Inspiration in Death
Last week, I died.
Ok so I didn’t die, my D&D character died. Xyresh, the 4th level Factotum/2nd level Wizard, has gone to the great beyond. A lucky strike with a hefty weapon ended her adventuring career forever. Alas, alas, alas the day.
Xyresh’s companions very respectfully gathered up her body and returned her to a temple for burial. She was carefully laid in her coffin and then prayers were said over her. Then, she was stripped of every single item of value and buried.
This isn’t atypical of D&D games but I have actually managed to play for nearly 20 years with very few deaths. Maybe this made the callousness of it all stick with me more. I don’t know. What I do know is that while they were selling Xyresh’s favorite piece of equipment, I had a very vivid picture of the bow being placed in her hand as an infant. That picture then flashed forward to the bow in her hand in her grave. In between these two pictures a story lives.
Don’t get me wrong, I have ideas and snippets of ideas all the time, non-stop, every day. Rarely though do the ideas resonate through me to the degree that I literally jumped up and grabbed my computer so I could start jotting down notes.
The story isn’t about her exactly and it isn’t set in some D&D-esque world but the story has got me working on writing again. Instead of procrastination. And all because my DM husband rolled a nat-20.
What inspires you?
