backstory

the most important loser in the world ♡

so this part is just me getting into the weeds about a character you'll never experience the full scope of, firstly because you aren't in my head or in my dms with my friends, but more also because you'll never be in the call with my dnd group while the story unfolded. her story is technically over, we concluded the campaign and we aren't planning on playing these same characters again. i can write more about what i think should happen to them all after the story ended, but that's only true to me now.

my whole deal with her was to make her a lot like me but specifically when i was younger. they're very reckless and over-confident and egotistical. a lot to prove and not nearly enough to back it up. super insecure but also very narcisstic. i'm not good enough but at least i'm better than you.

unfortunately the best way to give up your ego is to prove that you're not the best, that you do need help, that it's possible to lose and have it matter. so that's what happened to her, as it happens to every character in a dnd game. i got my ass handed to me session one and in many small ways time and time again.

over time they stopped being a "me first i'm the best" type of person and began to realize what she was actually meant to become as the protector. being the protector was never about status, but about true leadership. putting others needs before your own wants. like, of course she needed to be strong and fast and good fighter, but that was only the surface level part of it.

i hadn't intended for her to be a very deep character initially. obviously i wanted her to have character growth but i never thought i'd make a standard neutral good murder hobo type and end up with a lawful good character that would have been a paladin if i had been able to play with her longer and get her charisma up. i don't know what oath she would have sworn, but it would have been in part to the moon goddess and in part to her party member Aven, whom she grew to love very deeply depsite knowing she would have to give them up eventually.

so Aven is an eladrin twilight cleric from the feywild. why, you may ask, is he on the prime material plane? good question. the answer is tears in the wall between the planes and they just happened to fall through one into the material plane. no big deal. to not get into the weeds about every detail of this two year long campaign, just know that Aven's ultimate goal was to get back home to the feywild and for plot reasons interplaner travel was very hard to do on purpose. so we spend the early days learning about shit and then traveling to a spot that we can slip through the planes (and gain some new party members on the way). and over that time, through the power of autism riz and shared trauma, they fell for each other.

protector more or less deluded herself into thinking that they'd never get Aven home. that would be a tragedy of course, not getting him home to his family, but would it be so bad if he were to stay with her? and like the hand of god reaching down to personally punish that selfish thought, they make it to the feywild and it suddenly becomes a very real possibility that they get Aven home... and that protector may be the one trapped. and for another cruel twist, an actual god gave her a way home, but she'd have to take it now or possibly never. so, she had to go. she wasn't meant to stay in the feywild and she couldn't leave her whole family behind even for her love.

this arc of devoting herself to keeping her friends safe and getting Aven home and having to choose to go back home to her family without Aven is what lead me to think she'd become a paladin, given the time. she learned to put her ego aside, to put the needs of other first, and to recognize that sometimes her wants were at odds with the safety of others. she reached her final form more or less, became the selfless leader her mother knew she could be with time.

and the worst part? Aven would have gone with her. Aven would have went with protector back to the prime material plane after all that struggle to get to the feywild and defeat the big bad and return him to his family. he would have, if protector hadn't told him no. that wasn't what she promised. she promised that she'd get him home. it wasn't safe for either of them to stay in the wrong plane. he would have gone with her and lived happily enough without his family with protector... and continued the big bads work in secret so he could have his cake and eat it too. it could have happened, and it would have be a beautiful tragedy.

one i plan to explore to give them their happy ending ♡