#tabletop fun

OK SO, basically, we’re doing a quest relevant to our Half-Orc Barbarian’s storyline, and the end stretch of it involved having to storm a little keep atop a hill where the Barbarian’s old enemy was holed up. The problem is, that little keep might as well be a fortress, because there’s only one narrow road leading up to it in a straight line, and the enemy, who is a Wizard, has powerful magic to blast us with, making it hard to get there. In addition, there’s her husband, a Ranger, who shoots powerful arrows from an enchanted bow, complicating things further. We have a Wizard and Ranger of our own, but they have the high ground, proper fortifications, and all in all, this is not advantageous to us in the slightest. It’s a stacked deck full of 2 of Clubs.

The sane decision here is to pull back and either get stronger or call in some favors to bring extra hands. Another solution is to climb from the cliff face, but not only is this VERY dangerous, it also carries the risk of being spotted, and if they start firing on us from THAT position, that’s game over right then and there. Problem is, if we do pull back, that’ll give them time to escape, because they aren’t foolish enough to stay in that place. The only real solution here was to back off and cut our loses. It had been an arduous quest, but we needed to be realistic about this: We simply didn’t have the means. That would’ve been it, of course, had it not been for our Barbarian’s plea.

He was devastated. He was furious. His revenge was so close, so tangible, and he had to put it hold because we simply lacked the means and the strength. Our Barbarian is a jolly, rowdy fellow, and this was the first time in the campaign he cried, his tears a Molotov cocktail of anger and impotence.

The thing is, Rasmus doesn’t like to see his friends sad. He hates it. This couldn’t stand. This wouldn’t stand. Not in the Miracle Maker’s watch. I ask the party to give me a moment to think of a solution, I look at my character sheet, my inventory, my skills, try my hardest to remember the other players’ inventories, can we do something? Can I do something?

For a long, agony-filled three minutes, the answer was no, but on that 181st second, the thick wooden doors suddenly opened, and behind them, the answer waved its torch at me. The answer was yes. There was something we could do!

I tell our Wizard to come with me, and ask our Ranger and Barbarian to stay here to make sure they don’t escape. We were around a 3 hour ride away from the city we use as a hub if we rode our horses. Barbarian asked me to elaborate, I simply answered “trust me”. One, because we really had no time, but most importantly? What is an entertainer without the spice of intrigue?

SO, we ride back, we get back to the city, we go into our base, and from the basement, I produce the corpse of the absolutely indestructible hero I killed in the prior story. I made sure to store his corpse because I wanted to try something with it down the line, BUT this was far more important, my Barbarian buddy is more important than schemes and shenanigans, so we put his corpse on the back of my horse, and we ride back. Once we are back, we produce a greatshield none of us really used from our Bag of Holding, I take some of my trusty rope (NEVER leave home without rope!), and I strap the corpse of the hero to the greatshield. I instruct Barbarian to drop his huge battle axe and to pick up the greatshield, the Barbarian tries to lift it, DM says he can, and so, Barbarian now wielded this McGyver Shield.

“...What good is this gonna do, Rasmus?”

“The hero might be dead, but he’s still indestructible.”

“So..?”

“:)”

A few seconds pass, and a LED lights above the Barbarian’s head with an “OH!”

We take our positions behind Barbarian, and we start running towards the keep with all we’ve got. The enemy Wizard and Ranger shoot spells and arrows countless at us, but the hero’s corpse in front of the shield kept deflecting all harm from us, absorbing spell and arrow effortlessly! With a way to make it to them, now all we had to do was lunge at them like rabid dogs!

And like rabid dogs we did! Tear them apart, we did! With his bare hands, the Barbarian seized the enemy Wizard and tore her limb from limb, retribution at long last for the unjust culling of his nomadic tribe! The idea was a huge success, we were all hyped, it was amazing, except there was one little big problem: Rasmus had just committed high heresy.

In this setting, burials are extremely important. To deny someone their burial is an unspeakable crime. I said I’d bury him myself, since I was his undoing, but I, uh, threw him in our freezer, and told everyone I totally buried him. Well! The cat was out of the bag, and while it was a good idea, now I kinda had to answer for it. The other player characters were cool with it, ‘cause we family, but uh, some people that were observing this (unknown to us; that explained the occasional dice our DM kept rolling now and then, they were stealth checks), magical paparazzi, basically, and they were very upset at my high heresy, so they call some people from a nearby town, and tell them to lynch us, basically. Anything for a scoop!

So I am being interrogated at spearpoint, and I get asked “WHY DID YOU COMMIT HIGH HERESY”, to which I reply a number of things, and none truly work, so I am about to get sent to the gallows, when the DM makes a joke: “You’d have to make your own religion at this point to get out of this one without violence”.

I thought that was a good idea, so I did.

Rasmus starts telling the townspeople how this wasn’t high heresy because that man over there was actually an enemy of solar providence. They ask what the hell “solar providence” is, and Rasmus just looks at them as if looking at helpless slugs about to be bathed in salt. Oh, what sad eyes! You poor fools, you truly don’t know about Solar Providence, now capitalized? I guess you do live in a little town... SO I guess you don’t know that I am the Augur-spoken Prophet of the Solar Sect, either, huh? I start weaving a tale of how I am here to deliver Solar Providence in the name of the Solar Sect, and that the hero, alongside the Wizard and Ranger we just killed, were all Fellows of Scrying, a band of false prophets who operate from the shadows of the Church. To prove this, Rasmus takes out his crystal ball, because, remember he used to be a phony fortune teller? Well, time to put the ol’ elbow grease to good use! By using word and contextual cues, Rasmus managed to “read the past” of many members of the mob, and then started handing out future fortunes. The people of the small town were fascinated with this and believed us! From criminal to prophet! So they let us go and we even get some devout followers. When we report back to our friendly NPC, he pinches the bridge of his nose, elbow me in the ribs, and tells me “EVERY FUCKING TIME WITH YOU, RASMUS”.

Well, some other dialogue happens, but the bottom line is that our friendly NPC isn’t too happy with the Church, which hasn’t been corrupt per se, but has been very sloppy in the recent years. Being a politician, the NPC concludes we can use this to our advantage, and well, now we have a plot going in which we want to overthrow the Church as the primary faith in the city and maybe the country. He had a kickass headdress made for me, and now I am Rasmus Kasper Istre, Augur-spoken Prophet of the Solar Sect, bullshitter extraordinaire.