Bombyx

Official image of Bombyx, drawn by @grace.pptx on Instagram

Bombyx Mori is a Reborn Swarmkeeper Ranger played by Amelia, and one of the main characters in Arc 3. Her name, "Bombyx Mori", is the scientific name for the silkworm, which is the animal she has as her swarm. "Mori" is also a form of the latin word for "death".

## Description

Bombyx Mori is a tall Reborn who is human-like in appearance but with pointy ears. They have warm copper skin ("like she goes out in the sun and enjoys it"), dark brick red hair, which is usually tied up in a knot or ponytail, and a tattoo of a mulberry plant on her left arm with the seed pods being on her palm and the twigs and leaves on their arm. She has piercing brown eyes in an otherwise gentle face.

Normally, Bombyx wears fine silk from her own production and no armor. During Arc 3, she wears crop tops in green or sage colours. During the Arc 3 Flashback, she wears a top, a vest that is white at the top and rainbow perlescent at the bottom, and baggy harem pants in navy blue. Around their shoulder they have slung a little bag containing the removed branch of a mulberry tree and their swarm of silkworms. Over the course of the episodes of Arc 3, the silkworms grew from eggs to fully-grown worms, and she replaced the tree branch when the leaves were eaten off by the worms. When the worms hatch from their eggs, they usually start crawling around on her body a bit.

Her weapon of choice is the bow, and she is usually seen wearing one slung over her shoulder in the opposite direction of the bag.

Their magic item is a Key to Paradise, with which they can open any door to reveal a beautiful garden. Fitting to this one, all of her keys are silver and tarnished, so that they match.

## Personality

Bombyx has a very content personality and although she has lived more lives than she can count, she always appreciates the smell of greenery and roses. She sometimes appears careless, but when talking to friends and strangers alike she can also show great amounts of sympathy and understanding. They, for example, fear that Jim might be lonely so they seem to consider setting him up with somebody. Also, when the party wanted to talk to Queen Lilliana and Princess Sybilla immediately, they insisted on giving them more time to themselves in a difficult situation.

She loves her silkworm swarm and is rarely seen without them. She also deeply cares for them, as indicated through the facts that she developed a silk making technique with which she would not have to murder the worms, sings for them so that they grow up smart, and buys them things like granite stones to enjoy. When not adventuring, Bombyx runs a silk empire that makes and sells only the finest silks.

Her most prominent fault is her struggle to accurately estimate time, leading to her constantly being late or missing things completely. Additionally, her memory is not the best either. This not only leads to her forgetting to reach out to her old party members after they split, but also in regularly forgetting when they reached out to her. She, for example, barely retained anything Annie wrote in her quarterly newsletter and never answered, and forgot to come to Diarmad's rebirth ceremony as she thought that it was several months later than it was.

Bombyx has a hard time sitting still. They like picking up things, sometimes even licking them, and are usually the first to go to a new place when the rest of the party is still deciding on whether to go or not.

Bombyx has strong opinions, especially about clothes, capitalism and monarchy, and rarely keeps them to themselves. She describes herself as "brutally honest", and this sometimes even leads to her or the whole party getting in trouble. The last time before Arc 3 that Bombyx spoke to the king, for example, the whole party was arrested for three months, although it is unclear why.

While she sometimes steals from people, she apparently doesn't do it because of a kleptomaniac side, but because of her political ideas: she does not think of it as stealing, but deliberately takes things that could be useful from wealthy people that they aren't using like Count Michael, from whom she stole a +2 longbow and a Cloak of Elvenkind.

## Background and Arc 3 Flashback

Bombyx does not remember a lot from her 1000 years of life, but since she knows both Sylvan and Elvish, she assumes that she might have been an Elf at some point not too long ago. As a Reborn, she has had multiple bodies, and when she has had a body that was able to give birth she sometimes died in childbirth and was immediately reborn as her own child (see The Lives of Bombyx Mori).

Despite her old age, she has had little influence on the events of the last 1000 years, even though on multiple occasions she expresses politically left, anti-capitalist and/or anti-monarchist ideas and opinions. She spent most of her life in the forest, sitting in trees, making silk, and scaring humans away, tending to avoid engaging with politics. Instead, she just focused on expanding her knowledge of the silkmaking process, which by now is incredibly vast. Apparently, they were the first one to domesticate silk worms, before which they spent a lot of time in the forest looking for soft insects that would be compatible with swarming. However, they have since forgotten this fact. Also, they might have been a thief a few centuries ago, explaining why they could easily break into Annie's apartment. She claims that once, someone cut off her head, and also that she knew a wizard named Althior, who killed her three times before they eventually became friends. It is possible that Althior also became a lich at some point, however she is unsure whether this is a sure fact.

Four years prior to the events of Arc 3, she was recruited by Lathe Nightrym and joined the party. During their first job in the town of Yelna, Fey Moss bought her a wolf for 100gp from Crimno Crumley's pet shop. At first, she wanted to name the wolf Lathe, and then settled for Lathe Junior when her teammates pointed out that that name might lead to confusion. It is unclear what has since happened to the wolf, maybe she set him free, maybe Jim takes care of it now.

Between the first adventure of the Arc 3 party and Arc 3 itself, Bombyx established her silkworm trade and became a kind of tycoon in her field - she is a self-proclaimed girlboss. Her silks are actually widely known and Fey Moss orders exclusively from her. Thanks to her technique, she does not have to murder the worms to get to the silk, but instead sees them as her friends. In addition to that, she has a technique that allows her to imbue the silks she produces with more magic.

It seems like Bombyx has a single helper in her silk business, which is Jim, her fertilizer guy. He is very young and also quite inexperienced, and Bombyx just picked him up in a tavern, gave him a job, and practically made him her right hand man. She references him from time to time to the party, and whenever she was not able to make it to one of Fey's performances, she just sent Jim there in her stead.

Apparently, at some point Bombyx's silkworm business was blighted so that she had to re-build it, although it is unclear when in the timeline that event happened.

Bombyx has an apparently unresolved conflict with a tailor named Yvette Tauron, who works for Gem Lovejoy, because Yvette does not buy their silk.

## Character Arc

Over the course of Arc 3, Bombyx not only shows her chaotic, forgetful, and loud-mouthed side, but also how much she cares, both for her friends and for people who are as good as strangers. They take the time to care for Queen Lilliana after the attack on her daughter, and insist on giving Sybilla as much time as possible before having to ask her about what happened.

After the adventure, they plan on taking Jim to Tyle, introducing him to Princess Sybilla and teaching him how to stay alive when they are not there in addition to helping him navigate whatever effects having been resurrected with the Infinite Garnet might have on him. Then, she will continue running her silk business. She plans to send Penny Lovejoy a single dress made out of her silk to convince her to buy silk from her, even though making business with the Lovejoys is no longer a priority. They want to make more of an effort to see their friends, invite Annie out once in a while and steal her spellbook so that she cannot focus on studying all the time and has to relax, too. They also want to help Annie through her difficulties and grieving process a bit more.

## Amelia Stats

This is to track how many times Amelia brings something from this world into DnD.

Total: 8

Episode 1

* [00:07:45] - "They do **Bar Mitzvahs** here?"
* [00:12:36] - "Oh, do you have **sparkling water**?"
* [00:17:21] - "I was asked to deliver this letter. I was tempted to open it, but that is a **felony.**"
* [00:17:32] - "It has a seal on it, which I know that's how all letters are sealed here, because **glue** doesn't exist"
* [01:15:01] - "We should go get some **gyros**."

Episode 4

* [00:14:28] - "You hear this sort of lyrical, like harp version of **Closing Time**"
* [00:20:22] - "Is this because of the **Christmas** party?"

Episode 7

* [01:52:52] - "You always trust local reviews. We don't want **Yelp**."

## Trivia

* Amelia was the first player neither Gus nor Haley knew in person before playing this arc.
* Amelia decided to play a Ranger to "broaden her horizons", which is connected to the running gag in the DnD community that Rangers are the worst class to play. There is an ongoing, although playful "fight", between Ranger supporters and Ranger haters.
* Before she decided on silkworms, Amelia's first idea was to go "full on Jane Prentiss" and use wasps instead. (Jane Prentiss is a character from the horror fiction podcast The Magnus Archives.) Ultimately, the fact that one can make a business with silkworms made the decision for them.
* Bombyx is kind of a self-insert for Amelia, especially as a personification of her ADHD, or what would happen if you would leave Amelia to their own devices for 1000 years.
* As a free expertise, Bombyx has Nature. Amelia was torn between Nature and Animal Handling.
* Amelia rolled really high for Bombyx's stats.
* Before Arc 3, Amelia was most excited to play a Ranger and do ranged combat, and also to do "creepy shit with worms".
* Bombyx's favourite colour is cerulean.
* They give good and calming head scratches, and also like to kiss people on the forehead.
* In the intro of Episode 7, Amelia took the initiative to ask Haley to give them 1 DM inspiration. Later in the episode they used it and rolled a Nat 1.
* Originally, "Salas" was the name Amelia had wanted to use for Bombyx, until they found the scientific name for silkworms and decided that that was a way cooler name. They later used the name Salas for a different character, their backup character for Arc 6.
* Thavius is Bombyx's uncle through marriage