Eryss 🦇❤️

🌻Icon Commission🌻 for @XWinterEyeX thank you for the commission!

Jiraiya is the greatest mentor in the Naruto verse. Not because he taught the most jutsu or made his students the strongest fighters on paper. Many mentors did better at pure training. Orochimaru pushed Sasuke hard into new skills. Tsunade turned Sakura into a top medical ninja. Kakashi and Guy gave solid basics and discipline. What makes Jiraiya different is the kind of change he created in his students’ minds and lives. He trained Minato, who became the Fourth Hokage. Years later, he trained Naruto, who became the Seventh. He also took in Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan in the Rain Village. Even though that path later went dark, it shows how far his reach went. One man touched two Hokages and helped shape people who moved the whole world. With Naruto, the impact was deepest. Naruto was a loud, lonely kid who mostly wanted attention and recognition. Jiraiya spent years with him. He taught him the Rasengan and how to use his chakra better, but the bigger lesson was how to look at people and pain. He showed Naruto that hate and revenge keep cycling through generations. He taught him that real strength includes trying to understand others instead of just beating them. Naruto carried those ideas into everything he did later. He kept trying to talk to enemies. He refused to give up on Sasuke. He talked about breaking the cycle of hate. Those choices came from the way Jiraiya made him see the world, not just from new techniques. But perhaps the most painful part of Jiraiya’s legacy is how his story ended. He died alone in enemy territory, fighting his own former student, Nagato, who had become Pain. Even after being brutally wounded, Jiraiya used his final moments to uncover the truth and send a message that could help save the world. He never made it home to Naruto. And Naruto never got the chance to say goodbye to the man who had become more than a teacher to him. Jiraiya died without seeing Naruto become Hokage, without knowing how his final message would change the world, and without knowing that his faith in the next generation would eventually be rewarded. Yet even in death, he never truly lost. Naruto carried his master’s dream forward and proved that the cycle of hatred could be broken. Jiraiya’s body sank into the depths, but his teachings lived on in the person who would change the shinobi world. Other mentors were excellent in their own ways. Kakashi built teamwork and calm thinking. Guy proved hard work can beat talent. Minato left a powerful example as a parent and leader. But Jiraiya mixed skill, time, sacrifice, and a clear view of life’s bigger problems. His students did not only get stronger. One of them became the kind of person who could change how others thought and lived. That is the biggest mark a mentor can leave. And perhaps the saddest thing about Jiraiya is that the man who taught Naruto never to give up on his dream died before he could see that dream come true.

In my original D&D campaign (1974-77), one of the dungeonmasters decided he wanted an all-evil campaign. We figured out XP and advancement for kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, and gnolls. Everyone's first character was a gnoll. But if you got killed, your next character was only a hobgoblin, which was objectively inferior (getting only 1+1 hit dice per level, instead of 2 like a gnoll). Then if you died again, you had to be an orc. And so forth till you bottomed out at kobold. This meant that players who'd survived longer not only had higher level characters, but a big hit dice advantage. A 6th level hobgoblin had 6+6 hit dice. A 6th level goblin had 6 MINUS-6 hit dice. Ugh. Since everyone was evil, we mercilessly bullied each other. When it got too bad, the weaker characters banded together against the strong ones. Despite the fact we were all fighters (the only character class available to goblinoids, or "giant class" humanoids as the original book categorized them), we got to a decently high level. It helped that we all had darkvision and could open every dungeon door automatically (says so in the rules), and we could talk to most of the monsters in the dungeon. The campaign ended when after a heated fight, we found a suit of +5 magic plate armor. Naturally, the highest-ranking player, a 13th level Hobgoblin, claimed it for himself. The entire rest of the party immediately joined together against this, because if the hobgoblin had +5 plate, he would be unstoppable and our existence would be intolerable. Basically, he'd take ALL the treasure from now on. So began the final battle. The 13th level hobgoblin vs. everyone else. I think the next-highest level was a 9th level orc (not me). The weakest was a 4th level kobold. Anyway the hobgoblin rationally focussed on killing the lower-level enemies first, because all of us did the same damage when we hit, so killing us reduced his incoming damage. Pretty soon, everyone was dead except for the hobgoblin and the orc. The orc was almost unscathed, because the hobgoblin had been finishing off the rabble. The fight seemed pretty even. The hobgoblin had fewer hit points by then, but he had a better THAC0. Well, the fight had been going on for 30 combat rounds when the gamemaster rolled for a random encounter (once every 10 rounds, like it says in the book) and got one. A gigantic hydra walked into the room. Our then house-rules for hydras made them specially deadly, and only if both surviving fighters teamed up would they have a chance against it. They looked at each other. Then they looked at the hydra. Then back at each other. All in real time you understand. Then they literally shrugged, and went back to bashing each other. The hydra was in its glory, randomly striking at both opponents while being mainly ignored. Both characters died. It was glorious, and we did not start up the "evil" campaign again, because it had ended perfectly. True story from the dark ages of D&D.