#antrius

then there’s Nicole’s character, a tiefling sorcerer named Nixie. she can be a bit on the oblivious side—her intelligence score is zero—but she makes up for it with FIRE. like. literal fire. she’s adorable and pink but also she has one plan ever and it’s FIREBALL. also she likes women. when she was a kid she accidentally burnt her whole family to a crisp, probably due to wild magic and repression. disaster.

then there’s Pat the DM. who just wants a nice campaign. he also plays Every NPC (excluding a few roles later on) regardless of species and gender. he has to put up with the party’s shenanigans, which are exhausting, but he clearly does enjoy what he does, which is nice.

of course, this alone is great potential for a series—but what really brings it in for me are the side characters. aka guest players. over the course of the series, there have been a LOT of those: Vlithryn the triton cleric who’s tired of the party, Annandale the warlock who everybody hates, Dargle-Bark the… eccentric druid, Lorienne the paladin (who eva and antonio flirt with both in and out of character), the catlike Rogue who Nixie flirts with and Evandra hates, Mogdar the pacifist half-orc barbarian artist, Godfreya the incredibly amazing paladin, and my personal favorite—Zephyr the air genasi bard, who a) is Antrius’s ex, b) is Antrius’s rival, c) flirts with Antrius despite all this, d) is a bit (read: a lot) of a prick actually, and e) is crushingly insecure and cries himself to sleep.

that last character appears in a one-shot and one full episode, but that doesn’t stop him from being my blorbo. i have also watched the episode and gone over each shot and frame so many times that yesterday i realized that there’s a mistake towards the end where his flute switches hands in the very last shot of him. because i’m at that point where i have to see every facial expression from every character in that (musical!) episode, including nixie and evandra’s glorious background actions.

there’s also another earlier musical episode, which happens to be the best-rated episode of the series. the party’s been captured, and antrius (mis)uses bardic inspiration to get them out of it—and it’s beautiful. it’s just beautiful. wonderful cinematography, wonderful singing, wonderful lyrics, wonderful acting, wonderful script, just wonderful.

The wisp of smoke from Nixie’s fireball faded as her hand slumped lifelessly onto the pillow. Dixie wailed a little, pretending for appearence’s sake, before gesturing to Bastion to slit the butler’s throat so the elf didn’t get in the way of their looting.

Dixie stormed out of the bedroom as Sandra and Gavin turned out jewellery boxes and pulled open chests. He had been sucking up to the old bat for years now, putting up with her neverending tales of how she out-fought Evandra, out-sang Antrius, and turned her competitors to ash.

‘Key-key-key..’ Dixie muttered, kicking in the door to the study. He ignored the large bookshelves towering to the ceiling, and concentrated on the solid oak desk in the middle of the room.

A quick rummage later and he was holding the brass key to the treasury in one clenched fist, and a small slip of paper in the other. 

The paper was yellowed with age, tea-stained and slightly charred, and bore his aunt’s curling, spiral signature at the bottom.

Dear E and A,

Guess what? I found the orphaned baby boy of that warden we killed when we broke out of jail! Not that time, the other one. You know.

Anyway, I’m raising him now. So if you want to come by some time and meet him, his name is Little Dixie and he likes sugar candy! A lot!

Yours,

Nixie

Dixie put his fist in his mouth to stifle a furious scream. Sure, he poisened the old biddy to get to her fortune, but if he’d known she was responsible for leaving him penniless in the first place he would have..

He could have...