Love is in the air! Read on for some of your favorite Fandible characters’ thoughts on love and romance!

Byron Clayton of the Clayton Manor (Unhallowed Metropolis)

I have written this letter a thousand times. I have said the words to you in the opium dens of the Eastside and within the confines of my dreams at night. These words are not old. They are not new. They have always existed because they go beyond a statement. They are fact. They are truth — like the air we breathe and the blight we all suffer.

In our history, people speak of star crossed lovers who suffer the pangs of love the instant they lock eyes. Yet, my condition towards you go beyond this — my love for you transcends petty words and actions. It delves deeper, past the strength that such an emotion gives. To fear.

My love for you frightens me to silence. It frightens me like a vampire fears the predator eye of the dhampyre. It does not give me strength nor does it give me power. The love I feel for you drains me of what I hold most dear — my inability to care. Like the devil himself staring up at a cross and remember what had been and what could of been, I find myself searching myself and realizing that I am left wanting.

I have written this letter a thousand times. I will write this letter a thousand more until my hand loses the strength to lift the quill. And it is only then that I will take the moment to utter with dying breath:

“I have missed your singing”

That is all that I deserve to say. That is all I deserve to give you. You are beyond the petty obsession of one lonely noble.

Let your beauty never be touched by the Blight,

Byron Clayton

  Byron Clayton of the Clayton Manor

Dear Lady Craven,

It was a pleasure meeting with you last night. I hope you will accept this gift as a sign of my adoration.

– Byron

Drake Raven (Monster Hearts)
Love by Drake Raven

Love is the most acceptable clinical psychosis in the modern world. Its place in our wretched, delusional society is so high that the pain and death that it leaves in its wake is seen as something to be revered. So coveted is this emotion that we still enjoy watching a play about two lovers killing themselves over a love that cannot be. Maybe it’s because as we get older we can’t imagine anything other than being young and in love. Maybe we lose our ability to be in love as we get older. Maybe that’s the point.

Love can seem at first like the delicate patter of rain against a window. Everything about it is hypnotic, beautiful and serene. But what it hides is a coming storm. A tempest (sorry, I’m writing an essay on Shakespeare for A.P. English that’s due, like, tomorrow) of turmoil and gale-force winds, harming destroying laying waste to everything in its path. We don’t even realize the danger we’re in until it’s too late! But by then we have gone mad, dancing like fools in the torrential downpour and screaming into the unforgiving wind that we never wish for the storm to end. Our last bit of reason leaves us when we, without a hint of remorse, tell others to join us in the turbulent madness. We sing its praises as we are drenched to the bone.

Sometimes someone will try to steal your storm. Do not let them. Love is a battlefield.

Granik (Shadowrun)
Shaman of the Honey Badger

Love? Love is a complete and total bitch. No seriously, she should be a complete and total bitch. What sort of man wants someone reasonable in a relationship? No, you man up and go after the one who screams out insults at you. The one with fists that clip you for every slight, both real and imagined. Nothing better to get all the right bits going then a good fight. Hell, if she starts with the bat, you’ve got a keeper.

I was with a troll girl once. She could throw a punch like a tank. The time she threw me into a wall was the closest thing to joy I have ever felt. Almost cracked a smile. Had to dump her though, she got soft. Tried to hug me once.

But those babies who think everything should be flowers and candies look at me like I’m broken. They talk about romance or soft words. Fuck them, I say. Do you think your opinion matters to me? I am Granik, Shaman of the Honey Badger and I DONT GIVE A SHIT!!!!

Moira Clayton née Hepburn (Unhallowed Metropolis)
The last page from the diary of Moira Clayton, heavily scratched out and blotted with ink, dated just over one year ago

Dear Diary,

Horatio’s grueling schedule continues to make my heart feel heavier than I think I can bear. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say “the honeymoon is over.” Oh do not get me wrong – my love for Horatio is stronger than ever before. He is the light in my life and shows me daily how to be a better person than I was the day before. But the day-to-day duties of the eldest son of a noble house such as the Claytons require long hours, sometimes with rather unsavory characters, and that’s outside of his humanitarian efforts that often bring him face to face with an even rougher sort.

I fear what his passion may mean for our future.

Perhaps he can be convinced to lighten his burden if he knew there were something special waiting for him at home every night. I sometimes get lost in a reverie imagining him coming home after a long day, perhaps after assisting factory workers in organizing, or visiting the over-crowded orphanage. Dinner would be waiting for him, and there would be two of us waiting for him at the table. A darling son with Horatio’s caring eyes and, if I may be so bold to hope, my own biting wit. Horatio would be charmed by the child, laughing at his antics, and more and more eager every night to cut his official duties short to come home to his family, our happy trio.

I am finally ready to give him the exciting news I’ve for several weeks now. I have asked to prepare a special breakfast for just the two of us tomorrow – dear Mother will be taking a long sleep after another rousing night of bridge (and sherry) and Byron has agreed to shoulder some of the family’s burdens and attend a meeting and give a speech in Horatio’s place. My reveries will no longer be mere dreams soon. I am with            

In truth, the honeymoon cannot be over. I have never loved him so much.

Reynaldo Macharius, Captain of the Shadow Labyrinth (Rogue Trader)
Love in the Koronus Expanse (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Xenos)

There is a saying among those who deal with Rogue Traders such as myself: we have no love in our hearts, only greed. Or if we do love, we reserve it for that fickle mistress: The Lady Profit. They are, of course, absolutely correct. Ask yourself: where is the profit, what’s the margin, on a thing like love? There isn’t any. It’s a fool’s gambit at best, to spend so much time and energy on something so ephemeral. And besides… why bother putting in so much effort on something destined to fail? Human life is cheap, hardly worth the effort it takes to build up a proper romance. You wine them, and dine them, and spend quite a bit more money than you normally would have, all to get a bit of extra time with them, and then you turn around and the object of one’s affections has been devoured by Warp demons during one of those far too common Gellar Field fluctuations while traversing the Warp. Really, who has time for that nonsense? I’ve got a ship to run.

… still. The void of space is cold, and even in a ship like mine, teeming with life both human and otherwise, it can get.. lonely. And one wonders. Could there be, out there, somewhere in one of those vast, uncounted worlds and glimmering stars, someone who’s heart beats as mine does? Someone who, like me, realizes that there is no place in Profit for silly things like hating all Xenos on sight? Who knows.. perhaps that someone might even be Xenos themselves.

Computer, delete this entry once I’m done.

Ahem. It might not be so bad. To face the coming storm with a like-hearted soul beside me. Maybe a Captain herself. With her own ship. A ship full of trade goods, passengers of various races, and creative interior design. The kind of ship I will be glad to add to my growing fleet of vessels with which to spread trade and profit throughout the sector, after I’ve tricked her into meeting me for dinner at a neutral point while my trusty crew (and Barsher) boards and takes over her vessel. Ah, such lovely times we’ll have, then.

You know what they say, after all: in the grim dark future we have carved away here for ourselves, there is only love. And war. Mostly war, really.

Fandible.Com is now on Patreon! If you enjoy our weekly blog posts and actual play podcasts, please consider supporting us.