Active service
Mar. 5th, 2026 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseOnce again, I've realised the significance of something in the story only after I've written it.
Kerian the bard and Lindith the cleric were two of the major characters in the first book. At the end of that book, they stepped through a planar portal into the Blessed Fields of Elysium, one of the Upper Planes in the D&D universe (it's the one corresponding to the Neutral Good alignment). They knew they wouldn't be able to go back, and that was fine. Both of them had had a rough time in different ways, both needed healing, and they knew they'd get it there. In doing this, they also became effectively immortal (although death is usually not the end in D&D anyway - when you die, you normally go to the plane corresponding most closely to your alignment, though these planes can of course also be reached by other means).
However, they can still talk to people on the Material Plane, but only through the particular planar portal that they walked through. So if you want to see them, you have to go to the place where that portal is, and that, so far, has been the main plot of the sequel; Nivaunel discovers she is Kerian's daughter, and when she discovers it's possible to go and see him, obviously she wants to do that... cue the usual string of adventures getting there. She got there, she had plenty of time to talk to both Kerian and Lindith, but now the party has travelled on to the capital city for further plot reasons which aren't important here. On arriving there, they book themselves into an inn (my goodness, the number of inns in this story! - I haven't described every single one of them, but all the significant ones need names, innkeepers, and at least a brief description of the general ambience and the catering), and they're just enjoying a good dinner when someone they know - and had hoped never to see again - walks in. His name is Rhalnor, he's an evil bard (and a serial rapist, though that precise word is not used at any point), and to add insult to injury he attempts to bolster his reputation as a bard by going round claiming to be the son of Kerian.
Nivaunel - who has turned out to be a great deal more formidable than I ever envisaged her - won't stand for that, so she gets up and challenges him. The innkeeper, a halfling, doesn't like Rhalnor (he's played there once before and now thinks he has free licence to do it whenever he wants without asking), so he backs Nivaunel; nonetheless, things look as if they're about to get ugly, but suddenly Kerian and Lindith materialise in front of the shocked bard and start very calmly and conversationally telling him a few home truths. Such as who his father actually was (another Rhalnor, in fact), and the fact that he has eleven children dotted around, mostly from unwilling mothers. The story, obviously, is going to be all round the city before dawn the next day. It transpires that Kerian and Lindith are now "agathinon", which is to say low-ranking angels; this is how they were able to leave Elysium, though they did have to get permission to do so. It also transpires that this isn't about Rhalnor misusing Kerian's name, although Lindith (not particularly Kerian himself) does admit to having been annoyed about that. They were there because Rhalnor had to be unmasked urgently in order to prevent some unnamed woman falling victim to him and subsequently committing suicide, since if she lived she would then go on to do a lot of good in the world. And, of course, everyone (me included!) is wondering why they didn't become angels as soon as they entered Elysium; after all, they've been there some time.
I realised as soon as I woke up this morning. This is not some kind of promotion.
Yes, they've become somewhat more powerful (but actually not that much more; they were already something around 20th-level D&D characters when they stepped through the portal, so they were impressive to start with). But I realised they didn't need to accept the transformation, which was, of course, a matter of free choice. They didn't need the extra power where they were. They could have continued to live happy and blessed lives of well-earned rest for all eternity in their old forms, and nobody would have censured them for it in the slightest. They could even have continued to talk to their old friends via the portal. They already had everything they could possibly need or want.
No. What has actually happened is that, in the great war between good and evil, they've now signed up for active service. And once you're an angel, you're an angel. You don't get to retire. They're going to be in that war till it ends.
No wonder it took them a while to decide.
Kerian the bard and Lindith the cleric were two of the major characters in the first book. At the end of that book, they stepped through a planar portal into the Blessed Fields of Elysium, one of the Upper Planes in the D&D universe (it's the one corresponding to the Neutral Good alignment). They knew they wouldn't be able to go back, and that was fine. Both of them had had a rough time in different ways, both needed healing, and they knew they'd get it there. In doing this, they also became effectively immortal (although death is usually not the end in D&D anyway - when you die, you normally go to the plane corresponding most closely to your alignment, though these planes can of course also be reached by other means).
However, they can still talk to people on the Material Plane, but only through the particular planar portal that they walked through. So if you want to see them, you have to go to the place where that portal is, and that, so far, has been the main plot of the sequel; Nivaunel discovers she is Kerian's daughter, and when she discovers it's possible to go and see him, obviously she wants to do that... cue the usual string of adventures getting there. She got there, she had plenty of time to talk to both Kerian and Lindith, but now the party has travelled on to the capital city for further plot reasons which aren't important here. On arriving there, they book themselves into an inn (my goodness, the number of inns in this story! - I haven't described every single one of them, but all the significant ones need names, innkeepers, and at least a brief description of the general ambience and the catering), and they're just enjoying a good dinner when someone they know - and had hoped never to see again - walks in. His name is Rhalnor, he's an evil bard (and a serial rapist, though that precise word is not used at any point), and to add insult to injury he attempts to bolster his reputation as a bard by going round claiming to be the son of Kerian.
Nivaunel - who has turned out to be a great deal more formidable than I ever envisaged her - won't stand for that, so she gets up and challenges him. The innkeeper, a halfling, doesn't like Rhalnor (he's played there once before and now thinks he has free licence to do it whenever he wants without asking), so he backs Nivaunel; nonetheless, things look as if they're about to get ugly, but suddenly Kerian and Lindith materialise in front of the shocked bard and start very calmly and conversationally telling him a few home truths. Such as who his father actually was (another Rhalnor, in fact), and the fact that he has eleven children dotted around, mostly from unwilling mothers. The story, obviously, is going to be all round the city before dawn the next day. It transpires that Kerian and Lindith are now "agathinon", which is to say low-ranking angels; this is how they were able to leave Elysium, though they did have to get permission to do so. It also transpires that this isn't about Rhalnor misusing Kerian's name, although Lindith (not particularly Kerian himself) does admit to having been annoyed about that. They were there because Rhalnor had to be unmasked urgently in order to prevent some unnamed woman falling victim to him and subsequently committing suicide, since if she lived she would then go on to do a lot of good in the world. And, of course, everyone (me included!) is wondering why they didn't become angels as soon as they entered Elysium; after all, they've been there some time.
I realised as soon as I woke up this morning. This is not some kind of promotion.
Yes, they've become somewhat more powerful (but actually not that much more; they were already something around 20th-level D&D characters when they stepped through the portal, so they were impressive to start with). But I realised they didn't need to accept the transformation, which was, of course, a matter of free choice. They didn't need the extra power where they were. They could have continued to live happy and blessed lives of well-earned rest for all eternity in their old forms, and nobody would have censured them for it in the slightest. They could even have continued to talk to their old friends via the portal. They already had everything they could possibly need or want.
No. What has actually happened is that, in the great war between good and evil, they've now signed up for active service. And once you're an angel, you're an angel. You don't get to retire. They're going to be in that war till it ends.
No wonder it took them a while to decide.
