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The Adventurer's Successor

one year ago
Commended by mizal on 4/13/2023 10:58:17 AM

This was a fun brainstorming/world building thing I participated in on another forum, so I thought it might be fun to do here as well.  This idea originally came from Avaday Daydream.

The rules are basically, come up with an adventurer, hero or villain who is the successor of the one in the previous post.

Posts should include:

  • The adventurer's name and their relationship to the previous one.
  • Their class (in a D&D/Pathfinder sense) and/or their greatest talent.
  • Their most noteworthy triumph in their adventuring.
  • What they retired to or otherwise what their ultimate fate was.

An Example:

Lady Marovina Ponce Du  Luc was known far and wide for the opulance and extravagance of the gardens she maintained around the properties and castle of her husband Viscount Paizu Ponce Du Luc IX.  Few, if any, realized that she was also the notorious theif know as the Churchmouse.  The Churchmouse was reknown for robbing the vaults of the great churches of Chearevult, god of wealth and commerce, and his inverse, Tluveraehc, goddess of greed and averice.  The majority of the riches thus acquired were distributed to the poor and needy through anonymous donations to the various charities that the Viscount and Lady administered.  

That was until the Churchmouse made an attempt at the true crown jewel of Tluveraehc vast collection, the Second Sun.  This jewel was a yellow diamond the size of a wagon wheel, with more than 300 facets, and that shone with a radiant inner light, said to be the light of prosperity.  She succeeded in escaping with the great gem, but was cursed by the baleful wrath of Tluveraehc.  This curse corrupted first the Lady, then the Viscount, then their advisors.  This curse turned generous and munificent rulers and leaders petty and spiteful.  In short order the lands over which they had so prosperously managed for decades became a hotspot of corruption and malfeasence, a shame to the entirety of the kingdom.

Realizing the presence and impact of the curse far too late, Lady Mirovina sought to find redemption for herself and her family.  Digging up the Second Sun from it's hiding spot, she carried it up to the highest spot in her lands, coincidentally the bell tower of the greatest church of Chearevult.  She raised the great stone above her head and it flared with brilliant light, catching and amplifying the last rays of the sunset.  Lady Mirovina vanished, but wherever the light of the stone glimmered, the taint of corruption was washed away.  Most importantly, this cleansing light swept over her husband and family, restoring them to their previous mindsets.  The Second Sun shattered as it fell when the Lady vanished, dusting the streets around the church even to this day with fine yellow crystalline shards.  It is said that to find one of these shards is to guarantee good luck for a year and a day.

and then her successor

Illnya Ressaluete was born in the village of Vicennes, the third son of a butcher and a midwife.  Illnya was always a slight and sickly child, though his nature led him to seek ways to comfort and aid others has much as he could.  Consequently, he was well liked by most in the village, and early on felt the calling of the priesthood.  This was an idle dream for him until the day that Viscount and Lady Ponce Du  Luc came to the village.  They were there to officially break ground on a new school for children that was being founded thanks to a huge anonymous donation that had been made for that purpose.  Illnya took particular inspiration by a speech the Lady gave to the children of the village about the promise and hope offered by a solid education.  

Illnya applied himself wholeheartedly to his studies, quickly being recognized as one of the most gifted and driven students in the schools initial student body.  This academic excellence brought him to the attention of not only the Viscount and the Lady, not only the local school administration and staff, but also the far flung Thuamaturgic Academy.  No one from this area had ever been recruited by the nearly legendary magical school, so it raised many eyebrows when a mage representative appeared in a puff of violet smoke near the school one morning.  This mage, Exemplar Rictus, quietly observed Illnya in his classes for the day, and officially offered the young teen a scholarship to the Academy.  Lady Ponce du Luc was one of the first to send along her congratulations.

The following years of study into arcane mysteries caused Illnya, now renamed Neonate Viccis, to miss the gradual downturn of his homeland that began soon after his matriculation to the Academy.  It was with some great surprise then, that the Lady Ponce du Luc reached out to him again more than  a decade later to seek his input on her suspicions that she had come under the effects of a divine curse.  It nearly lead to his failing several classes during his penultimate year, but his research for the Lady allowed him to identify the required timing and sacrifice required to break the power of the curse.  He was saddened to eventually learn that she chose to make herself the sacrifice, but was gladdened to hear the good news that his homeland was returning to normal once more.

Once he graduated from the Academy, Illnya, now known as Exemplar Viccis, took up the role of recruiter, travelling the length and breadth of the greater kingdom of Atticala looking for promising youths to welcome to the Academy.  Decades passed as Illnya served as a recruiter, a teacher, and administrator, and advisor for the Academy and many of the nobles of the kingdom.  

In his waning years, Illnya, more widely known as Magister Rex Viccis, retired back to his hometown.  He was content to muddle through with his long standing research projects, and entertaining the children of the now sizeable city with simple but flashy magics.

 

Hopefully that everything clear.  So, we need one to start with, so here we go


Peshwar the Pale was born among the other gutter rats the port city of Goran's Gulf.  The pergorative was even more approriate for the young ratkin.  He was born a natural albino, his shock white fun and milky skin contrasted by the skyblue of his eyes.  Growing up in the gutters and alleys of the Gulf, one learns to be hard and merciless early on if one hopes to survive.  Peshwar was an apt student of these lessons, positioning himself as the leader of a small gang of other orphans and streetkids, mostly other ratkin, but also including some goblins and kobolds as well.  They guarded the territory they claimed vicisously, but a gang of children, no matter how ferocious, cannot stand up to the cooridation, planning and resources of the already established gangs in the city.  

When Peshwar and his brothers killed the first several enforcers sent in by the gangs, they eventually garnered enough attention to warrant a visit by one of the gang bosses that contested his claims.  The first to meet him was the former pirate Black Rob.  The negotiations run surprisingly long as Black Rob was suprised to find how much he liked the wiley and audacious Peshwar.  Eventually an agreement was reached where Peshwar's boys were absorbed into Black Rob's crew, the Red Tide.  This agreement created a direct pipeline from the orphanages and homeless of the city into the Red Tide, which ran scams, piracy and burglaries up and down the Pearl Coast of the kingdom of Atticala.  

Peshwar applied himself to this new organization with the same self-serving pragmatism that he had exhibited since birth, quickly rising through the ranks either by merit or carefully deniable murder to become Black Rob's right hand in less than a decade.  It was during this rise in power that Peshwar orchestrated some of his most decisive and memorable maneuvers.  Such legendary acts as the Sacking of Port Dewine and the invention of the three card monte.  The one that he seemed most proud of himself, however, was the Seek of the Rainbow Lotus. 

As he tells it, Black Rob had been striken with some grave disease, something so foul and strange that none of the medics, clerics, medicine men, sages or surgeons in the kingdom seemed able to cure.  Peshwar took his favorite ship, the Ratking, and a small crew and set sail to find the legedary Rainbow Lotus.  It was said that one could brew a tea from this lotus that was so pure and powerful that it could cure any illness, or potentially grant immortality if drank in good health.  For weeks Peshwar explored the fantastical lands of the Madness Isles.  While the details of his encounters there often vary from telling to telling, the story always ends with Peshwar finding a small forgotten temple alone on a tiny island.  Small bug-folk populated the island and it was only through his natural cunning and cleverness that he was able to bamboozle them ito allowing him into the temple long enough to pluck the Rainbow Lotus within.  Nearly singlehanded, he fought the armies of the bug-folk back to his boat, almost losing the Lotus at least twice.  Just one small hurricane and outrunning a kraken, and he was pulling back into the port at Goran's Gulf.  

Black Rob was on death's door when Peshwar appeared with the Lotus, but as promised by legend, the tea instantly returned Black Rob to health.  Shaken by this closest dance with death in a long career, Black Rob retired, Peshwar taking his place as the leader of the Red Tide.  He only held this title for a few weeks however, before Black Rob's former lieutenants executed a coup that ended with Peshwar's head affixed to the bowsprit of the Ratking.

The Adventurer's Successor

one year ago

The name of our next adventurer was uttered the minute his whining arse got pushed out of the womb of his mother in some grimy alley in the slums of Goran's Gulf.

"Ah, another fucking Skank." The woman said as she picked the crying wrinkly child up from the gutter while frowning. "Certainly didn't get them looks from me."

Thusly begins the adventure of our lad named "Skank" though he himself rather would his peers refer to him as Alessandrius Elantra II of Goran's gulf. Thus far scholars have found no records of an Allessandrius Elantra senior. Allessandrius was raised by a noble consort that has felt the plight of the poor and has lent her services to the lower city of Goran's gulf.

In other words, her mother, some farmer's daughter, had the wonderful idea to be charmed by the promises and sweet nothings of some nitwit who thought he could make it big in the city. She left her hometown to "follow his dreams". Well, dreams cannot get food on a plate or common sense in one's mind. So this nitwit procured some debt, some gang boss was not amused by this "tiny" mishap and soon she found his eye and his right arm hanging above their crummy room. With no one else to turn to, she chose the world's oldest profession.

In other words, his momma is a prostitute. 

Although our Allessandrius had the face even his mother would spit at, he luckily had inherited her sharp tongue and a keen wit that he unlike his mother didnt have to spend years filled with ,isery and stupidity to fully sharpen.

He taught himself how to read and write, how to carry himself as a person with high social standing and above all, how to steal a school uniform and forge application papers to the school of medicine. Peers described him as a charismatic young man, bit ugly as sin with a pig shaped nose and a nasty festering rash on his cheeks. 

Here's the account of his fellow classmates.

"His medicine is as nausea inducing as his smell, but it's somehow cheaper than what we usually make."

"He gave me a salve. Somehow the better my skin looked, the worse his got."

"Allessandrius? Yeah, I pay him to do my homework. He's the one with the neatest handwriting and his answers are way ,ore elaborate than it should be. He says that he doesn't need the money and that his allowance from his dad will soon come in a day or two. It has been a year."

After he had graduated with honors, he quickly found employment as the personal physician for the house of Dewine. Within one year of his service, he managed to save the head of the family's brother from becoming infertile. Many don't dare to speak much of this particular incident, but from the hushed whispers of the house's servants the words that were most often uttered were "testicles" "twisting" and "our lord be screaming like a dying donkey." The following year, the head of the family's first niece was born.

However, this golden age of contentment didn't last long as Port Dewine got sacked and the ruling family, the house of Dewine had to go on with their head severed from their bodies. Our physician bravely cowered in the corner as he saw Black Rob along with his right hand man Peshwar and his fearsome gang the red tide slaughter every last member of the family.

After the fall of Port Dewine, Allessandrius was out for revenge. Sooner or later news was spread that Black Rob had been stricken with some grave disease, something foul and strange. People close to Black Rob had claimed that they saw shadows and a foul miasma dance over the pirate's body. Some citizens of Port Dewine said that Rob fell because of the wrath of the spirits of the men, women and children he had slaughtered without any care in the world. Then the friends and close acquaintances said that the grand physician Allessandrius Elantra II of Goran's gulf might have dabbled into the occult and was partly responsible for the sudden illness of black Rob.

No one knew for sure for several years and after Peshwar had found the cure, the rumors and speculations died down along with self proclaimed investigators who are nosy enough to try to find the truth behind the layers of old wife's tales and deliberate exaggerations or lies to spice up the story a bit more. Soon this strange incident was forgotten and buried as a small footnote of the history of Atticala. 

However, there was only one prying nosy person left. A young boy, a streetrat that found himself to be the little helper of an old bed ridden physician. He had heard that this doctor was once someone with great renown who had written several books and spending most of his time on research about salves and the main requirements of a healthy human skin. After a wagon had ran him over crippling his legs, the old man decided to retire and purchased a small house bordering the slums of Port Dewine. During an especially cold night, the boy told his teacher about the story of Black Rob and asked what he thought about the pirate's mysterious illness. 

The physician's gentle smile morphed into an indignant sniff.

"Oh that Rob guy is a real tough cookie, friggin hell, you could cut his arms open and rub it in with dog poo and he'll still recover from that infection. Peshwar and him, stubborn bastards, cockroaches of the sea."

He then scratches the large scar on his cheek and subsequently the huge rash around it.

The boy leant forward. "Where did you get this scar actually sir?"

Allessandrius shrugged. The light of the fire danced over sunken crater made of angry pink flesh.

"Sometimes you just want to fuck someone up. I had some bone to pick with a nasty bug." He sniffed again. "Even after i tried to squash it, that little shit keeps coming back."

The Adventurer's Successor

one year ago

Traiben Monte had quite a reputation. Certainly not a good reputation, but a reputation nonetheless.

He was a nosy, gossipy child, with a habit of getting in other people's business and somehow knowing everything about everyone. This caused him to have quite a few enemies, a fact that he was blissfully unaware of.

Due to the knowledge that no secret was safe with or around him, most employers shied away from hiring Traiben. He simply couldn't be trusted.

However, there was one old man who had no secrets worth sharing. His name was Allesandrius... or so he claimed. Traiben had serious doubts about the truth of that statement.

Supposedly, this man had been of great renown at some point in his life. Traiben found that hard to believe; to him, the elderly doctor seemed like a worn-out, beaten up, ugly, crusty old man.

Despite this, Traiben was strangely fond of Allesandrius. He had stories like none the boy had ever heard, and his odd, gruff way of talking made him terribly interesting.

These stories were about days long gone, about royal family scandals and medical student shenanigans. No matter what the topic, Traiben was fascinated.

He was walking home after hearing a particularly exciting tale of how a princess poisoned her entire family and Allesandrius had to cure them without being poisoned himself, when his thoughts got rudely interrupted by a rogue donkey sprinting down the road.

The animal hit him head-on, sending him flying. The impact wouldn't have been enough to kill him if the incident hadn't occurred on a bridge, and if he hadn't been standing next to the flimsy railing. Being much too shocked to grab a hold of anything to save himself, he fell off the bridge and into the murky water below.

Traiben Monte was never seen again, and though there were rumors of the donkey being purposefully released by a villain who didn't want their deepest, darkest secrets bobbing to the surface, no concrete evidence could be found.

The Adventurer's Successor

one year ago

Bap was a simple river troll.  His ma and pop had been decent, for troll parents anyway, and raised him up with knowledge of how to fish and dive, pick out the useable river plants and how to work with them, and how to pick out a good bridge for a lair.  These were hard lessons, taught as much by screams and slaps as by words and demonstration, but Bap bore it and learned what he could.  Bap was by no means the biggest and meanest troll, but he was a competent fighter and herbalist. By the time he was twelve summers old, his parents were reasonably sure that he could keep himself alive so they followed common troll custom and drove him from the home with roars and rampage. They destroyed his childhood toys to show that he was now an adult, befouled the food he had secreted away to show that he was sufficient on his own, and scratching and biting him enough to leave scars to mark which clan he was from originally.  He fled from his parents, angry and terrified.

Over the next several years Bap traveled the length of the Chooser river that had been claimed by his parents and the greater River Serpentus that it fed.  By river troll legend, the River Serpentus encircled and bound the world, keeping the weaker races nearby for the trolls to use as needed.  After years of exploration Bap knew the truth, the River Serpentus as great and vast, but it in turn fed an even greater, stranger river that the weaklings called the Ocean, or the Betracian Sea.  This impossibly wide river supposedly ate all the rivers in the world, and Bap was willing to admit that it's ceaseless roar was intimidating and scary, an abomination of the gentle lapping sound that a proper river makes.  It was with relief that Bap left Ocean behind and followed the River Serpentus the other direction.

He wandered for many more years, and found several small bridges that looked promising at various fords along the Tumult creek.  For a couple of weeks he waffled between two particular bridges, one being closer to Port Dewine and the other being a couple miles away, closer to the village of Smithford.  He kept moving back and forth between, trying to track the kind and frequency of traffic across them, as well as how high the Tumult rises and how prolific the various fish and river plants were in each spot.  One afternoon as he lounged in the water beneath the bridge wishing that the decision was easier and almost hoping for some kind of sign.  Suddenly an unconsious human man landed in the water right next to him, along with some sticks and a few small stones from the bridge itself.  Bap smiled broadly and pulled the lucky feast towards himself.

That was the day that Bap decided on a home, and the day that the Quince bridge over the Tumult creek became problematic for the many people who use it.  Even with it's proximity to Port Dewine, Bap lived under that bridge for nearly a month, the best time of his entire life, rich with seized food and plunder.  Eventually however, some knights were dispatched to deal with the problem and poor Bap was driven off to sulk and make due with life on the edges of the Simmering Swamp, the last place anyone every reported encountering him.