I wrote this for a GM prompt at the end of a 3-year campaign, explaining what was going through the mind of my firbolg circle of dreams druid Halvard.
Halvard is still not sure what waits for the party at the mountaintop–but he knows they are carrying, in some sense, the weight of the world. He trusts his companions to wield the gems wisely and that there’s no other option than to press on.
He’s quietly relieved he is not bearing a gem. But he feels a responsibility to help share and relieve the load on the rest of the party.
He’s afraid of what this task might ask of them. He’s afraid of what it will ask of him, and whether he’ll be strong enough to follow through.
If they succeed, he suspects the world will need helpers to help rebuild and reshape it, a task he thinks he might be more suited to than heroics.
Traveling up the mountain, Halvard reflects on how this journey has been a series of crises of faith:
Despite studying the esoteric and otherworldly with the druid circle, it feels a little disorienting to be dealing with actual gods and elementals.
His mentors at the druid circle made the spaces beyond the veil seem like sanitized, purely mystical experiences–a vacuum full of peace and connectedness that could be experienced alone, and then put aside when it was no longer convenient. Instead, it has been chasing their every step, haunting every waking moment, reaching back into the material plane and expecting things he and his companions weren’t prepared to give.
His experience with Hecate–from distrust at the misuse of magic, to feeling her pain at her sisters’ death, to the betrayal of that trust–shook him. It was just a power game, and what if this was all just more power games? For now, he decided to continue acting as if there was good in all things whether or not it turned out to be true. Such a belief was necessary even if it turned out to be false–perhaps especially if it turned out to be false.
He joined the quest to help protect the people of Melas who were caught in the throes of the unpredictable change the gems were wreaking on the world. But now people are being hurt because of their proximity to him and his companions–Eightdur’s kidnapping, the razing of Chalcaeus.