Bleeding hot, thin, red blood, Calendula clutches Nime's hand and gasps for air. "I will always love you, Blue." She reaches for the woman's face and kisses her slow on the mouth before collapsing, limp and lifeless and free of disease.
Y'all I can't believe it's over! I'll miss this group a lot, it's been so lovely to play alongside you for the last three years, and I hope we get the chance to again.
Sorry Calendula's goodbye is such a bummer, but I thought this was the happy ending for her (although it wouldn't have happened without Tyrant's Grasp). She was a fun character to write and I'll miss her a ton.
Calendula's life becomes much the same as it always was for the last twenty years, with some exceptions. At her house, she builds an extension for her mother, and the two women work on rebuilding their relationship. Having proven herself to her goddess, her disease lessens further, though it never disappears.
She spends as much time as she can with Nime, her oldest friend, and though she no longer needs the heat from cuddling with the woman, they find tons of time for it anyway.
However, only a year later Lastwall falls to the forces of Tar Baphon. Calendula and her mother both take upon their swords and armor one last time to help the survivors of the keep at Vigil evacuate, and she loses her life in the conflict. Though she told Nime, she never confessed her love or attraction to Shenuska or Rudrik, thinking perhaps that there would be time enough.
Her friends are heartened, however, to know that she always dreaded dying of her sickness, and in dying of defense of her homeland, her last broken vows are made whole.
In the space that follows, Calendula is eventually canonized as a Saint, representing Iomedae's aspects of Redemption and Sacrifice, and remembered not as the grumpy, sick hermit with few friends and a fishing boat, but as a strong woman who wore scars with pride and loved the world more than life itself.
Calendula drops out of her rage and heals herself, steeling her nerves. "I would really like to be able to fly," she murmurs, angry she didn't think to ask about it earlier. "Would solve this lava between me and that."
She walks over to Rudrik and heals him of his nausea.
Calendula utters a brief prayer to bless her blade (idk how I forgot that in my buffing, gaining +2 to hit/damage, axiomatic, and flaming) before grabbing Theo's shoulder and teleporting them both behind the Sinspawns on the narrow neck of land between the group and Alaznist.
I know they are ten feet above the lava, but are the rune giants also floating within ten feet of our little island? Trying to decide if I should try to quickly take one down or just charge immediately for Alaznist before she has time to do anything.
protection from evil
resist energy, communal - acid 30, cold 35, elec 30, fire 35, sonic 5
true seeing
nine lives
spell resistance (SR 32)
haste
heroism
mind blank
Greater Spell Immunity (Fireball, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Cone of Cold, Feeblemind)
Shield of Faith
Deadly Juggernaut
Calendula has inherent energy resistance also, I've added it to the buff list as if it was cast on her, and edited my statline to reflect all these buffs because afterward, the statline won't be relevant
Yes please, they're good choices; she's an evocation specialist and (depending on DM interpretation), I could then use Paladin's Sacrifice to negate some nasty blows hitting others
Rudrik, we were suddenly healed when we were brought magically to Hollow Mountain just like all the other weird time shift shenanigan times so you should have 4 health
Calendula nearly faints with the sudden switching of planes and realities. "Feels like a lifetime ago we were here last," she murmurs before descending the ladder.
The acid hits Calendula square on, and though she wipes the burns and digested flesh away with a healing hand, the skin remains raised, freshly scarred. She thrusts her weapon squarely against and through the dragon, piercing its scaly hide with heaven's light.
Same Bonuses, Also Heroism Should Still Be Up:1d20 + 35 ⇒ (2) + 35 = 371d20 + 30 ⇒ (3) + 30 = 331d20 + 25 ⇒ (3) + 25 = 281d20 + 20 ⇒ (16) + 20 = 36 Damage:1d8 + 2d6 + 49 + 18 ⇒ (6) + (6, 4) + 49 + 18 = 831d8 + 2d6 + 49 ⇒ (6) + (5, 6) + 49 = 661d8 + 2d6 + 49 ⇒ (5) + (5, 2) + 49 = 61Forgot that the extra 18 DOES also apply to Evil Dragons so outsider or no, taking the brunt of it.
Outside of the aura of silence, Calendula rushes one of the dragons. As her sword meets its scaly meat, she shouts a litany of presumably unheard obscenities.
Calendula shrugs off the blow and stays standing through the tremor, but the earth's movement causes her to miss her swing, almost falling into the portal herself!
Hey sorry for the radio silence; I've been very sick this week and mortified at the possibility of it being COVID (especially with me visiting family I would hate to transmit it to them), so in my anxiety I let things slip. I got tested today and hope to have the results tomorrow.
Calendula clumsily pushes a finger inside her friend, rubbing a calloused palm across her clitoris. She presses her body against the undine, cold and clammy compared to Nime's constant heat, and pushes her other hand into her own bottoms, furiously working at herself and groaning low and deep.
She bites down on Nime's skin and muscle as she quickly brings herself to orgasm, grinding against the blue woman's thigh and muffling screams against her neck and shoulder. Her cold body heats to almost a normal temperature, although still cold compared to the undine she is pressed against, and her face and neck flush gray with her tainted blood.
Removing her hand from her friend, the chaste and prudish paladin takes the other woman's hand and rests it on her breast, inviting her to take more initiative as she returns to pleasure the both of them.
"Oh, oh Nime, kiss me more. Show me everything you've been waiting twenny years for. I am yours tonight, and you are mine."
Calendula counts down the minutes, invoking several prayers in the time before the Cyphergate opens.
Activating Sacred Weapon to bring my sword to +5, and adding Keen and Flaming Burst to the sword. Then Shield of Faith, and immediately before the moment, Divine Favor
"No," murmurs Calendula, pulling herself up and kissing Nime again. She stretches a gnarled and calloused hand down to touch her friend's thigh, "Forget yourself. Please I," she breathes in, kissing her friend again. "I want this." She gulps, and makes eye contact. "I wish for it. I love you and I-I haven't, been with someone in, in a long time. A long, long time." She nervously slides her hand up towards her blue vulva, tacitly asking for permission. "It would mean a lot ta me. If, if we do lose ourselves, after we go back in time, I want us to have had this. Now. I love you, and I want to share this experience with you."
She brings her hand up from its tempting position, resting it on Nime's front, just below her navel. "May I touch you?"
Sleepily, Calendula smiles, reaches out and grabs Nime's face in one hand and kisses her lips briefly. Her lips are dry and chapped, and the undine's soft and pleasant.
"I love you, Blue. You're the reason I'm alive today, and not jus because of Shelyn's healin. I probably woulda killt myself in anonymity without your friendship. An I hope when we change the past, we stay lovin each other."
For once in her life, the black-blooded paladin is uncomfortably warm, and so she sits up to shed her tunic. Laying back down, she stretches out her scarred and muscled arms. "Rest your head on my chest, please. I want to hold you."
She sighs, running her hand through the blue woman's blue hair. "I have a lot to say. And I'd like a chance to, to say it."
The phlegmatic paladin clears her throat, and starts. "Nime I, I always wanted," she pauses, thinking on her wording. "To offer you what you wanted. To be in love with you, I mean.
"You've given me more'n I could ever return. It use ta make me cry. When I realized what you meant when you said you loved me, and I realized how much I wanted to love you like that, too. But I didn't. An I couldn't
"I thought I couldn't love anyone like that, and I thought our friendship could only ever be pain for you. But eventually I saw how free and full you love, and I'd come to accept that you knew the risks and bore them gladly." She sniffs and clutches Nime tight to her, crying.
"Then as we journeyed, I thought I started to love someone like that, to want as I'd seen you wanting. But it weren't you." She breaks full into tears, and as the normally stoic woman cries, her throat tightens and her pitch rises. She takes shuddering breaths in between sobs and words, stuttering.
"And and and, and now," she continues, "the feelings I had for them are gone? And I don't know if it was ever real? Or or or if'n I, if I waited t-too long to tell em how I felt, and now all that's left is-is this ache inside me and and, oh, by Iomedae's bleeding c&#+, Nime. I hate myself for leaving you here in this same pain for twenny godsdamned years!"
She sits up and, lifting Nime a little, kisses her again, snotty and sobbing.
"I'm sorry," she weeps, pressing her forehead against her friend's. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
She takes a few steady breaths and stops crying. After a quiet moment spent gazing into the middle distance, she mutters, "I hope I'm not the same person when we change time. There's so much I don't like about myself. But whoever I am, I hope I know you."
Level 14 Pally gives me FORT and WILL +1, and Aura of Faith: allies within 10 feet of me count as having Good-Aligned weapons for purposes of DR.
While we have time, I wanna get my armor upgraded as far as I can afford to, which means going over our loot splits for the past like, book, and finally calculating money.
