My BFRPG game has it's first journal entry from a player. Plimble Mae shared with us her journal where she has her backstory, and at the end explains her relationship with some of her friends. I had to award some extra XP for this!
"Hello... book.
I am Plimble. You have long sat in my bag, just waiting for me to fill your pages with ink and chicken scratch as my mother would call my attempt at writing. I never thought I would do so until now. I miss mother and my sisters. You were one of the few things I was allowed to take when I was asked to find somewhere to be.
I miss my attic window. I miss making the fine lace for the dresses my mother sold. I miss my people. Oh, not the hobbits... Not the thieves... those are not my people. I mean my mother and sisters and the people I watched every day from my attic window.
I love my mother forever and ever. She fed me and taught me how to make lace. When she found I could make it even more delicate than she herself could it was my one job and I was no longer allowed to braid the beautiful piping as my sisters did for the dresses she made and made over for the noble ladies of our city. The dresses she adorned with my lace were later to be called "Fairywork Gowns" and were in high demand. I spent so many hours making this lace I could do it without even looking at what I was doing. Thus I began my hobby of watching the people as they moved about in the street below my window. Over the years I gave them names and was so excited when I saw new additions to families being carried about by their mothers. I would name them too and give them adventures in babyland. I do so love people. It is still difficult for me meet them though. I am so used to loving them from a distance.
The day I found out my mother was not my natural mother, was the day I was stolen away from her. When I was very young my mother would put shoes on my large feet. They were heavy and felt all wrong. I hated them so much. One day when one of the most illustrious ladies in the town invited her and all of us to a summer festival to honor one of her daughters coming of age, I took off the beautiful beribboned shoes and threw them into the river. I was spanked severely. I never wore shoes again. After that day I was never allowed to go anywhere with her or my sisters (basically anywhere that might cause my family embarassment) and I was only allowed to go out and play after most of the townspeople had cleared the streets at the end of the day. I would run to the orchards at the edge of town and climb and jump from branch to branch just like a squirrel. It was in one of those trees that I learned I was a hobbit.
I had fallen asleep after gorging myself on apples. When I woke there was another small person, like me, standing over me on my branch. I nearly fell, dear book, I was so startled. He asked me if I was the tailors daughter and I told him I was. He said I was not. His name was Trotter Briggs, he said, and he was my kin. My family, my true family, was slain. In accordance to my true mothers wishes, I was given over to the woman I knew as my mother to raise. He claimed he had tried to take me, but that my adopted mother had refused to allow it. Had I never wondered why I was so small and my sisters and mother so tall? Why my feet were so large compared to the dainty nubs at the end of my sisters shapely pegs? He was here to set me straight, and to take me back to my real home. I didnt want to go with him. I refused. He just nodded and said he understood. He brought out a sack of food and asked if I would at least break bread with him. I agreed and he began to tell me stories of my birth mother.
He was beginning to contradict himself in his tales when i began to feel sleepy. I blacked out and woke up on the inside of what smelled like an old fish barrel. When i was let out of my smelly prison I was in a glade and surrounded by many of my "own kind." They were a band of cutthroats and bandits. Totter was indeed my kin. The most deplorable of them apparently. I would never tell anyone this but you.. dear book. I wouldn't want anyone else to know I could be related to anyone who felt no shame in some of the things Uncle Totter had done. I will never tell them.
I didnt know where I was. I couldnt have survived on my own. I had nothing and no one now but these people. They taught me their ways. I learned much from them. Much that is useful now but also much that I will never use for the nefarious purposes they tried to influence upon me. I was with them for a few years, and then when I learned I was to wed the son of our leader, I feverishly began looking for ways to leave the band. I believed myself to be so far from my adopted family that I would never find them. On the night I was to wed I slipped my uncle a dose of the same sleeping draught he had used on me to kidnap me, and ran into the forest. Imagine my ecstasy when I found I was only about a weeks ride from my dear mother! I paid a farmer with a potato wagon handsomely to take me home. I had taken most of what my "dear" uncle had on him when I knocked him out, and apparently it was more than that farmer had made in three years selling potatoes. He was quite happy to return me home.
There was much celebrating when I walked in the house. My mother cried and held me shouting that once again we could sell the fairywork gowns that had once made her famous and that now my sisters would make advantageous marriages as they would be able to attend the festivals that they were no longer invited to since her work had fallen out of favor with the nobles. I was so happy to make her happy, book. I love her so very much.
When but two of my sisters had achieved these "advantageous marriages" my mother fell ill. For weeks I was shut away in the attic making lace. I was worried so much for her. I wanted to be at her side. I wanted to hold her and tell her she would be all right. My sisters refused to allow me near her. They said mother insisted I keep working so that she could make more dresses once she was well again. It was never to be. When the healers were able to purge the sickness from her body, she was no longer able to hold a needle, much less handle the heavy lengths of velvets and heavy fabrics needed for the dresses. She gave the dress business to my eldest sister, who had no use for it, as she had been the one to make the most advantageous marriage of them all. Mother was to live with her, and I was to find somewhere to be, as I would not be allowed in her house.
Mother cried and cried. Her life would never be the same. I felt so very bad for her. I wanted to make it better. She said she was cursed for what she did. She made me sit and listen to something that broke my heart. It was the truth about how I came to be her daughter. I cannot yet reveal this to you, dear book, it hurts too much. I cannot write it. Maybe someday. Not tonight.
In the end, she had me sell what was left of my fine lace, and bid me keep the money from it. She gave me you, dear book, and all the ribbons I could carry. She made the ribbons herself from the scraps of the gowns she made over. So beautiful! I found a great use for them too! I will get to that in a moment tho. I can't mention that without first saying that I have friends! Yes, book, real friends! Okay, well, maybe some of them don't see me that way yet, i can't speak for them, but I think they are my friends. Especially Dongan and Braignir. Dongan lets me braid some of my precious ribbons into his beard. His favorites are the red tones. They make his beard look like he has fire pouring from his chin! He has a very soft beard. I thought it would be all pokey when I first saw it but it is quite luxurious.
Braignir doesnt really like me to braid ribbons into his hair. I do it anyway tho. He needs beauty in his life, especially now. He is like a porcupine. He is all bristly and angry and doesnt trust much. I can tell. He is all beauty and strength, though, book. He is kind in his own way, though not to many people. I think the only reason he is kind to me is because I took care of him when he needed it. He was like a hurt animal, book. I had to help him. I did his hair for the first time that day. He wasnt too happy with the dandelion colored ribbons, though they did make his eyes shine and went well with his skin tone. The second time I did his hair he was drunk. I admit I took advantage of the situation... but I couldnt help myself. He earned the name "the rainbow warrior" from the townspeople that day. I dont think he appreciated that. He took all but the blue toned ribbons from his hair. Now that I know he favors that color I have set aside most of the blues for him, and have begun to look for unique ribbons of that color in the shops i visit. Plimble Mae aims to please!
I am sad for Braignir now. Recently he lost the use of one of his arms when we had a fight with a nasty old hermit and his familiar. He almost died, book, and I would not have liked that at all. When we were leaving, one of out party, who i shall not name, as that would be rude... you shouldnt have asked, dear book, shame on you... Anyway, he decided to try to take the body of the familiar we had managed to slay with us. We all told him to do what he wanted as we were leaving and no one wanted him to bring the silly thing. He did as he chose and once again we were in a position to lose more than we already had.
By the grace of whatever Gods chose to take pity on us that day, they killed the crazed old hermit and we got away with out lives. I am ashamed to say that I didnt help in that fight. I was so afraid that Braignir would be killed. He was already laying helpless, barely alive, and I was so angry that the other fool had tried to take the familiar that my only thought was to save Braignir. He told me to run! As if I would just leave him! I tried to drag him by his hair but he was too heavy and I only managed to hurt him, so I covered him with moss and grass and hid while I kept watch over him and waited for the horror to play itself out.
In the end, Braignir was healed but as I said before, he lost the use of one of his arms. One of our new comrades took his own life with the help of another in our party, so that he might be born again. He had lost the use of both arms and he was in despair. So tragic. I sneak into Braigs room at night to make sure he is healing properly and listen to his mutterings. I worry that he longs for the death that Eldrick(i think that was his name.. I didnt know him for long)chose. I hope he doesnt go that route. I will try to be useful to him. He is one of my only friends and I would give much and more to make them all happy, but right now, i think he needs me more than anyone.
That is all for now, Sir Book. I hope that I will live to write more and more in your pages. Until next I take up the quill- Plimble Mae"
