Orianna’s Crisis

(Approximate story word count: 1300 words. Estimated reading time: 13 minutes.)

A meeting with a merchant and a panicked conversation about relationships were the only standout moments from a day of ultimately boring travel, and as the four beautiful women, their kobold, and their guides settled down for the night, an order of watches was determined. 

Juliet had gone first, and the watch was uneventful.

Seb and Valzin went next, and the watch was uneventful.

Orianna was awoken for her watch, shocking the life out of Seb in process as she bolted upright, shouting, “I’m here I’m awake I promise I wasn’t going to oversleep!”

“Alright girl, I get it! Don’t need to dart around like that… I’m gonna go to sleep”, Seb said in response, before collapsing onto their bedroll. Orianna stood up and brushed herself down before wandering off to the main viewpoint down and around the tunnel.

It did not take long for Orianna to lose her focus however. Her eyes glazed over as she paced aimlessly across her designated path, sometimes looking up trying to see if anything was directly coming at her and sometimes going to idly look at her hands, examining them closely and…

…wait?

No.

It can’t be.

“WHATDOYOUMEANIVEBROKENANAILWHILSTIVEBEENDOWNHEREOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

Orianna had indeed broken a nail. A manicure that had taken almost three hours of work with layering different kinds of white polish, adding a layer of silver glitter polish on top before finally decorating the tips with three small clear gemstones. A perfect work of nail art, that had been somehow cracked during combat.

“It’s alright it’s alright it’s alright I can fix this my glove has kept it somewhat in shape if I just take it off and-”, upon taking off her glove, Orianna saw the damage was much greater than initially thought, the nail was almost completely snapped off, the initial break itself at a weird angle.

“Ohhhhhhh come on I can’t even glue this back together with how it comes off!”, she said, continuing to panic before running back over to her backpack to look for nail clippers, “Waterskin… bedroll… cutlery… makeup… brushes… makeup… brushes… where the hell are they?!”

The backpack was completely emptied, but no nail clippers were found. Orianna racked her brain to think of where they might be, before having an epiphany.

They were in a drawer in her side table, next to the letter from Eirina. She had somehow forgotten to pack them.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me how could I forget those okay admittedly I forgot a lot of things but nail clippers are important!”, she said, taking sharper and sharper breaths, bordering on hyperventilation as she tried to figure out a solution to her problem.

She reached down to the thin, sharp, delicate blades tucked into her garters, fully contemplating using one of them to slice off the errant nail, before realising she had a better tool. One of her edged cards would provide an even thinner tool to try to make the cut.

In a rare occasion, Orianna held her breath as she used the card to slice the nail off, letting everything out in one relieved exhale as she managed to-

“OHCOMEONIHELDMYBREATHWHYDIDYOUNOTCUTSTRAIGHT?!”

-make a complete hack job of it.

It was a quick dash back to her backpack to go find a nail file to try straighten out her improvised, but nonetheless shoddy, handiwork. She looked through all of her brush bags and makeup cases, but there she had no files.

“Okay how could I have forgotten those too theyyyyyyy are not kept with brushes so I completely blanked on picking them up when packing my bag okay that’s on me…”, she said, pondering about using her rapiers as a sort of radial file until an… interesting tool choice came to mind.

Whilst not a tool for physical beauty, a whetstone was sort of like a nail file. It was not, but to Orianna’s panicked mind it would fulfil a purpose, using the utmost of her dexterity to try to reshape the nail to make it look less out of place until she could get a proper manicure. And whilst the nail was now tidier, it still looked out of place.

The worried words had now just become a sequence of stressed sounds and meaningless mumbles as Orianna considered her next move.

She thought about hunting the merchant down again and asking to buy some soft leather gloves rather than the lace ones she was wearing, she considered just leaving it and praying that none of the gorgeous, beautiful, absolutely divine women in the group would just not notice it. In her panic, a stupid idea manifested into her head.

“If I cut off the other nail on my other hand and try tidy that one up I could blag it as it being a feature nail of sorts and that’s why it’s shorter to give more highlight to the other gemstones on my other fingers saying it out loud it sounds kind of stupid but I need to do something!”

Reaching for another edged card, she had to make more delicate deliberate slices, both to make an initial cut into the nail and then to try match the roughshod appearance of the original nail. All the while she was making panicked noises, and had now begun to cry, attracting the attention of a meditating Lorelei Shadowhand.

The drow sorcerer had proved herself a worthy combatant, and a useful source of knowledge on politics & customs down in the Underdark, especially pertinent when interrogating others of her type. Using her telepathic abilities, she spoke directly to Orianna’s mind. “I can hear you crying,” she said, “come over and show me what’s wrong.”

Yelping slightly at hearing the calm, dulcet tones of Lorelei’s voice directly in her head, Orianna shuffled over gently to show the focus of her concerns. Lorelei’s face was unfazed at the situation she had found herself in, but a gentle raise of her eyebrow showed she was quite shocked at the steps Orianna had taken.

Mentally running through the spells she was capable of, Lorelei tried to think of a solution. Conjuring her shadow hound to retrieve some nail supplies could have been an option, but finding any in range meant it was a no go. Casting an illusion to give the appearance of complete nails had the potential to work, but given the illusions were static it would not have kept appearances up for long.

Eventually, a temporary solution was reached. Muttering some words of power and performing complex gestures, Lorelei turned Orianna invisible so as to make her messed up nails invisible. Admittedly this was not a permanent fix, but it would keep her calm enough until morning where they could think of a better plan.

“Oh my god thank you so much Lorelei this helps hide things so much and-OHCRAPICANTSEEMYLEGSNOW!”, Orianna said, finding a new reason to panic.

“Yes Orianna,” Lorelei said, sighing ever so slightly, “that’s because I had to make all of you invisible.”

“Oh right sorry yeah that makes sense anyway you can go back to thinking about whatever elves think about in their weird sleep but not sleep thing I’m gonna go back on watch okay bye love you thanks.”

As Orianna bounded off, the sound of her heels clicking giving away her position even when invisible, Lorelei shook her head gently, “capable of felling foes triple her size, and yet she breaks at the most minor of personal problems…”

The rest of the watch was uneventful, giving Orianna plenty of time to consider what her next manicure should look like. Maybe purple with black gemstones to match the vibe of the Underdark better.

Inspiration

Look to your right. All of those checks are the result of roleplaying out Orianna having broken a nail whilst in the Underdark. As usual with taking watches, I was asked to make a Perception check to see if I saw anything whilst on watch.

Not being the most perceptive type to begin with, this was made even worse by Nat 1-ing the check, which lead to the hilarious chain of events of figuring out how Orianna would react to having a broken nail she could not fix properly due to lacking the correct tools.

Any reasonable person would have asked around the party to see if anyone had the right equipment.

Orianna is not reasonable. Orianna is an overthinker who panics easily outside of combat, meaning she’s more likely to take a rash course of action using whatever tools she had on hand to try fix the problem, invariably making it worse.

This did not take much effort to roleplay. I am someone who reveres my own nails. I absolutely love keeping my nails long and layering polish on late at night during a film or a D&D game to create the perfect manicure. And whilst I might not have the same reactions as Orianna, I do feel an intense moment of sadness when I realise one of them has broken.

As an aside, it is a very nice change of pace to be able to write slice-of-life stuff for my characters, especially for someone like Orianna. Her introduction story was incredibly heavy which will be important for how she develops, but I feel an equal measure of joy in writing her calmer moments, being able to use the fact she is incredibly young and naive to my advantage in these pieces.

And if more roleplay moments like this come up? Well, the stories basically write themselves at that point.