Heeey look it's Milo, my cat gunslinger from the Wolfriders of Malvia Pathfinder game that you may remember I dumped a whole lot of pictures for on here last year. Alongside him, though, is a character I mentioned in a in a previous picture of Milo, the otter captain from Katzch, Wayd Ajeem al-Akkari.

So, for context, I mentioned in another previous picture of Milo and his friends that, at that time, they had been TPW'd by what we had presumed to be the final boss but actually wasn't, being sent to Hell in a weird loophole situation so we could find our way back to the Material Plane in order to stop the apocalypse. A lot of things happened in Hell that I won't go into detail over (a lot of walking, a lot of shooting, a lot of devil-killing), but along the way, who should the group come across but the aforementioned Wayd, who Milo had killed earlier in a duel to the death, imprisoned with some other Katzchians. She had had her memories restored after her death, and she remembered and told Milo how hateful she had become after certain devestation befell her comrades and friends at the frontlines of war, with a plague of locust-like insect monsters laying the land bare and unsympathetic/abusive Malvians using their dying/starving statuses to take their stuff and them prisoner. I didn't mention this in the previous picture, but the Katzchians in Wayd's squad were also carting around a sample of said bug monsters in a big metal box, having planned to unleash them on the Wolfriders' home city, Wayd citing her hatred from those conditions being her motivation, and also likely the reason she was in Hell now.

Well, Milo, with his own experiences, was empathetic and forgiving of Wayd, and after being freed, Wayd tagged along with the party and helped them with their fight. Milo and Wayd had already been bonding before their duel, and, as time went on and the adventure in Hell continued (we fought and "killed" the Tarrasque a couple times, no big deal), that bonding continued throughout the journey until it grew into an outright romance. They talked to each other more about their histories and their families, they slept next to each other, and they fought alongside one another, keeping each other from going down more than once. Once the partyhad all finally made it out of Hell, Milo used a portion of a Ring of Three Wishes they had stored to bring Wayd back to full life, and the two openly declared their love for each other before Milo had to go off with the rest of the party to save the world.

Milo by design was meant to be an extremely closed-off, withdrawn, anti-social, and secretive person, and while his opening up to his fellow party members and his revealing of his tragic backstory were always meant to happen, him falling in love was something I really never anticipated happening. At that point in the campaign, everyone in the party except Milo were paired up with someone else, and I was honestly just expecting Milo to keep going solo. Wayd had initially been another tragic point for Milo, having bonded with someone else from his country but needing to cut her life short to prevent his own demise, but her popping up once again in Hell was fairly unexpected (I had actually been expecting to see Milo's brother at some point, and while there was a fake-out, it turns out his brother wasn't in Hell at all to Milo's relief), and the continuation of that bonding they had had previously just naturally blossomed into legit love, which was really nice for Milo and myself, so much so that I felt I needed to get this drawing of the two together out of my system back in February to celebrate it.

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