DND 5E: Lai'ee Eeneeh
An analysis on a DnD Character
In June of 2021, I created the concept for a character for 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons that I thought might be entertaining and interesting to play. It boiled down to “how far can I push flavor, and still make something functional?”
The result is Lai’ee Eeneeh - a mute alien from Spelljammer.
“But Rhakon,” I hear you saying, “Spelljammer doesn’t work with 5E!” And you would be correct - the game systems don’t work well together, but that isn’t the goal here. There aren’t any Spelljammers popping up, no interdimensional space adventuers, rather instead it is a character that once had the ability to traverse this domain that is now forced to walk on but a single world.
I pulled from a lot of different elements to create this. It pre-dated the Endwalker expansion for FF14 which had so many similarities invoked that I was honestly giggling the entire time I played the expansion, because the narrative strokes were so similar. I also enjoy the fallen angel trope and thought I could create a fun twist by making this a case where the alien isn’t simply “above it all” or otherwise used as a negative commentary on humanity and the humane experience. Instead, it is used as a mechanism to explore what it means to exist as a person, and how the challenges involved in interacting with the presuppostions of people can often result in isolation.
For an alien who is already isolated by the fact of their existence, there then comes the double isolation of being unable to speak.
It was a deliberate choice. For those who play DND, they’ll immediately note the increasing difficult represented there, because for any caster class a verbal component is pretty much mandatory for spells. The natural conclusion would be the avoid a caster and focus on a martial class - someone with a sword or something similar.
Yet, me being me, I decided on a caster class anyways. I chose a Simic Hybrid Artificer Armorer.
Simic Hybrid easily allows for the alienesque elements I was seeking, especially with its mutation aspects. The Armorer let me double layer this too - the subclass allows you to wear armor that can look like anything you want really, and better yet it cannot be removed without your consent.
Why does this matter? I’ll get to it in a second here.
Another element that was critical for Lai’ee was the notion of them not actually being the entire entity. Rather, they’re a symbiot that is itself now deprived of its host: the Spelljammer. Not only did I rob them of agency, I robbed them of their sense of purpose as well (and some other fun little bits). Since I’m a bit of an evil writer in what I do to my characters, I also pulled in one of my other characters (whom I will detail in another character post) in a rather fun way.
Remember the Armorer bit? It acts as a permanent “second skin”.
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Can you guess what I did yet?
…
To avoid spoilers until later, I’ll take this opportunity to segue into some of the other experimental bits with the character. One of the advantages of playing an alien is you can essentially create both an entirely new psychology and a new ethics system that they use. I decided on something not wholly unknowable, and more or less turned them into a Good aligned character: they want to help, it’s their way. And for those who know me personally, this is probably not a surprise since that is a reoccuring theme for characters I create or comment on. For Lai’ee though it means more than just helping the old lady across the road.
They want to truly help. So when they are first introduced to the world and see the startling degree of horrible conditions present, their reaction is to want to help the entire world. An obviously impossible task that they inately understand to be impossible, but one that acts as a compulsion anyways. It has led to some fascinating instances already in the time I’ve played them.
Another fun element is seeing how people react to their agender nature. I specifically wrote Lai’ee as having no defined gender, as the concept doesn’t exist for their species. More or less, they reproduce like a sponge. Lai’ee then functions as a clone of a clone of a clone. For players, they tend to then assign their own mentally identifying genders when describing Lai’ee, which is both perfectly acceptable to the character and incredibly fascinating for me as a player and writer.
In a single instance, I saw Lai’ee being referred to as “him” “they” and “her” by three different players.
This lends a significant weight in my mind regarding how successful I feel they have been - in narrative terms, they are outstandingly successful. Their outlook is motivated by a desire to help but mitigated by a high INT score - meaning they understand they cannot have the power to truly help others on the scale they desire, nor would that even be justified. They’re not of that world, their own systems and beliefs wouldn’t work here and the people present possess a different set of instincts and innate features. Yet, they still have shaped things, helped others, mitigated conflicts, and even successfully talked down a final boss encounter. Yes that’s right, a mute character talked their way through a boss encounter - through incredibly well done roleplay that involved multiple people working together. Something only achievable because of the friends made along the way.
Yeah, it’s a bit sappy, but that I think is also a critical component of Lai’ee. They really do believe these things. They genuinely have faith in others and genuinely believe in the potential of life.
Which brings us to something a bit on the darker side.
Lai’ee is a symbiot - that means they cannot exist on their own. So what were they attached to?
Who said it was past tense attachment?
The Spelljammer is a part of them, but not all of them. So what is?
Ahhh for that, we must look inside our little symbiot. Remember that character I mentioned who I plan to go into detail about in another post?
The Lai’ee entity is more or less “the armor” and within is what they refer to as The Vestige. It’s about as dark as it sounds. The Vestige is the vestigial remnant of the being that they called “friend” that came from Ravnica. When Lai’ee went there, they were cut off from the Spelljammer during an attack, and in an act of sacrifice, their friend defended Lai’ee from being killed, only to be mortally wounded in return.
Not really knowing what else to do, Lai’ee emeshed themselves around this friend, keeping them in a perpetual state of “alive” and yet partially “dead”. They’re still in there, driving Lai’ee to an extent. Thus, The Vestige. Lai’ee is fully aware of this, and really, the two of them have created a new gestalt-entity as a result. The Lai’ee of before was more distant then the one people have encountered now. More driven by their mission.
What is their mission you might ask? Well, simply put, it is to explore. Explore the universe, assess potential threats to Home, report back. Alternatively, you could see Lai’ee as the magical equivilent of a Beserker Probe. For those who don’t know, Beserker Probes are a theoretical Dark Forest answer to the Fermi Paradox in which when certain conditions on a planet are met, the probe turns on and blows it up. You can see a very good example here:
Does that mean Lai’ee goes boom?
Not necesarily. Lai’ee of the now is “off mission” so to speak. They’ve been in space an extremely long time. Home may not even exist anymore. Plus, Lai’ee is no longer bound to the Spelljammer. Now, it is them and The Vestige. Now they’re something Other.
For those who have read all the way through, you’ve probably picked up on all the various tropes I’ve been using for this character. To better break it down, here’s a very simple bullet point list.
Alien traveler
“Fallen Angel”
Mute
Empathic
Is not what they appear to be
Within, lies another soul
Meant for one purpose, chooses another
To add to this, the character also speaks in older English phrases, with lots of thee’s and thy and thou’s. I chose this because the semiotics of the worlds should be distinct and different, with Lai’ee’s formality in language use a result both of inability to understand the nuances of casual conversation and because this is simply how they think. As time goes on and The Vestige slowly recovers, we’ll have to see how this impacts them.
I hope you all enjoyed this look into the character! If you’d like to take a look at the raw file where I just dot down ideas and explore things, see here!
The species and a lot of the influences for their culture come from an entirely different world building project of mine that has been in the works for over 15 years now. Undecided if I’ll post it here or not as of yet.
As Lai would say, “This journey be but one step along thy chosen Path.”
