Obituaries

Bring out your dead!

In the last several months, since I published Death and Troika! the Tables and Tales RPG community has suffered the losses of many more PCs. Good and bad, greedy and selfless, sci-fi and fantasy. Most of these mortalities have been described or at least touched upon in the two DCC posts here and here. Sailors on the Starless Sea proved to be one of the most lethal modules I have ever run. But it’s a 0-level funnel so of course it was always going to have a high body count. If I am counting correctly, it took eighteen of the 23 PCs that sailed it. But, for a non-funnel adventure, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse is, by a long way, the most murderous I have ever run. Death truly waits around every turn. It’s really just as well Troika! characters are so easy and quick to create.

Nicksen aka Sticky Nicky

The character who replaced Tim the Gremlin Catcher lasted just three sessions. Here is his obituary:

The heroes continue to meet their ends in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. Nicksen, known by his friends and casual acquaintances as Sticky Nicky, came to his end in the swirling maelstrom of Deep Storage. We had little enough time to get to know this intimidating Rhinoman but we did discover that he had been sent to the warehouse by one of Troika’s underworld bosses to track down a band of underlings. Instead he had been captured and almost exsanguinated by Paude, the vampiric red giant. When our other warehouse workers discovered and freed him, he joined them in their explorations and told them of a treasure they could seek out. Sticky Nicky used his formidable strength to help them break into the energy maelstrom of Deep Storage where they met a Gulf Man Roamer, a wraith-like creature. In his efforts to fight off the swirling menace, Sticky Nicky found himself trapped in a sack and whisked away to be eaten alive in the depths of the void by his captor. A moment of silence, please, for Sticky Nicky.

Socrates Honeysuckle

Borrowick Grimpkin, Wizard Hunter, was replaced quickly by a most august personage who also lasted only three sessions. Here is his obituary:

All Socrates Honeysuckle, Prime Minister of the Owls, had ever wanted was to regain control of the Owl Nation from the Usurper Queen. Shamefully, however, politics is all about who has the biggest pockets these days, and Socrates had been thrown out of Owl Parliament on his ear, with barely a Silver to his rather ostentatious name. He was forced, as a consequence, to assume the unseemly roles of adventurer and treasure seeker in the hopes of striking it lucky with one big score. The Prime Minister had heard of the potential riches stored in the Warehouse of Whalgravaak, the city’s most notorious and dead wizard, so he flew there, heedless of the unknown dangers within. Inside he happened upon his soon to be fellows, Ba’Naana , Puddle and Sticky Nicky (RIP.) Together they succeeded in exploring the strange reaches of the Warehouse. Socrates Honeysuckle had a way with words that succeeded in getting the party out of trouble on several occasions but, in the end, his silver tongue proved useless when he was sucked into the void outside time and space at the bottom of the vortex known as Deep Storage. Despite being the only member of the crew with the ability to fly, his luck ran out and his slight, owlish frame disappeared forever into oblivion. Doff your caps, dear friends, for Socrates Honeysuckle, Prime Minister of Owls.

MHIEE

Sticky Nicky’s replacement was a poor lost soul. He survived only two sessions (being generous.) Here is his obituary:

Very little is know about MHIEE. To all intents and purposes, he seems to have popped into existence, whole cloth, in an infinite wardrobe dimension, where he, almost literally, ran into Ba’Naana, Socrates Honeysuckle and Puddle the narcoleptic Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors. They had been exploring the pocket dimensions of Deep Storage and experimenting with the wardrobe’s automatic garment dispensing properties. To their eyes, MHIEE was nothing more than a regular, if somewhat forgetful Dwarf. And he was happy to allow them to labour under that misapprehension throughout their short acquaintance. The fact was, though, that MHIEE was a Derivative Dwarf, carved from the ancient rock by a Dwarven mason. On completion, he was deemed imperfect, flawed, poorly made. So he was abandoned. Only a Dwarf could have seen the flaws, however. To all others, he was the very epitome of Dwarfishness. MHIEE and his new companions had adventures together and while Socrates Honeysuckle’s luck gave up on him in the vortex of Deep Storage, MHIEE’s positively carried him to the exit. Soon afterwards, they encountered the giant, Arbuthnot, warehouse employee and stickler for maintenance. He attacked them when Ba’Naana’s monkeys attempted to steal his master key. But he was soon tricked into falling through the unstable floor above the sunken lair of the Mother of the Worm-Headed Hounds that lived in the tunnels below the warehouse. MHIEE fought bravely, whacking the giant, over and over, but finally, all it took was a single mighty blow to connect. Arbuthnot crushed MHIEE with his enormous fist. Our thoughts and prayers are with his surviving companions, Ba’Naana and Ishmael D’Undifoy.

Warehouse closure

We are nearing the end of the PCs’ time in Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. I have warned them that the next session will be the last. I have also warned them that, like the last session, which claimed the lives of both Socrates Honeysuckle and MHIEE, I reckon there is the potential for at least two more PC deaths. Can Ba’Naana continue to be the only original player character to survive, or will he too succumb to the deadliness of the Warehouse?