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lettersfrombel9 Tarsakh 1492 DR
Outside a ruined shrine to Jergal of all gods, Sword Coast
My dear River:
I have realized I just wrote three letters in one day. This is perhaps too much, but a lot has happened.
Madame Lae’zel is concerned. As our relative expert, we should already be showing some symptoms of our transformation. Mind flayers generally don’t fuck around with their reproduction — and yes, I did write that deliberately. Perhaps if we were starting to show symptoms, it would be easier to do as she says and head for that crèche of hers. But I also recall that mind flayers are smart enough to experiment, and I could imagine that creating offspring that were more subtle would be useful for them. On the other hand, the mind flayers didn’t expect we’d escape their custody, so there would be no point in subtlety.
We did meet another victim, though. Wyll is a human would be hero, and he was chasing a fiendish warrior through the Nine Hells when our mind flayer situation landed on top of them. No word about his target, but he is willing to help both with the tiefling situation and with removing the parasites from our heads. Madame Lae’zel called him a githyanki word that apparently means ‘benevolent burden’, and she’s not wrong, but...
He helped us defend the gates from a goblin attack, but we encountered him next showing some of the young tiefling children how to defend themselves and...
River, you know I have a soft sport for children. You may even know why, I’m pretty sure I told you about my younger brother when I was drunk and maudlin. Certainly you know I tried to look out for the kids in the group — mostly Nurgle and Sylvia as Wynn seems to be less inclined to get herself into trouble. Apparently the quickest way into my heart — well, or at least my trousers — is a man who is actually good with kids. I was the one tasked to teach my brother how to fight, and I look at Wyll’s interaction with those children and I remember everything I did wrong, but I feel inspired rather than just ashamed. I even offered to show some of the children a bit about fighting dirty; the goal is to give them enough to get them out of trouble if they have to run.
There are a lot of children in the tieflings’ camp. A couple of them tried to run a scam and pickpocket on me, which was adorable. I’m not even mad, though they could use some help in identifying marks. They clearly need all the help they can get, with the amount of goblins in the area and even some of the able-bodied adults deciding they have better odds without the refugees. Also, at least some of the druids are real assholes. With the tieflings, my ancestry mostly comes up with surprise and curiosity, and even a bit of admiration because I suspect we both experience a lot of unwanted judgement. Some of the children asked if drow kidnapped children to the Underdark, so I I had to explain that Lolthites generally prefer adults, especially people without the ability to see in the dark, and not all drow follow Lolth.
(They did ask. I’m not going to lie to them about that. It’s also true. Humans are preferred targets not just because they are numerous, but because the ones who try to escape generally are going to either fail or be eaten by something. And children aren’t able to do as much as adults.)
But, yes, the druids. The guards on their sacred pool were instructed to turn away everyone who wasn’t part of their ritual (or at least a member of the grove), so there was no call to make comments about my ancestry as well. They did let me pass with a number of strict warnings about my behavior.
Why did I want to? Well, besides principle, they have a healer and I wanted to confirm Madame Lae’zel was correct that local healers wouldn’t be able to help before we follow her lead. And, they were holding one of the tiefling children because she tried to disrupt their stupid ceremony, because she heard her parents talking about how screwed they would be if the druids do seal their grove. And, well... a drow child would have known the risks and be utterly unsurprised that trying to disrupt a religious ritual was a good way to get sacrificed as an apology to the Goddess for letting the ritual be disrupted (I’m pretty sure these druids don’t practice sacrifice of humanoids, but they may still kill people) but these children apparently have had better lives than my brothers and I did, until now. Or at least better parents.
I had to cool off, so I volunteered us to do some scouting. I had found a ruined temple complex nearby, and we explored that. To my surprise, I recognized the god. No, not Lolth, thank all the other gods. But I recall doing some reading when I was new to the surface and trying to make sure my soul wouldn’t end up in the Demonweb Pits when I died. Ended up tithing quite a bit to Mask, figuring that the God of Thieves would appreciate a drow stealing his soul back from the Queen of Spiders. Most people know that Kelemvor is the god of the dead. They also know some of the history, that Kelemvor wasn’t the first god of the dead. Jergal, the first being to be god of the dead, still exists as seneschal and scribe to whatever god is god of the dead. The ruined church was a shrine to Jergal, which meant it was old as balls or very unusual. Explains why the main contents were books and tombs, though.
In the heart of the shrine was something still... well, animate. He introduced himself as Withers, and I don’t know what the hells he is, beyond ‘undead’, ‘not inclined to hostilities’ and ‘probably able to kick my ass if I start shit’. Some sort of philosopher and necromancer — or at least, he offered to summon back some shades if we needed a few extra hands — that mostly hangs around our camp. I’m not going to make him go away, because I suspect I can’t. He does seem to have a grudge against something called the Cult of the Absolute, which I recall hearing about somewhere, but can’t recall where.
Meanwhile, Shadowheart remains a delight, though she has made it clear that once we sort out this parasite business, she has her own tasks in Baldur’s Gate to attend to. Astarion meanwhile, continues to be evasive about his own business, which fits entirely with my first perception of him. I thought I saw him skulking about the camp, when I was laying down, but it can be hard to travel with non-elves who actually need to sleep. At least having one of us on watch is useful.
I continue to remain (somewhat suspiciously),
Your dear friend,
Bel
From the Player:
Outside a ruined shrine to Jergal of all gods, Sword Coast
My dear River:
I have realized I just wrote three letters in one day. This is perhaps too much, but a lot has happened.
Madame Lae’zel is concerned. As our relative expert, we should already be showing some symptoms of our transformation. Mind flayers generally don’t fuck around with their reproduction — and yes, I did write that deliberately. Perhaps if we were starting to show symptoms, it would be easier to do as she says and head for that crèche of hers. But I also recall that mind flayers are smart enough to experiment, and I could imagine that creating offspring that were more subtle would be useful for them. On the other hand, the mind flayers didn’t expect we’d escape their custody, so there would be no point in subtlety.
We did meet another victim, though. Wyll is a human would be hero, and he was chasing a fiendish warrior through the Nine Hells when our mind flayer situation landed on top of them. No word about his target, but he is willing to help both with the tiefling situation and with removing the parasites from our heads. Madame Lae’zel called him a githyanki word that apparently means ‘benevolent burden’, and she’s not wrong, but...
He helped us defend the gates from a goblin attack, but we encountered him next showing some of the young tiefling children how to defend themselves and...
River, you know I have a soft sport for children. You may even know why, I’m pretty sure I told you about my younger brother when I was drunk and maudlin. Certainly you know I tried to look out for the kids in the group — mostly Nurgle and Sylvia as Wynn seems to be less inclined to get herself into trouble. Apparently the quickest way into my heart — well, or at least my trousers — is a man who is actually good with kids. I was the one tasked to teach my brother how to fight, and I look at Wyll’s interaction with those children and I remember everything I did wrong, but I feel inspired rather than just ashamed. I even offered to show some of the children a bit about fighting dirty; the goal is to give them enough to get them out of trouble if they have to run.
There are a lot of children in the tieflings’ camp. A couple of them tried to run a scam and pickpocket on me, which was adorable. I’m not even mad, though they could use some help in identifying marks. They clearly need all the help they can get, with the amount of goblins in the area and even some of the able-bodied adults deciding they have better odds without the refugees. Also, at least some of the druids are real assholes. With the tieflings, my ancestry mostly comes up with surprise and curiosity, and even a bit of admiration because I suspect we both experience a lot of unwanted judgement. Some of the children asked if drow kidnapped children to the Underdark, so I I had to explain that Lolthites generally prefer adults, especially people without the ability to see in the dark, and not all drow follow Lolth.
(They did ask. I’m not going to lie to them about that. It’s also true. Humans are preferred targets not just because they are numerous, but because the ones who try to escape generally are going to either fail or be eaten by something. And children aren’t able to do as much as adults.)
But, yes, the druids. The guards on their sacred pool were instructed to turn away everyone who wasn’t part of their ritual (or at least a member of the grove), so there was no call to make comments about my ancestry as well. They did let me pass with a number of strict warnings about my behavior.
Why did I want to? Well, besides principle, they have a healer and I wanted to confirm Madame Lae’zel was correct that local healers wouldn’t be able to help before we follow her lead. And, they were holding one of the tiefling children because she tried to disrupt their stupid ceremony, because she heard her parents talking about how screwed they would be if the druids do seal their grove. And, well... a drow child would have known the risks and be utterly unsurprised that trying to disrupt a religious ritual was a good way to get sacrificed as an apology to the Goddess for letting the ritual be disrupted (I’m pretty sure these druids don’t practice sacrifice of humanoids, but they may still kill people) but these children apparently have had better lives than my brothers and I did, until now. Or at least better parents.
I had to cool off, so I volunteered us to do some scouting. I had found a ruined temple complex nearby, and we explored that. To my surprise, I recognized the god. No, not Lolth, thank all the other gods. But I recall doing some reading when I was new to the surface and trying to make sure my soul wouldn’t end up in the Demonweb Pits when I died. Ended up tithing quite a bit to Mask, figuring that the God of Thieves would appreciate a drow stealing his soul back from the Queen of Spiders. Most people know that Kelemvor is the god of the dead. They also know some of the history, that Kelemvor wasn’t the first god of the dead. Jergal, the first being to be god of the dead, still exists as seneschal and scribe to whatever god is god of the dead. The ruined church was a shrine to Jergal, which meant it was old as balls or very unusual. Explains why the main contents were books and tombs, though.
In the heart of the shrine was something still... well, animate. He introduced himself as Withers, and I don’t know what the hells he is, beyond ‘undead’, ‘not inclined to hostilities’ and ‘probably able to kick my ass if I start shit’. Some sort of philosopher and necromancer — or at least, he offered to summon back some shades if we needed a few extra hands — that mostly hangs around our camp. I’m not going to make him go away, because I suspect I can’t. He does seem to have a grudge against something called the Cult of the Absolute, which I recall hearing about somewhere, but can’t recall where.
Meanwhile, Shadowheart remains a delight, though she has made it clear that once we sort out this parasite business, she has her own tasks in Baldur’s Gate to attend to. Astarion meanwhile, continues to be evasive about his own business, which fits entirely with my first perception of him. I thought I saw him skulking about the camp, when I was laying down, but it can be hard to travel with non-elves who actually need to sleep. At least having one of us on watch is useful.
I continue to remain (somewhat suspiciously),
Your dear friend,
Bel
From the Player:
You know how sometimes when you are writing a character, and you have plans, and suddenly the character metaphorically pipes up and says 'we're doing something different' because your subconscious is running character simulator.exe in the background and realized that things would proceed like so.
Yeah, Bel did that when he first met Wyll beyond the battle with the goblins. I'd assumed I'd be courting Astarion, and was trying to figure out how to respect one of them so I didn't have two very similar rogues in the party, and then Bel spent less than five minutes watching Wyll help teach the tieflings some combat skills and he was all 'I want that man to bend me over and stab me with something other than his rapier'. (Well, or vice versa; Bel is not actually picky about sex acts.)
(I also wonder, since the telepathic link triggered in this scene, if Wyll got either Bel's memories of being a crappy teacher to his younger brother, or just the thoughts of a very thirsty drow, and which one Bel would be more embarrassed by. Probably the former; Bel could brush off lust as 'well, look, it's been a while and you are an attractive man and I can't be the first person who has had lustful thoughts about you', but he's actually ashamed of the former, even if it was largely the fact that while Bel's hometown didn't kill extra sons, they were largely left to sink or swim unless they had an actual rare talent.)
Yes, the party cleric in the tabletop game was named Nurgle. He was a cleric of Talona (god of plagues and poisons) that was being treated as some kind of saint by a cult of Talona thanks to a bout of childhood illness that left him disabled but alive. Bel got him out when the cult imploded, dropped him off at an orphanage under the idea that 'do not trust me with a human child' and when they met back up some five years later, Bel was all 'okay, at this point, I probably can't do any worse by teaching him the proper way to get and use poisons'. See: Bel with the tiefling pickpockets and con artists -- it's a hard world out there, and it's better to learn how to identify a mark than to take the high ground. Bel would concede that for a child pickpocket, he's not a terrible target -- it's not likely to work, but Bel also isn't likely to respond with hostility.
Of the party, Bel was the only one to make the check to identify Jergal in the shrine, so I had to rationalize why he would know this. Which is part of the fun of D&D -- when the cleric fails her Religion check, but the rogue gets it. Bel also continues to not put things together about Astarion, but he hasn't found the smoking gun yet.
