Damien Simmyns

Setting

I play Damien a slightly homebrewed Forgotten Realms setting (basically, little bit of steampunk has been added since it's "in the future" of the current 5e timeline, plenty of VR's guide / dread plane shenanigans, and ignoring any problematic WoTC weirdness).

Appearance

Damien has wavy white hair, strong facial features, and red eyes. He mostly wears dark or neutral colors with classier styles, but will add a little more flair on occassion.

I change his hair around every so often, so the exact style and whether he has facial hair or not is fluid. Currently, his hair is around shoulder length (he's letting it grow out) and has a slight goatee.

The two charms on his necklace are the symbols of Mystra and Eilistraee. He also has a holy symbol of Mystra that he doesn't always wear openly but always has on his person. He doesn't need glasses to see, but he does have a pair of magical golden reading glasses.

Personality

Damien tends towards the pessimistic side. He is quiet and reserved, preferring to be by himself or with a few close friends than in a crowd. He tries to maintain an image of indifference, but in reality wears his heart on his sleeve. When confronted with trouble (usually self-inflicted) his first instinct is to deflect and run away from his problems, but he's working on that. When his emotions boil over, his mouth tends to get him in trouble. If met with his anger, you'll usually find apology coffee waiting for you the next day.

He has an interest in languages, calligraphy (despite being left handed), fencing, and lock picking or other puzzles.

Relationships

Jacqueline Aurélie - Height: 5'3", Age: 300ish?
Vampire (high elf heritage) woman with long stright black hair. She's more on the quiet side, but has a sharp sense of humor.

Jacqueline is the duchess of house Aurélie in Faerlina, but her devotion to Mystra makes her a bit of a pariah due to her home's antireligious culture. Her brother, Marquis, is a the Secretary of the Treasury and started the first bank in Faerlina... in the former temple of Mystra. He also attempted to force her into an arranged marriage with a more than slightly insane raven society member, Dr. Makoto Eisbern. Their refusal and the fallout from it resulted in her vamprism. Currently, she's the student advisor at the Clocktower, but she's also written a comprehensive history of the domain of dread.

She and Damien bonded over their shared faith after a series of comedic misunderstandings in the beginning of the campaign and became partners soon after. Damien loves her deeply and really values her opinion (real simp hours).

Alex Esteban - Height: 5'9", Age: 40
Alex is a half elf man with short blonde curly hair. The best way to describe his personality is that he's basically a golden retriever.

He and Damien met while Damien was in grad school at the Lady's College in Silverymoon, as he acts as something of a liason between the city's temple to Mystra and the Conclave of Silverymoon. They've been close friends (and maybe a bit more than friends) for years. His mother (human) died a few years back and he never knew his father, but spends alot of time with Damien's family (especially on game nights). He also gave Damien the holy symbol he carries.

Damien was completely oblivious to Alex's feelings towards him and his own feelings until very recently. He didn't really know how to handle the situation (especially since he also loves Jacqueline) so basically just said he wanted to repair their friendship first. They basically just went from an eternal situationship to an eternal will they won't they situation.

Juniper
Juniper is technically Alex's familiar, but they end up sharing them. Jun usually appears as a fluffy male dog or a hairless female cat. Damien claims he has allergies, but everyone tells him this must be psychosomatic since fey creatures don't produce dander. He usually only summons Juniper when he needs her, as he doesn't want to have her away from Alex for too long. Juniper definitely snitches on what he's up to to Alex.

Kieran Morrowgaze - Height: 5'4", Age: 306
Kieran is played by another person in our DnD group. He's a lanky drow man with long white hair, red eyes, and a bunch of white ink tattoos. He's very flamboyant and outgoing, but is willing to stand up for what he thinks is right. He's very good at reading people.

Kieran had to flee the underdark after pissing off one of the noble women in Menzoberranzan. He may not have survived save for the help of a mysterious femimine fey spirit... This spirit taught him witch magic, which aided his already successful divination powers. However, this spirit slowly became very controlling of Kieran. On the surface, he joined a traveling carnival until he decided to take a break to gain some formal education at the Clocktower. Currently, he's the head of the violet witch coven and has freed himself of the spirit that once saved him. In the process, he discovered the spirit was a quori, one of the witch's sworn enemies, and some uncomfortable truths about the history of the conflict between the quori and witches.

Damien is Kieran's roommate (though now he spends more time at Jacqueline's lol). He cares about his friend, but is confused and stressed out by his party lifestyle.

Kleor van der Tuuk Adriani - Height: 5'6", Age: 23
Kleor is played by another person in our DnD group. She's a thin woman with red hair and soft blue eyes. Kleor is very headstrong, cunning, and dedicated to her studies as a chronurgy wizard. She also has two familiars Charles (usually a tammer) and Luna (usually a large moth).

Kleor's parents are a wealthy merchant powerhouse in Waterdeep. While she has no resentment towards her parents, she grew to realize what she wanted in life is different than her father's obsession with wealth and power. Part of finding her own path in life involved going to the Clocktower for her studies rather than an institution closer to home. Currently, she is a TA at the Clocktower and continuing her on the PHOADIST, a personalised demiplane in which time is slowed. She also recently found her childhood best friend, Ophelia, again, and the two quickly realized they were in love.

Damien appreciates Kleor's cool head in tough situations, even though his emotional tendencies sometimes causes them to butt heads. He finds her stoic personality hard to read, but to be fair he finds everyone hard to read. As the other anti-social night owl of the group, they often temper the rest of the party's antics (Kieran's antics... it's always Kieran's antics).

Siks - Height: ???, Age: ???
Siks is a changeling Damien has run into a few times now. He knows them in their Yuan Ti disguise... known as Jan Tee... Anyways, they bonded over rogue cleric shenanigans and being generally anxious people. Siks helped him out in a heist one time and also was his lawyer during his defamation suit with Jim Darkmagic (Note: Siks is not a lawyer).

Vieren (Neereath) Simmyns - Father, Height: 5'1", Age: 427
Vieran is a thin, almost frail looking drow man with pin straight white hair. He's a very quiet, anxious person that would rather stay home than go out. How much of that is personality and how much is trauma is hard to say. When he voices an opinion he means it.

In the underdark, he was a scribe, and used his position to research Eilistraee and the history of his people outside of Menzoberranzan propaganda. After meeting Imrae, he slowly fell in love with her and the two ran off together to the surface. Now he's an author on underdark history and culture. He also gives talks on his work sometimes, but he's a very timid public speaker.

While very similar to his father in temperment, Damien sometimes finds it hard to communicate with him. He values his father's opinion greatly. Vieran gave Damien the magical emerald pen he has as a graduation gift.

Imrae (Vahadarr) Simmyns - Mother, Height: 5'6", Age: 470
Imrae is a curvy, middle aged looking drow woman with wavy white hair that falls a little past her shoulders. She has a very big personality and can be very demanding or overly concerned about her kid's wellbeing. She's very outgoing and has a good sense of humor. Her bossy and loud nature doesn't apply to her husband, though. It's literally the HE SAID NO PICKLES meme.

Born to an almost noble family, she was being trained as a priestess of Lolth. Her family arranged for her to be married to a man in one of the noble houses as a political alliance and possible avenue to be absorbed into their house (or overtake it). Her duties made her interact with the scribes a good deal, which is how she met Vieren. As she got older she became more and more dissatisfied and uncomfortable with her duties, and started to receive visions from Eilistraee. By chance, she saw Vieren's research on the goddess and told him of her visions. The two slowly planned to escape, and fell in love in the process. She's currently a cleric of Eilistraee. After having her second child she stopped directly aiding escape missions due to the danger of it, but she's still very involved in planning and support.

Damien definitely gets his short temper from his mother. He loves her, but she can stress him out at times, as even her praise can feel like a demand.

Abigail Simmyns - Sister, Height: 5'7", Age: 88
Spunky young drow woman who looks very similar to her mom but more athletic. She has long white hair down to her waist. Abi is the epitome of chaotic horse girl... She once set her hair on fire while practicing a very convoluted dance choreography involving a horse, at least two swords, and a torch.

Damien enjoys her wild antics, but is also quickly exhausted by them. He worries about her safety alot.

Baelara Vahadarr - Cousin, Height: 5'6", Age: 201
Barlara has similar facial features to Imrae, but has a flatter, more atheletic build. She's the daughter of one of Imrae's older sisters, and escaped to the surface by herself. This fact coupled with her stoic personality has made her a bit judgemental, though she is a good person at heart. She helps others escape the Menzoberranzan that want to leave, though she is very adamant about preserving drow culture.

Damien is intimidated by her and thought she hated him for the longest time. She taught him swordplay and fencing when he was younger.

Backstory

Damien is from Silverymoon, growing up a little ways from the city in a community of predominately underdark ethnicities. His parents moved to the surface before he was born.

As an adult, he went to college at the Conclave in Silverymoon and eventually became insterested in metamagics and arcane research. His interest in metamagics was influenced in part by exposure to the unlimited metamagics available in the temples of Mystra. It was through the temple of Mystra he met Alex, and the two became fast friends. Damien had a bit of a struggle to find an advisor in the Lady's College, since most were either stuffy old high elves with long held racist grudges against dark elves or shorter lived humans unwilling to take on an elvish student. However, he eventually was taken on by Dr. Edwards, and older human professor, and secured funding for his graduate studies.

It was quickly apparent that his advisor was a manipulative and mainly just using Damien for his work. Damien taught his advisors Intro to Metamagics class, but never showed up to supervise. He pressured him into working long hours, and rarely approved of his work. His family and Alex suggested for him to find a different advisor, but he wasn't able to find anyone else in the college to take him on and didn't want to transfer away. Things came to a head when Dr. Edwards took the education outcomes data Damien had been collecting behind Damien's back and published it in his own old school backwards book on pedagogy. Damien was pissed, but was unable to do anything. It was his word and against his advisor's, and even if he did succeed in reporting Dr. Edwards, he would then be left without an advisor or way to continue his studies. In the end, he stayed and switched from his original pedagogical project to studying individual expression of cantrips.

Damien already had a tendency towards pessimism, but after this he quickly spiralled into depression. Worried over his friend's deteriorating mental state, Alex encouraged him to transfer to a different college. Damien eventually agreed to try this, but his advisor thwarted his efforts any time a professor contacted him as a reference. As long as Damien taught his class and made some progress on his research, Dr. Edwards was content to keep Damien around as long as possible.

There was two additional factors to Damien's graduate woes. Firstly, once he became a cleric of Mystra, he was technically no longer eligible to be in his program. The qualifying exams involved creating complicated spell scrolls assigned by other faculty members... which was very problematic for a non-wizard. Secondly, Damien had found a pair of magical reading glasses deep in the stacks one day, and as no one seemed to miss them, he kept them. Years later, it was eventually discovered he had the artifact, leading to him ending up in the school's honor court. The theft combined with his failing grades and lack of publication led to his expulsion (though his temper during the hearing certainly didn't help).

Equal parts devastated and angry, Damien left Silverymoon with his research (and the glasses) in hand. He couldn't bare to face his friends or family, so instead ran away. As he wandered south, he forged his credentials and took up odd jobs doing scribe work and some... less than ethical document creation. His interest in calligraphy paid off in this time, but as he dabbled in more roguish activities it was obvious he was not cut out for that line of work. Emotionally, he was shut down; religiously, he felt cut off from his goddess; and professionally, he was a bad rogue. After one particularly bad job that almost left him dead, Damien determined it was time to go back to a proper desk job. He was already close to the Clocktower, and he hoped it was far enough away from his home that his failed academic career could remain a secret. With his forged degree and desperation, he applied to whatever position he thought he could get. While waiting for the result, the alchemy ward at the university exploded, and the whole thing was transported to a plane of dread. He was hired on as a library assistant soon after.

At the Clocktower (or more officially, Kas Institute of Magic), Damien was forced to room with another older student, Kieran, due to the sudden change in location. Damien was rather cold towards Kieran at first, as he was still In The Pits and Kieran's easy going, party hard personality initially put him off. They eventually became friends though, as did he with Kleor, a graduate level researcher and TA at the Clocktower. The three investigated the strange explosion of the alchemy ward and discovered that the university's chancellor along with some of the faculty were using the population of the neighboring town as unwitting test subjects in a biological weapons test (oops it's necrichor time). During the course of the campaign arc, the party worked to stop the chancellor and determine who was loyal to him. Oh, Damien also got sued for libel by Jim Darkmagic after he used a subtle spell to make him say he was donating to charity and publicly stated how he thinks Jim Darkmagic is arbitrarily adding material components to his spells to enrich himself. He won the case (since it was literally true), but in the process Darkmagic managed to get his old advisor in to the Clocktower to spite him (don't worry Kleor got him fired later). There was a bunch of other stuff that happened, but we'll just stick to the main highlights for now.

Eventually, it came time to put the plan to stop the chancellor (primarily crafted by Kleor) into action. Kleor, Kieran, Ophi, and Damien went to fight the Chancellor, an astral elf named Medivh, while allies apprehended co-conspirators and helped to treat and quarantine people in town. Did I mention Medivh had the eye and hand of Vecna? Yeahhhhhhhh... The party defeated him, but not before Kieran went down (and was later revivified by Jacqueline thanks to Kleor promptly casting gentle repose) and Damien died by being impaled by Medivh's hand... which made it to where he could only be brought back by a true resurrection spell or a deity.

This is where we need to go backwards in time for a bit. Another major plot thread here has been unravelling the mystery and intentions behind a group trying to destabilize Mystra's power led by a mysterious woman named Constance. Additionally, for a while we thought she was involved in a very devastating attack on Faerlina where the stars fell from the sky, destroying the upper part of the city and forcing the survivors to move underground. The truth? Constance is the daughter of Mystra and is working to overthrow her half on principle and half from petty familial drama. Also Damien was having some complicated feelings about his religion because in our game someone has basically unlocked access to 10th level spells, so Mystra has been sending out people to destroy knowledge of them, which Damien sees as contrary to the religions ideals. Also she keeps pulling him into her weird family drama when he's just trying to do his job.

So imagine Damien's surprise when after he died, his goddess wasn't there to greet him. Instead it was Constance. She offered to send him back with a slightly altered connection to the weave. After a lot of discussion, especially clarifying that she didn't actually participate in a mass bombing of his partners home, he accepted. Upon returning he was no longer a cleric but instead a sorcerer. As Constance isn't really a deity yet, the resurrection also left him with some physical changes. Namely, he has a scar on his chest from the final blow, and he has found he fatigues more easily. So far he is enjoying the freshness of his magic and how connected he feels with it, but at the same time this feels heretical to admit. The sudden distantness of his goddess scares him, and he's unsure what any of this means for his faith.

After this, the university elected a new chancellor, and somehow Damien was convinced to accept nomination despite really not wanting to. Now as chancellor, he's trying to make the university more equitable while also balancing everything else in his life.

Currently, the school is on an extended break given their return to the material plane, so the party returned to Silverymoon to help Kieran find his father. He found out that his father is currently imprisoned in Menzoberranzan, so the plan is to get him out of jail and bring him to the surface (he is a very failed merchant he was NOT doing good business down there). Returning to Silverymoon let Damien reunite with his family and friends, who also have the resources to help in locating Kieran's dad. Damien was really stressed about this, as he left without a trace around two years ago. His anxiety was unfounded, however, as his family embraced him with open arms and Alex was happy to see his old friend again... Though maybe less than happy to see Damien with Jacqueline. While it was immediately obvious to everyone else that Alex had a thing for Damien, he is extremely dense and had no idea until it was (somewhat forcibly) revealed. This has short circuited his brain as he basically never put any thought into his sexuality ever and suddenly realized that maybe... To add more to his confusion, he also knows he loves Jacqueline, and his sister teasing him about a polycule just further broke his brain. For now, he told Alex that he wants to focus on repairing their existing friendship, which definitely didn't come across as platonic as it sounded in his head. Oh well, at least we are in the underdark now!