The Ballad of Baldric Brimstone Chapter Three: Big Gay Half-Orcs and Utterly Destroying Plot

Because this particular gaming story saga is now complete, I thought I'd list all three chapters here for easy navigation. Yes, I know you're on chapter three, but it's an easier list to mass-produce so that every chapter has its very own links.

- Chapter One: Don't Ever Field a One-Eyed Dragon
- Chapter Two: Why You Never Give Your Party The One Ring
- Chapter Three: Big Gay Half-Orcs and Utterly Destroying Plot

Caught up? Great, because today we're finishing this adventure off with the grand finale!

Chapter Three: Of Cohorts and Kings!

Time Travel and Leadership

When last we left our intrepid adventuring party they'd rescued one plot-relevant NPC and one non-plot relevant NPC from a floating city in the sky run by insane magical college deans. Our heroes return to their headquarters by a long and circuitous route, during which they are thanked for their service. When the NPCs tell the guild master and the royal family about what they heard while captives, our heroes are tasked with trekking into the center of a cursed city on the coast (which is conveniently a half-day's ride away) and investigating rumors of a potential legendary sword that could save the world.

Of course no one's been here in a thousand years... this place is creepy!

 

So, seeing where these rails are going, we saddle up and decide to go investigating. We ride up to the ruins of a once-great city, and find it mostly filled with rubble and poisonous smoke. We follow the open paths, very specifically staying away from the vapors while picking up a few odd coins here and there. We find a wishing well, Baldric throws one of the strange coins in, makes a wish, kills the water-double that comes out, and is gifted with a second gun. Overall pleased with my shenanigans we find the throne room. Seated in the throne room, to the surprise of no one, is a skeleton in the throne with a greatsword through its chest.

Nothing to see here, folks.

 

We walk the throne room a couple of times, and we have the central question of "do we pull it out, or do we leave it in?" Baldric is all for leaving it where it is, but our half-construct fighter pulls the sword. Right on cue the corpse re-forms into the ancient and powerful figure known as the Chaos Emperor, who immediately imprisons us all in huge shells of crystal.

Fast forward fifteen years or so...

We Slept Through The Apocalypse?

We wake up in a ruined city with no idea of what's happened. We make our way back to the capital, only to find that a decade and a half has gone by. The world's at war, the Chaos Emperor has taken over the Citadel, and roving tribes of raiders are everywhere.

Oh, and we gained a level.

So there's that.

 

It's at this point I decide to put something in play for another party member. Her character was a gay, male elf alchemist, and it had become a running gag that the only bi-curious NPCs he could find were half-orcs. I ask the DM if I can take Leadership and he okays it (for those DMs who don't know, that's a foolish thing to do). He lets me design my cohort, and I tell him that he was Baldric's apprentice back when he was still a fire bomber for an orc tribe. I trust our DM to work him in somewhere.

So what does the crumbling command faced with impossible odds ask us to do less than a day out of crio-stasis? Oh nothing big; just go and kill the Chaos Emperor.

Back to The Floating City in The Sky...

We truck back across the map with no idea of what the hell we're going to do or how the hell we're going to do it. We find a city-sized encampment at the base of the tower, along with the villain's three lieutenants.

One of whom looks strangely familiar...

 

Baldric recognizes his old apprentice, grown huge and having forced his way up the chain of command. That night he goes to meet him, and the two catch up on old times. They also get drunk... with alchemist fortitude saves. It isn't a pretty sight.

In the middle of the night the elf comes looking for Baldric, and finds him and his companion. Looks are exchanged, and Davor decides right then and there that he's going to switch sides to whoever that elf is fighting for. Lovely, not only do I have my cohort (who incidentally is how I field-tested my Incredible Hulk character build found here), but he happens to have information about the enemy. Wins all around!

All three of these characters are fetched to the base of the tower, and through a series of unfortunate events find themselves being magically transported up into the sky city itself.

Great Revelations

As I mentioned in the last chapter, Baldric's got a wishing ring up his sleeve. With that ring, and some clever shenanigans, we smash through the encounters our ST had meant to make challenging, leave the tower, and go on the lam back to the destroyed capital we'd come from.

While the 7-foot half-orc and the normally-reserved elf are making sheep's eyes at each other the rest of the party wants to know how the hell Baldric knows this guy. So he reveals his history as Brazen Red-Eye, a wanted war criminal responsible for the deaths of countless villages and all their inhabitants. There's some hemming and hawing from the other party members about this revelation, but ultimately Brazen decides he doesn't have time for it and informs the group what he's doing. The other two alchemists join him, and he marches up to the keep to demand a way to solve this whole convoluted problem.

And make it snappy, I'm sick of your bullshit!

 

The party is then given a series of combats, challenges, and fetch quests, the details of which blended together after a bit. The brute squad, with the support of the rest of the party, powered through whatever challenges were laid in front of them. They were eventually brought to a location that held a time machine. The goal of course is to send them back in time to stop this from happening. Because of course it is, why else would you slingshot a party into the future?

Most of the party is thrilled by this. They can go back, save their friends and families, and make the world how it was. For Brazen, he's finally found his friends and followers. He's in a world that makes sense, and he has a chance to rebuild it into something better and different than it was before. Here he's a man with a small army of followers, a strong right hand, and is a force to be reckoned with. Back there he's just another killer on the run from the rope.

A King By His Own Hand

The campaign was far from over, but it was very clear out of character that if this machine was going to render this future, horrible as it was, non-existent then Brazen, Davor, and probably Tirnel the elf would waste no time in blowing it straight to hell along with anyone who got in their way. Without this deus ex machina the game was over, and the epic final chapter would be impossible to reach without a lot of hand-waving and NPC magical bullshit.

As if we had any shortage of that in this game...

 

So our storyteller and the NPCs alike were quick to assure us that it wasn't linear time travel, but rather that this machine would punch a hole into a parallel timeline. A timeline that could still be saved. Brazen holstered his gun, folded his arms, and told them if they were getting they'd better go. He had shit to do.

Slightly confused, most of the rest of the party went. The players and ST alike were wondering what he was going to do, and so they ended the session by asking the $24 question.

Brazen Red-Eye purchased the cursed city and all of its properties from the Crown for a gold piece and a blot of ink. He took his cohort and followers (mostly alchemists, gunslingers, druids, and witches with a few barbarians and fighters for flavor), and rebuilt the city. He took in refugees of all stripes, and put them to work training for war, manning the walls, growing crops and assembling new structures. In time Lost Home became known as a place where anyone could find a a seat at the table if they were willing to work hard and follow orders. It established a college of alchemy and wizardry, as well as a gunworks where firearms and more dangerous weapons were built. In less than ten years it could field an army of warriors in construct armor, and an air force of dirigibles powered by alchemy and loaded down with smooth-bore cannons. Brazen Red-Eye ruled on the brass throne till the day he died, and he was burned with the honors of a great chieftain. His widow maker was placed in his hand, because wherever he was going he was going to need it.

And that, my friends, is quite possibly the most epic middle finger I have ever had a character give to a plot he was expected to keep following.

What's Next on Table Talk?

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The Ballad of Baldric Brimstone Part Two: Why You Never Give Your Party The One Ring

So, this epic trilogy has been all wrapped up. If you want all three chapters for easy reading, here they are!

- Chapter One: Don't Ever Field a One-Eyed Dragon
- Chapter Two: Why You Never Give Your Party The One Ring
- Chapter Three: Big Gay Half-Orcs and Utterly Destroying Plot

All caught up? Great!

Chapter Two: Why You Should Sometimes Trust Your Players To Do The Right Thing

So after Baldric's introduction to the party, where he promptly blinds and nearly kills a red dragon at level 8, we're left with a big cave, a hoard that fell into a hole in the ground, and a mysterious young boy who doesn't remember who he is. The party has barely wiped the soot off their faces when a mysterious NPC who looks like Frankenstein's graduate project and reeks of necromancy comes and steals our young boy. The hint is dropped that we're going to a place called the Citadel. Baldric, cavalier and brazen as always, shrugs and sets off to the Northeast to follow the trail.

Some background on this home brew world. There are three major countries; a northern nation that looks suspiciously like Russia, a southern nation that's China in all but name, and the middle, smaller nation which is a traditional, Western Europe sort of place. The Citadel is a massive city in the sky run by mysterious wizards and sorcerers, and it is a place of in-depth arcane study. It's like Oz, if it was run by mystical madmen, and is generally accorded neutral ground.

Nothing could possibly go wrong with this plan!

Plot Hook!

As a party we return to base and report the dragon is taken care of, along with the discovery of a strange boy. His equally strange and mysterious sister seeks us out, and drops hints that if he's allowed to remain captive then fell deeds performed by shadowy magic users will befall us and the world at large. Our group's psionic warrior, a woman from the nation of Not-Russia, had to leave her own brother behind. Between her feels for the separated siblings, and a letter she receives from her own brother that tells her he'd been taken to the Citadel and that she should stay away, we've got enough hints. Conveniently we're given the task of guarding a diplomat on his way to the floating city in the sky. Inconveniently he's assassinated, and our bard takes over diplomat duties long enough to get us all into the city and poke around and see what's happening.

The Plot Thickens...

We manage to get in past the gates, and at that point the party scatters to the four winds. The bard is filching papers and stealing secrets, the psionic is wandering the streets and putting out the word that she's looking for her brother or our mysterious boy, Baldric is kicking around back alleys and side streets, and the rest of the party is pretty much sitting at the pub awaiting developments. After some sundry arrests and generally annoying the powers-that-be in the city, our psionic is granted a meeting with her brother. He's escorted secretly to the house the party is staying at, and in the midst of telling his sister she shouldn't have come he's shot in the head by a sniper at long range.

Chekhov's D20 doesn't fuck about.

The party scrambles. Baldric is up on the rooftops chasing the gunman, our healers are looking at the dead boy, his sister is weeping, and the others are fortifying the doors. The chase ends with the killer getting away, and the party regroups for a tense, nervous night of looking over their shoulders and staying away from windows.

We Find a Plot Device...

The next morning officials are investigating what happened. The party is poking around looking for clues, when they find an insignificant-looking black ring. The bard doesn't roll high enough on a knowledge check, so he assumes it's just a magical trinket. Without being able to identify it, he hands it off to Baldric. After a high roll he can ascertain that it's quite magical, but the DM says he can't be entirely sure what it does or doesn't-

So, what happens when I slip this bad boy on?

As soon as he puts it on, Baldric realizes he doesn't feel hungry or thirsty. A ring that duplicates the effects of a ring of sustenance but which attunes itself instantly is pretty shiny. It also makes our adventuresome alchemist all the more curious. I'm busy roleplaying, turning the ring left and right, as the DM tells me there's no way I could possibly activate any of the other effects unless I roll a natural-

... And The Plot Gets Flipped the Bird

Baldric rolls a natural 20 on a use magic device check, a skill that he has maxed out. Our DM, flabbergasted, asks the question that every player loves to hear. "Do you want a useful effect, or powerful one?" Having already rolled the dice, I opted for powerful. His next words were, "you are aware you have just cast Wsh." From a magic ring. At 9th level. A ring which seems to be able to re-charge over time to do this ad-infinitum.

That is the sound shit makes when introduced to a fan.

The whole table is goggling, with half of them demanding what the hell the storyteller was thinking giving us an item with that kind of potential, and the other half wishing they'd rolled the dice and taken the risk. I converse with Baldric for 30 seconds or so, take a gander at his motives and his personal desire to be a hero. I look up at the DM, and smile. Baldric says, "I wish that this woman's brother was restored to her, alive and in full possession of his mental and physical abilities." Moments later there's a knock at the door, and a shadowy shape appears bearing the trembling figure of our psionic's sibling. He's scared and confused, but otherwise whole.

Yes, I used an extremely rare, 9th-level spell granted to me on a pure fluke that I could have unbalanced the game with to instead resurrect an NPC which wasn't even part of my character's plot. Because that is how one remains true to the character. Oh, and I forgot to mention that resurrection magic doesn't exist in this little home brew world. Dead, is dead, is dead, or so they all thought.

The Aftermath

Moments after the boy has been restored the party is taking turns demanding to know what I did, and how the hell it's even possible. Then alarm bells ring throughout the whole city. Squads of elite guards are running hither and yon, and madness is everywhere. We're pushed toward an escape hatch by a frazzled NPC, who also gives us the boy we found in the dragon cave as a compensation prize. We manage to escape after only a few days of attending meetings and fruitlessly searching for an answer.

It turns out that our murdered sibling was never actually dead in the first place. A clone had been made of him, and that clone murdered so that his sister and her friends would stop trying to find the boy. The actual baby brother was being kept in a warded, secure room no one would ever be able to find, and which would have been the center piece of a very hard to crack nut that might have lasted weeks, if not months out of game. Then Baldric applied his typical strategy of "fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?" while holding an artifact we weren't supposed to figure out much less attempt to use for several levels to come.

The lesson of chapter two is this: never give your party something you don't expect them to use. Whether it's a mysteriously locked trunk, an unidentifiable magic item, or just a substance they can't make sense of, at least one player is going to mess with it. Also, sooner or later that player is going to roll a 20.



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