You Just Never Know

Trigger Warning: This post has content pertaining to sexual assault. If you are sensitive to this information please DO NOT read on. You read on at your own discretion.

Malachi had been with us from the beginning. My husband met him at work. He was a cook at the time and Malachi was a bartender at the restaurant. We really wanted to start a game of dungeons and dragons but needed people to play with. So my husband invited some of his co-workers over to play with us. There was Mulan, if you’ve read from the beginning you know he was the Fighter. There was Malachi of course and myself. My husband was the Dungeon Master. We played for a few weeks before the table had to dissolve due to some personal issues on Mulan’s side. 

We eventually invited a friend of my husband’s to play with us, Milo. Then we found Kariss on the dndbeyond.com forums and invited him to play. We invited Malachi back for a second attempt at a table and our game in Barovia took off. We played through the whole module and moved into a homebrew portion that my husband wanted to try. This is when we get to the island of Novos. 

We made it to the Grand Guild Games before all hell broke loose and we had no Malachi to help us. We kind of had him in the background because my husband played him at a basic capacity but it wasn’t the same. We wondered for weeks where he was but couldn’t reach him. I had worked in repo before and knew that sometimes people went to jail for whatever reason. I was used to looking up the county records for proof that a customer was in jail and couldn’t pay. Malachi had had a few DUI’s before and I thought he might be in the drunk tank for the weekend or maybe the hospital if that didn’t work out. 

Well, we found him. It wasn’t a DUI. He was in jail for some sort of sex crime with a minor. I’m not sure of the details. There wasn’t much to find out because when covid hit there was so much backlog in the justice system that it took months for there to be a change. Eventually we heard that he had been convicted and that was that. We haven’t heard from or about him since. 

We didn’t have children so there was a collective sigh of relief from myself and my husband. The rest of the table was also relieved. I think we all felt like we had dodged a bullet. It was especially devastating for the group because there is a certain bond that forms when a party is together for that long. We all became friends and our home was open to them all. Malachi had been an enthusiastic player and was always excited for the next adventure. But that was now all gone. 

The saddest part was that even though we wanted nothing to do with the individual who played Malachi the Barbarian, we all missed the character. He had been a sort of big brother and protector to my Bard, Aleera, and was best friends with Milo. They had been Bigs and Smalls. They had taken on the arena at Vendelheim and won. The whole thing was surreal and I just feel a pit in my stomach when I think of it. 

Now we work by referral only. The current members of the table can invite people over to watch or take part in a trial session but they must vouch for them and we still do our own research on the side just to be sure. We have since added only one person to the table and he is awesome. I want to look forward and see the positive in life after this. Sometimes you just never know. People can be kind, sincere, and even honest to an extent. People will always have the capacity to be both good and evil. I will continue to keep an eye out and hope this never happens again.