Editing Tales of Linus (section)

== Zane the Unkillable ==
It's.... very long. Very very long. But sure. Two sides notes: DM loves "story" and will go to great lengths to stroke his ego and make "epic stories" that don't necessarily need PCs involved. DM also likes to keep PCs separate until they meet, to avoid that cliche tavern start, so there hasn't BEEN a party yet.
Roll up a fighter diplomancer, because fuck beatsticks. Charisma score good, diplo and bluff acceptable for what I want to do with him. Give him heavy crossow and ranged feats, this was before I knew about class archetypes like a fighter that specifically builds crossbows.
Tell DM about my backstory: ex-guard turned bandit, who wants to make a bandit gang and raid roads and woodlands.
DM convinces me to not be bandit yet saying I would die right away, might as well be guard first and see what causes me to stop, etc etc
Inserts his own Les Mis crap-plot about my guard captain boss, Taylor, who is basically Javert and rides my fucking ass to try and get me to quit and run off right away.
Stick it out, being a good guard, 'cause nothing IC justifies what "Zane" would consider worth running off.
DM decides to quicken things up or kill me off, 'cause I'm fucking up his epic storyline.
One day, on patrol, screams. Investigate house by knocking on door. No answer- in the name of the law kick it in!
Blood.
Everywhere.
On the walls, ceiling.
On me too.
Writing on walls says "you couldn't save them".
No clues, I'm questioned about it all, thrown in jail for "protection".
Released when more murders, couldn't have been me.
DM makes me roll nightly for nightmares because it was "so horrifying." Fail the saves and I wake up with exhausted condition, yay me.
Investigate murders in my off-time because it's what Zane would do.
Long story short, it's magic, and some asshole assassin mage was hired to be a serial killer and either pin it on me specifically or drive me insane and make me kill myself or other people. Didn't work out.

So I found where the bastard worked as his "cover" for being in my city, and go to his magic shop after hours and snoop around. Hidden path underground in back, leads to dungeon with all the victims, whose bodies always vanished, alive and well. Turns out illusions made up the corpses and he'd just been kidnapping people, and all were alive for now. I release them and hand them spare weapons in his weird-ass torture dungeon and send them out. He appears, and throws his strongest spells at me. Missing. Entirely. Zane gives chase, and for whatever fucking reason, I'd decided to buy like five quivers with max bolts in each. The mage is screaming "THAT ISN'T FAIR!" while I rapid fire his running ass and give chase, with him unable to stop long enough to throw more spells my way without me catching up and slaughtering him outright.

He ends up jumping onto a teleport pad I'd found and toyed with earlier, and I'd changed the exit point to be in a cell. He's stuck, because I close off the part he just stepped on, and I shoot him while he's trapped inside. Glorious.
I'm the hero of the force until, a few days later, somebody throws a bomb into my window and blows up my apartment and half the building, and I'm evicted (not that it was livable after that anyway).
I go to stay in the barracks like a recruit, and the DM one night tells me to "roll a perception check."
22. DM swears and looks at some notes, then tells me I hear somebody trying to open my window and picking the locks. I have Tricky Rope and a crossbow, so I set up a quick trap to let the rope do my shooting for me. Super rapid fire at this point, since I don't have to be the one to pull the trigger and can just load.
A witch and a bard try to sneak in and kill me in my sleep, both of them trying to use sleep effects on me after they notice I'm not only awake, but fully prepared to lay siege to my windowsill.
After a good deal of fighting I realize I'm outmatched and run for it.

Down the halls I sprint, a bard on a floating disk riding it like a jetbike, the witch on it with him ('cause fuck weight restrictions and all that) and throwing nearly-vorpal fucking chakram at me which start to rip me apart and return to him. Also, spells thrown at me. I'm running down the halls screaming and waking the ENTIRE BARRACKS THEY'RE ATTACKING ME INSIDE OF, and men pour out, slowly, to help. But are put to sleep immediately by bard and witch.
I dive out a window, roll not to take damage from the fall, and book it across the courtyard. The bard/witch fail their own saves and crash, and I start opening fire from distance, until they close in again and I run back inside. This time I corner them with some allies, and they blow themselves up to take me with them. Building collapses, plus giant explosion, roll reflex or taking ungodly crushing+fire damage.
I make the save, which the DM glares at, and Zane is kicked out of the Barracks just like he was kicked out of the apartment.
DM tells me a bit later that the perception check was "save or death" because they'd have slit my throat in my sleep, no save allowed.
So Zane survives, and finds out that those two were assassins, like Masked Mage Serial Killer, and had been hired to take him out since he beat the first assassin.

It occurs to Zane at this point that somebody is really out to get him, but I've met no powerful NPCs or pissed anybody wealthy or strong off. That I know of. I do some investigating, and find out that a underworld lord named "Crowley" who is a giant pedo and drug kingpin has been angered that I busted some of his men in one of my first sessions with Zane. And has hired killers to take me down. Zane, who cannot refuse a challenge, decides to go after this kingpin himself, off the books.
He waits a few days, knowing that somebody else will come for him, and sure enough they do. A fighter and a ranged specialist, like me, using more of those teleporting mats the mage guy had. He teleports roof to roof to roof shooting at me across the city, while my partner and I try to corner him. Eventually we get rid of enough mats that he can't pop around anymore and we confront him in the giant cul de sac of a noble district, where we really shouldn't be fighting. He throws firebombs at us and we stay in the open to avoid getting houses blown up, which is my duty as a guard. Eventually I run into a magic shop's tent where the owner is gone, and I wait, rolling a stealth check.

Also my guy has dabbled in alchemy in his off time and I roll a check to see if I recognize any alchemy potions, so I take a few. Health regen, fire resist, and dragon's breath.
The guy tries firing into the tent, but keeps missing. Then he burns down the tent, but I survive and am hidden so he comes down to investigate up close.

Zane fires from stealth and... misses. I re-roll stealth with huge minuses and he fails the perception, so Zane fires again, and, misses.
They toss their crossbows aside and start throwing bottles at one another, hitting each other with random effects. Zane uses the dragon's breath finally and the assassin throws a bottle which Zane realizes is a powerful alchemical bomb, so with an out the ass reflex he manages to catch it and throw it back at the assassin, who blows up.

Fuck due process. Zane slits his throat, then leaves, letting other guards figure out what went down.
He found on the corpse some orders, and decides to set a trap, since the orders say this guy should kill me then kidnap a new little boy sex toy for pedo Crowley.
Zane has a few underworld connections, people he's let go from time to time, and uses them to find a halfling that looks like a kid and hires him to pose as a new fuck toy. They go to the place Crowley wants and Zane hides inside, with the rogue halfling "kid" on the bed. Crowley turns out to be a tiefling rogue with more money than brains and goes for the kid, not noticing me. The kid fails his surprise attack, but I don't, and a huge fight starts up. Because I have my back to the closed door, Crowley doesn't get to leave or stab me in the back as a level seven rogue. I do take AOO from firing in melee range though, and kid halfling doesn't hit for shit when it matters. Barely, we kill Crowley, who turns out to be an evil Tieflinf ambassador to our land. I don't give a fuck, I vanish his corpse and pay the kid off and leave. Big bad evil kingpin is dead and it's before he's even supposed to be. DM is annoyed I figured out what was going on and set a trap and won, because he still wants his Les Mis plot and Taylor has been riding my character's ass this whole time, about inconsistencies in reports and blah blah blah. He knows something is up, but not that I just did us all a huge service by taking justice into my own hands.

For a time in-game it's all good, until a ranger assassin shows up. I growl, but the DM justifies it as "the last assassin I was supposed to face who was already paid" and he's still after me because he "enjoys the hunt."

Okay, fine. We fight through the city until I run out of town and ride off on horseback, with him chasing. We're firing, his bow and my crossbow, thundering through fields and past farms on a race towards death, until we kill one another's mounts and crash.

A close-quarters fight begins, but I have a +5 poisoned dagger I got off of Crowley and Weapon Finesse and more dex than strength, so I start landing some good blows. The Ranger, after a good deal of rolling around, asks me to stop before dealing my killing blow. I... do?
He concedes defeat and asks me to let him go, honorably, until we fight again. Zane's not one to pass a challenge and lets this assassin go, warning him there won't be a concession next time. Zane goes back to town on foot, bloody, exhausted, and truly tired of this shit. DM things I'm about to quit the guard but I don't, so he moves to phase II of "let's force what I want to happen onto your character."

''Linus the Skeltal  08/02/14(Sat)17:19:18 No.33844073
:''I should note that all this takes place between levels 3 and 4.. I got almost no experience for any of it, was expected constantly to die, and the assassins ranged from the weakest (level 4 mage) to the strongest (level seven ranger) and then Crowley himself, who was level seven with enhanced stats and out the ass gear.
Yeah. It was like that.

So the DM has an entire town go missing because Misc. Plot Line 5 going on elsewhere that nobody knows about is still going on. The army goes to investigate and needs volunteers. Zane is keen, and tags along, and after a month of riding they get to the giant sink-hole where the town was. It leads into bad parts of the underdark and the leader of the army regiment here says "Let's explore it!"

Zane is put in a squad of ten men who, lo and behold, get seperated and then, after an earthquake, seperated again. This earthquake was the result of either the barbed devil Zane talked out of killing everyone or the beblith that attacked them shortly after. And I'm still level 4 at this point.

Squad of ten becomes Zane and four others, stuck in a pile of stones and unable to get out. After careful engineering checks (because my fighter studies and knows shit) he figures out how to excavate stuff safely and digs them to a lower chamber, where a dungeon is. Said dungeon is filled with everything from phase spiders that he diplos into working for them to a "reclaimer" or something, which is a giant metal fire-spewing spider. Vampires, ropers, a gorgon, and several other lovable things such as gates to hell and nagas also show up. Zane somehow makes it past all, until they get to a last door, large and magic, and guarded by... an iron golem. Level four still.

Zane tells the people he's going through that door. They say no. He tries to get to the door and the golem starts swinging. Not only that, but four stone golems come out of the ground nearby and join in. Everyone runs, and Zane uses quick thinking to set a trap for them all. It involved two giant braziers, a 500ft pit, the spell "grease" and a little stone shaping. But, it didn't work, because while Zane bought them time to set things up, the dungeon sealed him from them and he was stuck five golems versus himself.

So what does a level 4 fighter do against a CR13, 11, 11, 11, and 11? He takes off the ring of blah blah blah he had on, throws it at the giant magical door, and shoots it to break it can cause an arcane backlash explosion (not sure if this is homebrew or legit, but apparently popping magical items causes BOOM).

The door, too, pops. So does the entire dungeon because of runes and spells. Rocks fall, everyone dies.
Except for my reflex I somehow make, avoiding not only the giant magical wave of death but the rocks that crush everything around me.
Zane survives while four stone golems are crushed, and the iron golem is buried. It begins to dig out, but I remind the DM that by his own rules if you dig out of a pile of rubble you roll a sleight of hand or it shifts and crushes you more. Iron golem can't make the DC and constantly crushes itself until death.

He gives me 1000exp for "shenanigans" and that's all. I go through the door, which leads to a catacombs. My party of NPCs hasn't caught up with me, and I doubt they will since the entire dungeon is rubble.
It takes about five minutes for Zane to come across a lich.

The Lich crawls out of its tomb and, off the bat, "maximized fireball" hits Zane. He lives, barely, and drinks a health potion. The Lich throws a "cone of cold" at my newly level five fighter, and he lives, again, because it rolled low.

Zane then makes the will save for a Circle of Death, and starts shooting magic candles around the Lich, popping them like he did the doorway, but the DM wised up and they're far enough apart there's no chain reaction.

The Lich then tries to use a sleep effect on Zane and he passes the save, so he tried again. A friend watching pointed out you can't use the same spell to knock him out for 24hrs but the DM said "it's different- this is something from my system" and left it at that. Obviously I failed this one. He tells me to roll a fortitude save... and I pass. While KO'd?

The DM grunts and I wake up later, apparently the new bitch of the Lich who left me alive but is mind controlling me. Whatever... I'm sick of it by now.

I'm forced to travel to the Shadow Plane where everything is instantly three CRs higher, and I'm deep down in the Underdark, out of resources, level five, and mind controlled.

Zane meets a party of adventuring Fetchlings shortly thereafter, and through diplomacy convinces them he's not a poor weak sap stuck deep underground but a STRONG DANGEROUS man from another plane who is there for shits and giggles. They back the fuck off, because it's easier to believe that than everything he's been through, and Zane wanders around until he finds some of his NPC buddies for whatever reason. One of them has gone mad at an ancient goddess's shrine, and casts disintigrate on Zane, which he survives with a few HP and proceeds to stab that fucker to death. Zane goes back to the Fetchlings and tells them he's lost but he'll protect them from scary monsters IF they guide him to the surface. Sounds good to them, they were heading that way anyways and shit's dangerous so this strong guy watching over them is a good deal to serve as sherpas.

Zane gets to the Shadow Plane surface, talks to the mayor of a local town, and is sent to his own plane after saving a little girl from an evil cult of evil. After he gets back to his own plane he FINALLY says "fuck it, I quit" and leaves the force. The DM skips for joy, says Taylor has sworn a blood oath to hunt Zane to the end of his days, and will find and ill him for betraying the kingdom, being evil, and doing nothing to help anybody but himself and never assist the Guard.

Zane is retired and I roll up a new character, Teagan.
Description	What you type	What you get
Italic	''Italic text''	Italic text
Bold	'''Bold text'''	Bold text
Bold & italic	'''''Bold & italic text'''''	*Bold & italic text*
Description	What you type	What you get
Reference	Page text.<ref>[https://www.example.org/ Link text], additional text.</ref>	Page text.^[1]
Named reference	Page text.<ref name="test">[https://www.example.org/ Link text]</ref>	Page text.^[2]
Additional use of the same reference	Page text.<ref name="test" />	Page text.^[2]
Display references	<references />	↑ Link text, additional text. ↑ Link text