DS292 | Wesnoth | Echoes of Invasion: The Heart Mountains | Part 7 of 7

Dicey Stories

Heppa and Tric study Mal-Vektor’s staff—which is almost as dangerous as the man himself.

• Scene 12
• Scene 13
• Scene 14

GM Notes

We won’t be seeing Ash and Aglana again in this campaign—at least not together as a couple. So I’ll take this opportunity to fill in some of the backstory that informs their behavior, but that didn’t get stated openly at the gaming table because our loveable PCs actually showed some discretion!

Aglana is the child of the main character in the Battle for Wesnoth Dead Water campaign, a princess among the merfolk, and her being in a relationship with an elf would not be approved there. That’s one of the reasons Ash keeps quiet about her when around elves. In addition, her comment that she is not to put herself at risk is because of her royal standing. Aglana comes to the rivers of the Heart Mountains to get away from all the expectations put on her by her family.

And Ash… Well, Ash is the first RPG character that I intentionally designed to be asexual. Ash entered our storyline in October of 2021 (yes, you’re listening to some real archive footage here! I’m recording this commentary in April of 2024). It would be a few more months before I figured myself out enough to talk with my spouse about how the term asexual applied to me. Making Ash was a helpful exercise for me, a chance to inhabit a character who felt romantic attraction to someone, but not sexual attraction. I love that RPGs give us that kind of space, to explore different interaction styles, different personalities, different intelligences, different ways of being human (even if you’re playing a non-human).

Our character art by Del Borovic and the map we refer to (by me!) can be found here.

Our music is sampled from Return to Wesnoth by Matthias Westlund (aka West), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, part of The Battle for Wesnoth Project. Visit them at wesnoth.org.

Need context? Jump to the start of the series!