*** As promised, Velinsen's role.
*** I took the liberty of fixing several embarrassing typos.

531(100%) 809(100%) 641(100%) 13085(0.87%) 11 AM civilized none sleeping: role read 1
Subject: Vel's Story (I)
Added Thu May  8 05:38:56 2025 at level 29:
So, Velinsen hunts bad people.

This is not something he particularly wants to do. It's an imposition, not a
passion. He's not someone who was marked from an early age by a burning
desire to seek justice or protect the innocent. Left to his own devices,
he'd just be a regular guy, and not even a particularly good one. But 
hey -- as he's always saying, we all work for someone, don't we?

Let's begin at the beginning. Vel was a young, ambitious student when he 
discovered he had a knack for summoning and negotiating with 
extraplanar beings: imps, djinn, minor demons, and the like. His aims in 
dealing with them were always rather base. He wanted money, 
mainly, and power, both arcane and temporal. Vel wasn't an *evil* person, 
but he was certainly self-interested, and many of the beings he dealt with
absolutely were capital-E Evil.

Now, there was one way (and one only) in which Vel was a genuinely good
guy. He had a family. A young wife, who shall remain nameless, and a very 
young daughter, Lily. Vel loved them. You'll note my use of past tense
there. How ominous.

If you're savvy, you can probably guess what's coming. The thing about 
dealing with powerful beings, is, well, they're powerful, and the deals don't 
always go well. One night, one of Vel's conjurations escaped, and his wife
and child were killed. Vel, though? He was fine. His wards protected
him. He dismissed the errant djinni, but too late, far too late.

Gosh, what a sad story, right? But predictable, too. Conjurations wreaking
tragic havoc ... it's been known to happen.

531(100%) 809(100%) 641(100%) 13085(0.87%) 12 PM civilized none sleeping: role read 2
Subject: Vel's Story (II)
Added Thu May  8 05:42:46 2025 at level 29:
I'm going to skip over Velinsen's immediate reaction to his family's death.
The weeks of grieving. The drinking. You can fill in the blanks yourself.

But Vel didn't grieve as much as you might expect, because he was, after all,
a conjurer. He had options.

He threw himself into his art with renewed fervor, because now he had a true
goal. No more would he strike small-time deals with imps and djinn for
modest wealth or fleeting power. No: he would make a much bigger deal with a
much more powerful being to return his wife and child to him.

Again, I'll let you use your imagination to picture this journey. All those
sleepless nights spent pouring through arcane tomes ...

Now, this quest could have ended in several ways, most of them very bad, but
eventually, something answered Velinsen's call, and it wasn't the arch-fiend
he'd been preparing to deal with. 

It was a cherub. And it had stern words for him.

Velinsen's activities (thus spake the cherub) had attracted the attention of
the powers that govern the Azure Fields and the other light-leaning planes.

The cherub told Vel in no uncertain terms that his quest was doomed to
failure. The dead were dead; they could not be brought back. Or, rather,
they COULD, but they wouldn't come back "right," and any power that
would offer such a thing -- as well as the price they'd demand -- would be
too foul for the cherub to even speak of.

"Really, you don't want to go down that road," it said.

But the cherub had a teeny, tiny olive branch to offer. It knew where Vel's 
wife and child had landed in the afterlife. It'd even talked to them. Now, the
spirit of his wife wanted nothing to do with him -- she blamed him for
the whole thing, understandably --  but Vel's child? The cherub was willing 
to visit her from time to time, and even act as a go-between, relaying 
short messages between the two of them. It would be happy, for instance, 
to tell Lily that Vel loved her, that he was thinking of her, and that he would
never stop being sorry for what had happened.

You can imagine how this went over. It was less than Vel was hoping for, but
much more than he deserved.

531(100%) 809(100%) 641(100%) 13085(0.87%) 12 PM civilized none sleeping: role read 3
Subject: Vel's Story (III)
Added Thu May  8 05:46:16 2025 at level 29:
As any conjurer knows, nothing offered by an extraplanar being ever comes
free of charge.

"What do I have to do?" Vel said. "What do you want in return?"

"Well ..." said the cherub.

To sum up the negotiations that followed, the cherub's price was that
Velinsen had to turn his entire life around. Clean up his act. Dedicate his
soul to the cause of the Light. Help and protect the innocent and stamp out
evil wherever he found it. All of that good stuff.

"That all?" said Velinsen.

The cherub thought for a moment and stole a swig of Vel's coffee. There 
would also, it said, be a lot of paperwork.

"Paperwork?"

Oh, yes, said the cherub. Not all angels and archons worked this way,
but its department ran a tight ship. Everything Velinsen summoned, every spell
he cast, every nefarious being he killed or even TRIED to kill, all would
have to be meticulously catalogued. Velinsen's paperwork would be due at the
end of the month, every month, and the Powers That Be would brook no delays.

Velinsen stared into his (now empty) mug of coffee for a long time.

"Okay," he said.

531(100%) 809(100%) 641(100%) 13085(0.87%) 12 PM civilized none sleeping: role read 4
Subject: Vel's Life Since Then
Added Thu May  8 05:48:32 2025 at level 29:
All of that happened a few years back, and there have been ups and downs
since then.

Vel's heard from Lily several times. The cherub has flatly refused to tell him
any details about her afterlife (that's verboten), but Vel knows she's okay, 
not suffering, and that she doesn't hate him. (Unfortunately, the same still 
can't be said for his wife. Or is she his ex-wife, now? Death is confusing.)

Working with the cherub has been a mixed bag. It's full of Opinions.
It's not a fan of Vel's heavy wine consumption, for instance, which
started after the conjuration incident. And while it's pleased with his
results vis-a-vis hunting evil so far, it's not always a fan of his
methods. He isn't as pure as the beings he summons, and he's made no
commitment to not make use of evil beings, or to avoid healers and
shopkeepers with red auras. Suffice it to say he's not Maran material.

And, indeed, Vel's more than a little uncomfortable with the Fortress in
general, which he was quite wary of back in the days when he was a less
upstanding citizen. He finds them puritanical and, frankly, a bit creepy,
which is a source of perpetual disappointment to the cherub.

If you catch Vel in a quiet moment, maybe he'll expand on that. But not right
now. He just killed a necromancer, which means he's earned the right to send
a short letter to his departed daughter. And after that, his extraplanar
bosses are owed a report, which needs to be stamped, sealed, notarized, and
filed in triplicate.

*** There are other chapters, most are just life updates not really worth pasting.
*** This is the only interesting one. 

531(100%) 809(100%) 641(100%) 13085(0.87%) 12 PM civilized none sleeping: role read 6
Subject: UPDATE ON: Velinsen's Mental State
Added Mon May 19 07:47:42 2025 at level 33:
ALCOHOL

Vel's alcohol consumption is stepping up. Wine was always his drink of
choice, but he's recently discovered the joys of hard liquor, and
sometimes, he skips meals entirely in favor of The Drink. Needless to say,
the cherub disapproves, but alcoholism isn't a violation of their agreement
... technically. There isn't much he can do.

VEL'S (LITERAL) LILY

Vel bought a flower from a Tir-Talath merchant. It is, of course, a lily. He
meant to give it to the cherub to pass along as a gift, but he noticed that
it didn't seem to wilt or decay, and so he kept it. Is this some sort of
message from the Beyond, or simply a bit of preservation magic applied by a
clever florist? Hard to say, but Vel is much more attached to his lily than
he is to objectively much more valuable artifacts.

*** BONUS ROUND: Here's Vel and Lysari talking about all of this!
*** I found it in my logs and thought it was a cool conversation between two
*** characters with very different life philosophies. I did snip and reorder a few 
*** messages to make it more readable.

*** It started when Velinsen saw Lysari killing (neutral) guards and naturally
*** assumed he was a mean scary Outlander who wanted to kill all conjies.

Lysari tells you 'Not to worry. I won't hurt you or the little angel.'

You tell Lysari 'Yes, I'll confess I was wondering.'

You tell Lysari 'I can't imagine the old cherub will approve of you slaughtering guards.'

Someone tells you 'Somehow, I don't think you've lived a wholly sterling life, either. '

You tell someone 'What gave it away?'

Someone tells you 'Hmm. Call it intuition?'

You tell Lysari 'Pretty keen sense you've got there. Impressive.'

You tell Lysari 'I mean that.'

Lysari tells you 'You either develop it, or you get killed.'

You tell Lysari 'And sometimes you still get killed, even then.'

Lysari tells you 'Anyway. No one likes having to look over their shoulder all the time. I thought I'd put your mind at ease.'

You tell Lysari 'I'll confess to feeling a little sorry for the guards, but I imagine they're trained for this. One hopes.'

Lysari tells you 'I imagine that a heart like that is what drew the cherub to your side. '

You tell Lysari 'Could be. I certainly didn't choose HIM, I promise you that.'

Lysari tells you 'You seem dissatisfied with his company.'

You tell someone 'I shouldn't complain. We have a deal.'

You tell someone 'I'll tell you about it someday, if you like. Not today, I think.'

You tell someone 'It's just a little personal.'

You tell someone 'But the cherub does tell me I need to be more open about things.'

*** Snip some subsequent chatting about Lysari's own story that I don't want to post without permission.
*** When we fade back in, Vel and Lysari are chatting about a necromancer they want to kill. 

Someone tells you 'Like the silverfish, he scuttles through the dark, and finds those who are most vulnerable. It is wretched - but undeniably effective.'

You tell someone 'Oh, I tried to coax that one out of his city a few days back, but he wasn't having it.'

You tell someone 'You can imagine the paperwork. Or maybe you can't. Somehow, I can't picture you filing papers.'

Someone tells you 'Paper...'

Someone tells you 'What a horrible creation.'

You tell someone 'On my end ... the paperwork for summoning an angel to kill a necromancer is ... considerable.'

You tell someone 'The paperwork for summoning an angel and NOT killing a necromancer is ... excessive.'

You tell someone 'In fairness, it might have been parchment. I can't really remember.'

Someone tells you 'That's not too much of an improvement.'

You tell someone 'We all work for someone.'

You tell someone 'Well, maybe not you.'

Someone tells you 'Correct.'

Someone tells you 'Unfortunate that you are so bound. None should be so.'

You tell Lysari 'Fully agreed. It's part of why cherubim wouldn't have been my first choice of familiar. Or my second or third.'

You tell Lysari 'Rather persnickety and hard to deal with, frankly.'

Lysari tells you 'What would have been your first?'

Lysari tells you 'I do not know of such...outside beings. We do not see them in the woods.'

You tell Lysari 'I always found imps, quasits, and mephits considerably more straightforward. Even djinn.'

You tell Lysari 'But my days of dealing with them are in the past.'

*** I just want to mock the logbin for enreddifying (that's a word) hits in "mephits." 
*** C'mon, bruh!

Lysari tells you 'I have not heard of such things. What are they?'

You tell someone 'Some of them are demonic, I believe. And a few creatures of the planes.'

You tell someone 'All rather more mercenary than the cherub.'

You tell someone 'And not sticklers for paperwork.'

Someone tells you 'Why continue to deal with the cherub at all, then?'

Lysari tells you '...Right. The complex past.'

You tell someone 'Exactly.'

You tell Lysari 'I think it's time for a rest, but I promise to tell you next time.'

*** and then

Someone tells you 'It's next time.'

You tell someone 'Then I suppose let's talk about it.'

You tell someone 'But I'm going to drink a little as we do.'

Someone tells you 'I can't stop you. And I don't see why I would want to.'

You tell someone 'You've lived an awfully long time. Has anyone very close to you died?'

You tell someone 'Anyone you would have given a great deal to bring back?'

Someone tells you 'Plenty. It is easy to strike into the world when there is nothing tying you to home.'

Someone tells you '...but nothing lasts forever. Things die. New things rise. You and I, too, will be a part of the cycle.'

You tell Lysari 'I'll be brief about it. There was someone rather close to me who died. Two someones.'

Lysari tells you 'I suppose that you reached to the outer planes to try and bring them back...and got an angel, instead.'

You tell Lysari 'Close. A cherub.'

You tell Lysari 'I was told in no uncertain terms to stop.'

You tell Lysari 'But there was a small olive branch.'

Lysari tells you '...I guess you don't mean a real, actual, useful branch.'

You tell Lysari 'The dead are meant to stay dead, apparently. But it isn't completely verboten to relay messages back and forth.'

Lysari tells you '...'

You tell Lysari 'But this does, evidently, come at a price.'

You tell someone 'The price, apparently, is dedicating yourself to the cause of the light. And filling out the attendant paperwork.'

You tell someone 'Like I said, imps and mephits are much easier to deal with.'

Someone tells you 'You are a child.'

*** WOW, MEAN
*** You're talking to someone who accidentally killed his whole fam!

Someone tells you '...I will explain.'

Someone tells you 'You are young, and headstrong, and pliable rather than resilient. I think it is because of the short lifespans of your kind. '

Someone tells you 'In your actions, I see the actions of one who, when they do not encounter the desired outcome, fumes that they are going to tell their mother, or similar: an appeal to a higher authority to change the outcome.'

Someone tells you 'It is not a condemnation of your character. It simply is the state of you. And, moreover, is only my evaluation. I could be wrong.'

You tell someone 'What would you have done, then?'

Someone tells you 'I told you already. Things die. That is an immutable fact. '

Someone tells you 'Possibly the consequences can be subverted. But as you are finding out, it is perhaps not worth the trouble. '

You tell someone 'For whatever it's worth, I suspect the cherub agrees with you. And whoever he answers to. I'm not clear on that, really.'

You tell someone 'I'm given to understand that the dead are meant to stay dead, and we're meant to move on.'

You tell someone 'Which is, I think, why I was contacted. Evidently, if one of the cherub's ... opposite numbers ... had gotten to me first ...'

You tell someone 'I wouldn't have liked the results.'

Someone tells you 'You already don't like the results.'

You tell someone 'It's worth it. For me.'

100% 100% 100% 3632(62.17%) 3 AM civilized none standing: hold lily
You stop using a rod of carnelian.
You hold a violet and white stargazer lily in your hands.

You say to a violet and white stargazer lily 'It is.'