#i love you j'er'em'ih

[katiefratie]

J'ER'EM'IH!!!!!!! IVE MISSED YOU BUDDY!!!!!!

[pikmininaplane]

@underrated-d20-event day 8 – Escape from the Bloodkeep and A broken item of personal use! And hey, I love the EFTBK cast, so after torturing them a bit last time I thought I could go with some lighthearted fun :) Although Leiland might not see it that way…

A Brush with Dishonor (327 words)

"So let me get this straight, Leiland, darling," Lilith snorted, barely able to hold in her laughter, "you... broke your hairbrush."

"He threw it on the ground in a fit of rage when he couldn't brush a knot out of his hair," Markus chimed in, not even bothering to hide his smirk.

Leiland blushed, which was really quite a feat for an undead to achieve. "That... would be correct."

"And you couldn't find any of us – not me, not Maggie, not Efink or even Markus – to ask us to lend you ours."

"Efink doesn't brush her hair," Leiland snapped, out of embarrassment and just the tiniest bit of jealousy, "she just has perfectly straight and very wet hair all the time. She doesn't even take care of it."

The woman in question shot him a piercing smug look. "Oh, so sorry I was born that way."

"No fighting, dears..." Lilith intervened. "And so, you went to Sokhbarr to ask him for a spare brush. Sokhbarr, our scaly friend?"

"Should I be offended by that tone you're taking, Lilith?" the scaly friend in question called out, though he was far from offended, laughing along to the rest of his friends.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't thinking, and– and he did have one!" Leiland retorted. "So I was right to go to him."

"And you didn't think that that brush looked a little... odd?"

Leiland buried his head between his shoulders, feeling the shame creep back in. "Well, beggars can't be choosers, can they?"

"But then you kept using it," Lilith continued, "For what, weeks?"

"... A month."

"A month?" Maggie shrieked out, tears pearling at the corner of her eyes from laughing so hard. "You've been brushing your hair using J'er'em'ih's brush for an entire month?"

Oh, for Leiland Jr.'s sake.

Leiland hid his face behind his hands, burning up amidst the uproarious laughter of all of his friends.

He was never going to live this down, was he?

[notthewriteryourelookingfor]

If you haven't watched Escape the Bloodkeep from Dimension 20 yet, this is your sign to watch it.

The power of friendship, but evil friendship

The characters are at like level 9 so they can do all the cool shit

J'er'em'ih is amazing and i love him even tho I have 0 clue how to spell his name

Matt Mercer plays a babygirl

Women supporting women

Men supporting women

Fantasy shit

It's great and it's like 6 episodes and they do so much in that 6 episodes

[allthecastlesonclouds]

Is someone were to start watching dimention 20 . What series(?) would you reccomend n where ?

omg omg okay okay so i'd say there are so many different routes you can take depending on what genre you like!! this is truly so hard omg. i can start off by saying most seasons are on a subscription service called dropout which is the only subscription service i will be paying for in my life (unless you're counting a patreon as a subscription service), but they also have a youtube where they've released a couple full seasons.

i'm putting Escape From The Bloodkeep at the top because a) Villainous Found Family, b) free on youtube, and c) there's an NPC named J'er'em'ih. It's a Lord of the Rings knockoff from the perspective of the villains who are dorks and also queer. Found family to the max and so many bits.

i will be crunching this post because it is LONG! genres galore!

if you want Drama: A Crown of Candy is a Game of Thrones/Candy Land mashup. The Ravening War is the prequel. Both of them have a nonzero chance of making you cry and Do have permanent deaths. A Court of Fey and Flowers is the other drama but it's. queer Bridgerton with fairies. no angst many flowers and there's LETTER WRITING and a RUMOR PHASE

Coming Of Age: Fantasy High Freshman Year, Sophomore Year, Junior Year, and The Seven. While I think t7 is higher in quality than Freshman Year, you do need FY for context. either way, both feel as realistic as an adventuring school can be to an actual coming of age story.

Misfits and Magic is also a Coming of Age and an homage and just. a fabulous piece in general which I think is a GREAT introduction (if you have dropout)! it's a group of people going "how much can we poke fun at jk rowlings books bc we grew up on those but we Don't Like Her and actually her system is trash?" it's a smaller cast using the kids on brooms system, and, once again, it's queer and coming of age and found family. there's a wet cat of a man if that's what you need in your life.

Horror Seasons: Neverafter and Burrow's End are the two Overtly Horror seasons and they both pull it off very well. Neverafter is found family. Burrow's End is a literal family (of stoats) (not anthropomorphized, just plain stoats). they're Good Horror.

The Unsleeping City (Part I) is also very good. only filmed media that's made me cry. i can't speak to part ii specifically because i did not vibe with the virtual filming style. i got dropout because of Pirates of Leviathan, but i had the context of s1 and s2 of fantasy high so. idk man. is this coherent?

romance: Shriek Week and A Court of Fey and Flowers. Monster dating sim and Fairy Bridgerton. i'm not a dating sim person so i couldn't really do shriek week but ACOFAF. Man. That season.

Mystery: Mentopolis. I cannot tell you how much I loved Mentopolis. such a good season. Hank Green is there. Mike Trapp (creator of J'er'em'ih) is there. It's truly just tropes tropes tropes. everything is a pun.

Mentopolis also fits under action, which is what I would put Coffin Run under as well. Coffin Run my beloved. 2 vampires a wannabe-vampire and a jewish-old-man-who-misses-his-wife walk into dracula's castle and go. "hey we're your favorites, right?"

i'm so sorry. i hope this helped. i really love this show man. there's very few seasons i couldn't finish and 20 seasons out right now (the 21st is coming out every wednesday starting last week) and while there are MORE seasons like A Starstruck Odyssey (scifi comedy, 10/10 no notes) this is a long post to say. TLDR: you gotta know what style of show you like. my friend and i both watch it but she REFUSES to watch fantasy high and i can't stomach A Crown of Candy but we still both watch other seasons.

[jamiebluewind]

FUCK YES!!!! Escape From The Bloodkeep is genuinely one of my favorite underrated seasons. I loved how it subverted so many tropes that it left Brennan scrambling when his pvp fell through with their found family (but make it evil). I want J'er'em'ih merch. I love almost all the PCs. The bones guy was an ICONIC ad lib NPC and the Lilith's kids omg! But it's an early season not with the Intrepid Heros, so it doesn't get much attention. Later seasons that everyone compared it to had more budget, it didn't get a lot of fanart even when it was new, and a lot of lists put it on the lower end, so it's honestly a real treat for me whenever I happen across fanart from it. So you planning on doing art for that season genuinely made me happy stim ^_^

Day 6 of drawing every D20 Character

All the Bad Kids in my style!!

[sashthesloth]

If y'all didn't know, Ive been watching Escape from the Bloodkeep

[masculinepeacock]

has any animal companion rolled more nat20s than j'er'em'ih? like percentage wise?

[bloodkeep-escape]

bloodkeep 🥰🥰 i do like to think about markus like. as a pirate "saving" those in the realm of the light who are seen as undesirable and bringing them back to sokhbarr <3 obvi he doesn't use the word save but is like "i kidnapped them from their homes" but they're never hurt. their "keepers" or parents may be tho <3

hey i love this so much. wrote a short fic because i love it so much actually

~~

"You're coming with me now."

The man who stood in front of them was... terrifying, and Seven could feel their whole body shaking. He was tall, with lithe muscles, wild black hair, and a gold skull mask covering his face, and he was holding a curved sword that glinted in the moonlight and dripped with red.

Seven knew they couldn't do anything about this, even if they wanted to- they hadn't had anything to drink in two days, and anything to eat in longer than that, and they honestly were struggling just to stay standing in the corner of the barn they had been sleeping in for the past few months. "What do you want?" they asked, voice scratchy with disuse and thirst.

The man tilted his head, looking them up and down, and Seven tried to stand up as straight as they could. "I told you," he said, "I'm taking you with me."

"Oh," Seven said, and they weren't even surprised. "M... my parents finally hired someone to get rid of me?"

"No," the man said, and then he laughed, and Seven was expecting the sound to be harsh and frightening, but it was bright, almost musical. "No, your parents didn't hire me."

Seven suddenly remembered the red on the man's sword.

"They put you here, didn't they?"

Slowly, Seven nodded. "They said I'm cursed," they said, "because of something I did, maybe, or something I'm going to do? That's why I look the way I do, and why... why I'm not really their child, and why no one else is allowed to see me."

The man nodded, sharp and quick, like Seven was just confirming something he already knew. "Right. Come on, then." He gestured out the door of the barn with that wicked sword of his, and Seven knew that they would be going with him, one way or another.

Still, they hesitated. "Where are we going?"

The man's face was hidden behind that golden, shining mask, but somehow, Seven still knew that he was smiling. "Have you ever been to Gorgar?"

~~

Sokhbarr was busy with the wargs, the less sentient kind, when one of his assistants came and told him that Markus was back from another expedition out of Gorgar. J'er'em'ih trotted after him gladly as he moved towards the door of the wildlife sanctuary, shelter, and medical wing they had constructed from the remnants of the beast pits.

Markus stood waiting with a... a figure at his side. Humanoid, mostly, but their limbs were just a little bit too long, their mouth stretched a little too wide, their teeth a little too sharp, their proportions just not quite human. They trailed behind Markus, looking around the sanctuary while clearly trying to appear like they weren't looking around the sanctuary.

"Sokhbarr!" Markus called, and the figure looked over, their eyes immediately going wide.

"Welcome back, Markus," Sokhbarr said, pulling Markus into a hug that made the other man laugh.

"Acting like it's been years since you've seen me," he said, clapping Sokhbarr on the shoulder and stepping back, and Sokhbarr could hear the grin in his voice. "Anyway, I want you to meet Seven. Stole them away from their home, one of those small villages in Elna. Their parents had shoved them into the barn, if you can believe it."

The figure- Seven?- kept sneaking glances at Sokhbarr, without quite looking at him.

"Seven, huh?" Sokhbarr asked. "Interesting name."

"Seventh born," the figure said, voice soft. "Never got a real name."

Sokhbarr raised an eyebrow. "Well, if you're going to be helping me in the sanctuary, you'll have to choose a name at some point. No rush, of course, but whenever you pick one."

Seven blinked, looking up at him for the first time. "Help you... what?"

"In the sanctuary," Sokhbarr said, gesturing around and behind him. "We take in all sorts of creatures, from Gorgar and from all of Elna, and we give them a place to live, and some help, if they need it. It's a big job, so sometimes Markus... finds people to help me."

"If you want to," Markus interrupted. "We can find other work for you here, if you'd prefer something else."

"Some of the animals back home were the only ones who didn't seem frightened of me," Seven said, looking around again. "There was a cow, one time, that was born not-quite-right, so they threw her into the barn with me, and I kept her safe." They paused, and then smiled, the first one Sokhbarr had seen from them. "I'd like to help."

Sokhbarr grinned at Markus, and then at Seven. "Well then," he said, "welcome to the bloodkeep."

[luxheroica]

omg omg omg okay

4, 6, 10, & 16!! 😁

4 - favourite NPC

ooohhhh this is tough there are so many. I really like Esther honestly. Something about a gal who is both tough and smart. Also Gilear is fantastic.

6 - comfort character

what is a comfort character even?? you have got me hooked on the Cody Walsh train and he is delightful. I really loved Binx from ACOFAF last season and was highly relateable. Ylfa comforts all my inner weird girl impulses.

10 - favourite familiar/animal companion

who is better than J'er'em'ih though?

16 - character you want to see more of

everybody in Neverafter!!!!!!! give me more of them!!!!!!

[pimpernels]

10 and 17 for the Dimension 20 ask me! 👀

10 - favourite familiar/animal companion

I gotta go with Boggy the Froggy because he's just. so round. and precious. And I love him. But shoutout to Trapp for J'er'em'ih, though. 10/10.

17 - campaign you would want to play in

So many of them--but as a former New Yorker, I feel like it's gotta be Unsleeping City.

[natjennie]

ahhahhhhh the ending of eftbk my BELOVED... leiland being the right hand of lord of shadows leiland jr but also raising him w/ maggie, when they had a relationship full of hatred and jealousy because of zaul'nazh's mistreatment of them both like... being against each other with seething bubbling rage bc of the lord and then to be brought together by the promise and hope of a new one.. lilith and all of her children, taking a stand for their family, refusing to back away from hardship and finding strength in one another. sokhbarr's heartwrenching "you don't like my wild things" contrasted with the fact that he awoke the lava mog in the scary volcano and helped bring back a dying species, put so much love and care into j'er'em'ih that he brings screambeasts back to life... and markus being so focused for so long on outshining his family, being the most impressive, most daring, richest, learning to rely on and trust the other party members and growing to be loyal to people and ideas rather than things.. efink's complete transformation marked explicitly by the change in perspective from "my friends need me" to just "friends need" going from seeking answers and always looking for affirmation and approval outside of herself rooted in a place of doubt and self-loathing to seeking wisdom and guidance in others because she knows they are capable, and that this is what she can do to help. I just... the "evil" campaign is so fucking good guys..

[jq37]

oh WOW that new bloodkeep ep

**spoilers for family in freefall bloodlines and lifelines**

Man this episode was a lot. Probably my fave of the season so far.

Brennan seems to have an M.O. in terms of plotting things. They way we got a focus on each character in a stressful situation reminded me a lot of Family in Flames from the FH season which came at about the same point in the story.

Anyway, we start with Brennan giving the most unnecessarily verbose description of falling ever.

I am actually not sure how big Lilith is supposed to be in relation to everyone else at this point. Or how big her kids are supposed to be. I thought the really young ones were like straight spiders but like Jessa and the boy who’s name I’m forgetting were centaur style like her. But like, idk. 

Efink insisting that she’s still holding the wheel (even though it truly means nothing) was so funny.

Both Matt and Brennan do very good re-entry sound effects.

Brennan: Feel free to do nothing.

Rekha: *SLAMS that induce labor button with no hesitation*

Truly amazing

“You feel your fire break.”

Leiland falling to his doom while bossa nova music plays in the background and rolling his eyes at Maggie is iconic.

Everyone is dying and Sohkbar is just like, fine.

Lilith polymorphs into a full ass spider.

Even though it ended up going sideways (literally) not a bad plan from Markus.

Brennan is so good at scene setting exposition.

Erika acted the hell out of that moment when she and Sohkbar share a look before she tells Russel everything is gonna be OK. She didn’t have to but she did that for us.

The wheel that steers nothing metaphor was such a good turn of phrase from Bren.

Efink’s DOUBLE NAT ONES.

WOOOOOW.

Rekha goes, “THIS is the bad day,” with Kristen Bell’s inflection and I am reminded that it has not even been a full 24 hours in game since ep 1. Wild.

Anyway, Efink’s norn spirit things disappear which is what happens when you roll snake eyes I guess. Amy is legit tearing up.

Brennan’s throwaway joke of explaining story structure low key killed me.

Leiland gets advantage on perception and rolls a nat 20!

Are all of the Vingury just gay for the next person in their chain of command? Because that’s what it seems like.

Matt’s flustered Leiland as Miles implies ~things~ is adorable.

Animal handling 2, electric boogaloo. I love that joke.

Maggie is so OP. Maggie hits the ground and isn’t even at half HP. Leiland is knocked into negatives though.

His first death save is a nat 1. WHICH IS 2 FAILURES. I was so stressed.

Then J'er'em'ih rolls a nat 20 to go save him!

I love the phrase, “J'er'em'ih’s normal form” as if he has a normal anything.

“J'er'em'ihdeserves the credit.”

Anyway J'er'em'ih(w/ an assist from Sohkbar) saves Leiland!

Rekha was so concerned for John. Like, not even Maggie. Rekha.

“It’s gonna be an egg!?”

Samantha Eagles. (Of the Philadelphia Eagles?) I died at that line.

Maggie levels up and gets healing magic. (“Fuck yeah!” says Maggie.) John stabilizes.

The fact that Maggie thought it might be an egg makes me concerned that she maybe isn’t ready to be a mom.

I love that Maggie just wordlessly presents her baby to Lilith (the alpha mom of the group) like a kid showing their mom and art project.

OK, this is such a tiny moment but I love, love, love that Maggie has a good enough relationship with Lilith that when she heard what she thought was a threat to her baby, she just asked, “Is that a threat to the baby?” instead of attacking her or going *Maggie will remember that* and harboring mistrust. The way she asked was so adorable. Also, Lilith would never.

Markus floats basically the exact same plan as Lilith (defect to good, get pardons) but at least he uses it as a plan of true last resort.

Lilith being the keeper of basically all of Efink’s self esteem is great. Also, everyone has to keep reminding her that she is queen.

“As the resident magnificent failure.”

“Allow me to be the basis for your self comparison. That’s the best I can offer you.” LEILAAAAAAAND.

Anyway, Leiland gives a great pep talk to Efink who throws her spell cards over her shoulder irl (”it’s an RP episode. it’s fine”).

Amy to Brennan who is about to start roasting Efink’s entire life: Don’t do this.

So when Brennan said, “Efink gets to decide right now if she’s good at magic.” I was thinking, that’s a big thing to put in a PC’s hands unless you want the answer to be yes. Because, in another story, “No,” might be the better answer narratively, but who’s gonna voluntarily nerf themselves like that?

So Efink dips into an episode of Friendship is Magic which Brennan beautifully picks up the narration for and gets the info they need without rolling for it. She also has some major self actualization and is now dry, less vain, and less dramatic.

It kinda seems like this was leading towards Lilith being the new leader what with her thoughts while she was falling and her being passed up for the promotion but, come on. She would have to make a crazy soul rending deal to just take the crown normally and she has kids and common sense. Otherwise, I think Erika would have made that play.

“Is my son a different player than me?” I love Rekha.

Like Leiland, I fully thought she was gonna name the kids John at first. (Are you ‘allowed’ to jr. a kid who isn’t named after you or your spouse? I’ve never seen someone do that. As in, add the jr., not name a kid after a friend).

I love that Matt roleplays Leiland into so many awkward moments. A good RP-er doesn’t care about their character being cool all the time.

“I’m naming him after the name of yours that I prefer.” That was so sweet.

“First of all, J'er'em'ih’s an excellent judge of character.”

Everyone coming together to make Leiland feel better was so so sweet. These guys are like the exact opposite of murder hobos in a game where they 100% have the right to be.

The baby tells Leiland to kneel and he just does it because of course he does. (Leiland later: I HAVE A VERY PARTICULAR SET OF SKILLS)

Maggie after Leiland swears total fealty to Leiland Jr: Can’t you keep anything at like 80%?

Efink rolls a nat 20 on her check to navigate the Bloodkeep, basically completing her self actualization arc.

Leiland resists the urge to chase Hamhead, completing a portion of his arc.

The running thing of people giving Maggie biologically incorrect info on kids because of their drastically different biology.

Aww all of Lilith’s kids.

Lilith dispel magicking the book golem, implying she could have done that at any time and just chose not to.

Leiland apologizes to Maggie for being bitchy to her out of jealously, which I thought was sweet but was just the warm up act for what was about to happen.

But, before that, Maggie’s dad calls and Efink hangs up on him for her. For a second I thought that cutting off the call meant we wouldn’t get to see what was behind the doors but, luckily, that wasn’t the case.

(Also Sohkbar and Lilith eating popcorn as Maggie and her dad fight).

Did Efink appoint herself high adviser?

“Please don’t bite him,” *Leiland Jr. bites a spider*

So, anyway, Leiland and Maggie go into the portal and see visions of (1) weird sex between Zaul and Lilith and (more importantly), (2) Zaul bagging on Maggie when she’s not around/thirsting after Leiland when he’s not around.

The simile about winning the lottery after you find out money can’t buy you happiness was so good.

“What a fucking pig!”/“I agree.”/“Oh, do you?”/“Actually I do.”

I’M SO PROUD OF THEM.

Instead of being mad at Leiland (or Lilith for that matter) she just doubled down on being mad at her dickhead ex. And Leiland, instead of being all winner winner chicken dinner just felt bad for Maggie and Decklan.

“Was this something the baby should have seen?”/“No.”

“This is one of the lesser times it’s bad to say your father’s name.” Yikes Leiland.

Anyway, the whole hang makes plans to take Sohkbar shopping and it really fits in with the theme of this ep of everyone boosting everyone’s self esteem. This ep has a lot of genuinely heartwarming moments.

“Sohkbar yes. Sohkbar yes. Sohkbar yes.”

“What did you roll? [28] You see everything.”

Leiland Jr. as new king seems like a questionable decision imo but I’m not gonna backseat RP.

“You guys start engaging in a fun conversation about statecraft.”

“Lilith, I’d like a hug.” Lilith hugs her and kicks her legs up like she’s in the climax of a romcom.

The whole group hugs and Brennan calls them out and has a NPC call them out, even though he’s the person who led them to this path!

Man, the promo for this ep really made it sound more dire and less heartwarming that it actually was.

YOU’RE DEFINING GOOD

“Imagine there’s 9 squares in a grid.” TRAPP

That like 20 seconds had so many good lines. “We’re cutting out the middle man and taking evil straight to you.”/“We’re evolving evil.”/“We’re disrupting evil.”

Now that I think about it, they really haven’t escaped the bloodkeep so far, have they? They’ve been going back and forth between it but not really trying to escape it per se. 

Olag is back because, again, of course he is.

Final battle y'all!

Sounds like we’re getting actual Gollum next week so that should be fun. Also, very curious to see what that last, “No,” is in response to. These guys are good at cutting trailers so it could be nothing serious, but who knows?

[notthewriteryourelookingfor]

I'm watching Escape from the Bloodkeep again because I love this cast (and hope that one day they'll do another cuz they're hilarious) and I love the story and I just had a thought.

If J'er'em'ih can only give birth to what people have a nightmare about and thus, we are waiting for someone to have a nightmare about a scream beast so there can be more of them:

Do you think there is a ritual or spell they could do that forces everyone who's currently asleep to have a nightmare about a scream beast?

I know that would be a big thing in the rules of D&D like a God or something would need to do it but, would that work?

I feel like that would work.

Imagine if Sokhbarr becomes like a God and that's all he does like every 20 years or so everyone has a scream beast nightmare until the scream beasts number in the millions and have formed their own army and have taken over

And Sokbarr's just like (👍■_■)👍

[kipperlillycopperkettle]

2, 8, and 10 for the ask game?

02. favorite sidequest? OH this is hard bc like i feel like i have a deep affection for most of the seasons but like in different ways but if i had to pick it's probably either misfits and magic (comfort food season), or mice and murder (i just love how insane brennan goes w the npcs that season) 08. favorite villain? honestly? i have always been very compelled by the acoc villains. like you have calroy's whole monologue and also him yelling caramalinda gives me absolute chills. i think acoc pulled off the surprise villain twist v v well and not only that i think a lot of the other more minor villains are also compelling and i wish they'd gotten more airtime. like what's plumbeline's deal? what's fettucina alfredi's? but in terms of favorite favorite i think null from tuc 2 just like. hit me fucking hard. null is, i think, the scariest villain to me personally so i do think they have to win

10. favorite familiar/animal companion? as much as i do love peppermint preston and boggy i think the sheer delight i personally got from the pcs all going “he can DO that?” every time he did anything means that i think j'er'em'ih wins. boggy would win if i didn't hate his canon art tho 💔

send me a dimension 20 ask!

[bloodkeep-escape]

what moment made you laugh the hardest in bloodkeep? And which of the knock-off LotR npcs is your favorite?

hardest laugh was definitely every single j'er'em'ih moment, but especially the skyship battle when he killed markus's brother and fully anchored himself to the wheel and had to make intelligence checks to sail the ship with his -4 intelligence. good for him <3 also, of course, the entire avanash saga, but especially sokhbarr on his good insight giving the simple "i don't know about this one, guys," as this man says clearly the most unhinged things in the world. and brennan's "this man is Full Crazy." he sure is!!

also GALFAST. galfast galfast galfast. i love her with my whole entire heart!! samwise gamgee turned into an overly polite but badass lesbian with the statistics of a fucking hill giant. the only correct choice

[bloodkeep-escape]

been wanting to do something for aro week and monday was @dimension20alphabet ​ A day so how about A: aromantic

a little bloodkeep oneshot, featuring aro sokhbarr, demiro lilith, and some background lilith/efink!!

~~

When Lilith scuttled into the caldera of the Scary Volcano, smiling and thinking about Efink as she did so, it looked empty. She was expecting bursts of lava, maybe some good-natured screaming and growling. 

“Sokhbarr?” she called, moving a little bit further in, “Do I need to start preparing webs to pull you out of the lava?”

“All good down here!” came the response, and Lilith could hear the smile in the words. “Just cleaning up, I’ll be there in a moment!”

Smiling in response to Sokhbarr’s cheerful voice, Lilith settled in to wait. Soon enough, only a couple minutes passed before Sokhbarr came lumbering up the sloped side of the crater, J’er’em’ih trotting faithfully behind him. 

“How’s the lava mog doing?” Lilith asked, noting the enormous (but seemingly empty) bag that Sokhbarr had slung across his back.

“Oh, she’s great,” Sokhbarr said with a grin that was almost wistful. “Took a bit to figure out what kind of food she liked best, but she’s finally starting to thrive, and I won’t be surprised if we have lava mog babies in a year or less!”

“That’s incredible, Sokhbarr,” Lilith said, and meant it. She loved seeing her friend’s joy for every creature he cared for, which was part of why she had gone to the Scary Volcano to find him. The other part...

“Now tell me the truth,” Sokhbarr said, cutting into Lilith’s thoughts. “I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here just to check on the lava mog.”

Sometimes, Lilith hated how perceptive her friends all were. “Yes, well, maybe not entirely,” she admitted. 

J’er’em’ih trilled, sounding concerned, and Sokhbarr nodded. “J’er’em’ih is right, you know. What's going on?"

Lilith wasn't sure what, exactly, J'er'em'ih was right about, but she got the gist. "Have you ever been in love?" she finally asked, figuring it was best to get right to the point.

"Not in the usual sense of the word, no," Sokhbarr answered, looking at her curiously. "I love J'er'em'ih, and I love you guys of course, but I've never been in love." He paused, reaching down to scratch J'er'em'ih between his eye stalks. "What's this about, Lilith?"

"I thought that was me," she admitted, smiling a bit as J'er'em'ih leaned in to Sokhbarr's touch. "Sex is nice, but romance was never really something I was interested in. But now…"

"Efink, right?" Sokhbarr asked, grinning.

Lilith flushed. "She been my best friend for ages, but recently things feel… different."

"Well, I don't know how much advice I can give you," Sokhbarr said. "Like I said, I've never had feelings like that, and I don't think I ever will. But there's so many kinds of love, and I think it's okay if you're starting to feel a new one."

J'er'em'ih trilled again, seemingly in agreement, and Lilith laughed. "Maybe you're right- both of you. Thank you, Sokhbarr."

"We've got your back," Sokhbarr smiled, "all of us. That's what being evil is all about."