but sometimes when people say my scars are a curse it still feels like they're right." & "I may be a little too excited about my newfound powers of violence."

Nattie Kells

Human Order Cleric [Hermit]

Nattie's family likes to say she was born morose; a depressed and somber child, she never quite got on with the people of her river town, and made few friends, not even during her wild years of late adolescence when she carved her way through every interested lass available only to seemingly lose her passion. Oh, yes, people tried to help, but the things they found meaning in just didn't quite resonate with Nattie, and she dabbled with this church and that career and suchlike before, inevitably, dropping them in favor of her only seemingly eternal passion: reading. Eventually she scraped some money together to go traveling, looking for anything that could speak to her, and she found a long-abandoned shrine to Jergal, the Last Scribe, assistant to Kelemvor and Lord of the End of Everything. It wasn't meaning, not exactly, but the idea that all would be ash one day, that meaning was not required, it had a comfort to it.

She was 23 when Jergal came to her in her dreams and requested her services, which would necessitate a return to lands where other people dwelled. Nattie awoke to find a pile of equipment near her, along with a holy symbol, and she set off, learning the ways of divine magic in her dreams as she made the long and pointless trek back to "civilization". Now, as the Quill of the Last Scribe, Nattie enacts what she thinks of as fate. A charm spell here, a nudge there, and things happen; a man meets his future husband by taking a road he would have walked past, a goblin scout is devoured by an owlbear he would have avoided, a horse spooks and kills its rider. Nattie has hurt people. She has saved people. She tells herself it doesn't matter, but beneath the layers of lassitude and nameless sorrow there is an uncertainty. What is she becoming?

This, too, is Jergal's design. Nattie is determined to live in misery, but the Last Scribe can wait for her to realize better. He can always wait.

Personality Traits: "Ugh. People." & "Primary sources motherfuckers! Write some! Keep them safe!" & "Nobody talk about the kind of person I am around furry animals. I mean it." / Ideals: "It means something, that you were here, and that you were alive [Good]." & "People return to dust eventually. It doesn't matter if they return to dust faster [Evil]." / Bonds: "My lonely home in the shrine is sacred to me." & "The bookstore I used to go to as a child was nearly going out of business, but as long as I keep spending adventuring money there it will never die." / Flaws: "I don't really have any bad feelings about people dying. People die all the time. They're very good at it." & "I wish I felt more blessed by the attention of my god, but he's such an aggravating little bitch. Why's he gotta be so annoying?"

Dagill Tapper

Shield Dwarf Knowledge Cleric [Background]

The son of miners, Dagill quickly proved to have a keen interest in learning, if little talent for academia. For much of his youth he found employment running books for the clan's mines, until - on the advice of the local priests of Moradin - he was sent to Neverwinter to be educated in magic, as the gift was in him and his home had little resources to explore it. Wizardry did not work out for Dagill, despite his passion for the Art, but that passion saw him into the worship of Azuth, God of Spells, and eventually he was chosen as a Cleric.

Dagill's interests lie in the recording and advancement of magical knowledge, and his new faith keeps him busy. Between expeditions to recover lost knowledge and study traditions of spellcraft, he assists in scribing scrolls and seeks out potential mages in under-served populations. Though his clan doesn't approve of his conversion, he's still a dwarf's dwarf, with a deep love for the gods of his people, who returns home often and pays his dues in gold, labor, and knowledge for the good of his people. They'll come around eventually. They must.

Undiscussed with most is Dagill's dearest ambition: to find one of the lost scrolls penned by the very gods, and cast it with his own hands. What else could bring him closer to his new god?

Personality Traits: "Have you heard the good word about how great wizards are today?" & "Despite it all, I'm still a dwarf's dwarf in a lot of ways." & "I make a big deal out of Azuth. All the time! People should appreciate him more!" / Ideals: "The advancement of the Art is meant to help people [Good]." & "We have obligations to truth, and to history [Lawful]." / Bonds: "I still send money to my clan, and I should visit again soon. I might have an arranged marriage coming up." & "The wizard who tried to teach me is a good woman; I need to repay her kindness." / Flaws: "I have a bit of an inferiority complex about wizards." & "I am easily distracted by puzzles and riddles."

St. Nokta Kinslayer

Goblin Life Cleric [Outlander]

Honesty can change a life, you know. Nokta's warband came up against a pack of tall-folk adventurers, as goblin warbands sometimes do. She was a soldier, then, seemingly destined to be smeared beneath a mercenary boot, but when she was captured the adventurers said: talk, and we will let you live. She talked, of course she talked, Maglubiyet teaches survival at all costs, but her fellows found out, and intended to kill her along with the adventurers during an ambush.

The tall-folk fought like demons to save Nokta, because they had said she would live, and they meant it. Despite their best efforts she died, to an arrow in the throat, only to wake with the battle still raging, brought back to life by diamond and spell and the tall-folk shaman in his metal armor. Three times did Nokta die, and three times was she brought back, only to watch the tall-folk shaman take a blade to the heart. Gripped by something she couldn't name, Nokta raced over, and took his diamonds, and tried to speak his spell, fervently calling out for his strange tall-folk god to spare him.

Nokta was answered in the name of Illmater, the Lord on the Rack, god of mercy and of self-sacrifice, and has served him since. For dying and returning, her new church calls her Saint, but her people call her Kinslayer, and the Traitor Shaman, and more besides. There will be no peace, and though Nokta knows her suffering reduces that of the world, this cannot continue. If the Fire-Eyed God wants her head, there can only be one recourse: break his priests until the cost of war sickens Maglubiyet , and he accepts peace. Saint Nokta is unafraid, and she is unmerciful.

Personality Traits: "What, tall-folk - uh, I mean, yes, my child?" & "I don't hate vegetables, I love meat." & "The Tall God says His blessings are for all. For some reason." / Ideals: "Peace for peace, wrath for wrath [Neutral]." & "I don't understand the compassion I was shown, but I do treasure it [Good]." / Bonds: "The adventurers who fought for me have my service for the asking." & "I'll drop everything to fight the servants of the Fire-Eyed God." / Flaws: "I don't know what this 'love' is, and 'trust' is also still pretty difficult for me." & "My fears drive me to violence far more often than the Tall God likes."

Jelka Threebones

Orc Grave Cleric [Acolyte]

Jelka came to live amongst the Sky Pony tribe of the Uthgardt as a young adult, one of several political hostages exchanged between her own tribe and the Sky Pony as part of a peace agreement; with both in the shadow of the Kingdom of Many-Arrows, wise leaders on both sides sought to cool traditional conflicts between them in favor of looking to the greater threat to their mutual north, and Jelka was selected for her cool head, proud bearing, and great foresight for such a young orc. The story might have ended there, if the Cult of the Dragon hadn't moved into the area looking to pillage the spirit mounds and burial grounds of both tribes' warriors to secure a supply of corpses for their necromancies. Outraged at this desecration and disrespect, Jelka called upon Gruumsh and Tempus in the name of both her peoples for the power to revenge herself upon the defilers, and her prayers were answered.

Today, Jelka continues her campaign of revenge in the name of Gruumsh, hunting down those who raise the dead, defile graves, and bend the minds of warriors. Her list of enemies is long and only growing longer, and she is keenly aware that she is not yet mighty enough to face down the likes of dracoliches or, say, the entire sovereign nation of Thay. But she will be. She must be. Wrongs have been done, and she wades into battle chanting the litany of them in an endless roll of accusation and reprisal, screaming hateful hymns alongside her chosen allies. Her new mission has made for strange bedfellows, but for all her outward fury Jelka remains the curious and level-headed young orc she was when she was selected all those years ago. Perhaps there are other enemies she might make peace with, to gain the satisfaction of her almighty vengeance.

Personality Traits: "Raise a cup with me! We should celebrate!" & "I'm very curious about new cultures, sometimes to the point of being annoying." & "I love a good story." / Ideals: "The world will hit you hard. If you don't take revenge, all you'll get is hit again [Evil]." & "If you don't have the guts, you don't deserve the glory [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "My word of alliance, once given, is absolute." & "I have siblings in my first tribe who should be adults soon. If they need my help, they have it." / Flaws: "I never forget a sleight." & "I pick fights I can't win sometimes."

Kellard Frosthalt

Rock Gnome Nature Cleric [Folk Hero]

Kell should have been a druid. He knows it, his clan knows it, druids know it, there's even odds that mushrooms in Menzobarrenzen know it, but he's always had a deep phobia of shape-shifting, so for a long while he was content to study nature…academically. Sure, his papers were trite, but the man published and that's not nothing. When he was hired to catalog finds for an expedition into Netherese ruins, the team found an ancient shrine to the goddess now known as Chauntea, and beset by undead guardians. Unwilling to let the sacred place be defiled, Kell took up arms for the first time, and found himself blessed with power.

Now Kell spends his time in lost places, seeking revelation and tending to the needs of rural communities. His new position is intimidating. More than many other followers of the Lady of Waving Grain, he understands that his goddess is an ancient and persistent foe of evil. Only…can something better truly be grown from her foes? Is Kell ready?

Personality Traits: "I love nature! Let me tell you about this parasitic wasp!" & "I know it doesn't fit my station, but I just, I need to be dressed sharp, okay?" & "I tell jokes with a completely straight face." / Ideals: "There are no pointless things; all things of the world have a treasured place in it [Good]." & "Generosity is the highest virtue [Good]." / Bonds: "Fuck Netheril, fuck the Netherese, burn their ruins and salt the ashes." & "After that first fight in the ruins, a peasant family took me in. I owe them my life." / Flaws: "I have a deep and abiding phobia of having my body changed against my will." & "I never, ever, ever, shut the fuck up."

Dolly Bookchild

Half-Drow Peace Cleric [Investigator]

Most half elves lose their human parent first, but as the child of two adventurers Dolly wasn't exactly surprised when her drow mother bit the big one doing battle with a demon accidentally released from an ancient binding. Seeking to understand her loss, Dolly started spending time in the sacred libraries of Deneir, and eventually converted after falling in love with learning. Academia isn't exactly her strong suit, but Dolly has a lot of practical knowledge that isn't often written down in an accessible fashion. Her new church was proud to fund the publishing of Dolly's Practical Survival Guide.

Still, a new love of learning isn't closure, and Dolly yearned to be an adventurer like her parents. After her second book went off to the printers, she stayed up in vigil to ask Deneir for a cleric's power, vowing to use it to find and advance knowledge, and to protect the ignorant. Her wish was granted, and now she bears the peace of the library wherever she goes. Every day is a lovely day for learning.

Hopefully one of these lovely days Dolly will figure out that the demon isn't done with just her mother.

Personality Traits: "It's a beautiful day to learn something new, isn't it?" & "Ah, the great outdoors!" & "I skip when I'm happy. No really. No, really." / Ideals: "Knowledge belongs to everyone [Lawful]." & "Extend grace to the ignorant; they truly do not know better [Good]." / Bonds: "Dad's getting on in years. I need to make sure he isn't worrying about me when he passes." & "I still return to my temple pretty often; it feels more like home than home does." / Flaws: "Sometimes I forget that my fun adventures can have deadly consequences." & "I'm from the big city where my heritage isn't a big deal, so it's surprising every fucking time that it's a big deal elsewhere."

Jonas Cobbler

Aasimar Light Cleric [Urchin]

So here's the thing. Jonas had a bit of an odd childhood. Raised by a then-single mother who is a devout follower of Lathander, Jonas was maybe six, seven years old when he mentioned in his prayers that he's a boy and asked for some help being a boy because he knew Mommy worked very hard and didn't have a lot of money. His first direct experience with divinity was his god's gentle voice in his mind saying: yes, my child, your new dawn is upon you. He had some explaining to do the next morning, and his mother was happy for him and seemingly cross with Lathander, for some reason?

It wasn't until Jonas was about seventeen that he got answers to that particular mystery; he came home to find his mother, her partner, and a golden-haired stranger waiting up for him. His mother introduced the stranger as Jonas's father...

...Lathander.

Maybe running away from home in a bit of a panic was the wrong move, but uh. Jonas has at least one parent looking out for him now, right? It'll be fine. It'll be fine. It's all gonna be fine.

Personality Traits: "I am extremely food-motivated." & "Let me teach you my secret handshake!" & "Uh, I've got, a spell for this, uh - fuck - uh, in the name of the new dawn uh -" / Ideals: "You don't need a reason to help people [Good]." & "The best time to be a better person was yesterday. The second-best time is now [Good]." / Bonds: "My old friends mostly went off to real careers, but we still stay in touch." & "There's a hidden place in the old neighborhood that I take care of." / Flaws: "I cannot walk into church any more without thinking, holy shit this guy slept with my mom." & "I am embarassingly weak to a pretty face."

Freddie Wright

Human Twilight Cleric [Criminal]

Hailing from a family of Selunite wererats in Yartar, Freddie used to have a fairly exciting life spying on Zhentarim operations, right up until she blundered into a cell of Sharrans in the sewers. They pushed her into a portal to see what would happen, but not before somehow stripping her of her lycantheropy to ensure she would suffer and die. Freddie arrived in Undermountain with nothing but her faith, and in her time of need the Moonmaiden answered. Against all odds, Freddie survived, scrounging up equipment, learning the traps, and eventually staggering out of the Well into the Yawning Portal Inn. She still has nightmares, but Freddie is grateful every day that she's alive to have them.

Now the former wererat stalks the Sharrans up and down the Sword Coast, seeking the return of what was taken. She hates her heavy armor and despises being caged in one body, but despite her snappish ways she takes her duty as a guide very seriously. That's part of the problem, actually. The dead of the Underhalls haunt Freddie and beg her intercession so that they might move on, and with every ghost laid to rest her prey gets further away. But what's a girl to do, ignore them? No. Freddie has faith. This righteous path must, will, make her whole again.

Personality Traits: "Time is money, hurry it up." & "Sometimes I overcomplicate things because I'm biased against direct solutions." & "Hey that reminds me of something that happened in my family -" / Ideals: "If you give people what they need to grow, they become their best selves [Good]." & "No one else can walk your path for you [Chaotic]." / Bonds: "Yartar is still my favorite city, and I stop by to do good by it when I can." & "The dead of the Underhalls that follow me have none other to speak for them." / Flaws: "Do you have any idea how much this stupid monkey body pisses me off?" & "I've got a vengeful streak that is not uh, approved Selunite behavior."

[nei-ning]

JUST 5 songs!? :O I have to leave SO MANY songs out which I absolutely love! Well, I go with the ones which I'm most "obsessed" with currently - and even still 5 is not enough, ahah! (Note: My obsession for songs do change with time).

Survivor - ZOOL

Black Tiger - ZOOL

ササゲロ - You Are Mine - ZOOL (sasagero)

Bang!Bang!Bang! - ZOOL (I don't now this singer's name but DAMN I love his voice SO MUCH! Best parts, when he sings, are 2:43-2:57 and 3:54-4:07. How his voice has been made to "echo" / repeat, like that - OH! MY HEART! EVERY TIME!)

Dark Side's JUDGMENT - Sosei Tachibana (VA Toshiyuki Toyonaga). Absolutely LOVING this man's voice! How he changes and lowers his voice at the end of sentences in certain points is just... GOD! I've NEVER heard anyone having or using voice like that! I LOVE IT! Sends pleasant shivers all around my body each time :D Makes me so excited, ahah! Example: When he sings word "nareyo" around 1:22 - 1:24. How he lowers and changes his voice to "yo". UUUUHHHHH, I CAN'T!!

Shame I had to leave so many other amazing songs out BUT I will do separated list of them at some point :D

Not gonna tag anyone specific since I know people won't do them anyway - even if I tag them so IF you want to do this, you can mark me as your tagger :) I was tagged by @evelhak! <3

list 5 of your favorite songs and tag 10 ppl, tagged by @daevguy

thanks for tagging me!

in no particular order:

The Urgent Call of Palestine - Zeinab Shaath

Eye-Flowers - Zaliva-D

Bleed - Nfract

Another One - ABADIR

Thaqela - Demyoon

I don't know that many ppl here yet and sorry if some of you have already been tagged in this! @amiracleilluminated @velvetjune @emmaswanned @lesbianalanwake @the-labyrinth-of-me @judyalvqrez @lostinthewoodsomewhere

[junos-jrabbles]

Hi! I have a TF2 request/suggestion for you if you want. You can choose the mercs you like to use, though I may humbly request Engie. Romantic or platonic, and in whatever form you would like.

The team has a new recruit! They are one of the most genuine, patient, friendly, sweetest people one could ever meet. They make everyone breakfast in the mornings, they listen to people's problems, they volunteer at a puppy orphanage, talk down muggers in the street, essentially a bottle of sunshine as a person.

On the battlefield however, they are most certainly one of the scariest people alive. They are incredibly strong and durable, no need for weapons when they can tear people apart with their bears hands and teeth. They are brutal, carnage incarnate, and have absolutely no fear whatsoever.

Now, their sweetness is genuine, they are not faking anything. Outside of battle they are one of the most pleasant, stable people on the team. If ever asked, the best reply they can ever give is "This is a war with no true death. (Thanks to the respawn machine) When you can play a game with no consequences, why not have a little fun? ~"

What do the mercs think about their new teammate? How did they react to seeing their first time on the battlefield? How scary is the game with a player who doesn't care?

(sorry for the length there, I get all excited. This would obviously only really work if the respawn machine is a part of the setting.)

Thank you so much for the request!! My first one :) And don’t worry about the length!!! I love excited rambles x3

Sorry that this is short!! i wrote a little hcs list for this for a little more content, but it might take a lil longer to post LOL I'll link it here when it's ready <3 and sorry for the wait, i hope this is what you were lookin for!!

Wild, meet tame.

Engineer/GNC Reader, 1k words

It was like watching a switch flip, he'd never seen it before, ever. Not as drastically as it would with you, at least. One minute he'd be wiping encrusted blood off the turret of his sentry, remnants of some poor enemy Scout, when he'd turn his head to see you barreling into the front lines. The team's Medic struggles, then practically gives up trying to keep up with your rampaging pace.

“It's like zhey don't… don't care!” Medic howls, crouching down by his dispenser to recoup lost energy. He shrugs, you're one hell of a bottled storm out here, and he can only wonder if there's anything deeper down that you're hiding away. He can see you still, just barely, from the vantage point he'd set his nest in, and by God was it a bloodbath down there. The enemies are torn to shreds in seconds, not unusual when under fire from the hulking Heavy and his repertoire of miniguns. But, the lack of gunfire is what was most unsettling.

He could see you, teeth bared, lunging in a fruitful hunt for blood, the enemy soldier screaming as he tried to kick you off of him, nearly blowing you both to bits, but sky high like a bloody firework. It was effective, and their offensive pushes were a lot weaker with someone like you guarding the captured points. There was always a nervous hum in the air when someone would call out your death, a moment for the enemy to recoup, only for them to be torn down by your wrath again.

It'd been nothing but victories recently, and it was unlike anything they'd ever experienced. Even those above them had been a little nicer recently, and boy it sure was infectious.

“Y’doing alright there, Engie?” He closed the fridge door, and looked around. What had he come in here for, that your voice had drawn him out of his search for? The cold air that brushed past him raised a shiver across his skin.

“Whatever you're after, I can cook up, I don't mind.” You're humming, pouring something into a pan on the stove, and whatever it is, smells amazing.

“Those pancakes?” He asks, stepping over gingerly, usually anyone brave enough to cook in the communal kitchen would tell any company to get out, lest they be branded by a scorching hot spatula across the face. Not you though.

“Yeah! I'll make you a few. You been eating enough, all holed up in that workshop of yours?” The sweet smell is even stronger now as you flip the pancakes, your words just as sweet, with a simple, kind hesitance in the playful tease. He knows you wouldn't poke fun at his work.

“I think there's some honey or chocolate chips around here if you want some in ‘em, hon.” And with that small mission given, you're back to humming some classical piece he'd heard playing in Medic’s office once or twice, familiar.

There's a beat of silence as he just… watches you. Only for a moment, eyes lingering where they should, just curious. He wants to ask something, but the words don't exactly come easily. He turns, and begins to rummage through some of the slightly-too-high cabinets, finding the chocolate chips, which some dickhead has placed just out of reach. He reaches high, tip toed, fingers just barely tickling the bag before he manages to swipe it down off the shelf, and bring it over to you.

The bag hits the counter with a rattly thwump, and you lean over, looking inside. “These’ll do just fine…” The smile on your face is nearly eerily pleasant as you take the bag and dump a small handful into the poured batter. There's a smoky smell in the air, but the baked goods seem fine, and Pyro isn't hanging around yet.

There's been a few moments where he questions you, your motives, your actions, but… You hadn't done anything to seem like a bad person. If anything, you'd done nothing but prove the opposite! Hell, even the Doc's birds liked you, and that's a real feat! “Thank you kindly, ma’am.” He muttered, pondering you deeply, though trying not to, you'd done nothing to earn such scrutiny.

He's staring, he's sure, but he can't seem to pull his gaze away from you. “What made you erh…” Ordinary of him to start a sentence without being sure if where to take it. “Consider… this, as a mercenary, ain't the greatest work for kind folk like you.” He huffs, stepping over to your side, leaning against the flour smeared counter. “As kind as you want to be, at least.” He squints curiously, you're not quite looking at him, glancing to him out to corner of your eye once in a while.

“Am I being investigated, copper?” You coo, smiling coyly, and flip a pancake onto a plate to your left before turning right to face him, crossing your arms across your chest. “I know what you're thinking.”

The air around you is warm, and swirling with the delectable smells of baking and everything sweet. “It's different here, than out there.” You turn back to the pan, prepping another pancake.

A shrill squeak rings out from the hall, and you both snap your heads to the noise, before it squeals down the hall, away from the kitchen.

“What in tarnation— I don't think you're some… monster,” He chides, shaking his head and wringing his gloves hands.

“Not at all, but it's just… So fascinatin’. Watching you go about, tearin’ them to shreds like it's nothin’ to ya, don't even flinch when the enemy Sniper gets a pick on you!”

Even he was prone to a nervous moment or two in a fight, but you seemed to have some sort of miraculous handle on it all though.

“I know it's different.” He resigns, and you slide another pancake onto the plate, then towards him.

You shrug, and turn the stove off, placing a small cover over the larger plate of previously made pancakes.

“There’s no harm in going a little crazy out there, I might come back with a new scar if I'm unlucky, but, well…” Your lips are pursed tightly as you mull over your next words.

“Well, there's nothing to it, we can't die, Dell.” You murmur, he takes a pancake and gingerly bites into it.

“The real fight is only lost when one team gets bored and gives up, basically, so why not have a little fun with it?”

[valentine-cafe]

i recently re-read the secret admirer with herrera husbands (209) and oh dear gods, it's soo good. and i was wondering if maybe, i could get a continuation of it?<3

also have a bit of my rambling about secret admirer reader, because i got bored at lectures, haha.

(gn reader)

a hypochondriac. that's what your friends and family called you whenever they heard that you were going to the doctor again. any minor problem was a good enough excuse to see dr herrera again, and leave another set of gifts. after some time, lying to the poor janitor was becoming easier and you didn't even have to resort to stealing keys, if only to leave a loving note.

to others, such behaviour would come off as weird. you knew. you oh so greatly knew that, still remembering how that one person you were a secret admirer for reacted way back. with rejection.

and you just didn't want to live through such an experience again, being content with only leaving gifts, never seeing the reaction. did your notes made them happy? did they appreciate another glass jar with eyes or other body part? you knew not. but you were content with it.

of course, you knew that one day, you would be noticed. it was bound to happen. what you didn't expect was that you would be caught so quickly. and just before your visit. . . you just couldn't recall it now.

even if the fear of just another rejection was eating you up.

– sincerely, 🦇anon <3 (sorry for my questionable english, it's like my third language,,)

˖⁺. ﹙ mad doctor yandere  x gn reader x mad scientist yandere. ﹚ .𖹭 ݁

. . . secret thing !! 🍒 :  jìngyí: mad doctor ˖ naga ˖ yandere character ˖ rishen: mad scientist ˖ mantis-moth-spider hybrid ˖ yandere character﹙ verse 209 jìngyí & rishen. ﹚

they discover that you are their new little secret admirer

“my. . . you’re even prettier up close.”

the fingers that trailed along your cheek send sparks through your chest and up your spine that flushes to the office chair. the doctor’s chair. yet standing before you is far from the charming, kind man who has treated you from the fakest of flues to the smallest of rashes.

instead - his husband. with a smile that sends your blood pumping through your veins. from fear? excitement? you’re not sure. all you can do is let out a bit of a squeak as the scientist leans over your form that had been stumbled into the chair so unceremoniously.

a far cry from the tender thumb that strokes along your cheekbone. a smile that outshines sharp eyes that trail you head to toe. a cunning, smooth voice tops it all off. like the cherry on a bloodied cake. soon to be you.

“I hear you have taken quite. . . the liking to my husband.”

“dearest. spare them will you not?”

the deep voice from behind has you shooting a hand to your mouth to contain your squeals. something you barely manage when slithered gold hues peer at you over his husband’s shoulder.

“I told you, they are. . . interesting.”

jìngyí’s sly hands slowly trace up rishen’s sides. caressing up then back down to the swell of his hips. his lips lather on his husband’s neck with a love that makes your heart throb. even more so we his gaze meets your face and you catch the smile against rishen’s divine skin.

a shaky breath. you thank the heavens that jìngyí pulls rishen away - for you are not sure if your poor, smitten heart could behold the scene of them love each other much longer.

“you have been quite the peculiar patient - have you not?” jìngyí click his tongue and takes his lover’s place. leaning over you while rishen circles around behind the chair. his smooth hands trailing down to your shoulders, before tracing up your neck and cupping beneath your chin. thumbs at the corners of your jaw and raising your face to meet the doctor’s properly.

“peculiar indeed. . . and so. . . tempting.”

“I. . . I don’t understand,” you choked. eyes looking up at them brightly. hopefully.

and with both of their hands on you. their lips to your ears - you could practically feel your irises shaping into hearts.

“we’ve decided to keep you. . . can’t let go of such a dedicated pet - now can we?”

[venomwrites]

Caitlyn waiting for Vi to wakeup.

Warnings: Spoilers for Ep. 8

“She’s alive?” 

The doctor looks surprised at her sharp, desperate inquiry. Caitlyn could care less about his opinions. For the money she’s throwing at him, he should have none. The doctor nods. 

“Yes. She’s stable,” he continues, “they are going to clean her up—“

“No,” Caitlyn cuts in, “I’ll do it,” the doctor hesitates, “my father is a doctor,” Caitlyn reminds him sternly, “I know what not to touch.”

The doctor hesitates for only a moment longer before he nods. Someone leads her down a long hallway. Caitlyn reminds herself over and over that Vi is alive. Right now, that is the only thing that matters. It still takes her a moment to push open the door and step inside. 

The room is silent except for the beeps of monitors and the hiss of oxygen. Caitlyn can categorize all the numbers. They are stable. Barely. But understandable for someone who has just come out of major surgery. She knows that but it doesn’t make it any easier to approach the bed where Vi is laying. 

She looks like a stranger. 

Tubes snake from under the blanket to carry away waste. One peeks out from her ribs and drains into a rust colored bag of fluids. Above her are more bags. Liquids, blood, antibiotics. They snake through the clear tubing and into her arm. All Caitlyn can think of is how much she would hate this. 

Someone has left a tray with water and sponges. Caitlyn picks one up and wrings it out. She isn’t sure where to start. Brown antiseptic washes Vi’s chest, neck and face. It coats around the white bandage that wraps her head. There’s flecks of it underneath the oxygen mask that covers her face. 

Part of Caitlyn screams that she has no right to do this. No right to touch her after she shoved her away. She’s spent as many nights cursing her as she has longing for her. What right does she have to touch her? But then Caitlyn thinks how much Vi would hate people seeing her like this. Vi trusted he enough to at least try to work together. Caitlyn focuses on that. Jinx is imprisoned, Vander is dead. She’s the closest thing Vi has to a friend. Even if she is a poor excuse for one. 

She starts with her neck. 

Underneath the black greasepaint is the pale, tattooed woman Caitlyn remembers—and it’s not. There are new muscles that coil under Vi’s skin. Vi has always been strong and spent most of her life existing on a diet of prison food. Now she is solid muscle. Caitlyn gently moves the hospital gown to wipe at her chest. She takes care not to disturb the tube that drains the damage from the Noxian spear. 

She feels tears cloud her eyes as she works. 

It feels like her fault that Vi is laying here. No, it is her fault. She went along with Ambessa. She wasn’t fast enough to outsmart her. The knot of anger that has been loosening in her chest unravels faster as she wipes Vi’s leg. The best she can tell Vi hasn’t been taking care of herself. Of course she hasn’t. Caitlyn wanted to hurt her when she dumped her there. Now she feels like a child learning her actions have consequences. 

Before she can get to Vi’s shoulders, she turns to her hands. 

They’ve cut off the bandages Vi always wears. It’s the first time Caitlyn’s seen Vi’s bare hands. She hasn’t been taking care of them either. Some of the marks on her knuckles are pink and bright, they are new. That cracks something new in Caitlyn’s chest. Vi’s entire life is in her hands. Literally and proverbially. And because of Caitlyn they are littered with half healed marks and patches of raw skin. 

“Gods,” Caitlyn can’t quite contain the words, “I’m so sorry.” 

She dabs at her knuckles. Anger has clouded her judgement for so long. All she has wanted is Jinx. But looking at Vi’s mangled hand, Caitlyn knows she would trade anything to undo this. 

She slides a hand under Vi’s neck enough to clean the grease and antiseptic from her shoulders. Then her face. Until the only thing left is her hair. Caitlyn only hesitates a moment before she wipes the sponge across it. Of course the paint comes off. Of course it’s paint. Vi is right there under this hard shell. Just waiting. 

She is such a fool. 

She tucks the gown around Vi’s prone form and unfolds the blanket on top of that. She hopes Vi will open her eyes but she doesn’t. The puff of her breath against the oxygen mask and the beeps of the monitors are the only things that let Caitlyn know she is alive. 

But she is alive. 

Caitlyn doesn’t know why but she reaches into the cabinet and opens out a roll of gauze. She cradles Vi’s arm in her lap and winds it around the skin. Her forearms are the only unblemished part of her. Because they were locked around her sister as she covered her with her body. But Caitlyn wraps them anyway. If Vi wakes up she wants her to know someone thought of her preference. Even if she know Vi will be furious if she finds out it was her. 

Caitlyn draws the blanket up and tucks it around one shoulder. Even though she can hear it on the monitors, she leans forward and places her ear against Vi’s chest. Her heart beats steady against Caitlyn’s cheek. Her chest rises and falls evenly. It’s a drugged sleep but Caitlyn closes her eyes and tries to match it. That way if Vi’s heart stops again, maybe hers will too. She hopes when she opens her eyes Vi will be looking at her. But she doesn’t. 

Caitlyn lets herself look for just a moment. With the black paint stripped away, it’s the Vi she remembers who lays there. The Vi whose haunted her dreams since she left her. Everything in Caitlyn aches to touch her cheek. But she’s overstepped in so many ways. She settles for a press of fingers to Vi’s wrist before she forces herself up. She tucks Vi’s arm underneath the blanket and makes sure it is pulled all the way up. 

There are a thousand things Caitlyn wants to say. 

But words are cheap and Vi won’t hear them. She pushes the cart of cleaning supplies to the side and washes her hands in the bathroom. The greasepaint is stubborn under her fingernails. Even when she tries to scrape at it halfheartedly. She hates the dirtiness but it’s also fitting. Vi doesn’t deserve the stain, she does. Caitlyn allows herself one last look at Vi’s prone form before she leaves the room. 

“Commander?”

“We’re going to the bunker to see the prisoner,” she says, “tell them to expect us.” 

[tavolgisvist]

Scouse

Viscount Montgomery Brian Epstein’s personal assistant Barry Leonard quit his job ‘because the strain of managing the Beatles is just too great’. In an article in the Daily Express Leonard told about his experiences with the Beatles. Among other things, he said Paul wanted to leave the group and was trying to lose his Liverpool accent. As the Beatles gathered at the office of their accountant, Epstein mentioned the story to Paul. ‘Barry says you are trying to lose your accent,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t,’ muttered John, as he examined a likeness of the Beatles fashioned in papier mâché.

(Love Me Do. The Beatles Progress by Michael Braun, 1963/1995)

After a short interview in which they sound like they're putting on Liverpool accents (particularly Paul and John), 'and now their new single Love Me Do'. 'FANTASTIC…turn it UP!' (I shouted in my head). That's my brother…my bloody brother!…My head's exploding…'so ple-e-e-se love me do'. <…> I dashed back to Forthlin to tell Dad I'd seen our Paul on the TELLY and then waited for Paul to come home to see if he'd changed at all. By the time he eventually got in, Dad and I were in bed but I was still awake. The conversation probably went like this: 'Psst…here you.' 'Is Dad asleep?' 'Of course he is, it's past two o'clock.' 'We were celebratinh. Did you see it?' 'Yeah it was gear, it really was.I had to watch it in a bar down from Bernard's, but it was fabulous.' 'Could you see the velvet collar?' 'Sure, you could see everything.' (When the decision to 'go commercial' and buy suits instead of the cool Hamburg leathers was reached, mainly by Brian, Paul had smoothed over the shock by saying, 'But ours are different from anybody else's…ours have got velvet collars…look.' As the cardboard box lid was lifted and the white tissue paper unfolded to disclose the dark blue 'Dougy Millins' tailor-made suit, sure enough, the highly polished, trouser creased, mohair suit was topped with a black velvet collar.) 'But why did you talk like that on the TV? It sounded like George gone wrong…you don't talk like that.' 'I know that, you know that, but they don't know that…It's part of the image…' 'Monkey suit and phoney accents?…anyway it worked, it was fantastic.' 'Gear, I'll be off then, ny nyte.' 'Nigh-night…psst can I have your autograph?' 'Sod off.'

(Mike McCartney, 1981, Thank U Very Much. Mike McCartney's Family Album)

Part (I), (II), (III), (IV), (V), (VI)

Interviewer: Are you going to lose some of your Liverpool dialect for the Royal show? Paul McCartney: No, we don't all speak like BBC

(Interview 16th Oct 1963, befor the Royal Variety Charity)

We went to London to party. I always tell this story, it happened pretty much like this. The week before Merseybeat broke up here [in London], or a couple of weeks before, I was just with my friends, and you were at a posh party, and they'd come up to you [adopts 'posh' voice] 'hi, how are you?' 'Great, thanks.' 'My name's Peregrine, and this is Cecilia…' 'Oh, great, hi.' 'Where are you from?' 'Oh, Liverpool…' 'Anyway, Cecilia, you said…' And they just turned their backs on you, because it was so simple - you were useless to them, useless. Anything north of the Cape was the hinterland, the jungle. So they couldn't care less. And then, a week later, Merseybeat suddenly goes 'bang!' He goes down to London before he conquers America and the world… and it's the same party, "Oh, I'm Sebastian, this is Claudia, what's your name?" "I'm Mike." "Where are you from?" "Liverpool." "Liverpool, oh my God, guys, come here, look, these guys from Liverpool, it's just wonderful." And then they'd do a Liverpool accent, and that's why it always came out Brummie [Birmingham], because they couldn't do a Liverpool accent. So, yeah, you were a nobody, and suddenly everything changed.

(Mike McCartney, interview for the Super Deluxe Edition, September 26, 2019)

pic by lisamarie-vee

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