In September, Anna Blackwell released on Patreon the Familiar Shelter Volunteer’s Guidebook which is an expansion to Apothecaria. This expansion gives your character something to do during downtime.

Your character can volunteer at the High Rannoc Shelter for Familiars and complete tasks for the familiars. If they complete all the tasks they earn the familiars trust and can use their ability. Your character can also adopt a familiar as long as they have earned their trust.

Before releasing the expansion she asked if people wanted to memorialize past pets as familiars. I decided to submit one of my first pets that I had as an adult.

I had two ferrets; Misty & Lilith aka “The Inseparable Duo”. They did everything together, play, eat, sleep, steal things, cause mischief, etc.  Both had a lot of energy. Constantly running around, jumping and climbing. They were like cats on catnip all the time. Lilith got her name because she attacked her sister and gave her a permanent limp. So we thought she was going to be a little trouble maker. That didn’t turn out to be the case. She was actually quite calm.  We think she only attacked her sister because of the stress of being in a new environment. Misty was named because she had a silver coat.  As she aged though it turned white. Misty turned out to be the most mischievous of the two. Misty was the leader and Lilith always followed. When they were out of their cage, they loved running around and exploring and looking for things to steal and hide in their favorite hiding spots; under the futon, under our bed or in their cage.  They would steal anything they could easily move like keychains, pens, bottle caps, small plush.  They would even try to steal large plush toys that were way bigger than them. Though they usually wouldn’t get very far. 

Sadly Lilith developed a tumor on the top of her head.  It developed insanely quickly. Vet said due to her age and with how fast the tumor was growing that it was best to not do surgery and to take her home and that we would know when it was time. Eventually her quality of life declined and we took her to get euthanized. When we came back Misty went crazy looking for her sister and was never the same. She became very depressed, wouldn’t leave her cage and if we brought her out she’d just go back in, and barely played. About a month or so later she stopped eating and was barely moving so we immediately took her to the vet.  It turned out she had tumors inside her abdomen and due to her age and how bad she was it was recommended we euthanize her. We went with the vets recommendation.  I don’t know if there is an afterlife but if there is I hope they are happy together causing mischief.

I felt bad choosing between the two so I sent her both and told her, she could pick whichever she wanted. But instead of picking just one of them she came up with an awesome idea to include both while still only taking up one slot. Basically they would be a single familiar bonded together. Misty would be a ghost ferret that would lead Lilith into mischief.

Besides my ferrets, there are also cats, dogs, a rat, a spider, a chinchilla and more. I think it was really nice of her to let some of us memorialize our past pets in her game. I can’t wait to try the expansion.

Notes:

* A harpy is a mythological creature that is half-human, half-bird. The harpies in my story are humanoid with wings, clawed feet and clawed hands. They can fly fast and many choose to be in the delivery services. The postal harpies wear a light grey uniform with the Postal Harpies Express logo.

Notes:

* A boobrie is a mythological shapeshifting creature that lives in lochs.

* The riddle is the same one the sphinx asked Oedipus in greek mythology. 

Prologue

Notes:

* I started my journal on Winter, Week 11 to create a prologue but I still started the actual game on Spring, Week 1.

* On the first entry, after the sentence "I of course happily agreed." It should start "She said she would teach me.." I accidentally missed the first two words and didn't notice it till much later and was unable to fix it.

* The rainbow trees in The Iridescent Forest are based on rainbow eucalyptus trees. Unfortunately I forgot to use my references so they don't actually look like them. It would not have been possible to fix them so I just left them alone.

* The letter from Aunt Meriam is almost entirely word for word from the Apothecaria book. Only the last few sentences were changed to fit my story.