Ooooo this is a great starting point for a ttrpg quest.
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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You arrive in the village of Cam, a small, backwater mudhole sandwiched between three swamps and a long dead forest. It isn't your first choice, but you are confident that, if nothing else, people won't give you a second glance as you walk through the gates covered in horseshit and what you hope is someone else's blood.
However, you are more right than you think. No one is looking at you at all. In fact, you don't see a soul in the town.
As you wander through the streets, you see the signs of life, but not a person in sight. Then, you hear it--a clamor--coming from the the edge of the westernmost swamp. Rounding the corner of a house of ill repute, you finally catch a glimpse of the townsfolk.
Walking towards them, you pick up on bits of the conversation. A woman, found dead and half-eaten, lies at the edge of the swamp. Any other time, this wouldn't mean anything to you, but this time it's different. Shes beautiful, or what's left of her is. Clad in a beautiful blue gown, a crown--though now crumpled--lays near her porcelain face. She is striking, and it is obvious immediately that she isn't from this town.
Over the murmur of the crowd, a voice can be heard.
"As the new king of this sad lot, I see that it falls to me to be the hand of the law. Citizens of Cam, your king requests the aid of those of stout body and sharp wit to assist the kingdom in finding out who is responsible for the death of this poor young woman. I promise 50 gold pieces for any information of value, and a full 500 gold for the capture of the nefarious soul responsible."
500 gold will go a long way to making sure you never have to eat trail rations again, and really, how hard could it be to track down a killer out here in the middle of nowhere?
Player 1: "Well, about that trail rations you..."
Player 2: "I start by casting Fireball!"
GM: "What? Why? What or who do you target?"
Player 2: "Dunno, but I wanted to play a meme character so badly. Can't I just cast it... in the general direction of the swamp?"
GM look with a stone cold face, grabs their dice: Go on, if you're sure...
I approach this new king and declare that I shall find this killer.
The king seems a little startled at your sudden declaration. He eyes you up and down, and then clears his throat.
"Ahem. Yes. It seems we have some volunteers, but they seem to be from another kingdom. Surely, one of the fine folk of Cam would readily take up the call?"
No one steps forward. The king seems a little apprehensive, and an insight roll tells you that he seems worried, but you can't be sure about what.
"Uhh, I see. Very well, then, adventurer. What is your name?"
I am Peb the Girl. A cleric of minor renown. These are my traveling companions:
I am Ferro, a Druid from the once great wilderness outside of your town.
Before we get too much further into this, I'm gonna stop it. Lemmy isn't really cut out for long term play, and I have to get to work on my campaign for next week. Peb, Ferro, it's been a pleasure. May all your twenties be nat.
Impressive adulting. Well done.
Aww, us silent readers were just getting into the story. I want to know how it ends.
Now we have this whole concept we ourselves need to figure out how it goes, I can't do that on my own.
I do know a guy who's very much into LARP, maybe I should brainstorm this with him and invite the weird, bearded, 40yo Warhammer-guy to see if he can add a character.
How much is a rulebook nowadays? Do I have time this weekend?
Sorry what were we doing?
I'll spoil it for you. The new "King" is a wanna-be evil wizard who is stealing magical artifacts from all over the land, all while trying to establish his own kingdom. He thinks that he can point suspicion elsewhere if he hires someone to look into the murder that he caused, all while setting up his own fiefdom in Cam, but then some out of town adventurers with actual muscle come in and fuck everything up. What follows is the evil wizard trying to frame the heroes for murder while also taking them out without drawing attention to himself. I think at some point there will be a heist, likely before the final battle, where the heroes steal the wizard's artifacts and then use all of his ill-gotten gains against him.
That's what I thought of when I was writing that. Knowing TTRPG players, that would all go out the window during session 1 when they decide to befriend the wizard and help him rule.
Didn't even get a chance to reply to the original comment. this sounds like an amazing plotline, you should run it
It would be a lot of fun, and I may do a one shot with it, but right now I have a two-year-old homebrew campaign that takes all of my DM prep time, so it'll stay on the backburner for a while.
Your first mistake was using a swinging weapon in an environment where only thrusting weapons have any chance, your second was having such a poor grip that despite being able to breathe underwater and being a higher lifeform than man this dipshit was able to take the sword from you...
Which goes back to problem one, as you had no way to swing the sword with enough force to do anything to the fish
I don't know if we need to criticise her choice of weapon as much as his.
It's rocking a fucking flail underwater.
A comically oversized flail, that realistically would have drawn him down into the depths
Depends on it's buoyancy, though. Perhaps it's not metal?
It's got other tactical issues. The chain being too long and the handle being too short. Overall it's not going to do much as a weapon.
But that's not really the point
Spent all his evolution points on superfluous eyes that don't serve a purpose instead of points on intelligence.
What are bicep eyeballs supposed to do other than give you a massive case of motion sickness?
From the angle it looked like the plan was to let the force of the onrushing fish impale itself, rather than time a slash to coincide with its onslaught. As for choice of tools, perhaps it's the only sharp one available to her. As for grip, I don't know what is standard for mermaids or whatever she is. She may have just found that sword 5 minutes ago from a shipwreck, and had no time to practice.
Remember, the theme of the comic is that she's not some super-special "lady of the lake", and instead is more just a girl with a weapon in her hand, or at least she did for a brief moment! So her not being prepared seems to go hand in hand (so to speak) with that.
None of those details are likely to make it into King Arthur's (fishy) tales that he will tell all his friends about "how I became king, once upon a time...", especially as the tail (ah... see what I did there!?:-) grows with each retelling.
This scene would have been the perfect candidate for a perfect loop.
She didn’t have a very good grip on it then.
Moist hands.
If I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
She learned a tragic lesson in why spears are the go-to weapon in undersea adventures.
That said, impressive strength on that mutant Kuo-Toa to swing a flailed morningstar underwater.
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Thats some good art right there.
Good art makin'.
Great style! Nowadays it seems that all comics are either stick figure/Marvel/anime style.
I wish current comic illustrators would try to develop a style, and check out comics from non manga/Marvel origins. The Belgian Marcinelle school, or the ligne Claire schools are two great examples.
European comics provide an amazing range of styles, the study of which could be of great value to current illustrators.
So that man grabbed the sword from the blade and yanked it out of the mermaid's hand without her realizing? It doesn't add up.
Nat 20 dexterity
Fish are slippery, so we can assume mermaids and their hands would be too.
Well if she's swinging a sword through the water then she's already royaly fucked.
Except that the scabbard makes the wearer immune to blood loss.
I think the joke is this isn't the Lady of the Lake. The guy just saw a sword poking out of the water and thought it was Excalibur, but it isn't. So that's not its scabbard either.
…~what?~
Excalibur wasn't magic, the scabbard was magic. It prevented the wearer from dying of injuries or something like that, and since this is a clear Excalibur reference (the Sword in the Stone wasn't Excalibur btw) it means the Lady in the Lake still has the scabbard so she's just beaten up a bit.
There seems to be some context missing here…
In Le Morte d'Arthur we learn that the scabbard is actually more valuable than Excalibur itself because any wounds received by the bearer wold never bleed. In the final panel of the comic there is a large pool of blood forming, presumably by the lady of the lake's death (or maybe her hand being bitten off). There shouldn't be blood.
Thanks for the history lesson! (I still like the comic, too!)
I liked it too, great art style. Although since I'm already nitpicking: a morning star on a chain seems like the least practical underwater weapon imaginable.
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Well TIL.
Interesting addition is that, in Latin, the name for scabbard is the same as the female reproductive organ. So it could be taken to mean a vagina that makes one immune to bleeding.
Am I the only one who wonders how Kermit got mutated?
Nobody's safe when Disney owns your IP.
Oooohhh burn!
Is that The Loveland Frogman?
the truth finally revealed
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