End of an Era and Forward unto the Dawn

So....this isn't really so much a story of mine as my way of saying farewell to something that's been a huge part of my life for the past year (maybe longer).  A Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I didn't start but joined and played for the very first time in my entire life.  Last year in the Fall I joined a custom campaign with its own story and characters DM'd by someone I'd not met before but is now one of the very best friends I've ever had.  I met two new people who I still know the names of and whom I'll never forget.  I grew even closer to a girl that first invited me to be with her circle of friends and has been my absolute closest friend for the past two or three years.  I made close bonds with her fiancee and they gave me an experience I'm never going to forget.  These people are:

Jordan Boyer
Kayla Moyer
Dimitri Mitchell
Joey Zienkiewics
and Chris Bechtold

I remember when I first asked about joining Joey's campaign and didn't even have the slightest clue what I was doing despite my claims that I'd played the game once long ago.  I was commercing with Jordan and Kayla on Mabinogi and we were discussing my joining the campaign and talking to Joey about me playing with you guys.  It was my first campaign for a game that I'd never think, not in a million years, that I'd ever come to enjoy and love so much as I do now.  Jordan helped me create my very first D&D character too and that character has become one of my most loved and fond story character I've ever had the fortuitous chance to breathe new life into: Kiria, Catia's little sister and a rowdy one at that.  He turned a human, teenage girl into a Dual-Bastard-Sword wielding Ranger with strong balance and an obvious presence in the story even up to this point now.

Do you remember this Kayla?



It was the first drawing that you ever did, just especially for me.  It's a picture that I've treasured closely since the day you gave it to me.  I'll never forget the day I started using it for Kiria's picture for the journal entry I'd made for her.  Thank you so very much for such a great treasure.

I remember where Kiria first started too!  My first battle encounter was against Wights in a graveyard and she came out swinging and doing so much in that fight.  I felt so great and we had so many laughs together that night.  She was such a brat too when she first started I remember.  Joey told us that when Kiria'd slain one of the wights that it's soul told her thank you and her exact response was a sarcastic "Yeah yeah...."  I remember how much of a brat she seemed to Nautila (Kayla's character) and how badly they got along at first.  No matter how hard I tried, those two girls never seemed to get along.  But now those two are some of the bestest of friends that they could've ever been.  I remember how supportive Jordan's character Garment Brimagh was when she first joined the party and nobody seemed to get along well with her.

I remember the night that she met her husband in the campaign Flynn Lumi too.  It was during some kind of festival in Lucard and Nautila (who Kiria had learned to call 'N') fell for the King there.  Kiria however, met Flynn as two people who chose to dance the night away.  They eventually danced so long that most everyone'd left to return to their homes for the night.  Even then the two of them stayed together.  Flynn gave her her first kiss and someone that she'd fallen head over heels for.  The two of them eventually met back up in his home city of Rispa and she found out that he was the Prince of Europa, a continent in the campaign.  They quickly fell in love and she was soon engaged to him, his secret of his family's curse revealing itself to be that he was a werewolf.  But even then, Kiria didn't let it bother her.  She promised Flynn that she'd bear his curse with him, no matter how painful that it would be in the end.  That's something that I'll never forget.

Then we went to the Parsiian prison islands.  That was a doozy lemme tell you!  Nautila fell for Seth, a huge part of the story in terms of characters and the two had so many hardships.  I remember that Kiria got in the way relationship-wise so much and she even started to fall for the dashing Sorcerer herself!  In the end though, she kept her faith to Flynn.  Then she found out that she'd had an older sister that she hadn't known anything about and everyone found reason to travel together so that she could go and finally reunite with Catia again.  I remember the party's first reaction to her, Nautila's especially.  Those two didn't get along at all when they first met.  But eventually Nautila found a way to forgive her for her past actions towards her as she saved Seth's life from almost certain death once again at the hands of his own recklessness.

Then Kiria was married and she had not one, not two, not even three, but four children with Flynn!  I couldn't believe it when Joey roleplayed that bit and told me how unlucky she'd gotten to be pregnant with four of her mate's children at the same time.

But all of this aside, this campaign was my very first that I'd ever played and it's how I found so many friends in this game and grew to be the DM and player that I am today in that game.  You all taught me so much about this game, we had so many laughs together and so much drama.  This was an experience that I'll never forget so long as I live and I'm going to miss my time together with all of you so much.  Everything is coming to a close and soon we'll be separated once again to our own corners of the world until fate once again brings us together.  My only hope is that that time is sometime soon and that we'll have more fun together in the future.

Here's to a great year playing my very first campaign with all of you and to many more in the future. This may be the end of one era, but we've all taken so much from it that we're willing to always push forward and go to see that next dawn that awaits us. From me, thank you very much all of you. I'll never forget this experience so long as I live.

-Jake Eisenhauer