This is the story of the infamous torture scene that took place after my character lost her arm to the BBEG after surrendering in combat in exchange for the life of the group’s ranger whom had during the course of the combat been captured and held hostage. Anyways, so my character wakes up on the cold floor of a subterranean prison cell. She would be in a lot of pain right now considering her arm was just lopped off but it looks like someone healed it to a stump. This of course means that more than anything right now she’s pissed off and concerned about her friends. I immediately ask the DM if I can see any guards and quickly get a layout of my immediate surroundings including my own cell and the corridor it runs along. Apparently I was just left with the one guard and so I hop into stealth using the natural shadows of the dungeon and teleport past the bars grabbing the guard’s keys before letting myself back into the cell the regular way. It was rather fortunate that I had done this so quickly as not moments after I had reseated myself on the floor the BBEG and her attendant arrives and let themselves into my cell, locking the door behind them upon entering. So I think I should point out that the BBEG is a large snake woman. In the guise of the Queen she had appeared to us as a half elf but during our last battle she had revealed her true form and that is how she greeted me now. They stood my character up and the BBEG began to beat her with her bare fists in hopes of breaking both body and spirit but only found her own frustration growing as my character cracked a wicked smirk and spit blood on the face of the BBEG’s attendant. This leads into one of my favorite bad jokes of the encounter. My character, who we will just refer to by Valeryn from here out, while smirking in the face of the BBEG, Sella, painfully coughs out a laugh and says “I have to hand it to you, I didn’t think you could throw a punch.” To which Sella wraps her snake tail around Valeryn’s neck and begins to squeeze stating “Mmm, there’s a lot of things people don’t expect about me.” To which I decided to be especially shitposty and reply with, albeit through choked wheezes, “No yeah, I get it. The whole snake thing.” At which point Valeryn gets gut punched and again spits blood specifically in the attendants face. At this point Sella is visibly unsettled by Valeryn’s refusal to show fear or weakness in her presence and decides to prepare to lunge her bladed tail at Valeryn... However before the blade can reach her throat Valeryn in a cruel almost villainous tone asks “So you don’t care what happens to all of your subjects then?” This stops Sella in her tracks. She is all at once confused and concerned and demands that I elaborate. You see, nerdy as this may seem I had since our first meeting been creating a psychological profile of the Queen with which I determined that she above all was a woman ruled by her own ego. I reasoned that she kept the brainwashed citizens around to feed herself adoration and praise, something she likely wasn’t accustomed to as I had a hunch she had some severe Mommy issues. Turns out I was right. After Sella released her throat Valeryn smugly explained that Sella’s on duty attendant Ophelia had so graciously supplied her with the material she needed for the Find Familiar spell while she had been staying at the palace. She then went onto explain that within a matter of days an army would be arriving from the capitol city that would likely slaughter the brainwashed citizens and their Queen indiscriminately, and all because Valeryn had been able to send a letter via the familiar she had created. During this the words “You may have disarmed me, but I haven’t been declawed.” were uttered. Peek dialog. Anyways, the real issue here was that the DM had previously established that a familiar would not die or be desummoned if the summoner dies in this setting and thusly I have left Sella in a tight spot. Clearly the hawk hasn’t had enough time to reach the capitol but by now it would be pretty close which means that the only way to remedy this would be to have me dismiss my familiar. Valeryn informs her that she’s thinking too small and explains that if she really wants to be sure that the familiar is gone the best course of action would be to have Valeryn resummon it and then kill it. Sella, astonished by Valeryn’s good advice sends Ophelia off to gather the ingredients I’ll need. So long story short during the wait Valeryn explains how she had been onto Sella’s schemes from the start and convinces her that she had played along out of a sense of loyalty. Basically a lot of emotional manipulation going on here in subtle ways to trick the BBEG into trusting Valeryn. Anyways, we come to an agreement that Sella won’t kill or brainwash my friends and let them go in return for Valeryn summoning and killing the bird. It’s at this point that the DM tries to make things uncomfortably lesbian by having Sella coil around Valeryn suggestively and “massage” her.. it was weird but it was also evidence that my plan had worked. I had both the BBEG and the DM wrapped around my finger for the moment. Sella even suggests that I replace her right hand man while we swap tragic backstories, albeit it was said with a weird sexual connotation but I had always suspected she was banging her bodyguards so it wasn’t too surprising. Anyways Ophelia arrives with the stuff I need, I resummon the bird and then strangle it to death as proof of my loyalty. However Sella and by extension the DM is paranoid as fuck because they know they have been thoroughly outsmarted up to this point and thusly Sella proceeds to use all three of her uses of Geas to repeatedly ensure that I didn’t just desummon the bird at the last minute to make it look like I killed it. After that was settled Valeryn complains to Sella that this cell is too cramped for her tastes and Sella has to summon every ounce of her mental fortitude to not just give me my room back up in the palace proper. Instead she has Ophelia gather up some men to bring me a four poster bed down here even though she explains right after that, that I’ll be back in my palace bedroom by tomorrow. According to her it would just look really bad if she let me free of the cell the same day we tried to kill her. This is when I reveal I’ve had the keys all along and she doesn’t even bother taking them from me because as I explain to her I could have left whenever I pleased. After all, one arm or not Sella is aware that Valeryn can still pose a massive threat. Speaking of the arm it was revealed earlier that Sella could totally help Valeryn grow it back. Anyways as Sella is finally leaving Valeryn’s cell she says goodbye and Valeryn in turn says “They’ll never really care about you, you know. You only brought them here as playthings to feed your vanity.” With that Sella stops in her tracks, her eyes widen and the DM begrudgingly describes her pained face as she quickly turns away and leaves. Finally the bed arrives, Valeryn gets herself a long rest and in the dead of night sneaks out, steals a sword of one of the guards, kills him, and proceeds towards Sella’s room in spite of the DM’s protests and whining. To his credit, for once he didn’t pull any bullshit to try and circumvent my ungodly stealth and I made it to her room without any further combat. I made sure she was asleep and then slit her throat without incident. This is were the game ended for me as that immediately devolved into an argument and I was guilt tripped into leaving the group, though it honestly just felt like getting kicked out. He never told the other players what happened and basically retconned my character out of the game. Though, in my head cannon Valeryn took over as the Queen after that, releasing the brainwashed people and sending her friends home while she stayed behind with the lizardfolk to continue training her growing vegepygmy army eventually becoming a well meaning villain in her own right for one of my campaigns.
