Marieya’s Lessons

Compared to the leg of the journey that came before it; Skogarholm was a relatively uneventful stop for myself and my new friends. Whilst the weight of Vantar’s demise weighed heavily on us all (Honesty especially), we went about our own tasks in the city. Fauna and Jørgen departed for a temple of Wotan, which I initially wanted to tag along with to seem respectful… but the mention of candles meant there would be a lot of fire nearby…

…though thinking back, sweating profusely near some candles may have been preferable to what Honesty and I went through.

We decided to go to a tavern called “The Roach”, recommended to us by our captain, where I paid for the drinks to try help Honesty through the grief of losing his closest friend. And this is where I made my first social slip up of the day, because I didn’t realise how loud I was speaking when I was speaking low of the ale on offer, leading to being dragged out by the kobold before anything bad happened.

I got somewhat of an earful once we had got far enough away from the tavern, with Honesty saying, “I know you come from a cult but that could’ve easily gone wrong!”, which, I know I’m an unwilling initiate to the dragons, but Segottan is not a cult following, and whilst I certainly think some of their techniques are cult-esque, the Mharoti Empire is most definitely not a cult (as dangerous as one though, in my opinion).

What followed was probably one of the most embarrassing sequences of my entire life… getting social interaction lessons from a kobold…

“Alright, so, let’s start with a greeting” Honesty said, adjusting his coat as he looked at his shadow fey companion, who herself was looking like she would rather be anywhere else

“Uhm… H-hi…” Marieya said, the usual hesitation present in her voice “I’m Marieya Ebontide… it’s nice to meet you, I guess?”

The kobold rubbed his brow in exasperation “Are you confused about if it’s nice to meet someone or if your name is actually Marieya?”

There was a pause. “…both?” Marieya made a noise of discomfort “Do we really have to do this?”

“Look, I’d rather not die because you’ve accidentally pissed off the wrong barkeep” Honesty said, adopting a mixed tone, communicating his frustrations but trying to convey concern for Marieya “So, now try greet me with a bit more gusto!”

The shadow fey sighed, thinking to how nice it would have been to just sit silently in a temple, not bothering anyway. “Hi… my name is Marieya Ebontibe, it’s nice to meet you.” She attempted a smile but ended up adopting a nervous expression instead.

“Good start, I suppose” Honesty leaned up to inspect the face of his companion “Try not to look so nervous, and now, give me that intro again, be confident!”

“Segottan, please” Marieya thought to herself, almost as if starting a prayer “Give me the strength to not place a geyser under this geezer” before taking a deep breath and putting on her best confident expression “Hi! My is Marieya Ebontide, it’s very nice to meet you!”

Honesty gave a slow clap, oozing with sarcasm, but the slight smile on his face slightly betrayed his true feelings “It’s a good start, I suppose.”

After this was another awkward encounter, as we somehow managed to barge into a homeless shelter thinking it was a front for something else. This was pretty bad on it’s own, but through talking to her familiar we called Fauna over to give us backup… which we didn’t need, so she had wild shaped for nothing (I never knew wolves could glare until today). She dragged us back to the temple of Wotan where we waited patiently for Jørgen to finish adding to his spellbook.

With the day I had, staying silent was an absolute treat.

“Now how about we head to The Roach for the night!” Jørgen said.

…well, time to see if that lesson pays off.

Inspiration

I’ll start this off by showing you the “Flaws” section of Marieya’s character sheet.

From this alone, you can kind of tell that she is a walking disaster waiting to happen. Admittedly I play a lot of her regular interactions by drawing on my own issues with anxiety in the past, and how it wasn’t really until late on in my life that I actually started to develop a semblance of a social life, due to issues with anxiety and generally being a bit socially awkward.

In universe there is a reason why her social skills never really developed, and it’s part of her background with being an emissary to the Mharoti Empire. I haven’t fully explored why this is in sessions yet, so I’ll just leave it open ended for now.

This specific bit of fiction is a recreation/dramatization of something that happened in the last session, where Marieya talked about the quality of the ale she was drinking, saying she’s used to bad ales, which inadvertently annoyed the barkeep, after which my friend Brett (the player behind Honesty) used the moment to do some frankly excellent roleplay with me about improving Marieya’s social skills, which, whilst hitting a bit close to reality for my liking, was extremely enjoyable.

With this campaign being my first proper experience of D&D, it’s almost somewhat expected that I’m going to make mistakes and slip ups when it comes to playing my character, but the sessions I’ve had so far have been immensely enjoyable and I’m looking forward to where I can take my walking disaster of a Cleric next.