#my partner choose a halfling which is.. incredibly real for them

[teaposee]

Dunmeshi sonasss

[marquis-teren-kiden]

Top 5 moments that really defined your time as an RPer.

[This is an incredibly long post. So, feel free to read it or not as you wish. Blessedly, there is no ‘NSFW’ alert associated with it. Brutal, visceral, and sometimes anguish or feelz inducing commentary, but nothing you can’t have up at work or around the (Grand)babies. So, have at!]

#1. - Beyond the terrible graphics of the games at the time, my first real experience RPing happened when i was nineteen. A friend of mine from school had invited me on leave with her (Yes, it was that kind of education) to her home to get away from the boredom and strictness of our vocational training. I said yes, and while we were off at her place (which, also, was in the woods in the middle of nowhere, but in a different state) she introduced me to her Aunt, who was an avid DM. The woman had accumulated just… man. Volumes in binders of faces and forms of men and women - models, actors, singers, you name it - which she had rated from 1 to 20 for the purposes of allowing players to choose their character’s ‘comeliness.’She had it all. The picture books. All of the (2E) D&D books and supplements. She asked how long I���d been roleplaying, and I said I hadn’t. So, she broke it all down for me. Let me choose from an extensive collection of dice and line-by-line explained the mechanics of the game for me.My first character? A dual-classed Drow Fighter/Ranger. She made an NPC Human Paladin and the story for the background to explain the two of them being a battle couple was easy for me to come up with. She loved it. I killed myself with my own bow, and my own arrow, my first time using it. (I rolled a 1.) and she used the NPC to heal/resurrect my dumb Elf. Best introduction to RP I could offer to anyone, and it was mine.#2. - A Co-Worker asked me if I’d ever RP’d before, and I told him about #1 on the list, which had been five? Six years before. He said he would love to have me for a ‘beefy’ Campaign he was putting together, and after negotiating on the terms and times, I agreed. The Campaign was ridiculous. (Not in a bad way.) Just uber powerful creatures all over the place. So, he required every player to be half-something from the Monster Manual.I made up a Half-Halfling/Half-Celestial and made him a Bard/Psion. While we were at work, I rolled his stats (which were INSANELY GOOD.) And he sat and watched. (The stats were so good that one of the other Players, sitting next to the DM, accused me of cheating, and the DM laughed and said I watched them roll *my* dice. Those are their scores. I laughed crazy hard.) That Campaign about three years, and was insanely good fun. I eventually retired my Half-Celesital as an Avatar of Fharlanghn, the God of Travelers. (My Muse was a Psionic Nomad.) And the GM still phones occasionally to ask me to RP him as an influence on current or on-going campaigns.

#3. - My (now ex-) Boyfriend found out that I was an avid RPer in Guild Wars, and asked me to come RP with him (I think he was jealous of my Muse’s in-game Husband) in World of Warcraft. We rolled up a pair of Druids. But, within a week, two things unexpectedly happened. He got bored of his level 5 Druid and ditched me to go back to his level 54 Warlock. AND I levelled up without him looking for herbs, and on my first trip to Darkshore (Like, level 11 or 12?) I witnessed a pitched PvP Battle between a level 56 Night Elf Hunter and a skull icon (later learned, level 60 Raider) Tauren Warrior. I was Resto and started healing the Hunter. At the time, I had no clue what ‘flagging’ was, or that my Muse could be harmed by doing it. I just wanted to help the guy who looked to be putting up a hell of a fight given the disparity between them. (I assumed the Tauren was just a very powerful mob.) The Hunter won the fight, and greeted me ICly. Introduced himself. Thanked me profusely, and since I’d cobbled together an identity for my Druid before my BF and I had stopped playing together, I just rolled with it. The Hunter eventually became the Druid’s Lifemate.#4 -  The next two are more personal, and as you know (Nerd) Last year was absolutely devastating for me. I lost twenty-six writing partners during a significant IRL series of hardships involving losing my health, which cost me my job, which led to me losing my home, all while trying to take care of my kids and maintain a Guild with a massive storyline. 

The vast majority of the Co-Writers i had at the time were just relentless about wanting and needing to be ‘important’ to the storyline, rather than working together with everyone to solve the puzzles that were laid out. And, I was DMing two or more events each month from my cellphone out of a motel my family was paying for for several months. During that time, I lost two important friends who were RRP Partners for Teren. One due to refusal to communicate at all why they had suddenly started getting angry every time I mentioned RP (even when it wasn’t for Teren) and another who literally just… disappeared. Not just from me. From everything. All without explanation. Of the twenty-six acquaintences/Co-Writers who dipped on me during that SL, those are the two that still haunt me the most, and they are the primary reasons I keep my Writing Circle so small. 

Has their continuing influence on me been positive? No. I don’t think so. Not in the long run. But, has it been powerful? Has it shaped the future of my writing and my relationships with others in/out of character and IRL? Unequivocally. 

#5 - Mister Rogers (Teren, wtf are you going with this?) Mister Rogers once said that when something bad would happen, he would get scared. An accident. A fire. Something worse on the news. His Mother would tell him to “look for the people trying to help. There are always people trying to help. Look for the Helpers.”

At the bottom of the abyss for me, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically - there were people, IRL, OOC and IC, who were genuinely trying to help me. Even when I told them I just wanted to wrap up all of our mutual storylines and walk away from writing - not just Roleplaying, but writing stories at all - they did everything they could to help me. Help me figure out what their Muses needed. Help me figure out what my Muses needed. Helped me connect with strangers to tie up story elements that had disappeared with the people who were abandoning the large-scale Campaign that had been running off of my phone for months on end. 

There were at first a couple. Then a few. Then a handful. Now, there’s a little under a dozen people who have made writing possible for me again. Who stuck with me through all of the terrible shit that made even logging in to Teren’s old account an exhausting, heartbreaking slog. Who eventually helped me heal myself with self-care strategies I’d never needed before, and to give some solid foundation to Teren’s storyline so that - even if I couldn’t save all of my Muses - I could save this one. 

At the beginning of the year, I kicked off this blog, still unsure if it would last a month, or if I would walk away from it after all. Two months, three months in, I still didn’t know the answer. What I did know, is that I was (albeit slowly) getting the desire to write again. I was (slowly) feeling the urge to create again. And I was striving to interact on a level that would allow me to leave if the old warning signs started cropping up, without devastating my Co-Writer’s storylines. (Which is a lot of why so much of what Teren does happens in Nishan; which is only a small pocket of Azeroth as a whole.)

To wit, the amazing legacy and continuing tales of Teren Kiden and his life after 01/01/2018 aren’t a product of “A” moment. But, of People. People who recognized that I am a person and not a collection of pixels. People who empathized with the catastrophe my life had become and - instead of disappearing - did what they could. No one had to solve my problems. Most didn’t have to do anything but RP. But they all helped me to recover from the single worst year - IC, OOC, and IRL - of my life with patience, poise, respect and - most extraordinarily - with hearts that were strong enough to let me go, even though they desparately wanted me to keep holding on to our friendships, because that was what I needed most at the time.

[To each of them: @daughterofkiden, @summerbloom-fae, @karrista, @olivia-lovecraft, @news-nerd, @huntsman-hawthorne, @maluraunderchild, @renlavaye, @scassira, @waroftwowolves, @stonestridernerd, @phamguero, @oh-yeah-no @kelladen - you are all such beautiful, understanding, and exceptional people, and I quite literally wouldn’t be here, writing, without you. Thank you so much for your extraordinary strength and exceptional qualities of character. You are more deeply cherished and appreciated than you will ever know.]