This gave me the opportunity to write a background that wasn't just about me, but about how I met someone as well. I have to say, this rivals "Redemption" as one of my favorites.
Some things you should know: Paladins are LG and are very zealous in their beliefs. They can naturally sense evil at will.
Shout out to Jacqui Valdez for playing Helena Vix.
Shout out to Colton Neiger for DMing this campaign.
Bullok and Helena Vix
“You did it on purpose, jerk!” she screamed. She was angry. She was violent.
She was eight years old.
“You guys are just jealous that you don’t have a tree
house!” she cried.
“You don’t have one anymore!” the boy taunted. She
quickly grabbed a rock and chucked it at him, smashing his nose. The boy fell
on the ground, his nose slowly dripping blood. A second boy spun her around to
face him.
“Hey! We were just playing around with your stupid tree
house! You didn’t have to hurt him!”
She gave him an icy stare, “How would you like it if I
busted your tree house?”, and she
kicked him square in the crotch. “How does your tree feel now?” She said with a sneer as he collapsed on the ground.
She spun to face the third boy who was now approaching
her. He was several years older and quite a bit bigger than her, but if she
seemed to notice, she didn’t let on. “Don’t think that I’m afraid to hit a
girl!” he shouted, but before he could raise a hand against her, she put a
right hook across his mouth, dropping him to the ground with a split lip.
All three boys were rising at this time, and the girl was
about to face a united front. They turned to their adversary, only to see her
standing resolute under her ruined tree house with a hammer in hand.
“My dad left this hammer here to fix mistakes. Are you about to make a mistake?” she told
them with a half smile.
They ran.
“Stupid jerks”, she spat as she turned to look at her
play place. They had torn down the door and knocked an entire wall out.
Luckily, both had come down in one piece and should be able to be put back up.
She picked up loose nails, climbed the ladder, and tried to hammer the door
back in, but it simply wasn’t working. She cried in frustration and threw the
hammer to the ground.
“I can do that”, came the gentle voice from the bottom of
the tree.
The girl peeked down from her perch to see a boy her age
simply standing at the base of the ladder.
“Whatever”, she grumbled.
He picked up the hammer and ascended to the tree house.
He looked at the nails, hammered them straight, braced the wall with a branch,
and proceeded to hammer it back in. Meanwhile, the girl took the chance to vent
her anger at the boys, explaining their jealousy, their vandalism, and her
victory over them. And all the while, the boy fixed her tree house in silence.
And that’s how Helena met Bullok.
* * * * * * *
“You need to stop letting these guys pick on you, Lok.”
Bullok gave a non committal shrug to his best friend of a
decade. “It really doesn’t matter, Helena.”
She looked up from the door lock she was attempting to
pick with an angry look, “Of course it matters! They stole your money!”
“It was three copper. And that doesn’t even pay for their
clothes that we ruined.”
The memory brought a smile to both of their faces. They
had created an alchemical mixture that attracted bees and then doused their
rivals in it.
The boys had to literally tear their clothes off.
“Yeah, but we only did that because-“
“There’s always a reason”, Lok interrupted, “this has
been escalating as long as I can remember. When does this end? Shouldn’t we be
finding a better way to take care of-“
Helena threw the lock pick at Lok before he could finish.
“This stupid thing won’t open anyway.”
“I can do that” Lok stated. He knelt down, picked up the
lock pick, and had the door open soon after.
They walked in the house, being careful to stay quiet.
“Are you sure no one is here?” Lok asked.
“The family isn’t, but all three morons are.” She
whispered with a wolfish grin.
They sneaked around the house, looking to find something
specific. After peeking in a couple of doors, they found their goal at last.
The chamber pot.
Helena quietly dusted the rim of the bucket with the mixture
and they exited the house as quietly as they entered.
“So,” Lok asked while they hid nearby, “they go to the
chamber pot…and what happens?”
“The mixture reacts to the minor amount of ammonium in
urine. When their pee hits the pot…boom.”
“Boom? How big of a boom?”
“It’ll only be smoke and noise, but enough to scare someone.
It won’t be that-“
The blast shook the house.
They both began to
laugh, but then they heard the scream, the scream of a little girl.
“Gods,” Helena said, “their sister was home.”
A week later Helena and Lok sat quietly in the same tree
house that had housed their first meeting. They had been there for a quarter of
an hour, not talking, and the silence was ear splitting.
Lok finally broke the silence. “They say she’s going to
be fine. She wasn’t seriously hurt and-“
“She’s deaf.” Helena spoke, matter of factly.
“She’ll be fine…except for that…” The silence returned as
they avoided eye contact. “Well, at least we were honest about it. We’re in
huge trouble, but I think this’ll finally be the end of our stupid rivalry.”
Lok finished his sentence and noticed that Helena wasn’t even listening. Tears
shone in her eyes and she stared out of the tree house window.
“I’m leaving, Lok.”
“What? Where are you going? Are you in trouble?”
“No, I’ve just been thinking. The first couple of days I
was so ashamed. I’ve been spending so much time and effort trying to get
revenge on these guys that I never thought about making that much of an effort
on anything else. But slowly, that shame turned to passion. And that passion
became a calling. I truly feel called to do something more. I worked so hard to
teach those punks a lesson, but there are real evils out there that I could be
working against.”
“What are you saying, Helena?”
“There’s a paladin order that I’m going to be joining. I
feel like this whole event has given Pelor an opportunity to get through my
hard heart. I feel like I’m being called
to join this order.
“And I leave tomorrow.” She finished.
“Helena, you’re overreacting. We already apologized and
we can start working on better things here, but please, don’t leave.”
Helena gave her best friend a compassionate smile and
took his hand in hers. She said nothing, but her actions told him everything
she was thinking.
Nothing would dissuade her from her calling.
“How long will you be gone?” He asked.
“Years.” A final silence fell between them. After a few
moments, they spoke the last words they’d say to each other for four years.
“You’ll still be here when I get back right?”
“I can do that.”
* * * * * * *
She surveyed her home town.
She thought that it seemed so different and yet exactly
the same, all at the same time. It was the right time to come back, she was
certain of that. The teenager that used minor alchemy skills for pranks was
long gone. She now was Helena, paladin of Pelor. She was here to right wrongs,
to uphold justice, and to dispatch evil.
She let her eyes scan the town as she walked through it,
taking in all the sights, all the nostalgia.
And noticing the man trying to pick a lock to someone’s
front door.
As she casually approached him, she extended her senses
to test the man’s heart, to see if he was evil.
Although he wasn’t, she still wouldn’t stand for breaking
and entering. She grabbed the man’s shoulder, threw him on his back and put her
sword to his neck.
“And just what do you think your do – Lok?”
“Helena?”
They met eyes in a moment that neither would ever forget.
She noticed the classic twinkle in Lok’s eyes, but they belonged to a young
man. He’d gained muscle over his body, his skin had tanned, and his boyish
smile now had the slightest blemish: a light scar going from lower lip to chin.
She noted that it only added character to the man that Lok had become.
Meanwhile, Lok was overwhelmed with the strength that the
woman standing before him exuded. Helena had always been strong, but this was
different. This strength was coupled with confidence, certainty of self, and
something else that made her even more beautiful than her obviously attractive
features could convey: righteousness.
It took a moment before either of them was reminded that
she was standing over him with a sword at his neck.
“Wait, what are you doing? Are you about to rob whoever
lives here?” Helena said as she shook her head back to the situation at hand.
“Well, I’m certainly going to take whatever I want.” Lok
replied with a grin.
Helena brought the blade closer to his throat.
“Because it’s my house! I live here!”
“Wait…you live
here?” Helena looked at the home. It wasn’t extravagant, but it certainly
wasn’t humble. “What do you do?”
“Uh…well, I’m an adventurer. And a locksmith. I also do a
bit of carpentry. And sometimes I-“
“Okay, I get the point.” She told him with a grin.
“You’ve always been a jack of all trades.” She reached out her hand and helped
him back to his feet. “Why were you trying to pick the lock?”
“I don’t actually own a key. I’m always trying to keep on
my toes. But you can ask anyone in town!”
“I believe you, Lok.” She said with a laugh, “So, what’s
new in town?”
“In four years? A lot.
Uh, my parents moved out of the city a while back, a couple of the brothers are
married and have places of their own…oh! Their sister! I found an enchanted
horn that picks up sound via magic, not ear drums. She can hear! Only through the
horn, but she can hear again. Oh, and-“
“Oh my gosh, when did you start to talk so much?”
“I usually don’t. I haven’t actually changed that much.
There’s just so much to tell you.”
“Want to tell me over lunch?” Helena asked with a smile.
“I can do that.”
* * * * * * *
“You did what?”
Helena furiously shouted at her boyfriend.
“He had been underpaying them for months. He was illegally cheating them.” Lok stated, as
if that should answer everything.
“So you stole from him? You stole from him to repay wages
instead of going to the town guard, or even me?”
“You know it would have just been their word or his, and
no one would have listened to them.”
“You still broke the law.” Helena said through clenched
teeth.
“What do you think Pelor would approve of: action or
doing nothing?”
This brought pause to the paladin of Pelor. Helena calmed
a bit and said, “You’re not Pelor, you don’t get to make those choices. You’re
a man, a man who happens to be dating
a woman who swore to uphold the law.”
“I did what I thought was right.”
“Well now I have to do that same. I have to turn you in!” Helena said, her temper starting to heat up
again.
“I understand.”
“You’d better!
And I’m not going to ask for leniency! You’ll likely spend a month in jail, and
that’s in conjunction with having to pay the man back! You will answer to the law! And when you get
out, you’re going to marry me!”
They met eyes and a beaming smile grew to replace
Helena’s angry features. Lok found his breath and smiled back.
“I can do that.”
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