Stuffed Tarrasque

The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome.

My character has a stuffed tarrasque.

No, not a real one. just a little one that he carries around with him.

In all other regards, he's a tough mercenary who lacks any sense of a soft side. He takes what he wants whenever he wants it. and respects no one who can't beat him in a fight. I will admit that it's somewhat jarring for such a character to carry around a stuffed animal, but I'm rather prone to allowing my characters to think for themselves. and this guy really likes his tarrasque toy.

The other players in my group simply considered it an eccentricity of the character and didn't think too much about it, especially because their characters were far weirder and had odder habits and traits. However, my DM started to obsess about the stuffed animal.

I didn't originally intend to hide the "story" behind the stuffed animal from my DM. but when he first asked me what my characters reason for it was. I got a sense that it wasn't really the mood to explain it. I just dodged the question, fully intending to explain myself later, but my DM's attitude suddenly soured and he demanded to know, saying that characters couldn't have any secrets that the DM didn't know.

I decided to simply refuse that idea by not telling him the reason why my character had a stuffed animal, and I had enough cheek to still ask for his "permission" for my character to have a stuffed animal. He likely would have refused if he could come up with a reason that wouldn't invalidate everyone else's characters, but without such a reason he gave me his permission.

It wasn't even a really interesting "story." He just received the toy as a child, and no one ever explained that only children play with toys. It was just supposed to be a minor note of my character, a way to show that he didn't care what others thought about him and that he had different ideas of what made a man a man.

However, my refusal to speak about it made everyone think there was some melodramatic story behind the toy, like it was the last gift from his dying mother or a memento of a slain son. I tried to keep the toy as just something that was listed on his character sheet under "Items," but my DM just couldn't get over the fact that I was keeping a part of my characters story to myself.

The DM tried to make my character's life difficult, by having villagers ridicule him for carrying around the toy and people treating him like he had the mind of a child. When he realized this didn't bother me and some good roleplaying resulted from it, he decided to change tact by trying to get rid of the toy.

Fireballs started to damage our items. Thieves began to regularly visit us in the night. Ethereal Filchers, Raggomoffyns, moths and mold, sunlight and dirt, everything in the world that could either damage, steal or eat my character's toy was thrown at it. Of course, my character would try to protect the tarrasque, often very enthusiastically, until my characters sole defining trait was how much he cared about the toy.

Finally, it happened. A black dragon's acid breath. Poor reflex saves, and an overwhelming amount of damage. Half of my backpack was destroyed, and the stuffed animal wasn't the hardiest of objects.

My DM couldn't help but smile. We both understood how a story was created, and my character had a very small window in which he had a chance to explain the toy's story. When one of the other players asked him about it, he would either have to explain it, or it would just be decided that he never had a story to begin with and they toy would be eventually forgotten as just a weird quirk of my character. It was either reveal the story while it was relevant, or throw away the chance forever.

As much as I didn't want to tell the DM my story, I had to admit that I was trapped. It was just how the story had to go. Otherwise, it would be a bad story.

So, after we had killed the black dragon, the opportunity arose. A player asked me why I had cared so much about the toy.

I asked the group if they ever had any toys when they were children. After a brief moment, they all (except for the drow rogue) said they had.

I asked them if they really cared about a particular toy, really cared about it, took it with them everywhere.

Some of them had. Oddly enough, the DM chimed in, saying he remembered also having a stuffed animal he carried around with him everywhere until he was eight. I ignored him, and continued.

I asked them what happened to that toy. There was a moment of silence as the players thought about it, and I helped them with an answer. "You lost it, right?"

"You couldn't find it one day, and you looked everywhere for it. You asked your parents if they had seen it, and they said it would turn up. So, you cried a little here and there, but only because you were lonely. You still thought that you would find it eventually."

"Every few days you would search around the house, around the yard, thinking up new places to look even though you knew all the places it could be. The days stretched into weeks, into months, until you lost hope, and had to accept that it was gone. You'd never see it again."

"You didn't realize. You never even imagined. It never crossed your mind that something could convince your parents that you were too old to carry a toy with you everywhere. That's because you can't see it that way. You don't understand this idea that losing that toy will let you better fit in with society. You don't believe that it will help you learn about coping with grief and loss, and will make you more mature."

"The thing you really can't understand is how your parents can give you something, allow you to grow to love it, to love it more than anything else, and then take it away from you."

"I watched my parents take mine. They thought I was asleep."

"I left my home that night, because I couldn't understand. I couldn't understand what kind of person could see someone love something, to genuinely care about it. and to take it away from them."

My DM sat across from me, but he couldn't look at me.