elanya

I have this problem where I can never sleep well on Sunday nights and it makes my Mondays extra crap. Today was also full of legitimate annoyances stopping me from getting stuff done, but the poor sleep just piles on the cranky. Sunday is also my weekly 4th ed. D&D game that has now been running for 2 or three years now? Oh may I just looked and it started in August 2011. I started later than that, but only by a few months. I think it may officially be my longest running game ever, at this point!

Anyway, I often have trouble sleeping after gaming nights because my head is just full of characters and stories and stuff, so that's nothing really new. last night we ended early though, and I actually got to decompress and knit for a while instead of staying up too late talking about game, but that didn't seem to help -_-

We are currently in the middle of a sort of side story featuring some NPCs, exploring some major events that are happening while our main PCs (or most of our main PCs) are busy elsewhere with other things. Most of us are playing a group of Tieflings that we sort of rescued from the evil cult that raised them >.> They tried to kill us, we captured them and semi-forcibly gave them a chance at a new life. This was about 3 years ago in game (there was a pretty big time jump between heroic and paragon tier, which is what we're in now. Herloic is lvl 1-10, Paragon is 11-20 for those unfamiliar with 4th ed). They've had a chance to get over the brainwashing more or less, though I think they still have some issues :p

I'm playing Torment, who is sort of a Barbarian/Ranger.... Well, he's a barbarian who uses two huge swords. he was one of the more brainwashed of the initial group and since I'm the one playijg him I get to decide what all that means for him now. So this is what I was up last night thinking too much about :p I'm probably only playing him another couple sessions at most, and we're mostly fighting our way through a city that's being invaded by Formorians, so there is limited RP opportunities - although there has been some good stuff.

I basically think he doesn't know how to really interact with the world outside of the structure he's been given. he went from a society whre might made right and he was pretty mighty to one where that's not true and he doesn't really understand the rules. he basically has all these feelings of anger and betrayal that he doens't know how to process, but he understands strength, and it is easier to follow the strong and stay with his friends than figure out a path for himself. I think that even when he does know how is is supposed to act in particular situations he doesn't always understand why, and is afraid he is gong to so or say something wrong. This adventure has been good for him in some ways, because it is making him face things and figure out what and who he cares about outsiode of his group, and where he actually thinks the lines of right and wrong are, and that superiority of strength doesn't make something worthy of respect. The Formorians are really strong, but he doesn't even remotely want to align with them, and he finds the things they are trying to do in the city upsetting while at the same time seeing how their goals are almost exactly the same ones he was raised to serve. He was still pretty young when they were rescued (like.... 16 maybe? around that?), but he'd been very well trained ( think they were level 8 when we fought them >.>), and I don't think that was all just theoretical training. I'm sure he did at least some terrible things in his short career as a thug for a chaos cult that was trying to overthrow all of civilization :p

Last night, we fought a bunch of Formorians who were doing....something magicy that we coudln't figure out. There were some runes on the floor. Our wizard (another of the Tiefling kids, Random) didn't know what they were, or how they worked. He suggested trying to destroy the ground they were written on to see if that would get rid of them. So Torment and the other strongest of the group (Scion) smashed one, and it released the magical energy and did....something. We heard some ominous rumbling from deep within the caves (we were in the undercity at the time). So - that was probably a bad idea. But when another NPC (a spirit of knowledge) showed up, Random tried to blame it on the Formorians, only he phrased it ambiguously and Torment thought he was blaming *him and Scion*. And the the spirit chastized him for being a brute and smashing things without thinking and he was So. Mad. And hurt. Because he didn't want to see the city destroyed and more people hurt, and he'd listened to Random in good faith. It was just reminiscent of the backbiting and betrayals they were supposed to have gotten away from when they got away from the cult.

Random was mostly just being immature and trying not to get in trouble, and of course being angry and smashing things is sort of what Torment *does*, so I don't think people gave it much thought beyond that. But on top of dealing with this really huge external threat, I think he is facing something of a personal existential crisis too - wanting to reject the image that people have of him, but not knowing how, or how he wants to be seen, or what they rules are, and who is even playing by them now.

So there's an example of how I over-complicate characters in my head and it keeps me from sleeping :p