Kai Nightwolf

NAME: Kai Nightwolf

AGED: 23

OCCUPATION: Medicine Woman

CANON: Dungeons & Dragons: The Middlesex Campaign

Have you heard George Carlin’s latest idea for world peace? It’s simple: every person in the world has to get in a parallel line and shake the hands of the people in the other line. In other words, if everybody knew each other a little better in spite of the races and cultures, they’d be less likely to kill each other because they’d develop empathy that way. Before the Dungeons & Dragons world even heard of Electra and Sandra Nightwolf, there was a completely different tribeswoman who would break down racial barriers through her romantic escapades with Brutus Warcry. Her name was Kai Nightwolf.

Kai was not a warrior in any sense of the word. Her role within the Nightwolf Tribe was to heal those who came to her with illnesses, whether they were mental, physical, or spiritual. If you think a paladin’s “lay on hands” trick is pretty neat, try spending a night in Kai’s medical hut (don’t get any perverted ideas, you’re not getting any action). When entering Kai’s hut, think of yourself as a Diablo II character with one hit point left and poison running through your bloodstream. With one click, Kai will refill your health meter and expel the venom from your body. Okay, so that’s not exactly real time, but she was that good.

She had heard stories about the Warcry Tribe and how brutal they were (despite the Nightwolves being just as brutal themselves). And yet, when she was out picking herbs and berries for her natural medicine, a wounded warrior from the Warcry Tribe needed her the most. Kai knew this stranger was considered the enemy, but she still laid him on the ground and worked her healing magic. Within an hour of shamanistic rituals and medicine dances, Brutus was patched up and ready to go back into battle. But he didn’t want to go back to battle. He wanted to fall in love with Kai.

Brutus began to visit Kai more often even for little injuries like a hangnail or a splinter. The two of them began to realize how stupid racial hatred was. Despite their differences in flesh hues (Nightwolves were brown and Warcries were black), they went on dates together, long walks among the creek, naps in the forest, and they even made love once or twice. A barbaric extrovert like Brutus should have been used to having multiple women gather around him for sex. But this wasn’t sex with Kai. This was love making. This was a moment of beauty and passion, not shallowness and disgust. It’s because of moments like these that Kai and Brutus even considered running away from their respective tribes to get married.

Kai never made it. The day before she and Brutus could escape the tribal grounds, an army of Warcry warriors led by two unenlightened halfwits named Titus and Cabal surged through a Nightwolf encampment and slaughtered anybody with brown skin, including Kai, who had her head chopped off by Titus and Cabal themselves. Scalps were taken, weapons and treasures were looted, and dead bodies created an ocean of brown and red violence. Brutus found out about this heinous assault and excommunicated himself from the Warcry Tribe immediately.

Brutus was so heartbroken that he ran off to the city of Middlesex just to get away from his so called “family”. He never got over Kai. The feel of her smooth skin. The jasmine scent of her hair. The beauty of her chocolate eyes. The sensitivity and intellect within her tormented soul. Everything about Kai Nightwolf was beautiful to Brutus. He told this to his future wife Darthania and she too confessed that she never got over a past love of her own: a wizard named Randy Farrell. Brutus and Darthania were so lonely that they had nobody’s arms to run to but each other’s. They married while Kai and Randy’s spirits were floating in the heavens. Where’s the justice in that?