“If anyone reads this, please know: I fought harder to trust them than I ever fought an enemy.”

“Is it true that great stories only happen to those who can tell them well? If so, I really hope I can be an exception to that. Sitting here by the window of the tavern quarters, murmuring the last three months’ events to myself, I realize my recounting sounds as dry and lifeless as items on a ledger. Every moment — crossing the frontier, trailing the river through Neverwinter Wood, the rocky path to Phandalin — it all slips out in quick, colorless fragments. I barrel through the weeks in what sounds like a blunt and unfeeling take on my first adventure outside the Underdark. But when I speak of my companions, something changes. My lips lift of their own accord and a rush of words pours out, vivid and full of life. Their strength, their conviction, the way their words make me pause and reflect, or simply wrap me in their warmth — the “Javelins” paint a story far richer than my own. And so I wonder: maybe my story can still be great because it is no longer mine alone.”

“Fanesca: Surface Delver” is a series of entries I wrote (with some AI assistance to keep a semi-consistent tone) about my character’s experience as I play Dungeons & Dragons: “Lost Mine of Phandelver.” It may have begun as a prewritten adventure, but our player characters’ backstories inspired such a rich expansion of the world, I’ll honestly never forget playing it. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried (straight up sobbed), I’ve woven verbal prose I didn’t know I was capable of, and my friends inspired so much fanart (which will be shared in these entries someday).

(CONTENT WARNING: fantasy violence, blood/gore, torture, sexual assault implcations, trauma, death)