The…
The battle was long, a lot of people had come out to join us and try to assist in fighting off Cunning in the crab tank. Fauna… Fauna had taken a torpedo straight to her body and had collapsed, in the panic I forgot all about stabilising her and just focused on running with Honesty.
You failed once more…
Even when Honesty went down, I didn’t help him… I was so incensed in the moment that all I did was pray to Seggotan for guidance, beseeching that his power keep us all going… that maybe, just maybe, he could help save Vantar from death.
Little Marieya, slowly losing all her friends again. One. By. One.
I thought we had won! I thought that after putting that crab, machine, thing out of action that we’d have been able to get the soul gem back, but somewhere along the way, or even when Cunning was in the machine, it got cracked. Meaning that he was gone. Gone forever.
And you did noth-
Get out of my goddamn head! We tried, I tried, all of us tried to be the heroes in this story. Travelling far and wide to work towards a solution, risking life, limb, and all manner of dangerous monsters. We tried our best, and after all this time, our family can never be reunited again.
Reaching into her bag, Marieya grabs a large tome, gold etched writing on the front displays the title as “A Definitive History of the World: As told by Mharoti Scholars”. The book is the Mharoti Empire’s retelling of history, making things appear more favourable to their causes in the hope of sowing dissent amongst other cities and nations.
She didn’t care for the book, she had plenty of opportunity to sell it at Prawn’s Pawn whilst she was offloading plenty of other such items. However, for all the pain and misery the dragons had brought her, in the back of the book was some writing
One paragraph read, “Izumi… Vardal… Ancil… Charax… I miss all of you… I hope one day we can be reunited, and on that day… I can tell you how sorry I am for letting you down.”
Another, written just below: “Marieya, you have a duty to protect your new friends. Honesty may be anything but, and Vantar seems to be going along with whatever schemes he has cooking. Jorgen is mildly antisocial but seems to be screwed on straight, and Fauna… well Fauna seems okay actually. But you need to know, keeping these people safe and close to you will help you to see how much better life can get.”
Grabbing a quill and some ink from a nearby nightstand, Marieya scribbled a little bit to make sure she had got the ink on right, before going to write a new paragraph.
“Vantar… is gone now. For everything we did, we couldn’t save him. I tried to comfort Honesty in the moment, but, he needed to be alone. Goddamnit… I should’ve stuck around anyway, I know what it’s like to feel the loss of friends, I know what it’s like and I failed to help anyway.”
A tear dropped down onto the page and more soon followed, as Marieya tried to suppress her sobbing to avoid waking up the others before moving onto another paragraph.
“Is this what the life of an exiled phoenix is? No… I’m not a phoenix. Phoenix’s are majestic, honourable, with the misfortune I’ve brought to everyone around me I’m more like an albatross around their neck.”
She slammed a gloved hand into her face hard, the sound travelling through the room but not stirring anyone who was asleep.
“I have to stay with them, when I told Honesty that we’re family, I meant it. Sometimes though, families have those who are not the most welcome and I know I’m on my way towards that. If it comes to it, I’ll sacrifice myself for them. Maybe in death I can earn a smidge of redemption, and finally get a chance to be useful.”
Clasping her hands around the back of her head; Marieya allowed herself a few brief moments of unrestrained bawling. Keeping the noise to a minimum, she allowed herself the relief that comes with crying, letting all the negative feelings and emotions that had been boiling up through the aftermath of the battle out, before finalising her writings with a short sentence.
“Even in death, you are still my friend. Goodbye Vantar.”
Seggotan, lord of the sea and mentor of the waves… please, I beg of you, protect Vantar’s soul as he drifts through the tide, he is not one of yours, but I ask you to guide him to the other side. And please…
Don’t make me bury anyone else.
Inspiration – Content Warning
(Note to my DM, Albert: You handled this session amazingly friendo, the battle was tense, enjoyable, and ended up being a good level of difficulty despite original intentions. The preceding work and proceeding explanation is no bearing on your ability to tell a story… this is something I needed to write for me.)
This entire session was not going to be easy, we were up against an enemy we had never encountered before, and even then, we all knew that our efforts were going to be in vain. A lot of this campaign had been dedicated to getting a Gearforged party member revived, when the player decided not to continue with the campaign, it left a dilemma of how to resolve things. Rather than having a character change for the person playing Honesty, it was decided that killing off Vantar would be better.
Now… that is why it was difficult for the characters and scenario, but, this fight ended up taking a toll on me mentally as well. Admittedly, the fact that Marieya is very much a projection of myself did not make anything better.
In the lead up to this session, one of my closest friends had gone through some grief, and because of how close I was to the person he was grieving for, I felt a lot of similar feelings as well… and it took a lot to try resolve my “feeling bad about feeling bad”. I had locked into a mindset that because he had way more reason to grieve, I should just shut up and lock everything inside. It took a late night vent, some reassurance from friends, and a lot of virtual explosions to pull me out of that rut.
However, there was something else as well. About two days before the session, I had my personal issues regarding abandonment triggered by an event within a social circle (since I know these people may also read this blog, this is also nothing on you), which meant that losing Vantar in the session really ended up hitting a nerve hard around my own loneliness.
I feel I really struggle with making and keeping friends sometime, some of it conscious, some of it blissfully unaware until it is way too late, which is why when I am presented with the possibility of having friends fade from my life things start to go a bit haywire. Tried to portray that with Marieya, especially through the line:
“Even in death, you are still my friend. Goodbye Vantar.”
Even when people fade from my life, and for all the memory problems I have, the good times I have with friends will always remain, and I can hold that close as a memory of positivity.
To try end this off on a more positive note, I am going to showcase some art my friend Brett (and Honesty’s player) did in the lead up to this session, involving the party reacting to the scenario. He absolutely nailed the reference expression for Marieya I gave him along with making her incredibly beautiful even in sadness. His instagram is bretticus.llewellyn.art if you want to check him out.
Rosalia Rambles 
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