Nostalgic RPG stories (A.K.A. come brag about your characters)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

After reading Brickenshire’s thread here: http://boards.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum4/HTML/006654.html, I started remembering some of the cooler characters and campaigns I’ve played in.

Luckiest character: While playing a first level elvin thief, I was able to kill a hill giant with my bow. House rules stated natural 20s caused double damage. I rolled three natural 20s in a row. The giant had tagged me with a rock first, causing the absolute minimum damage (4 points). I had 6 points.

coolest name: Bosco Vandershmeck, the pyromaniac mage.

My friend Bryan gets the award for coolest AD&D Druid concept: A Rasta druid, who comuned with nature by using “special herbs and spices”. Best example of a True Neutral Alignment I had ever seen…

Bryan, another friend, and I also came up with the idea of Dr. Zimbabwi’s Traveling Circus. Bryan was Dr. Zimbabwi, the absent-minded mage with the cart full of talismens, potions, and other assorted crap that occasionally worked like he expected it too. My other friend played an Elvis-ish bard: a great singer, charasmatic, and dumb as a post. My character was the juggling thief with telekenisis.

Most Evil Character: The last campaign I played was usuing GURPS, set in the near future, when magic returned to the land. My character was a surgeon for Ben Taub (local hospitol in Houston: It’s where you go if you don’t have medical insurance). The rest of the party thought I was very noble for sacrificing my time to help the poor and homeless.

The truth was, I was a voodoo priest, and anonymous patients offered an endless supply of blood and tissue for my spells.

The best part of the game was making my little voodoo dolls of all the other characters as I patched up their injuries during the game…

Any other geeks wanna join in here? :smiley:

You say “cheesy” like that’s a BAD thing.

2

Heh…where do I start?

Okay, my boyfriend, our DM at the time, gets me the Ranger Handbook for my birthday, and I get the bright idea that I want to play a Falconer. The thing about Falconers is that they’re VERY attached to their birds. It goes beyond just a simple pet-owner relationship–it’s almost like their minds are in tune. There’s actually a d4 roll for weeks of grieving if the bird dies, in which you lose points on all your rolls.

So I take the bird into a castle with me, and at a fork in the hall, I send it down a hallway to investigate. The next thing I know, I hear a very brief squawk cut off by a loud thump. I go ballistic. I run down the hallway, pretty much forcing the members of my party to follow me. When I get to the end of the hallway, I’m faced with a wooden door. It won’t open. I roll a Strength check for open doors. I had an 18(32) strength, so I bash the hell out of it. Of course, there’s some sort of locking spell on the door, but I don’t care. I’m hysterical. Eventually, after exhausting all of my open doors, the door is a door-shaped mass of splinters, still standing in my way. The wizard in my party took pity on me as I stood heaving and babbling in the corner, and cast Knock on it. The door opened, and I saw a two-foot stone slab on the ground from where the ceiling had fallen in. So I start beating and clawing at that, until someone cast Transmute Stone to Mud, and I dug around in the mud until I found the smooshed body of my bird.

That was both pathetic and hysterical at the same time.

I have plenty more, but I’ll give the floor to someone else.

3

I was never into it much, but some friends convinced me to sit in on a session or two.
Our band was fighting some group of creatures, and, not having any idea what to do, I had my character pull out this ancient scroll we had stumbled upon earlier, and began to chant it. Turns out, it released a demon, and the DM got a devilish look on his face, relishing the fact that I was about to be torn limb from limb. He told me to roll the dice, and then he looked something up in his manual, and his jaw dropped. Evidently, whatever combination I had rolled forced the demon to turn to me and say, “What is your bidding, master?” Everyone else in the room could hardly believe it; it was evidently a big deal. So I told the demon to slaughter all of our enemies and then go home.

They told me of another part-time player who was apparently more clueless than I, which I found hard to believe. Their crew had run into some trouble in a fortress of some sort, and half the band was trapped inside with some foul beast or another. Since this knucklehead was outside, when it came to be his turn he says, “I set the building on fire, and run away!” That became sort of a catch-phrase for our group of friends when someone does something really stupid.

One last note: As you well know, these RPG sessions can last until dawn. One of our friends concocted a special “drink” that he would use to keep himself hyper enough to make it through the long night. The ingredients: Mountain Dew, Jolt Cola, Hot Chocolate Mix. He would stir it together, and then drop in a few of those RedHot Fireball candies and allow them to dissolve in the mixture. Shake well and enjoy!! He called it “Fuzzy Tremble” and brought out a pitcher of it for the D&D sessions. And he drank it. I could barely stand to smell it.

I wish I knew a bit more about the game mechanics to make the stories a little better, but as I said, I didn’t play very much.

4

I have the most stupid players in the world…

I was gm’ing a game of Shadowrun and the pc’s had a simply run, go to the local university, kidnap some girl, and bring her back.

Player one, while trying to make friends with this girl, “accidently” admits to her and her two friends (one an undercover FBI agent) that he was hierd to kidnap her, and gets arrested when they find an ares predator on his person (in a federal building). He is promptly arrested and chared with possesion of firearms in a federal building.

Player Two, while providing a distraction for players one and three, walks into the student union with an LMG and starts shooting at the ceiling and screaming at everyone. The bullets from the LMG go threw the ceiling, seriously injuring a half dozen people on the floor above. He is chased down by lone star and arreseted a half hour later, charged with a whole slew of things.

Player three, having the only insight he has ever had in his life, decides to follow the girl around and back to her apartment. He see’s the girl, her girlfriend, and the undercover FBI agent friend in her apartment talking. So he imediatly pulls out the ole uzi and wastes the FBI agent threw the window, jumps in and shots the girls friend, killing her. He turns to capture the girl, who is now hiding in her bathroom with a gun up to her head, threating to kill herself. So player three decided, in order to achieve his mission, to shot her knee caps out. After the girl hits the ground, and before player three can reach her, she shoots herself in the head. Player three, not knowing the the FBI had installed a camera in her room, is arrested three days and charged with 1st degree murder, murder of a federal agent, breaking and entering, attempted kiddnapping, illegal possesion of fireamrs, and tax evasion.

This are people i game with… it really happened!

5

I played a thief who had a pet dog, Weezer. My DM hated the fact that I had a pet. He only let me have it because I helped him wash his car once. We had finished exploring a dungeon and the DM was rolling for treasure. I somehow found a ring of wishing, and wished that Weezer was a Golden Dragon. This completely pissed off the DM, who had no choice but to grant it. Weezer ended up accidentally killing me a couple of weeks later. I was allowed to be resurrected if I agreed to get rid of Weezer. I did so, but adopted a goldfish later that night.

We never played much after that.

“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.” – George Bernard Shaw

6

Once upon a time, my oldest brother was running a campaign that needed a ranger, so here I come with Arillethena the half elf (she had issues)and she did everything that a good ranger ought. She fought well, got propositioned by other PCs, blew up a necromancer’s familier, and guided they guys in and out of all sorts of jams. Then I went away for the summer and they allowed another guy (with my reluctant permission) to take over Arillethena. His playing was a disaster that wound up getting the poor ranger killed eventually, the whole incident was best summed up by one of the other players, “Man, when your sister was here, she was a good ranger, she kicked ass and blazed trails, now she’s just a bitch with penis envy…” as close as I recall.

All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.

7

There’s just so many to choose from.

One of the games we played was Torg. For those of you not familiar with the game the premise was something like this. There are many different dimension. A dimension based on horror stories. A dimension much like 50’s pulp fiction. A dimension called the Cyberpapacy (yes, really). And these dimension have invaded earth. They have even set up “zones” of their own reality.

Anyway, my character was from the pulp reality. He might be described as a “pulp scientist”. He had a knack for finding pieces of technology and just putting the pieces together to see what he could make. His most used invention was a belt that allowed him to become invisible and/or teleport (doing one was easy - both was hard).

As you can imagine the whole idea of pulp science was just a blast to play with. Plus I’d get to pick up a piece of a force-field generator here and a sonic ray gun there and just whip up new inventions. This wasn’t strictly speaking by the rules, but our GM knew the difference between “By the Rules” and Fun.

And as a bonus - this character has been published. The Torg people were working with the idea that all the role players were out there running their adventures in the same universe at the same time. The decided to publish a game suppliment with submitted characters. My group sent in our characters and we all got in the book. Of course we found out that EVERYBODY who submitted a character got in.

So if you ever get the Torg Characters gaming suppliment look up my character. He’s listed as “Professor Unseen” (a name he frankly hates).

“My mind reels with sarcastic replies!” - Snoopy

8

One of my MERP (Middle Earth Role-Playing, based on Tolkien’s world) characters was the luckiest sonofabitch ever born. Which was lucky, because we had a GM who gave us impossible missions. (Just about every session started with one or more of us rolling up new characters.)

So, anyway, this time we hear about a rich evil magician who has a tower deep in Mirkwood. He’d supposedly gone on a trip, so we were going to sneak in, loot the place, and get out. Of course, it didn’t work like that. Some kind of magical trap got us, and, when I “woke up,” me and one other character were chained, naked, between floor and ceiling of some room in the tower.

The evil guy arrives and asks my buddy what he’s going there. (I think the GM was hoping we’d find some way not to have all of us die there.) But my genius friend proceeds to threaten the evil wizard, claiming vast and mysterious powers for himself. The evil wizard says, “Is that so?” and toasts him. Then he turns to me.

I figure I’ve got nothing to lose, here, so I throw my head back, laugh, and tell him he’s done well. I then make up some story about being an agent of the Necromancer who was ordered to recruit a band of idiots to test his tower’s security. The evil wizard says something functionally equivalent to “Well, then, I’ll just ring him up on my magic mirror and be right back.”

With a little luck, lots of blood, and one dislocated wrist, I manage to get most of the chains off (one’s still clamped to my right arm, but not to anything on the other end) and escape. I clobbered an assortment of evil thingys with the chain on the way, and then jumped out a window to land on a roc’s back.

Like I said, luckiest sonofabitch character I ever had. He probably lasted six months in that campaign.

I’m your only friend
I’m not your only friend
But I’m a little glowing friend
But really I’m not actually your friend
But I am

9

Once while playing GURPS my party of two was imprisoned by a fairly powerful Duke for some reason or another. Well, we were supposed to be the food for this Duke’s young adolescent dragon that he also had locked up in the Dungeon. In typical comic book fashion, we were thrown into the dungeon and the inept guards left after locking and barring us into this room.

Needless to say, there was a murky light in the room, the dragon, a disease ridden pond that the dragon drank from, and a whole litter of bones along the floor. Immediately after the door closed this dragon attacked us with his fire breath. We dodged away and went to get a thigh bone (the only weapon in the area). We eventually destroy the dragon after being beat practically to death and stay awake long enough to bind our wounds. Unfortunately, we don’t really heal much (House rule: binding only stops bleeding unless you have the first aid skill). So we go in and out of conscioussness for a while as we slowly starve to death. By the time either of us has enough HP to actually get up (we were knocked to 0 and 1 respectively, but the disease area kept knocking us back on our asses) we started drinking from the pond. This was pretty bad but we couldn’t heal because not only were we sick and the water was practically sewage we were starving. So we got the bright idea to eat the dragon who had been sitting and festering for what for storytelling purposes (in the game) became several weeks on end. Well, we start eating the dragon getting sick because neither of us new how to cure it, staying sick becuase the conditions were so bad, and just generally being pathetic.

Eventually, the dragon is just to horrid to continue, we noticed that there were dried out cow/animal parts in the dragon dung, well, we eat those too. (GM said those weren’t as diseased as the other…we were young and the story was actually pretty fun at the time so realism didn’t matter). Well, eventually heal about half of our HP’s back shortly after finishing all the water in the scum sewer and practically everything else of relative consumptability (I doubt that is a word…so sue me…Don’t tell Melin, I don’t really want to be sued. ;)).

Well, the Duke’s guards eventually comes down to check on his pet and finds us there completely covered in excrement, naked, and festering with disease. The guards are shocked to still see us alive and the dragon missing. We stay locked up as he goes and gets the Duke. Well, after the Duke gets down, my character looks up at him in the most pitiful way and says, “Sorry sir, but we ate your dragon.”

We laughed at that for ages. The Duke eventually let us go, not for being brave, but because he felt the gods were on our side and didn’t want to anger them anymore since they “chose” to have his pet killed. :slight_smile: It was too much fun.

I also had several D&D, AD&D characters that were interesting. I really liked my pictish Dwarven thief who acted like a kleptomaniac smurf but that is another story.

HUGS!
Sqrl

SqrlCub’s Arizona Adventure

10

One of my friends has this fixation with giving his players the crappiest spells he can. He also uses his own RPG system, modified from bits and pieces of AD&D, GURPS and Warhammer FRP; thus, I was blessed with some of the most horrible spells he could come up with. Those I can remember-Field of Posies, a sort of sleep spell that could only be cast outdoors and resulted in a huge area of yellow flowers to sprout and grow; Wood to Dust, which is sort of obvious; and Flaming Missiles, another no brainer. Of course, I’m a 1st level mage traveling by myself, and I’m in a dungeon, which means my spells are just on this side of useless.

Anyway, there’s a door that’s barred on the other side from my character. In the bottom half of the door, there’s a small sliding hatch that allows someone at about mid-thigh height to look out and see what’s going on. Kobolds, the bane of first levellers everywhere, are guarding the far sid of the door. Two of them poke their heads out when I knock the first time; they snap at my knees and then slam the hatch shut. Trying to smash it down does no good, as it’s barred.

So, deciding to actually try to use the POS spells I have, I lay one hand on the door and one on the frame, and murmur Wood to Dust. As the wood dissolves, the metal brackets and the bar fall to the ground, braining the kobold guards in the process.

Same adventure, and I actually got to use the Flaming Missiles spell. Mind you, I’ve no missiles myself, as I’m a mage, but I was chased into an abandoned armory with a bunch of small bucklers-wooden shields about a foot across. Planting my feet, I started to whip flaming bucklers down the hallway like Frisbees.

I think I got some bonus XP for actually using the spells that adventure.

I don’t think I ever got to use Field of Posies, though.

Battles are won in nuance.

11

For about a year, I ran a bard by the name of Daken the Feckless. He usually did pretty well in combat, but whenever a pretty girl walked by he turned useless. The one time he actually picked up a woman, he disappeared for three days, and when the party finally found him, he was stripped naked, bound to a table, with whip marks on his back - very tired and very happy to see his friends.

The one combat sequence where he really had run of bad luck entailed the party being attacked by Barnie the Dinosaur. Daken fired an arrow, but I rolled a 1 on a 20d. So, the DM had me roll percentages. I rolled a 69, so the DM determined that the arrow had emasculated Barnie and caused him to go into a berserker rage. Barnie then stomped the beejesus out of my bard. The rest of the party had to pull that purple bastard off him. Took about three healing spells to straighten him out.

12

My first Shadowrun character was a dwarf street samurai. His only notable escapade was when he threw a smoke grenade into a corridor that had guards at either end, then ran in and shouted. Both guards turned and fired, aiming for a human sized target… bullets go over my head. Two dead guards.

My greatest character was a Paladin in DnD. The Kingdom he served fell under the control of an evil ruler, and he became increasingly uncomfortable following orders. He basicly wound up going awol, wandering around for a while, getting into trouble with his god, and becoming less and less paladin like. (He knew he was in trouble when he caught a cold…) So one day he wanders on a town where some priests of his god are about to burn a woman for witchcraft. The woman is the most beautiful he’s ever seen, and he decides to rescue her. He killed the first priest and instantly felt all his powers drop. His holy sword turned to dust, so he grabbed the mace the priest had and started in on the others. He takes them out, barely, and turns around to see an angel of his god about to slay the woman. He jumps in front, takes a mortal wound, and crumples at her feet. I lost control of the character when the woman started glowing, easily broke free of her bonds, and told the angel to tell it’s master that she was adopting his lost servant. The angel didn’t stick around and he became the Champion of the Goddess of Love. Unfortunatly, he’s too powerful to run as a PC, so he only pops up as an NPC every once in a while.

Final story isn’t mine. It was a dark sun campaign, and the party was wandering the desert and got lost. My buddy was playing a Thri-Kreen and as such was standing watch. By this time he was REALLY hungry… and elf just happens to be a Tri-Kreen’s favorite food, so… When the party woke up the ranger was gone, and the Thri-Kreen had full packs of rations.
The elf’s player was pissed, but the GM gave him extra EXP for being in character.

http://www.madpoet.com
“I never meant to hurt you,” you said,
And buried yourself in lies instead.
Next time I would rather be slain,
Than forced to bear your mercy again.

13

Eating frozen pizza at 2AM. Smoking pipes (too cool for cigarettes, then). Hoping to find a really cool magic item in the next bunch of loot. Ah, those were the days.

-I had one character that was just simply fun to play because he was so weird. His name was Gnash Bouldergrey, and he was a berserker gnome. Nasty little runt.

-One of my favorite and most successful characters was a bard named Dansgrub Ralc (anagram for Carl Sandburg). He was true neutral. First time out, he charmed a full size water elemental out of attacking the ship he was on. My all time luckiest roll.

-I inherited a character from a friend who left the area. He was a monk named, goofily enough, Harry T. Monk. The “T” stood for “the”. I decided to rework the character a bit. Changed the spelling for “Harry” to “Hari”, and decided that though the “T” stood for “the”, the “the” was short for “Thelonius”. Eventually, "Thelonius was the only name he went by. I also had to have him ditch some items that were inappropriate, like a magic sword. He became a pretty powerful character, I believe I got him up to 12th level, IIRC.

-When our DM created the world we played in, we were allowed to create some place names for our character’s home town. I had a fighter then named Cork. His hometown was “Ak-Rono-Hio”. I always thought it would be funny if every world had a place with a variant of the name Akron, Ohio.

Good times. Good times.

God is my co-pilot. Blame Him.

14

Gee…that was like 8 or 9 years ago for me. All I remember is that my character was a neutral ambidextrious Bounty Hunter who was immune to some poisons. I remember a magic spear launcher (I lost part of my right ear getting that thing) and a kick-ass smart shield that I had, but that’s about it. I can’t even recall the guy’s name…

The coolest spell I remember was “Magic Mouth.”

15

Hm…I have a few stories, some great, some absurd. I can remember, on a single die roll, killing the Tarrasque. For you non-AD&Ders, the Tarrasque is a godawful beastie that awakens every few decades and lays waste to several square miles, then goes back into hibernation. Killing it requires reducing it to -30 hit points, then Wishing it dead; otherwise, it just regenerates back to full health. Magic Missiles bounce off its magical hide. Well, we stumbled across it.

The ensuing battle killed one member of our party before I had my first roll. I threw a Dart of the Hornets’ Nest, a magic dart that splits into many missiles in flight. My rolls were such that it split into the maximum number of missiles, all of which hit and did max damage. Reduced the critter to around -90 HP on the spot. One Wish later, and we were sittin’ pretty.

On another AD&D campaign, with a very peculiar DM, our characters were on a ship. We were attacked by a Kraken (giant squid, basically). While trying to figure out what to do, we hear a sound from below decks: it’s Milo, the intelligent talking harpoon, coming up the stairs and breaking them as he came (he was extremely heavy). As the strongest character, I grabbed Milo and gave him a hurl. My rolls were so good that the DM ruled that the Kraken died from that single blow. Downside: we nearly lost Milo, buried deep as he was in the beast.

Maybe later I’ll tell y’all about the time my dwarven character got a carnivorous flying squirrel snagged in his beard.

16

One time, we were playing a Ravenloft campaign. For those of you who don’t know, Ravenloft is the gothic-type world in AD&D, and as such, has quite a bit of undead. Eventually, we were forced into the service of a lich who had lost his phylactery. Since that contained his life-force, he was pretty intent on getting it back. In order to do so, he had to send us back in time, to when the ruling vampire, Strahd, had first become undead. I’m a little hazy on the history, but I think it was his brother’s wedding we were crashing.

In order to do this, the lich had to put us into the bodies of certain wedding guests. So my character, basically a stripper, was stuck in the body of an assistant chef, and our biggest fighter was in the body of the priest officiating the wedding. None of us knew whose body the others were in at the time, and all we could do was watch and try to fit in as best we could.

Eventually, a raging Strahd came in and began destroying the wedding, the wedding party, and the guests. I tried to do something, but seeing as I was in a different body, I was a bit clumsier, and since all I could basically do in my own body was dance until I enchanted people and stole their money, I was pretty useless. Instead, the priest snapped into action. As Strahd bore down on him, he frantically looked for something he could use as some sort of weapon. He found an oaken broomstick and snapped it in half over his knee. Strahd rushed him. The guy rolled…and got a natural 20.

That was about when the lich brought us back into our own time, with a stern admonition to NOT attempt to change the course of history the next time he sent us back.

So that’s the time a band of about fourth and fifth level characters almost killed the strongest vampire in all of Ravenloft.

To illustrate how crazy this campaign was, the next time we went back in time, my character and the one evil character in our party ended up stealing the phylactery and ditching our party. I don’t know how the DM didn’t lose his patience.

17

Let me take you back to 1980.
The game :Dungeons & Dragons, before Gygax went nuts with expansion sets.
The character:slythe, chaotic-chaotic thief with a heart of gold and the mind of three-week-old lime Jello.

We had just gotten back from a badly run Monty Haul, and slythe decided to make a little money on the side running a three card monte behind the inn. Well, ol’ slythe didn’t have a deck of cards on hand, so he “borrowed” a deck from his old pal Grimnutz the Barbarian. You understand, of course, that slythe fully intended to cut G the B in on any winnings, right? :wink:
Well, slythe sets the table up and gets the crowd riled-up for some action. He whips out that fancy deck, deals out three cards…
In the next game, slythe remembered two things. 1.Always ask before borrowing. 2.Learn to recognize a Deck Of Many Things.

They wouldn’t let me play with them for two weeks! :slight_smile:

Eagles may soar free and proud, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.

18

It’s soooo surprising…nay, SHOCKING…to see that there are so many D&D enthusiasts on the internet. Who woulda guessed?

“My hovercraft is full of eels.”

19

Lots of favorites… :slight_smile:

From my rat shaman “Cheese Whiz” in my first Shadowrun campaign, to swashbuckling con artists in AD&D to a long stream of pun-ny Champions characters, featuring:

"Phoenix": A female superhero with literally flaming red hair down to her ankles. This, of course, was the source of all her powers, including the infamous “hot hair balloon” which gave her flight. And of course she spent lonely evenings pining over “Asbestos Man” – the only guy who could ever get near her.

"Shroom": An international drug icon with an incredible charisma and presence. Stealth wasn’t her strong point, but villains couldn’t think straight around her and there were always scores of stoner fans around to do her dirty work. Of course she had about 75pts. of variable psych-lims which were decided by the GM at the beginning of every run (things like “you are fiercely attracted to men in armor”, “you have an intense craving for cheetos” and “the ceiling is dripping on you”). Plus, her powers were all derived from popping different combinations of pills, with incredibly nasty (and humorous) side effects if she failed.

"The Whisperer": A financial wizard who is so tuned into the market that all of his powers depend on it. On a bullish day, he’s incredibly fast with superleap, aids, etc. During a market correction, he mopes around draining people, shorting his own characteristics, etc. He’s been known to entangle people in FTC investigations, suppress their powers with management consultants and control their minds through hostile takeovers. When all is lost, you might even catch him declaring bankruptcy (aborting to desolid with huge defense but no other powers).

Anyway, if you haven’t played Champions, try it. It’s a blast!

20

Many of the incidents of our previous campaigns become the legends of our current campaign. The touchstone of all of them is the story of Mighty Honknar.

Honknar, and his fellow adventurers whose names have been lost in the mists of memory, ventured out from the Keep on the Borderlands to explore the Caves of Chaos. They were attacked by stirges in the forrest. The only survivor was Honknar. He buried his comrades and went back to the keep with their stuff. He sold what he could, but kept several weapons, and went to the inn and recruited more adventurers.

With a new party, he set out once more for the Caves of Chaos. And once more they were attacked, this time by kobolds. With a fearsome shout, Honknar reached for his two handed sword and unsheathed it with a mighty metalic shinnng and it slipped from his grip and went tumbling into the forrest and landed in the underbrush. But mighty Honknar didn’t blink. He shouted to the kobolds, “See that? I didn’t need that to kick your ass!” Whereupon he reached across his back and drew his deadly long sword, which he immediately lost his grip on, sending it flying into the advancing kobolds ranks, but no where near close enough to hit one of them. “See that one?” he cried, “Hell, you can have that one!”

All this time, Honknar’s companions are fighting and dying at the hands of the kobolds, but thinning the enemy’s ranks as well, so that by the time Honknar got out his sturdy mace there was only him and one battered kobold left standing on the field of battle. Honknar rasied his mace to smash down on the kobold, but lost his grip on it and it landed somewhere behind him, and he shouted, “I sure as hell don’t need this to kick your ass!” Whereupon, Honknar headbutted the kobold, and it died.

Mighty Honknar buried his companions, collected their equipment and returned to the keep. He sold whatever he could, but kept most of the weapons, knowing full well how important it was to be well stocked. At the inn, he called out for a new party. Some of the adventurers hanging around suggested that it was too dangerous. After all, his party had been wiped out twice. But Honknar showed them how much money he’d made in so short a time, and a handful of lusty souls greedily signed up.

And so he was off again to the Caves of Chaos, where his party was attacked by stirges once more. He held firmly to his weapon, as he missed, missed and missed again, one stirge after another. But the stirges could not seem to miss him at all, and each stirge that stung him did as little damage as it could possibly do. By the time he had routed them from his back, his face, his neck and his other regions, he found himself once more the sole surviving member of his party, and was barely surviving himself.

When Honknar returned to the keep, the pool of potential party members at the inn had begun to be quite suspicious. To allay their suspicions, Honknar pulled off his chainmail shirt and showed them the horrible stirge scars. And so another brave band agreed to join him.

Into the woods they went, and upon hearing the buzzing of the stirges Mighty Honknar shouted, “Hit the ground, men, and cover your necks!” as he drew his broad sword, which he lost his grip on and it spun off into the trees. As the stirges closed in, he unstrapped his powerful two-handed axe from his back, reared it back and slipped from his hands, beheading the priest behind him. The stirges overwhelmed him and though their stingers scarcely managed to do any damage, their numbers overwhelmed him until finally, Mighty Honknar went down gurgling his own blood.

That is why at temples of Tempest, or on tapestries across the realm you may see the image of a powerful, powerful man beset with stirges. And the tapestry bears the sad refrain recanted every night at taverns and campfires, and wherever adventures gather, “Fors Honknarus Descendit” – reminding us that if Mighty Honknar can die, so can we.