#isthisanything — Public Fediverse posts

Is This Anything?

The Butterfly Festival

Every year, over the course of a fortnight, the city fills with butterflies. Millions of them. They blanket every surface, drift through every street, settle on every shoulder. They come for a few days, and then leave, continuing their migration and dispersing.

People come from all over to see the beauty. The festival that grew around their arrival is now the largest on the continent, with vendors, ceremonies, competitions, and tourists.

This year, something is different.

The butterflies arrived as expected, but something is off. The butterflies are... docile? Their bright colors are... muted? They seem... skittish around people. And when the fortnight ends, they don't leave. They stay, packed together, restless and dim. More keep arriving. The migration has stalled.

Nobody knows why. The festival mood curdles into unease.

---

Why this is happening can depend on the story you're telling:

1. Something blocks the migration path. A threat, a disaster, or a darkness lies ahead on their route. The butterflies are witnesses to something the players haven't found yet.
2. Something in the city is drawing them. An artifact, a ritual, a birth, a death. The butterflies are responding to a magical attractor the players may be connected to.
3. They are carrying something. Spores, a curse, fey larvae, encoded information. Someone is using the migration as a delivery mechanism, and the delay is intentional.
4. They are dying. Their colors fade a little more each day. Their death will trigger something - ecological, magical, or divine - and the clock is already running out.
5. Not all of them are butterflies. Most are, but something is hiding in the swarm, waiting.

---

The cause is left open on purpose. Plug in whatever fits your current story, or let the players figure it out and surprise you.

#iTA #isThisAnything #dnd5e #DungeonsAndDragons #TTRPG #ttrpghooks #Worldbuilding #storyhook #butterflies #festival

Meet Aldric.

He turned eighteen in the dark, which is how he would have
preferred to spend it -- quietly, without incident, without
anyone dying. He had gotten good at that. Staying small. Staying
away from the edges of things. He had watched his mother go
slowly and his father go suddenly and everyone else in between
go badly, and he had taken careful notes on all of it without
meaning to, and what the notes said was: it hurts, and it takes
a long time, and it means nothing about you except that it
happened.

The god did not introduce itself. It did not ask. It told him
what he was going to do and it did not wait for him to agree and
it did not offer him anything for the trouble and when it was
done speaking the room was just a room again and Aldric was
still in it, alone, the same as he had always been except now there was a direction.

He is not brave. He wants to be clear about that, in case
anyone is keeping track. He knows what swords do to bodies
because he has seen what smaller things do to bodies, and he is
not interested in finding out what the last part feels like from
the inside. But the god said go, and there is no one left to
stay for, and so he is going. Quietly. Terrified. One foot and
then the other, into whatever is waiting, which he is trying
very hard not to think about.

---

Aldric is a Paladin who did not ask to be one, built along the
lines of Oath of Glory less because he believes in it and more
because something does, and has decided he's the vessel. He
looks like someone who has been bracing for bad news long enough
that it has become his resting posture -- cautious eyes, careful
hands, the kind of stillness that reads as calm until you know
what it actually is. In combat he fights like a person who is
acutely aware that damage is real, which makes him precise and
not particularly reckless, and which makes his Divine Smites
feel less like power and more like desperation with good timing.
At the table he is the one asking whether this is actually
necessary, and then doing it anyway, every time.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #CharacterIntro #Homebrew
#Paladin #OathOfGlory #DivineMandate #CharacterBackstory
#Trauma #NewAdventurer

Meet Daz'Throol, Knight of Rix-Cave, Protector of the Green Shield, Master of the Staff of Throol.

There are people who protect others because they have to. Because it's their duty, their oath, their job. Daz'Throol does it because he cannot do otherwise. Something in him -- something ancient and immovable -- simply will not allow the weak to fall while he still stands.

He is calm. Almost unnervingly so. He speaks quietly, moves deliberately, and carries himself with the kind of stillness that makes a room feel safer just by him being in it. He will listen to your problem. He will consider it fully. And if that problem involves something trying to hurt you, he will step in front of it.

He will always step in front of it.

His war pick and the Staff of Throol are tools, not trophies. The Green Shield, which protects him as he protects others, is worn with the ease of something earned. His chain mail covers his torso, plate covers his legs, and in his nose hangs the ring that carries both his holy symbol and the signet of his order -- present and visible, a reminder of what he is and who he answers to.

He does not raise his voice. He does not need to. When the calm breaks, you'll know.

---

Daz'Throol, Knight of Rix-Cave, Protector of the Green Shield, Master of the Staff of Throol, is a Loxodon Paladin, level 10. He controls the battlefield, absorbs punishment, and keeps his party standing. His presence at the table is that of an anchor: patient, immovable, and absolutely certain of his purpose.

#iTA #isThisAnything #DnD #TTRPG #Homebrew #CharacterIntro #Paladin #Loxodon

Is This Anything?

A trilogy of novels where each one skips big chunks of chapters but still tells a full story. Years later, the missing chapters show up in the next book, and then the last book finishes the rest.

Each stands alone, but if you put all three together in order, you end up with one complete novel hiding inside them.

#iTA #isThisAnything #bookidea #storyconcept #novelstructure #trilogy #experimentalfiction #writingprompt #storypuzzle #metafiction