Details about Marieya Ebontide

For my first outing with Dungeons and Dragons as a nerdy adult, my campaign in the Midgard setting by Kobold Press has been unbelievable amounts of fun. I started out extremely nervous and not really knowing if I’d get along with different concepts, which, honestly did inspire some of my writing behind Marieya, hoping I’d be able to use my anxiety of starting out to give her a more fleshed out background.

In hindsight, I really do not know what I had to be worried about.

I am in a party with great friends of mine and my Dungeon Master is incredibly descriptive and accommodating of what I may not be familiar with. (And since I know they read this blog: I don’t express my love for you all enough, thank you for welcoming me into the fold. This game has been a muse for my writing and roleplay skills, and I will always appreciate that.)

So, I figured I would make a sort of master post to talk about Marieya’s mannerisms, appearance, and a little bit about her goals in this world.

Appearance and Equipment

Marieya is a Shadow Fey, a race from the Midgard Heroes Handbook. Shadow fey are a subrace of elves so share some qualities of their appearance, where shadow fey differ are skin colour, ranging from alabaster white to ebon black, and horns, with some having nub like horns, some having small goat-like horns, and some even having full demonic protrusions.

She sort of has a “middle ground” appearance when it comes to her race, having a pallid grey skin tone and about five inch long horns on the top of her head, with ashen white hair providing a somewhat stark contrast to her. Standing at five foot two and weighing one-hundred-and-two pounds (157cm and 50kg in real numbers), she is quite a small framed individual, even more so considering her resting posture is hunched slightly.

Underneath the thick mass of clothes she tends to wear her skin is covered in dark, weirdly shaped burn marks, being found everywhere except her hands, feet, and face.

Being a Cleric means her equipment is not going to make waves during combat encounters, but she carries what she must to hold her own. Equipped with short sword and shield (bearing the emblem of her god, Seggotan) for anything that gets too close and a shortbow for picking off enemies from afar; she is not left helpless as battle rages.

She also has a trident. Which has 1d6 – 2 damage because I had not fully learnt how the system worked yet and just wanted it because she had proficiency in it. I am most definitely still learning on the road here.

Mannerisms and Behaviours

Marieya Ebontide is a socially well-adjusted person with no flaws whatsoever.

Ahh… nope, she is a walking disaster in several ways.

I will start with her phobias, whilst a lot of things have the potential to spook her or make her jump, two things will always be a point of fear for her:

• Fire
• Dragons

Fire specifically comes from her origin story, where her inability to control her fire-based magic after an ego trip caused the death of her close friends and lead to her banishment from the Shadow Realm. Now she prefers to keep her distance from open flames where possible and will fidget incessantly whenever in proximity for prolonged periods of time.

Dragons come from her time with the Mharoti Empire, a brutalist society where tribute and fealty are the price for being spared a death of claw and flame. Whilst training as a cleric of Seggotan and emissary of the empire she was subject to daily threats, intimidations, and reminders of her place in the world she was “recruited” into.

Relating to this, Marieya’s eyes constantly dart around, as if she is on the lookout for a potential ambush or if the dragons are about to finally make good on what they have said to her in the past. The risk of being offed by dragons is increased by the fact that she isn’t exactly the most enthusiastic of Mharoti emissaries, instead choosing to offer the pamphlets on impulse and then sighing with relief whenever she “doesn’t have to explain the bullshit written in them”.

Survival is the name of the game for the young shadow fey, starting with when she was banished. Alone in a strange world with no one to depend on but herself, she honed her skills and senses to ensure she could keep surviving. Her main impetus in the world right now is keeping moving as far away from the dragons as possible and stay alive.

Whilst she isn’t really able to properly navigates some social situations due to lingering awkwardness from a lack of interactions with well meaning people, she holds the party close to her as friends, and believes that if she can help them out in whatever ways they need; she’ll be able to keep them around as friends.

Spellcasting Details

As a cleric, Marieya has access to a mixture of support spells, healing spells, and, in the case of some supplemental homebrew matching her domain, some absolutely insane offensive spells.

One bit of inspiration I took from my DM describing a healing spell once is that all her spells have water aesthetics, regarding of what they are. So, her healing spells are manifestations of soothing water that work to heal wounds, any spells that work off of divine energy have a cyan aesthetic to them, and spells later on down the line I envision them sharing the water aesthetic.

Examples of this could include Banishment manifesting in the form of a whirlpool to take the target away or Create Undead having the revived corpses being driven by torrents of water within them.

How she works with verbal and somatic components also changes on the type of the spell. For a water-based spell I always picture her having forceful gestures accompanying powerful words, such as an uppercut for summoning a geyser or swiftly pulling back her hand when summoning a ribbon of water to pull her enemies towards her.

This becomes much more subdued whenever she needs to cast a healing spell, her gestures are more deliberate, intricate, focused. Her eyes go from nervous yet determined to being wide with fear, manifesting magic as she fumbles over her words:

“Please… don’t die…”

“I can’t afford to lose anyone else…”

“If I can’t save you, I can’t save anyone”

Goals

“He will pay for his brutality, and I will take his head as penance.”

“The fires inside must be extinguished, lest they consume those around me.”

“Lay to rest the ghosts that haunt my lasting dreams.”

Finishing Off

There is definitely more of a story to tell with Marieya, and more behaviours that will become apparent as her character develops throughout the sessions and the full juicy details are revealed.

In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed this short post about some of her more intricate details. If you want to read more, there is a full category on my site dedicated to Marieya stories.