Tag Archives: Letter Game

Letter 5, Auster to Verin: “BookMark!”

Whew V, do I have a lot to tell you! 

A very bad line drawing of a half snake half goose saying “hiiiiissss”

But first – sneese SUCK. They’re half snake and half geese and all mean! I did not enjoy that bit, but I got rid of them by making balls of light for them to chase. Smart, right? Yes. I am smart. 

A very bad line drawing of a Gorgon, saying “Grrr Arg”

This was on the way to investigate that Gorgon thing, and was not what we thought! She’s under a curse, because she said she thought she was prettier than the Goddess Mithra, who apparently took offense. So now as a Gorgon, this poor lady has to guard the Eye of Shar – yeah I don’t know what that is. YET. 

We headed back to the Library because I had some serious research to do, and turns out Mithra and Ioun and Shar are triplets! Go figure, right? Shar hasn’t been seen since the Portal Wars tho, which is like, forever. Her followers are still around but their religion sort of collapsed into some kind of cult when she disappeared. They are very bad news. There might be a secret temple tho! Seeeeecret TEMPLE. Fun. 

Oh, while I was doing this research? Yeah, you know my notebook? The one I carry around all the time and am scribbling in constantly? I had that open on a shelf while I was looking something up, and a spectral version floated up out of it and suggested another place to look. Out loud. My book was talking to me. Not the weirdest thing to happen to me, but still. I named him BookMark, we call him ‘Mark for short and heck does he like to do research! And he is good at it, we make a good team.

However the Library did not have a ton on Shar, and Patricia, the head librarian? She suggested we go try the Library of Tyr, which is where Speak was, so perfect, and we haded there. Speaking of secret – they have secret areas in their library that only I can see the entrances of! I felt like the coolest kid in town. And ‘Mark picked up another word to repeat at odd times – “research” from before and now “knowledge” which was the secret passcode to get into the secret room in the library. 

Anyway. Confirmed Shar is bad news, probably super evil, and her sisters locked her away. (Don’t get any ideas, you.) 

We have to head back, Speak got put in charge of a sort of rescue mission and I want to stay with her. She keeps me safe. Like you used to. I miss you so much! This adventuring stuff is scary a lot, but mostly very fun? I hope I am getting better at all of this! Hope to see you soon, love you oodles and doodles!

For true and always, 
Auster Truestone

Letter 4, Auster to Verin: “Home Library”

Hey V, just a quick note, we are swinging thru town to grab supplies and so I can drop off the TWO books I have recovered. That’s right. Two so far. I am the awesomest. While I was dropping those off at the Library, I got my notes copied so far, in case…well. In case. And so folks here can do some research if they want. I used to do that when I was still beginning here – taking neat adventurers notes and turning them into something readable and researching the things they came across…and now I am the adventurer! I feel so cool right now. 

Oh and I looked up the Goddess Ioun and like…I should be careful with her, but I think it’ll be okay because she is the Goddess of Knowledge and like…that works? For me? I need to do some more reading… poor me. 

I heard about some artifacts you might be interested in, but we have to go check out a possible Gorgon situation, so I am going to go do that! 

Hope you’re having as much fun as I am! Love you oodles and doodles.

For true and always, 
Auster Truestone

Letter 3, Auster to Verin: “Tower Stuff”

Verin!!! You will NOT believe what I have been up to!! 

Okay, so you know that last letter, I said I was heading to this tower with my friends? Okay, well, we got there. Also, I am not good at drawing maps. Oh and I found a shiny rock.

So this tower is bonkers, half of it fell into the ocean ages ago, and of course the bit we wanted was under water. To get to it, I had to swim. I did not like it Veri. I did not like it at all. I am not good at swimming!!

Oh but while I was trying to do that, Speak got me some Demonic Octopus Ink! It is impermeable to water!!! Which is so neat. I am going to try and see if I can make something like it for my own inks, that would be super handy. 

Okay so this tower, right? It has a copy of every book every written. Seriously. I was just looking around and FOUND one of my missing books! Well, not the exact book that is missing, this one is newer but STILL. I am so excited. 

While looking for a book to give us any idea of what is going on in the tower (these guys are fighting over a glowing orb, I wasn’t really paying attention) I ended up getting cursed, TO NOT BE ABLE TO READ ANYTHING VERIN. NOT COOL. While I was freaking out about that, the Goddess Ioun spoke to me. And if I agreed to dedicate myself to her, she would fix the curse. Veri, I can not explain to you what was happening in my head at that moment, I was devastated, and panicking, and …oof even thinking about it getting me all worked up, so! Long story short, I agreed, curse lifted, I am dedicated to the Goddess Ioun now, no big deal.

Anyway! I found a book with a ton of info in it but Veri, it was written in CELESTIAL. I told you it was worth learning. You all laughed at me, but I told you. AND IT HAS AN INDEX. Oh I was in heaven and I just started inhaling the thing thru my eyeballs while everyone else did a bunch of other stuff (super was not paying attention ahem, book). This book is so cool I can’t wait to show it to you! This is where I found out about this tower containing every book ever written, and there are these automatons that will bring me any book I want! This is, of course, at the base of the tower. And we were in the top. So. Useless at the moment, but I am going to get back there! Ooo maybe we could go together!

Uhm, things got a little chaotic and we had to kind of run away, but! We used these travel circle things and I took a bunch of notes (as usual, hush) and sketched the symbols and what not – I want to show you when we meet up again, I think you would be really interested, seems like your kind of thing!

Well, we’re going to head back to town in a bit, so, I’ll just send this off to you now. Hope you’re doing alright! Miss you sis!

Love you oodles and doodles! 

For true and always, 
Auster Truestone

Letter 2, Auster to Verin: “Chicken named Fry”

Hi Verin! 

Me again, your favorite sister, haha. We’re really on an adventure now! Kurtz has this chicken he named Fry, and we’re not allowed to eat him. Oh and I met a bunch of pixies and they really do like shiny things and I trained like, all of them, copper for their pixie dust. I am positive I have seen something about using it in ink, but I left my ink experiments book back at the library so I’ll have to check on that later. 

I met this Paladin Leon, and he looks so familiar for some reason! Do you know him? I can’t remember if I have met him somewhere before…he’s really nice tho. 

Things aren’t too exciting yet, we ended up in a village where I could buy buttons – shiny ones – in case we run into any more pixies. And an actual bottle of Ink of Arcanum! I don’t usually use it much but I’m a little worried about running out while we’re out on an adventure and this could work as a base I suppose. If I am in a hurry. Maybe. We’ll see. 

Our guide to this tower we’re trying to get to is a 14 year old named Tony. Seriously. He rolls his eyes like 8 times a minute, but he seems to know what he’s doing so! Hopefully we should be fine? Wish me luck!

I know this one is a bit shorter, but I just wanted to say hi! Hope you’re doing well, and looking forward to hearing all about your adventures back! Hint hint. 

Love you oodles and doodles!

For true and always, 
Auster TrueStone

Verin and Auster TrueStone, a DnD Characters Letter Game

I would like to begin with! This is all The Husband’s fault. But let me explain. 

I have two characters in two different Dungeons and Dragon’s games. Run by two different game masters. The first one I created when I was getting really excited about tea – and the GM helped me make a character that was an alchemist artificer, to I could use the tea for my spells. He let me have her be an ambulatory wheelchair user, and she’s autistic, because I really wanted to play a character that felt like me and there are mechanics to support it now! Her name is Verin TrueStone, and I love her. Then I got invited to play in another game and I was like, well…I like Verin a lot, but I need someone else to play…ah heck what if she had a twin. 

See the thing is, I find twins a really interesting mechanic. I am writing a book about twins actually, but that’s neither here nor there. So, of course, twins. Both human, both autistic, and both ambulatory wheelchair users, because both of my GM’s are a delight. 

Now the differences are how they magic – because magic systems is yet another thing I find fascinating. So, Verin is an alchemist artificer. And Auster, her twin, is a wizard librarian. Verin casts her spells with tea, and Auster casts them with ink. Tada! I thought up Auster when I started getting hilariously into fountain pens and inks. Much like Verin came out of my interest in teas. It’s been fun so far. 

Now, the bit about how what you’ll see next in this area is The Husband’s fault. In our last session of the Caterean campaign (Nov 4th 2022) I made a joke about how I should play the Letter Game with my two twin characters. And he was Iike oh heck do it and post it on your site! So here we are. 

What’s the Letter Game? I don’t know if it has an official name or anything, but I played something like it when I was a kid on long car rides, and I’ve heard a bunch of different versions described, but I was mostly referring to what Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer did writing The Enchanted Chocolate Pot. If I remember correctly, they wrote letters back and forth to each other as the characters in what eventually became that book. So what I am doing here is writing letters back and forth between Verin and Auster, from their respective campaigns. 

I will not necessarily be writing a letter per session, but rather whenever I feel like it. That will most likely be inspired by interesting things that happen in the games, or random backstory pieces I want to develop. This is meant to give me a creative writing outlet that I plan to thoroughly enjoy. I will title the posts by which sister is doing the writing and I’ll date it using the general month of whatever hame session prompted me. Keep in mind I will maybe be taking artistic license, but I will try to run things by my GM’s when I feel I need to. And I will try very hard to make sure I am not speaking for any of the other player’s characters without running it by them first. This is meant to just be a fun creative outlet, so don’t take any of this too seriously! Just enjoy.