One of my favourite NPCs died tonight. You know how it is as a DM. Most of the time the NPCs you create are there for a purpose and you play them as best you can, but not with any special interest or enthusiasm. But every so often one comes along who you happen to really enjoy playing - and usually it's by serendipity; somebody who for one reason or another you and the players develop something of an attachment for.
Dev was one of these. A retainer who the players hired to accompany them to the dungeon for the grand sum of 5 gold pieces a month, my initial notes for him on my random hireling table were "about 15 years old, short bow, skinny, 2hp". He was generated alongside a woman called Asha, whose notes were "retired whore, one-eyed, spear, 5hp". I immediately decided that Dev was in love with Asha, but didn't know how to express it, and that Asha allowed him to 'pleasure her' whenever she wanted it. I didn't expect them to last very long, but they actually stuck around through a few delves, and Dev managed to get a few kills with that short bow.
What I liked best about Dev was the idea I hit upon that the only word he knew how to say was "okay". He would say it in an eager-to-please fashion in response to anything anybody said to him. This never failed to amuse me, especially in situations where he was asked a question.
In any event, Dev died tonight. It was a pretty ignoble death: crossing a subterranean lake in the ancient dwarf citadel of Sangmenzhang on a bamboo raft the PCs had brought along, he was savaged by a carnivorous lungfish and fell overboard into a swarm of tiny stinging jellyfish. He never stood much of a chance in the front row with 2 hit points.
It was a pitiful end to a rather pitiful session: tonight was one of those nights for my players. They lost 2 retainers, and twice PCs came a flukey dice roll away from death. They were forced to flee by a swarm of cockroaches, attacked by dwarf skeletons, and chased by a giant slug which they had to shut behind a doorway which was their only apparent escape route back to the surface. All they got was about 1000 silver pieces from inside the bellies of a bunch of lungfish, and a couple of rings with semi-precious stones, for their efforts. Oh well. Nobody ever said dungeoneering was easy.
I feel your pain. I just lost Leonard the Hobbit. The protector of the hobbit town and just the kind of stubborn old man that runs in my family. Too stubborn to pay his taxes to the looming human fort that would take him prisoner for this crime when it became one year too many.
ReplyDeleteMy characters loved him enough to make an impossible assault on the fort that held him prisoner. They lost one player, a bunch of hobbits, and all their stuff, just barely escaping after being taken prisoner. All to see Leonard killed.
They gave him a great burial.
I actually recorded the whole session for anyone to listen on my blog.
I miss Dev already; the only way the pain is going away is if we go back to town and talk to the head of the Guild of Sages (your performance for him also makes me chuckle).
ReplyDeleteUndead Dev!
ReplyDeleteIn a world of magic, no one really dies.
Also, Dev's cousins, other extended family, etc. You have godly powers in this universe, and I say keeping an NPC personality you like in the game SOMEHOW, in some form or another, can only be good for you, and for your players if they already miss him too. I know, I know, no one wants to make the undercut the power of the random dice roll. But for me, when I feel a loss like this, I fix it. I sure as hell can't do it in the real world, so I make exceptions in my fictional realities.
ReplyDeleteHow do you handle Raise Dead, Noisms? I've been running Labyrinth Lord recently and with a friendly Lawful High Priest in the vicinity, raising dead PCs and Retainers is easy - maybe too easy. I wanted to keep 'dead at 0 hp', so whenever the party drag the corpses back to Oldath the Wise, he says: "Oh, this one is merely sleeping!" - a sort of New Testmament based running joke! >:)
ReplyDeleteThere are ways of raising the dead, but my players read this blog. They have to figure out how to do it, and who to ask, for themselves.
DeleteIt's the yak pool, isn't it?!
DeleteN
It's the yak pool, the jellyfish, the giant slug, the hooks in the ceiling, the peridots, or something else.
DeleteWas Dev some sort of snarky commentary on adolescence?
ReplyDeleteNo, he was the opposite - eager to please and pretty positive about what he could understand.
Delete