Bittersweet Endings
This past weekend, Adam and I finally got around to decluttering our buffet. Unlike what I assume most people put in there buffets, ours was full of Dungeons and Dragons stuff: dice trays, dice bags, notebooks, minis, binders, and the like. While I love these things, I knew we needed to get it organized.
When I first sat down on the floor, I was planning on organizing the crazy - maybe tossing out a few things. But then, Adam joined me. Adam was our DM (dungeon master… some would call him a GM or game master). He started going through his binders. He was figuring out what he needed, what could be tossed, and what could be displayed on our bookshelf. He has so many notes from our first campaign. A campaign that we never finished. We stopped just before our characters hit level 10.
We started playing a couple years ago with a handful of friends. My character - my first character - was a gnome druid named Carci. I loved Carci. I still love Carci. During our last session, I planned for Carci to leave the party and I was going to pick up a new character. I was sad to watch Carci leave, but I knew that staying wouldn’t be what Carci would do. I had to be true to her.
That session ended with me getting on a boat and sailing home, leaving the rest of my party in jail (I promise I wasn’t evil. We happened to get arrested and I bribed my way out in order to leave).
A year later, we have yet to play again. I don’t even know how many times I thought of Carci this past year. I would imagine where she would have gone and done. How she would have become a hero on her own. How she would have found whatever she was searching for within herself. I would write ending that I will never see for her.
We recently got our group together to start a new campaign set in the aftermath of our last one. And if you would have asked me as I sat down this weekend if I would be as sad as I was, I would have said no. I was - and am - looking forward to playing my new character, Yarva. I honestly planned to just organize the buffet a little better.
When Adam started sorting his binders, I started doing the same for Carci. I plan to make a shadow box with her mini, character sheet, and a set of dice. Adam suggested that we make a cover page for my binder and have it next to our D&D books and his binder for our first campaign. He said it would be cool to have because Carci meant so much to me. So I started creating a picture of what Carci would look like on Hero Machine. And I just got sad. I thought I had already put Carci on a shelf, yet finalizing her binder - her story - well, I guess you could say I hadn't.
Even now, as I’m writing this. And as I plan on different details for Yarva, I have this bittersweet feeling filling my chest. I don’t want Carci’s story to be over. I honestly think I would be okay with just being her for forever. But that’s impossible. I need to move on. I need to play new characters. Tell different stories.
Maybe that just means that I’ve found something I love. Maybe it means I finally have hobby that I completely enjoy. Maybe it means I have more story I need to tell. Maybe it means that after any campaign, I will feel this way. I don’t really know.
I do know this, however, I’m so ready to jump into this new campaign. Yarva is going to be one heck of a character. I hope she does Carci proud.
