Tougher than the Rest 13/04 Nessa
Apr 16, 2022 14:21:42 GMT
Lykksie, Velania Kalugina, and 4 more like this
Post by Nessa al-Kiram on Apr 16, 2022 14:21:42 GMT
I can’t say I dig graveyards.
That was a joke. No, wait, a pun. Because if you work in a graveyard you dig graves and my job as a cleric, whilst it does include ministering at funerals, does not involve actually digging the graves. And then dig can also mean enjoy. As in, I dig it baby. So what I’m doing is playing with two meanings for the same word.
Humour, I am beginning to understand, is very different on the material plane.
Anyway, there I was in the graveyard coming up with a couple of zingers like that –
This place is really quiet, I don’t know why everyone’s dying to get in… because all the bodies in a graveyard are dead, you see?
And - hey, a two-seater cart crashed in here the other week. They recovered 50 bodies. Which is odd seeing as it’s a two-seater cart. Meaning they dug up the decomposing remains of other people not involved in the crash.
See what I mean? Humour is weird.
I’d received a calling from the Moonmaiden to drive back her enemies. We were to meet here, by the Grave Gate, at twilight to watch for the sign. Selûne would call her champions.
I got there pretty early to work on the stand-up routine and I saw Fog – and by Fog I mean this firbolg ranger I met a couple of weeks ago, not some atmospheric mist. Hahaha.
Fog was hanging out over the other side of the ‘yard, and I was just about to give a hearty salute when a beautifully be-plumed aarakocra cleric swooped in and swept down into a spectacular bow offering the most lovely greeting, full of hope and promise.
So I bowed lower and bestowed every drop of kindness I can. And he bowed yet lower and so it went on for really a remarkable amount of time.
In the end I literally ran out of words – there’s over 150,000 words in common and I’d easily reached a hundred or so.
Then a cleric of Mystra called Snowey showed up and we went through the whole cycle again. Then Marto, the cherubic axe slinger, and Zola, the beguiling paladin, wander over and it’s pretty much getting dark by the time everyone has got through a casual hello.
I started to worry that we’d miss the sign out of sheer politeness, when it became clear that someone was reading people’s minds. Not mine, but it got us thinking that the bored sentry at the gate might be more than he seemed just as the coves head ripped open and this utterly forgettable… I swear I’d seen them before… Yes! On the ship to the island with the fire and the fiends.
Good times.
Khaos, that was their name. They introduce the Jackal, the warrior from said pirate ship whose service and suffering shone out like the moon itself.
The conversation roamed over a number of topics, most of them mildly aggressive or at least passive aggressive – the opening negotiating strategy I have realised is typical to business dealings in Kantas – but we finally settled on a few simple guidelines.
This was going to be dangerous.
We needed to get something from a cave.
Things would try to kill us.
It would be dangerous.
We would be paid nothing.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how dangerous will this be?” Tayz asked.
“13.5” Khaos told him.
“Cool cool cool,” Tayz said, although I’m not sure he meant it literally.
As I looked around at our crew, however, and saw three clerics, a paladin, a ranger and an eldritch knight I thought – this must be one of the safest parties to be a member of. So much healing, so much protection. Nothing bad can happen to us.
So you can imagine my surprise when the fiend killed me.
The fire this time
We had perhaps been a little over confident. I seem to remember high fiving Tayz over the radiant power of clerics on the lash as we trudged through the Feythorn to Selûne’s Cave.
We probably should have prepared a little more but then, you know the old saying - we make plans and the gods laugh.
All of the scorched gnome corpses didn’t even put us off – and there were so many of them. It was no time to make jokes about keeping the gnome fires burning so I kept schtum. Instead, I went through the prayer cycle of the Nesarine empire. Always appropriate. And yet, something about that prayer seemed to attract a dark voice creeping up my spine. “You’re not the one we thought will come but you will do,” it said.
“I am here to save you,” I reassured it, aware that all fiends really want to return to the light. Its laughter was unexpectedly rude.
And then, literally the moment we walk into the cave filled with the holiness of the Moonmaiden, bathing in ecstatic love, this fiend grabbed me and hurled me across the room. I was hurt, but not fatally. Then things got a lot worse.
The battle was way harder than we’d expected. Some sort of elemental showed up, breathing flames, the fiend loved that and sucked up the fire like it was mother’s milk, Fog’s was hurt, our radiance was having some effect, but the fiend was bearing down on me constantly, so I unleashed the full force of the goddess, unfurled my wings and she killed me.
The road to heaven is paved with admin
I don’t know what it’s like for you when you die, but for me it’s really bureaucratic. You have incident reports to fill in and there’s a number of exit interviews so I was really not looking forward to the process but the love of the goddess suddenly surged around me and lifted my soul, carrying me back to my earthly form and kissing me softly.
“You are not finished yet, my child,” she breathed.
And suddenly I was sitting up in the middle of the battle and all kinds of shit was going down. Zola was in excellent form, smiting here and smiting there – I can sometimes be a little sarcastic about paladins but I must admit when you’re toe-to-toe with the denizens of Hell they really are ideal companions.
She crashed another smite combo into the hot chick who vanished but a freaked out Snowey started yelling about misty forms and suddenly a wraith is sucking Fog’s life away.
So there’s Fog dying on one hand and this just enormous fire elemental bearing down on the other. Marto steams into the wraith, Zola slashes the elemental to bits, Tayz heals Zola, Snowey saves Fog, Khaos digs up a chest from the ground pronouncing the quest fulfilled and I think – what good did I actually do there?
Embarrassingly, they showered me with money and jewels – Marto gave me the cash to buy the statuette I need and there’s enough diamonds to raise the dead which they pressed upon me, and I started to think… Nessa, you have to stop fucking about and start fulfilling your purpose because this whole business has been shameful.
Then my eyes lost focus and I was on a vast plain and I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black, the moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the tree sheds its fruit when shaken by a gale. The kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from what was to come.
I need to be ready.
That was a joke. No, wait, a pun. Because if you work in a graveyard you dig graves and my job as a cleric, whilst it does include ministering at funerals, does not involve actually digging the graves. And then dig can also mean enjoy. As in, I dig it baby. So what I’m doing is playing with two meanings for the same word.
Humour, I am beginning to understand, is very different on the material plane.
Anyway, there I was in the graveyard coming up with a couple of zingers like that –
This place is really quiet, I don’t know why everyone’s dying to get in… because all the bodies in a graveyard are dead, you see?
And - hey, a two-seater cart crashed in here the other week. They recovered 50 bodies. Which is odd seeing as it’s a two-seater cart. Meaning they dug up the decomposing remains of other people not involved in the crash.
See what I mean? Humour is weird.
I’d received a calling from the Moonmaiden to drive back her enemies. We were to meet here, by the Grave Gate, at twilight to watch for the sign. Selûne would call her champions.
I got there pretty early to work on the stand-up routine and I saw Fog – and by Fog I mean this firbolg ranger I met a couple of weeks ago, not some atmospheric mist. Hahaha.
Fog was hanging out over the other side of the ‘yard, and I was just about to give a hearty salute when a beautifully be-plumed aarakocra cleric swooped in and swept down into a spectacular bow offering the most lovely greeting, full of hope and promise.
So I bowed lower and bestowed every drop of kindness I can. And he bowed yet lower and so it went on for really a remarkable amount of time.
In the end I literally ran out of words – there’s over 150,000 words in common and I’d easily reached a hundred or so.
Then a cleric of Mystra called Snowey showed up and we went through the whole cycle again. Then Marto, the cherubic axe slinger, and Zola, the beguiling paladin, wander over and it’s pretty much getting dark by the time everyone has got through a casual hello.
I started to worry that we’d miss the sign out of sheer politeness, when it became clear that someone was reading people’s minds. Not mine, but it got us thinking that the bored sentry at the gate might be more than he seemed just as the coves head ripped open and this utterly forgettable… I swear I’d seen them before… Yes! On the ship to the island with the fire and the fiends.
Good times.
Khaos, that was their name. They introduce the Jackal, the warrior from said pirate ship whose service and suffering shone out like the moon itself.
The conversation roamed over a number of topics, most of them mildly aggressive or at least passive aggressive – the opening negotiating strategy I have realised is typical to business dealings in Kantas – but we finally settled on a few simple guidelines.
This was going to be dangerous.
We needed to get something from a cave.
Things would try to kill us.
It would be dangerous.
We would be paid nothing.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, how dangerous will this be?” Tayz asked.
“13.5” Khaos told him.
“Cool cool cool,” Tayz said, although I’m not sure he meant it literally.
As I looked around at our crew, however, and saw three clerics, a paladin, a ranger and an eldritch knight I thought – this must be one of the safest parties to be a member of. So much healing, so much protection. Nothing bad can happen to us.
So you can imagine my surprise when the fiend killed me.
The fire this time
We had perhaps been a little over confident. I seem to remember high fiving Tayz over the radiant power of clerics on the lash as we trudged through the Feythorn to Selûne’s Cave.
We probably should have prepared a little more but then, you know the old saying - we make plans and the gods laugh.
All of the scorched gnome corpses didn’t even put us off – and there were so many of them. It was no time to make jokes about keeping the gnome fires burning so I kept schtum. Instead, I went through the prayer cycle of the Nesarine empire. Always appropriate. And yet, something about that prayer seemed to attract a dark voice creeping up my spine. “You’re not the one we thought will come but you will do,” it said.
“I am here to save you,” I reassured it, aware that all fiends really want to return to the light. Its laughter was unexpectedly rude.
And then, literally the moment we walk into the cave filled with the holiness of the Moonmaiden, bathing in ecstatic love, this fiend grabbed me and hurled me across the room. I was hurt, but not fatally. Then things got a lot worse.
The battle was way harder than we’d expected. Some sort of elemental showed up, breathing flames, the fiend loved that and sucked up the fire like it was mother’s milk, Fog’s was hurt, our radiance was having some effect, but the fiend was bearing down on me constantly, so I unleashed the full force of the goddess, unfurled my wings and she killed me.
The road to heaven is paved with admin
I don’t know what it’s like for you when you die, but for me it’s really bureaucratic. You have incident reports to fill in and there’s a number of exit interviews so I was really not looking forward to the process but the love of the goddess suddenly surged around me and lifted my soul, carrying me back to my earthly form and kissing me softly.
“You are not finished yet, my child,” she breathed.
And suddenly I was sitting up in the middle of the battle and all kinds of shit was going down. Zola was in excellent form, smiting here and smiting there – I can sometimes be a little sarcastic about paladins but I must admit when you’re toe-to-toe with the denizens of Hell they really are ideal companions.
She crashed another smite combo into the hot chick who vanished but a freaked out Snowey started yelling about misty forms and suddenly a wraith is sucking Fog’s life away.
So there’s Fog dying on one hand and this just enormous fire elemental bearing down on the other. Marto steams into the wraith, Zola slashes the elemental to bits, Tayz heals Zola, Snowey saves Fog, Khaos digs up a chest from the ground pronouncing the quest fulfilled and I think – what good did I actually do there?
Embarrassingly, they showered me with money and jewels – Marto gave me the cash to buy the statuette I need and there’s enough diamonds to raise the dead which they pressed upon me, and I started to think… Nessa, you have to stop fucking about and start fulfilling your purpose because this whole business has been shameful.
Then my eyes lost focus and I was on a vast plain and I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black, the moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the tree sheds its fruit when shaken by a gale. The kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from what was to come.
I need to be ready.
