Let's Ask Violet

I’m no stranger to bullying.  When I was younger, it was unfortunately what I had to go through.  I didn’t understand it, all I wanted was to be friends with everyone.  But because I was different, because I had an opinion, because I was the tallest kid in the class, because I wouldn’t abandon my only friend, I was a subject to be ridiculed.

It was kind of dumb too.  People would challenge me to fights, they would call me names, tell me that they hate me and I should go die.  Who does that?  Who does that to an 8 year old?  Who tells an 8 year old to go die?  Who tells anyone to go die?

The one thing that I learned about bullying is that all it does is breed more hate.  Sometimes it’s hate for others, and the victim turns into the bully.  Sometimes it’s hate for yourself, because you couldn’t match their expectations of you, and you take that as an opinion of yourself.

I’ve seen it happen too.  I’ve seen bullying happen for the dumbest of reasons.  People getting bullied because of their gender choices, because they were the victim of something, because of the clothes they wear, because of the people they like, because of what their hair looks like, because they want to help others, because they want to succeed at something.

Why would any of these things be the cause of bullying?  Why would wanting to recover from an incident cause others to immediately put them down?  Why would someone wanting to express themselves in a way that makes them comfortable be the cause of ridicule?  Why would wanting to do the thing that you love be something to destroy by other people?

The simple answer would be because someone else did it to them too.  The simple answer isn’t wrong, but the simple answer needs to be longer.

All that bullying does is breed more hate.  When you take out your emotions on someone else, you’re lashing out at them.  Most people don’t understand the power behind their words.  Most people don’t understand that one wrong word or sentence can send someone else into a spiralling depression.  Most people don’t know that what they feel when someone else is attacking them that it’s not their fault.  Most people don’t know that the feelings of sadness and loneliness that they feel only spreads to those that they hurt.  Sometimes, most people are so blinded by the fact that they’re hurt that they don’t see that they’re hurting someone else.

Some people maybe enjoy that.  Some people maybe want to see others hurt.  I don’t understand why, I’ve been at the point where sadness envelopes you.  I would never wish that upon anyone else, and I will never understand the people who enjoy others in pain.

One thing that I never did was confront my bullies.  If they challenged me to a fight, I would defend myself, but I would never attack first.  If they called me names, I would shut the world out and draw.  If they made fun of the fact that I was always with my best friend and call us lesbians, I would just hold her hand more and we would go talk elsewhere.  But I do wish that I had told someone about my feelings sooner.  Maybe then it wouldn’t have been so hard.

For years I hated those memories.  For years I was hurt, and I hated myself for feeling so weak and helpless.  I believed the things they said about me, that I deserved to die.

But then I realized that they were wrong.  I didn’t deserve to die.  I had to learn to love myself, and tell myself that it’s ok to work towards something that I wanted to do.  I learned that there was so much more in the world that I had to do, and no on is going to hold me back.

So to those who were my bullies, to those who tried to beat me down:

I forgive you.

Whatever your choices in life are, I hope that you’ll hear these last words:

Bullying breeds more hate, but the hate stops with you.

Well around this time, my father had decided to let me play with his D&D group, because it was hard to get our original group together.  And also around this time was when I was really liking Caress as a character, so I used her a lot in our campaigns.

And of course, because of the fact of her dwarves siege cannon, she was running out of cannonballs. So my dad took it upon himself to make up a whole new dungeon for Caress to go through.

Caress and the rest of the party go back to the old dwarf in the middle of nowhere, to find out that he *gasp* ISN’T SENILE ANYMORE.  Yeah, it turns out that he’s actually pretty pissed off, and actually remembers us from the last time.  Why is he not senile anymore?  Well someone had stolen his forge.  The one that makes the cannonballs.  He turns to us to look for it, and thankfully we had a Ranger with us.  We made off after the thieves, but we found that the tracks split.  The thieves apparently got jumped by a goblin band, who then made off with the forge.

So we go after the goblin band, because who cares about the people who stole the damn thing, and we ended up killing all but one goblin, who told us that they were hired by a wizard who is in charge of a toll booth on a bridge.

We go to the bridge and bull doze our way through, since there was only one guy on the bridge.  But the tower was empty, except for two halfling boys, who decided to follow me despite all my arguments against it.  They told us that the wizard had fled to a fort with lizard men.

We end up getting to the fort, and I use the last of my cannonballs to take out a hole in the fort, as well as many people I can, while the rest of the party charges up.  After I had finished using the rest of my cannonballs, I started running up.  It was a really hard battle.  Why?  Because the wizard had summoned a demon to take out the party.  Luckily the party had taken out the wizard and the other people before they all fell.

Now this all happened in a couple of rounds, and because I was a dwarf, and the other 3 companions I had with me were all short as well, it took us forever to get to where the rest of the party was. Just take a second to imagine when Caress had arrived, all her party members were dead, and the demon had been dismissed because the duration of the spell had run out.  If this was a movie, that would’ve been hilarious.

So thankfully we were able to revive all the rest of the party members because Fritz, one of my other companions, was a cleric with raise dead.  And we searched throughout the whole fort, but there was no sign of the forge. Turns out, while we were fighting, the thieves who had stolen the forge in the first place had snuck in and stolen the forge back.

Well at this point, my dad’s group had just had enough with all this running around and dying, so we ran and caught up with the thieves, who had almost brought the forge in a giant circle back to the old dwarf.

And of course, when we brought the forge back, the old dwarf became senile again.

That wasn’t the last time we saw the old dwarf, but that was certainly the last memorable time I remember the old dwarf, mostly because my dad’s group of D&D players could only handle so much of his craziness.  And ironically, we still don’t know his goddamn name. After 8 years of playing Caress, we still don’t know that dwarf’s name. DX

Everyone has one of those stories where you never forget them. Ever. This is one of them.

The dungeon that we started off with was fighting against the undead in a forest.  We, being my brother, my friends Martin and Kevin and I, had changed characters.  This is also where my brother’s character, another gnome, gained the nickname Samwise the Crotchless.  We were fighting against a wyvern, and after killing it, Samwise got stuck under it.  We were pulling him out, but the wolf companion we had with us wanted to help and grabbed the only thing left available.

At any rate, by the end of that dungeon Kevin’s character had been turned into a wight, which means that a regular raise dead spell wouldn’t bring him back.  At which point none of us were high enough level to actually raise him back from being a wight.  So my father, being the DM at the time, made an adventure where the other characters from that party went to my character Jacques, a cleric of Zeus, at the tavern that he owns to see if he knew anything on how to bring Kevin’s character back.  All that Jacques knew was that a wish spell would bring him back.  But he didn’t have that spell, since he wasn’t high enough level.  So we heard of a rumour from a beggar in front of the tavern that the hall of wishes was somewhere around these parts, and it had a guardian.  A guardian that was so vicious and deadly that no one dared to look for the hall of wishes.

And once Jacques turned back to ask the beggar how he knew of this, the beggar was gone, and an old woman was walking up to the tavern saying that she would sell him a ring of direction on how to get to the hall of wishes.  Well of course everyone noticing how the old man had disappeared, and how this old woman was talking about the hall of wishes suddenly, this tipped us off, and we gave chase.  And it turns out that this old woman was no woman at all.  But…

THE LEPRECHAUN.

That DAMNED LEPRECHAUN.

So we gave chase, Jacques firing spells at it, and all the other party members giving chase.  Jacques summoned a celestial bear to try and trap the leprechaun down an alley, but the leprechaun cast a spell that made the bear dance, and for some strange reason circus music was playing in the background.  And the leprechaun got away.

At which point, this shit was on.  We went back to the tavern to suit up, but the leprechaun had beaten us there, back as the beggar sitting in front of the tavern.  We gave chase again, trying again and again to catch that motherfucker cuz he was the only one who knew where the hall of wishes was.  Jacques cast an anti-magic field around him, but he got around that, and somehow, SOMEHOW he managed to slip away from us again.

I’m not sure how we did it, but we found the cave where the leprechaun was hiding in, and then he polymorphed into a stone giant.  The giant furniture was also attacking us.  We were fighting him, and fighting him, and Jacques had run out of offensive spells.  We were all exhausted from chasing after the damn leprechaun that we didn’t have anything left to fight him.  At this point, my brother’s character said SCREW IT, and grappled the giant’s leg.

So yes, we had won.  We caught the leprechaun.  And because of that, we get one wish.  So did we wish to be lead to the hall of wishes?

Well you see, Martin was one of those…intellectual types.  Meaning he knew that whatever we said, the leprechaun could take it in a completely different way and screw us over.  And because it was my dad as the DM, my brother and I knew that he would totally do that.

So what did we do?

We spent 4 HOURS in REAL TIME writing up a contract for the leprechaun to follow, stating that he would lead us to the hall of wishes, without any trickery, and he wouldn’t fight against anyone who wasn’t evil.  And for some reason that he would be bound to Jacques so that way we always had a way to find the hall of wishes.

Well, what happens next is, by far, the second worst part of the adventure.

A group of brigands who knew that we were looking for the hall of wishes pops up, after hearing everything that we did, decides to take advantage of the fact that we’re all bloodied, and kidnap Jacques so that way they would have control over the leprechaun.

And because they were technically all True Neutral, the leprechaun couldn’t help us fight them.

We eventually beat them, but Martin’s character gets stuck in a mirror, and we ask the leprechaun to get him out.  The leprechaun agrees, but in exchange, he has his own contract that he wants us to abide by.  Essentially the contract read that the first contract is null and void, and that we would have 30 minutes to get to the hall of wishes and leave, or else he would have free reign to torment us again.

We agree and then hoof it to the hall of wishes, which happens to be in his closet.

So we finally make it to the hall of wishes.  And what do we do?

Well, remember when I said that the brigands coming in was the second worst part?  This was the worst part.  Martin, once again using his intellectual brain here, goes “Why don’t I just bind myself to the hall of wishes so that way we have unlimited wishes??”

And this is pretty much the moral of the story: don’t get greedy with wishes.  It is always a bad idea. Mind you, we were still pretty young at this point, but we learned this lesson quickly.

So instead of wishing for our comrade to be alive again, and not a wight, Martin’s character binds himself to the hall of wishes.  In which he becomes a statue in the hall of wishes.

And then the hall of wishes starts to disappear.

Jacques, being the only one who has brains at this point, jumps out of the hall of wishes, while my brother and Kevin’s characters stay behind so that they may be able to travel with the hall of wishes to it’s next destination.

They did not.

They went to the Plane of Limbo, and got stuck there.

We eventually got them out, but with an entirely new party.  And that’s really a story for another time.

There’s one thing to say about my dad’s home made dungeons; you never really forget them.