#raev plays pathfinder

[raevenlywrites]

Gonna make a thread of my Pathfinder campaign in meme

[raevenlywrote]

The Life and Adventures of Rufus Mergellus 5

Rosalie Thornton was not, in fact, Rosey Chamerblee his mother, but Rufus could understand how a group of people unaccustomed to Frevanian naming conventions could make that mistake. Rosalie was an important figure from his childhood, but not his mother. Rather, she was a childhood playmate who used to dance with him when his grandmother had not yet given up on his eternal clumsiness all together. Rosalie had asked after Rufus in port by way of trying to flirt with the sailor she asked it of, but as the subtlety of feline facial expression is largely lost on the furless, this fact did not translate. Still, she was not entirely displeased to see Rufus when he turned up on her door, having grown up into quite the fine young man by this point.

Rufus, for his part, could not say the same. It wasn't that Rosalie wasn't lovely- she was, with glossy tabby fur and striking green eyes and whiskers that curled to delicate hooks at their ends- it was that she was not his mother, and Rufus had once again broken the boucan taboo, this time of his own choice and knowing.

So it was with a broken heart that he met the love of his life.

The Hurbert, understandably, did not want him back after he’d jumped ship and set foot on solid ground. They hadn’t expected him to disembark when they’d made port, and had in fact been so not expecting it that no one had said anything when he’d made the gangplank. It was unheard of, absolutely unheard of. And while the Melisande had made exceptions for his unconventional upbringing--it was one thing to be carried off a ship in the belly of a woman who didn’t yet know she bore you, and didn’t understand the ways of the boucan-- the Hurbert was understandably pissed to have been promised a boucan and received … Rufus. No, he didn’t blame them for kindly requesting he find another ship. But he also didn’t have it in him to do so. He’d been given a second chance, and he’d thrown it away without a thought.

He didn’t deserve the name of boucan, and honestly, that was alright. He sort of missed plush, overstuffed chairs anyways.

He was happy to see his grandmother again, sad to learn his mother was in fact not home, and beguiled by the young catwoman who’d unknowingly lured him away from the sea like some sort of reverse siren. Rosalie for her part did not seem to mind Rufus’s attentions - and though her parents were less than thrilled at her interest in sailors, at least this one had fur, and seemed to be staying put.

And staying put he was. Now that he was older--and maybe not wiser, but at least more experienced- he appreciated all the things his grandmother had tried to tell him when he was younger. The road was hard, and cold, and wet. The food was bad. The going was unpredictable. Life in Folly could be some of those things, but it also had the potential for thick, patterned rugs, and rich, spiced cocoa, and songs sung under maiden’s windows, and kisses shared under the moonlight. Grandmother seemed to more or less approve of Rosalie, though she despaired of the catwoman’s complete inability to cook. That was alright with Rufus; he learned to make pies and cakes and sweets and roasts at his grandmother’s side, and fully intended to support Rosalie’s dream of running a shop of her own, relegating Rufus to the more mundane realm of domestic keeper. So he learned to knit and sew and sweep and do laundry and cook and make up beds and do more laundry-and gosh it really did take an awful lot to run a whole household didn’t it?-- and draw up baths and keep a root cellar and brew tea and make pleasant conversation with other domestic keepers, and how to participate in something called a book club, and how to change diapers and break a toddler’s fever and soothe a collicky baby - and was there really this much work to being a househusband, goodness!-and all manner of other things that would make him a good husband. Unfortunately, he would never get to exercise these skills, or at least, not in Rosalie’s household. Life, it seemed, had other plans for him.

[raevenlywrites]

Introducing Rufus Mergellus, Catfolk Ranger

[raevenlywrites]

I am very proud to announce that we as a party managed to name a character Corpse Bob (Formerly Alchemist Bob)

[raevenlywrites]

@whispersosoftly @qaraxuanzenith We need to arrange for this at this point. Hopefully not as our escape from the 10th House, but somewhere. Just know that this is in my back pocket ;)

we as a society will never truly progress until there are more fight scenes choreographed to mamma mia by ABBA

[raevenlywrites]

Yall I've got a pathfinder session in half an hour and i'm more angsty about work than I am Hyped for my boy Rufus. Ask me some dumb questions about my silly catfolk ranger boy so I can get in the right frame of mind

[raevenlywrites]

Yall, Rufus is having a real great day. He's had an amazing bath, he went to a party with a cute rat, he ate sushi and got drunk, set off some gnarly fireworks, and is getting cuddles and scritches.

Great Day for Rufus

[raevenlywrites]

For those wondering how the pathfinder campaign is going

[raevenlywrites]

!!!

I never posted my boys!

Meet my adventuring partners, Carnelian "Nel" Pyrite (fantasy Neil Caffrey) and Junko of Ilban, (Jim Hawkins meets Edward Elric)

[raevenlywrites]

Further adventures of Rufus Marcellus and Co

[raevenlywrites]

He knit

[raevenlywrites]

Rufus Diary 1.1.mp3 - SoundCloud

Listen to Rufus Diary 1.1.mp3 by Raeven Wright on #SoundCloud

Did some recordings as my idiot Catfolk Ranger Rufus. Enjoy :P

[raevenlywrote]

The Life and Adventures of Rufus Mergellus 4

It didn’t take long for Rufus to overshoot most of the crew in stature. He’d been of a height with most of the gnomish crew when he’d boarded, but it seemed now that every time they met ships along the lanes - he loved the phrase “along the lanes”, as if there were great roads running below the surface of the glittering waves - they scrounged and scrambled to find new clothes for Rufus’s ever-growing legs. He delighted in reaching things from top shelves, despaired of his paws hanging over the edge of his cot, and finally seemed to learn what to do with his feet, as his new family taught him dances and songs from far off places. His favorite was one that involved a pair of poles, held by folks at their end, smacked in rhythmic patterns against the deck to create the music and challenge alike. Rufus loved to step nimbly in and out of the clacking sticks, like the jumping ropes games from his childhood.

His childhood. Somehow, a handful of years had turned Rufus from a boy to a man. The tortured scrawling of that far off parlor seemed to belong to an entire other life, almost a dream at times. Memories of his mother and grandmother tangled together into a murky whirlpool of sameness, touched with nostalgia and longing like all his life was now touched with salt. Sometimes, it prickled at his eyes the self same way, but for the most part, he was happy.

 And then the letter came.

Rosey Chamberlee had been a smuggler, though Rufus had never heard that word before coming to the Melisande. His mother had called herself a patriot. His grandmother had called her “an adventurer,” with the same sort of tone she reserved for drunkards and gossips. Rufus had been told the story of his birth, passionately but with few details from his mother, and dispassionately but with more information from his grandmother.

His parents had met when his father’s ship had helped smuggle goods to the war torn Northern Frevania, a province in his grandmother’s telling and a young country struggling for its independence in his mother’s. Rosey would often get sidetracked by politics in her telling, and Rufus would let her, because he loved to see the light in her eyes when she spoke of anything with passion, even if he didn’t really understand a word of it. But then she would pause for a sip of tea--or more accurately, he suspected now, a hot toddy -and recollect her thoughts, and Rufus would prompt her for details about his father. Her eyes would sparkle then, too, but in a different way. Softer. Rufus loved that look most of all, though again, he hadn’t really understood what it meant. He just liked seeing her so happy, and liked the way she kissed his head goodnight with that special fondness of mothers whenever she told him stories like that.

Then she would leave, off to save the world, and his grandmother would fill in the details. Her daughter had what the folk of Folly called “the sickness”, where some wild part of their brains longed for trees and open skies and sleeping in the cold and wet and all together eschewed the things that made life worth living, in Carnation’s opinion. There were no flaky pastries in the wilds, his grandmother had told him, and no delicately seasoned salmon cakes and no fine silken yarn and no freshly washed hankies smelling of lavender and no cozy overstuffed chairs. Yes, the lessons in etiquette were tiresome and tedious, but they made civilized life possible, and civilized life made pastries possible. Still, sometimes Rufus’s gaze would turn to the road when his mother was gone, and his thoughts would turn to the sea.

Now his thoughts turned to his mother on the road again, but this time it was because her delicate hand-writing described it in such loving details. She had never written him letters before, but that was because he had never not been at home before. Now, that they were both out on adventures, she would write him and hoped that he would write her too, if his penmanship had managed to improve any out at sea.

It hadn’t, but with grim determination, it would. He treasured his mother’s letter, and copied it again and again with an empty pen, tracing over her words until he felt confident to write a letter of his own. In the meantime, he’d asked one of the mates to write for him, and letter turned to letters, and soon the lanes came to know that Rufus Mergellus was always eager for word from Rosey Chamberlee.

Or, at least, that’s how the message started.

Word passed mouth to mouth had a way of going a little bit sideways, and so in hindsight, it should not have been a surprise that things had gotten a little twisted in the telling. But when news reached the Melisande that someone in Folly had been asking around after him, and yes, they were pretty sure her name had been Rosey, and yes, The Hurbert was heading that way and would welcome a boucan, Rufus bid the Melisande goodbye, and headed - well, not for home, exactly, but back to the place his mother was waiting for him.

[raevenlywrote]

The Life and Adventures of Rufus Mergellus 3

Life on the Melisande was exciting. Even at his tender age, he was expected to work, and he loved it. He went to bed every night tired and sore and deeply content, rocked to peaceful rest by the tossing waves. Every morning, he was roused to do all manner of work, from mending nets to learning knots to cleaning fish to learning navigation. The sailors met him with patience and enthusiasm, though he was shrewd enough to wonder if it was for his youth or his heritage that made them kind.

A boucan, Guiscard explained, was a caste of Tamari that never set foot on the land. Rufus had been dismayed, thinking this automatically disqualified him. But Guiscard assured him that the captain was willing to take him on anyways, out of fondness for his father and out of hopes that Rufus’s cat luck would kick in if not his boucan’s.

The Melisande had fallen afoul of storms, rotting cargo, pirates, and a merchant who had inexplicably disappeared when the captain had come to collect. Rufus thought that would be a bad reason to take on a burden such as himself, but as he was quickly learning, he did not understand the intricate rituals and ways of sailors.

But he loved the stories, and the more he learned, the more he felt at home. He hadn’t realized how stifling the little townhouse on Astrid Lane had felt until he discovered the feel of salt air in his fur, the smell of brine, and the endless blue stretching out all around.

[raevenlywrote]

The Life and Adventures of Rufus Mergellus 2

The guest was like no one Rufus had ever met before in all of Folly. He was tall, tawny and black of coloring, and nearly completely furless. He wasn’t like any of the sphyxes or rexes; the fur he did had grew thick and glossy black on his head and the lower part of his face, and even some on his arms, though there it was hardly worth mentioning. His claws were short and flat to his fingers, and strangest of all, he had no tail.

“Rufus,” said his grandmother primly, “this is second mate Guiscard. He serves on the Melisande. He… knew your father.”

All sense of good manners left him. Rufus’ mouth hung open and even as the sailor chuckled, all Rufus could do was stare. If his mother was not talked about, his father was a theoretical only acknowledged because it took two persons to bring a young life into this world. A Tamari sailor…

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, young sea duck. You have your father’s eyes. I’d hoped you might.”

“Why?”

It was probably unspeakably rude to ask, and definitely not the polite response he should have given. But it was all he could think of, and it was too late to take back.

“Because they mark you as a boucan, and the Melisande could use all the good luck she can get right now.”

[raevenlywrites]

Gonna make a thread of my Pathfinder campaign in meme