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Falcos;24062278 wrote:
I should also let you know that your earlier story about Madbloom has also sparked a character for a close friend of mine - a Water Genasi Feylock called Suntide. Are you willing to slot that in as well, for her? Sorry that I'm spamming you with requests.
Heh - so I immediately realized your friend's request for the Water Genasi Feylock had the same name I gave the Selkie in Madbloom's story.
So... I expanded on Suntide's origin (from that story) changing her to a Water Genasi; and explaining how she came to be.
Then at the end, tying it to Madbloom's story (although the two can operate separately, easily enough; but in the event you're in the same game; it was a very easy and logical tie in!)
As always feedback from you - and anything your friend has to say (good or bad, I thrive on it all!) - I would love to hear!
Enjoy!
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She’d been the most beautiful woman my father had ever seen.
My father a human named Samar Cloudmane had spent the early part of his years working at the docks of Waterdeep, until one day, a crew having suffered heavy losses at sea due to an unforeseen storm were looking to recruit crew members. Though my father lacked any actual sailing experience, his years as a young adult working the docks of Waterdeep had given him enough insight on the basics (and he may have even borrowed a “story or two” and claimed it as his own experience) that granted him a position as a crew member aboard the Waverider.
He quickly worked his way up. He had started by being a deckhand and cleaning the decks day in and day out under the blistering, and often unforgiving sun. Even during storms, he had been sent out to “clean the decks.” For a brief while after that, he had become the ship’s cook – until they realized what a horrible idea that was (my father was always a terrible cook). He was then promoted to boatswain, where he took on an assortment of duties and reported directly to the Quartermaster. He oversaw the gunners and Master Gunner, who reported directly to him. When the Quartermaster was tragically killed during an attack by pirates, my father took over as position of Quartermaster, and this is where he stayed, until the day he met my mother.
She had booked passage from a small island, her long, golden hair blowing perfectly in the wind. Her eyes were as blue as the ocean, and my father swore they even moved like tides of water. The trek to Waterdeep had been two weeks, with frequent stops for trades; and in that time my father developed a friendship which bloomed into a romance with the woman named Atoirmna. Just before arriving at Waterdeep a mysterious storm struck the Waverider. This time there had only been one casualty and that was Atoirmna. My father was devastated. When the battered ship reached Waterdeep, my father resigned and took up drinking. He worked solely to pay for his drinking debt.
One night, while blissfully intoxicated, a beautiful woman entered The Broken Barge, a tavern made to look like a turned over vessel, and saw my father. She approached him, a young infant in her hands. “I am sorry I had to go,” her voice was one that immediately snapped my father from his drunken stupor. He looked up, though his vision was blurry due to the intoxicating amount of alcohol he had consumed, there was no doubting that it was Atoirmna that was standing before him. He blinked several times wondering if he had drank so much that he was now hallucinating.
“How,” had been the only words he could mutter, his blitzed mind becoming clearer by the second.
“I am,” she started to explain, her blue eyes awash in sadness, “not of this world. I am a Genie from the Elemental Plane of Water. I have always been interested in the Mortal world and have made several visits to it. But never have I,” she paused, shaking her head so her blond hair covered her eyes, covered her tears, “never have I met someone like you. You care about me because of who I was not only for how I looked. Your heart cared for me for who I,” she choked, “pretended to be. After our nights shared together, I sensed… the child… I felt ashamed. You had given yourself to me so freely, so deeply, so passionately, for a person I had pretended to be. I lied to you and that was unbearable. I couldn’t face you, so I used my control of the water, to create a storm, to allow me to be ‘washed overboard.’” She took a deep breath, “I thought I would be doing you a favor… even as I returned to the Plane of Water, I used a scrying pool to keep an eye on you… I kept waiting for you to get better… to pull yourself free from this sadness… and I began to realize you never would.”
My father could hear her weeping now. “I cannot stay with you,” she looked down at the infant in her arms, “but she can. Her name is Suntide. She is,” she paused again, regaining her composure, “our daughter.”
My father’s eyes brimmed with tears as Atoirmna placed me in my father’s arms. Though my mother was forced to leave again, my father now had a piece of her with him always in me. My father raised me as if I were no different than any child; despite my light blue tuned skin and water like eyes. I had my mother’s long, golden locks of hair, for which I was named after.
This is how my father told it to me; and told it to me often, still so in love with my mother, and so wonderfully proud of the woman I had grown up to become.
My father lived a wonderful life and showed me nothing but love for those eighteen years. He died, shortly after my eighteenth birthday of natural causes, with me at his side. Just before he passed, my mother, Atoirmna returned, but he had already lost conscious. But I feel like he knew she was there because he smiled one last time before taking his last breath.
I remained in Waterdeep for another year, working at the Broken Barge, earning wages as a waitress there, before taking to the road to see the world. I met a Nymph named The Dreamweaver, who took the time to teach me master the magic I had always felt coursing in my body.
One day, while lying on some rocks along the beach, I heard an unusual voice. Sitting up, I saw what appeared to be a humanoid turtle walking on two legs, speaking to himself. Curious, I approached and introduced myself. He in turn introduced himself as Madbloom. He was very interesting to speak with and when I returned to the Dreamweaver, I explained what I had seen. She had heard of this race known as Tortles, but had not seen one herself. (Which was amazing to me, because the Dreamweaver was several thousand years old). I had asked if she would like to meet Madbloom and she had said she did.
So the next day, I swam to the shore where I had last seen Madbloom, pleased to see he hadn’t moved. “Come meet the Dreamweaver,” I smiled, leaning on a rock and glancing up playfully at Madbloom. “She’s heard of your kind, but in all her years, has never seen one of you.”
“Well,” Madbloom shrugged, “I am not sure I am the best representation of my people. There are many who have traveled the world, seen more, have wonderful stories!”
“The Dreamweaver does not want to hear stories,” I giggled. “She just wants to meet one of you. I told her I knew one! A wonderfully nice Tortle, I told her! You wouldn’t deny me? Make me appear as a liar to the Dreamweaver?”
“I mean,” Madbloom sighed, “no, I don’t want to make you look like a liar,” he had begun to say, finding an excuse to not go, but Suntide cut him off.
“She’s really nice!” I pulled herself up onto the rocks. My bare body glistened in the setting sun; living with the Nymph, clothing was something I had learned to discard from my human heritage.
“Yes, well,” Madbloom looked away, “I will never get used to that.”
“What?” I looked down and realized my nude body had made him feel odd. “But you do not wear clothes under your shell, right? It’s just your shell you wear.”
“Yes, it’s just that,” Madbloom thought about it. Suntide watched with intense curiosity before Madbloom finally shrugged. “You’re right.”
“So you will go meet the Dreamweaver!” I began to clap excitedly.
“Wait! No! That’s not what I said!” Madbloom began, but I had already dove into the ocean and swam away.
“What have I gotten myself into? It’ll be nice,” Madbloom huffed, “once I leave for the Pull of the Tide to be free of that crazy Selkie.”
“Are you ready?” My voice startled him.
Madbloom screamed – or what passed for a scream from a Tortle – which sounded more like a squeaky door slowly creaking open.
I giggled as Madbloom shot me a knowing, scolding look.
“I can hold my breath underwater,” Madbloom began, just as I threw a small vial at him, that he remarkably managed to catch before it shattered on the jagged rocks at his feet. He held up the vial of blue liquid. “What’s this?”
“Drink it!” I smiled broadly.
“You expect me to drink something a fey just hands me from the ocean?” Madbloom eyed me again.
I returned his gaze, my beautiful smile never cracking.
Madbloom’s giant eyes fluttered. “Fine. Fine.” He muttered a series of words and sentences better not left heard by me, I suppose, and popped the top off of the vial and took a drink. Immediately his body felt energized as if he could run for days without needing to slow down.
I extended my hand and Madbloom took mine into his and in that moment, we were moving like a lightning bolt through the skies – piercing the darkest tides of the oceans – down deeper than Madbloom ever thought possible.
We came to a screeching halt before a large, aquatic cave. Several Mermen and Nixies patrolled the outside, some mounted on Hippocampus; magnificent aquatic animals with a torso of a horse, whose hooves were fins; and their lower body that of a great fish.
I whispered, “Come,” and Madbloom didn’t even think to wonder how he could still hear me underwater.
I led Madbloom by the hand, past several Mermen guards who eyed us as we swam by. Eventually we entered the large chamber with a golden seat, decorated in an assortment of sea treasure and shells. Upon it sat the most beautiful humanoid Madbloom had ever seen. She appeared to be an Elf, by the looks of her, with her thin frame, full eyes and pointed ears. But how could she be breathing underwater?
“She’s a Nymph,” I said, as if reading Madbloom’s mind. “She is the Dreamweaver.”
Adapt at being underwater for brief stints, Madbloom let his body sink to the floor where he could properly bow before her. The Dreamweaver smiled, “You are honorable and humble,” her voice sounded like a choir of angels. “You feel the pull of the world beyond now, do you not?”
“The Pull of the Tide,” Madbloom nodded, “that’s what my people call it. The tide pulls you out into the ocean of the world to swim in it, see it, and learn from it.”
“The world beyond is bleeding,” the Dreamweaver said, the emphasis of her voice so sad, even Madbloom felt his own heart plummet. “There is war; greed; savagery; brutality; murder; chaos; all of which has done one thing to so many… especially the children…”
“What is that?” Madbloom raised his head.
“They’ve lost their dreams,” Dreamweaver replied. “So many simply seek to survive the day, and lie in fear at night, with no time to sleep, no time to dream of a better life, or even a better world. What if you, on your travels during the pull of the tide, could help change that? Would you?”
“I would,” Madbloom agreed, “the idea that the world outside is full of such sadness, such a loss of hope… I would want to change it. Especially for the children; the children need a reason to get up, to hope, to dream.”
The Dreamweaver smiled. “I could see it in your heart. Your kind always passing tales to their young so that your young can go forward, charged with the knowledge you’ve passed down. Let me show you the world, when there’s nothing left,” she touched Madbloom’s left hand and visions of a land, decimated by war, the soil drenched in blood, filled his eyes. “Now let me show you how we can make it right,” then she touched Madbloom’s right arm. The vision reversed itself, and the people spoke to one another, laughed, enjoyed each other’s company, and the once crimson fields were now rows of apple fields, ripe with hope.
“You now have seen it, the dark,” she held up her left hand, “and the light,” she showed her right hand. “You now share a connection with me. There is one thing I failed to mention, my life force is tied to yours, so long as I live, you will age, very, very, very slowly.”
Madbloom had returned to the surface and the Dreamweaver could see it in my eyes.
“You’ve learned all you can from me, child,” she said, touching my forehead. “Go on, little Suntide, see the world again. Find your destiny.”
He's a 1st-level Paladin (duh), and his stats:
Hopefully those kind of attitudes will turn around sooner rather than later. I hate bullies.