Maeve

Maeve is a fallen Aasimar warlock, and I wanted to draw her before and after she "fell".

Here's a piece of writing I did about her backstory that I told as a monologue at my table:

Once upon a time, at the edge of a small farming community, nestled into a great and magical forest, a child was born.

From the moment they scraped the after birth from her small body, they knew this child would never be mistaken for ordinary. Her hair was stark white, light as the moon, and starlight dotted her cheeks like freckles.

The child was touched by the gods themselves, destined to bring great fortune to her people.

The community cherished this child, and as she grew, they prospered. For years, the summers were generous with rainfall, and the winters were gentle. The harvests were abundant. The community had enough to feed themselves, and to offer even more as trade for fine things—clothing, and jewelry, fine sweets and breads they had never before been afforded.

“She is our savior,” the townspeople would say.

The child learned the trades of her community. She learned to scent the air for signs of the last snowfall, to plow the fields and run the irrigation. She learned to pray to the gods as she watched the seedlings pop from the ground—to be grateful for all that they had given her and her people.

Her family grew, from the three to five—another blessing from the gods. And while the twins were not celestially touched, as she was, the community coveted them as well. She loved her siblings, and for a while life as it should be—easy.

When she was old enough, the child began to travel with the merchants. Not far, just a few towns over. She learned to work the market stall, selling the goods her people worked so hard to produce.

It was at the markets she learned of other peoples, of new languages and lands. She learned of great adventurers, and the places they’d visit, the strange and twisted seas, people of odd colors and shapes.

And something began to stir within the child. She wanted to know more about these new places, to find her own adventure.

But her place was in her community, where they coveted her blessing. She was their savior, and without her they could not prosper.

The child loved her people, and she wanted them to continue to thrive. So, she read books, the written tales of great escapades. She asked the people at the markets for their stories, and she daydreamed.

But after a while, the stories were not enough. The child, who had grown into a woman with a head filled with adventure, was restless.

So she did what she’d been taught to do her whole life. She asked the gods for help. The temples were only half a day’s ride from her family’s farm, and the trip was worn well into her muscle memory.

The child brought for the gods her favorite things—a small necklace a goblin had once traded her, and a feather of a great green bird, larger than she had ever found on the farm. She left them for the gods, and bent her head to pray.

“I do not want this blessing,” she said. “I cannot be their savior. Please, take it from me and give it to someone who wants it,” and while she could feel the gods' eyes against her back, they did not answer her then.

But, the child was god touched, and her prayers rarely went unanswered—though she could not have predicted the kind of wrath that the gods were capable of. Her gods had had always been gentle and good. They gave her people what they needed and more.

They had never before been angry with her.

When she returned from the temples that afternoon, a great fire had set upon her family home. It’d already swallowed up the house, where she knew her mother had been preparing dinner, and crept to the fields where her father was working. It was spread across the barnyard where the twins would go to play. Everything she had ever known and loved was enveloped in flame—her mother and father, and her siblings already gone.

“I take it back,” she cried to the gods, but they had already answered her prayers. “I’ll stay, for as long as I’m needed,” she tried again, and again, they did not answer.

She prayed until her hair was dark with soot, until the only light was the smoldering remains of everything she’d ever known. It wasn’t until she began to believe all the gods in all the worlds had forsaken her, that one answered.

“What would you give for them?” he asked.

And there was only one way she could answer that. She’d give her life, her soul, every piece of her being just for them to be safe again.

And in her naivety, she said the most damning words you can ever say to any god.

“Everything. I’d give everything.”

And so, the god took everything.

The people of the town don’t remember her. Her parents, and her siblings no longer know her name, it was like she was erased from the community in that fire. I don’t even know if you'll remember this story— I just wanted someone to know, even if just for a moment, about Maeve O’Renn, and the stupid, stupid mistakes she made.